Boeing-Lockheed Battle Over Military Fighter Plane Heats Up

In the pitched battle to win the biggest Pentagon contract ever, Lockheed Martin Corp. showed off its X-35B aircraft last week, demonstrating how it can take off with barely 600 feet of runway, fly supersonic and then land like a helicopter.

The flight, part of the competition to build the next-generation combat jet, marked the first time an airplane was able to complete all three tasks in one mission, which Lockheed said was not only historic but also “a profound technological achievement.”

“So what?” an official with Boeing Co., which is fielding the rival X-32B, said Friday, characterizing an increasingly testy exchange between the nation’s largest defense companies. “What you have to show is that the system works. That’s all they need to know.”

Nerves are a bit strained these days for a good reason. Both sides are completing flight tests this week and gearing up to make their final pitch next month to secure a contract that analysts believe eventually could top $600 billion with foreign sales and follow-up maintenance work. It would in essence set the agenda for the aerospace industry for the next three decades, they said.

Both companies have begun a public relations blitz, showcasing and touting their planes as never before and giving the media unprecedented access to test flights, including sitting in on pilot briefings before and after the flights.

In addition to persuading Pentagon officials to pick their plane, the moves are intended to sway public support at a time when the program itself faces a serious political challenge as Congress and the Bush administration haggle over defense spending.

The Joint Strike Fighter, so named because it would be developed for use by three U.S. military services, is among three fighter programs fighting for money. The others are the Air Force’s F-22 stealth fighter plane and the Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter-bomber.

President Bush, who during last year’s election campaign suggested that he would skip a generation of weapons to modernize the military, has said that the U.S. may not be able to afford all three programs.

Expected to be the largest defense program in the Pentagon’s history, the Joint Strike Fighter is in the earliest stages of development compared with the other two. As a result, it is the most vulnerable, analysts said.

“The other two have already had a tremendous amount of costs sunk into them, and one of them is already in production,” said Paul H. Nisbet, a defense analyst with JSA Research Inc. “The JSF is still a dream at this point, and it’s easier to kill a dream than reality.”

The Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornet, which began production in 1997, is furthest along. Boeing, as its prime contractor, is already completing several dozen aircraft a year.

The radar-evading F-22, made by Lockheed, is at the end of the development stage and awaiting approval for production to begin. The Air Force wants more than 300 F-22s at a cost of about $60 billion.

Richard Aboulafia, aviation director for Teal Group Corp., a Fairfax, Va., research and consulting firm, said canceling the program is not likely to have a major financial effect on the aerospace companies because the services still would have to replace their aging fleets by buying existing models.

But the companies could get hammered on Wall Street, where investors have viewed the program as “the great hope of the aircraft industry, although the numbers are unrealistic,” Aboulafia said. Some financial analysts believe the program could generate nearly $1 trillion in revenue over the next five decades, from foreign airplane sales to maintenance and upgrade work.

Moreover, cutting the program could aid European aerospace firms, which have been pushing their own rival airplanes, and further erode the U.S. industry’s once-dominant defense presence overseas. Emboldened by speculation in the U.S. that the Joint Strike Fighter could be a casualty of budget constraints, European companies heavily marketed rival versions at last month’s Paris Air Show, including the Eurofighter.

“They’re preparing themselves for a future without the JSF,” Aboulafia said. “Without it, we’ll lose export market share, and that’s going to be very painful.”

Though Pentagon officials said it would be a winner-take-all contest, some are privately advocating splitting up the work, with 60% going to the winner and the rest to the loser. Other analysts speculate that the Pentagon may allow each service to pick its own version, basically scuttling the initial idea of saving money by having one company develop a multi-role airplane.

Either way, both companies are developing the airplanes with the understanding that the winner would have the contract all to itself. So far the competition has come down to one side touting performance and the other low cost and reliability. Boeing has said that if the aircraft is too complicated it won’t be reliable, whereas Lockheed contends the Pentagon doesn’t want an affordable “mediocre aircraft.”

The planes differ in their aerodynamic designs, with Boeing using a delta wing shape and a fishlike nose and Lockheed employing a more conventional design that mimics its F-22. They also have turned to vastly different propulsion systems for the short-takeoff and vertical-landing variants.

Lockheed has opted for a new technology in which a large horizontal lift fan just behind the pilot provides the thrust for the plane to hover and land. A shaft from the jet engine turns the fan.

Boeing decided to improve on a 30-year-old approach similar to the British-made Harrier in which the exhaust from the jet engine is diverted to nozzles underneath the plane to provide the vertical thrust.

Although both concept demonstration planes were assembled in Palmdale--at Lockheed’s famed Skunk Works and Boeing’s Phantom Works--both companies said production would occur outside California if they won: Lockheed’s plane in Fort Worth and Boeing’s in St. Louis. California’s congressional delegation has been pressing the Pentagon to move the work to the state.

The final request for proposals for the fighter is scheduled for Aug. 10, with a response required from the contractors by Aug. 31.

The winning contractor would build 14 prototype aircraft for the so-called engineering and manufacturing development phase, which would take several years, before the airplanes would go into production.

Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. is one of the major subcontractors on the Lockheed version. Parker Aerospace in Irvine is signed up to do hydraulic and other aircraft equipment for both companies. Raytheon Corp.’s El Segundo operations would supply the radar for Boeing’s version.

The Defense Department is expected to select the winning aircraft in mid-October. Pentagon officials said the contract will be worth more than $200 billion, with production for 3,000 fighters slated to begin in 2007.

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Competing Planes

Boeing and Lockheed Martin teams are competing to build the Joint Strike Fighter, a multi-role aircraft that could be used by three branches of the U.S. military. The winning contractor would produce 3,000 planes in three variants: a conventional takeoff and landing plane for the Air Force, a short-takeoff and vertical-landing fighter for the Marines and a plane that could land on an aircraft carrier for the Navy.

One fundamental difference between the two designs is the propulsion system for the short-takeoff and vertical-landing variant:

* Boeing has opted for a system similar to the British-made Harrier, which diverts the jet engine’s exhaust to nozzles underneath the plane.

* To hover or land, Lockheed’s demonstrator uses a giant horizontal lift fan just behind the cockpit. A shaft from the jet engine turns the fan.