Japan Selects Lockheed Martin F‑35 Lightning II

FORT WORTH, Texas, Decem­ber 19th, 2011 — The Japan Min­istry of Defense has announced its selec­tion of the Lock­heed Mar­tin [NYSE: LMT] F‑35 Light­ning II as the Japan Air Self Defense Force’s (JASDF) next gen­er­a­tion fight­er air­craft, fol­low­ing the F‑X com­pet­i­tive bid process. The F‑35A con­ven­tion­al take­off and land­ing vari­ant (CTOL) was offered by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment with par­tic­i­pa­tion from Lock­heed Mar­tin. The ini­tial con­tract will be for four jets in Japan Fis­cal Year 2012, which begins April 1, 2012.

“We are hon­ored by the con­fi­dence the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment has placed in the F‑35 and our indus­try team to deliv­er this 5th Gen­er­a­tion fight­er to the Japan Air Self Defense Force,” said Bob Stevens, Lock­heed Mar­tin chair­man and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer. “This announce­ment begins a new chap­ter in our long-stand­ing part­ner­ship with Japan­ese indus­try and builds on the strong secu­ri­ty coop­er­a­tion between the U.S. and Japan.”

Glob­al par­tic­i­pa­tion is a cen­ter­piece of the F‑35 pro­gram and essen­tial for its suc­cess and afford­abil­i­ty through economies of scale. The pro­gram is com­prised of nine part­ner nations: the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom, Italy, Nether­lands, Turkey, Cana­da, Aus­tralia, Den­mark and Nor­way. The Unit­ed King­dom and Nether­lands have ordered test air­craft, and Italy and Aus­tralia have com­mit­ted long-lead fund­ing for their ini­tial oper­a­tional air­craft. In Octo­ber 2010, Israel select­ed the F‑35A as the Israel Air Force’s next gen­er­a­tion fight­er and is sched­uled to receive the F‑35 through the U.S. government’s For­eign Mil­i­tary Sales process.

The F‑35 Light­ning II is a 5th Gen­er­a­tion fight­er, com­bin­ing advanced stealth with fight­er speed and agili­ty, ful­ly fused sen­sor infor­ma­tion, net­work-enabled oper­a­tions and advanced sus­tain­ment. Lock­heed Mar­tin is devel­op­ing the F‑35 with its prin­ci­pal indus­tri­al part­ners, Northrop Grum­man and BAE Systems.

Head­quar­tered in Bethes­da, Md., Lock­heed Mar­tin is a glob­al secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny that employs about 126,000 peo­ple world­wide and is prin­ci­pal­ly engaged in the research, design, devel­op­ment, man­u­fac­ture, inte­gra­tion and sus­tain­ment of advanced tech­nol­o­gy sys­tems, prod­ucts and ser­vices. The Corporation’s 2010 sales from con­tin­u­ing oper­a­tions were $45.8 billion.

Media Con­tact: Mike Rein, + 817–763-2643; michael.j.rein@lmco.com
Media Con­tact: Lau­rie Quin­cy, + 817–763-3980; laurie.a.quincy@lmco.com