Lockheed Corporation

Lockheed Martin will open a base for maintenance, partial and complete renovation (MRO facility) in Bulgaria, said Jim Robinson, "International Business Development for the F-16 in the US company. This means that Bulgarian aircraft can be maintained in Bulgaria by local engineers and technicians throughout the duration of their 12,000 hours of flight hours.

The United States is considering expanding sales of Lockheed Martin Corp-made F-35 fighter jets to five new nations including Romania, Greece and Poland as European allies bulk up their defenses in the face of a strengthening Russia, a Pentagon official told Congress on Thursday.

Lockheed Martin Corp. expects it will take around 15 to 20 years to bring the cost per flight hour of the F-35 below fourth-generation fighter jets such as the F-16, the head of the F-35 program said on Feb. 27.

In June 2018 Bulgarian Parliament approved a plan to spend around $2 billion on its Air Force modernization. It planned to purchase 16 fighter jets to replace its existing air fleet of MiG-29s.

"A new F-16 is a much better aircraft than all the others available," Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov said on December 14.

SOFIA, Bulgaria (BulgarianMilitary.com), 19 September 2018, Author: Boyko Nikolov, Photo credit: Pixabay

The United States has struck a preliminary deal to buy F-35 jets from Lockheed Martin worth about $13 billion, clearing the way for a larger multi-year purchase that aims to bring the cost per jet down to $80 million by 2020, sources said.

Turkey has vowed to continue its contribution to global peace and security as a credible NATO ally on the day it officially received its first F-35A stealth fighter from the contractor Lockheed Martin in a symbolic but milestone ceremony at the aerospace's company headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas on June 21.

A highly anticipated ceremony for the delivery of Turkey's first two F-35 fighter jets from the United States will take place at the defense contractor Lockheed Martin's headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas on June 21, despite successive attempts by the U.S. Congress to block the supply of the new generation fighters to its NATO ally.

A United States Senate committee passed its version of a $716 billion defense policy bill on May 24, including a measure to prevent Turkey from purchasing Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets. 

The U.S. Department of Defense resumed accepting F-35 jet deliveries from Lockheed Martin Corp last week after reaching an agreement on covering the costs to fix a production error, the Pentagon told Reuters on May 7.