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Pentagon May "Rethink" the F-35 Stealth Fighter. Doomsday for Lockheed Martin?
[Motley Fool] In 2001, Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) won a stunning victory over its archrival in fighter jets, The Boeing Company. The Pentagon would award Lockheed Martin the right to build F-35 Joint Strike Fighters for the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marines (and for our allies) for the next 60 years.Pundits predicted that Lockheed would reap immense rewards from these contracts: $1 trillion, $1.3 trillion, $1.5 trillion, or even more! Or less. Earlier this month, the same Pentagon that bestowed upon Lockheed a trillion-dollar franchise to build America's "last manned fighter" plane suggested it now may cut this franchise short, putting potentially trillions of revenue dollars at risk. Interesting problem, ain't it? After years of competition, buyouts, mergers, and what have you Lockheed and Boeing are just about all that's left of the aerospace industry. I guess Northrup's still around, but nobody else comes immediately to mind. Given another flub or two, our engineering sector is left with a single point of failure, which violates one of the basic principles of engineering. Posted by: Besoeker 2015-08-02 |
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