UK Royal Navy F-35B aircraft fly over the Akrotiri Royal air forces base before landing, near coastal city of Limassol, Cyprus, Tuesday, May 21, 2019. AP Photo/Petros Karadjias, Pool
Lockheed: We Could Easily Sell Turkey’s F-35s to Other Customers
CEO: We’ll be fine if Ankara buys a Russian air-defense system instead of our jets.
Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson downplayed the impact of a potential U.S. ban on Turkey’s purchases of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, saying other countries are already angling for Ankara’s jets.
Speaking Wednesday at Berstein’s Strategic Decisions Conference in New York, Hewson sought to soothe investors worried about losing the anticipated sale of 100 F-35s.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the Pentagon may stop training Turkish military pilots unless Ankara abandons its plans to buy Russian S-400 missile interceptors.
Lockheed has delivered four Turkish F-35s to Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, where Turkish pilots are learning to fly the jets. Currently, the company is slated to send Turkey about eight jets per year, Hewson said.
“It’s not a significant number of aircraft that if there was a sanction that they couldn’t receive those aircraft now or in the future, it will be backfilled,” she said. “In fact, a lot of countries say: ‘We’ll take their [production line] slots.’ They really [other countries] want the aircraft. I don’t envision that being an impact on us from a Turkey standpoint.”
Related: Lockheed, Frustrated with US Air Force, Eyes Foreign F-35 Sales
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Japan and Poland could be among those countries. President Donald Trump, visiting Tokyo this week, touted Japan’s plans to buy nearly 150 F-35s.
If Turkey is barred from buying F-35s, its “delivery positions would thereby be vacated and available to Japan,” Capital Alpha analyst Byron Callen wrote in a May 27 note to investors.
Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak on Tuesday tweeted that Warsaw has requested to buy 32 F-35s. U.S. and Polish officials have been in discussions about the potential purchase in recent months.