F-16 Fighting Falcon News

November 5, 2000 (by Lieven Dewitte) - LMTAS has signed deals worth over $200 million with Israeli firms as part of the offset costs for selling F-16 fighter jets to the IAF.
Lockheed Martin said the deals represent some 25-30 percent of the estimated $850 million that the company had promised to invest in Israeli firms over the next ten years.

Deals were signed with Israel Aircraft Industries (the Lahav division), Elbit (including their subsidiaries Cyclone Aviation and Elop) Elisra, Rada, Rokar, TAAS, and TAT. In addition to this, Lockheed Martin also signed a number of development agreements for new items for the F- 16Is that would also be sold on the international market, a company statement said.

Brig. -Gen. (res. ) Yehoshua Shani, vice president of Lockheed Martin in Israel, said the links have not been at all hampered by the latest outbreak of violence in the territories. Shani also said that if the IAF decided to use its option to purchase more F-16s - which he said looked promising - then the obligation by Lockheed Martin to invest in Israel would grow to $1.5 billion.

Lockheed Martin was recently eliminated from competition as a US partner in the production and marketing of the US-Israeli Arrow-2 anti-ballistic missile defense system.

Israel chose the Lockheed Martin's F-16I multirole fighter over Boeing's F-15I last year after a bitter competition between the two. One of the factors that helped tip the scales in Lockheed Martin's favor was the promise to offset some of the $2.5 billion price tag for 50 of the jets.

Recently, the US Department of Defense refused to sell a key component meant to connect a series of Israeli subsystems to the aircraft.