The US Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin have finalised an $11.5 billion contract for the production and delivery of 141 F-35 aircraft at the lowest per aircraft price in programme history.

The US Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin signed a new agreement costs $ 11.5 billion. With this agreement, the prices of the F-35 Lightning II unit saw the lowest price they had reached during the program.

In this package, 141 F-35 Lightning II will be delivered. The cost of each F-35A aircraft in the previous package was US $ 94.3 million. In this package, the unit cost of the same aircraft was announced as US $ 89.2 million. The cost of F-35B, which is the STOVL version of the platform, decreased to 115,5 million US dollars from the amount of 122.4 million. For the C variant which are developed for carrier based operations, the unit cost reduced to 107,7 million from US $ 121,2 million.

Under the LRIP 11 (Low Rate Initial Production), 91 aircraft will be delivered for US use, 28 for international partners and 22 platforms for FMS (Foreign Military Sales) customers. Deliveries will start in 2019.

Lockheed Martin aims to reduce the unit cost of F-35 Lightning II platforms to US $ 80 million in 2020.