F-35 News. Desperation hits...

via The Wall Street Journal.

The Pentagon plans to offer deals to international buyers of the F-35 fighter jet that would undercut the price paid for planes destined for U.S. forces, the program’s military chief said Thursday.
Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan said he planned to offer multiyear deals to overseas buyers, a move that would help boost production of the jet and aid efforts to reduce its average cost.
The Pentagon negotiates deals on behalf of overseas nations with the F-35’s prime contractors, Lockheed Martin Corp. and the Pratt & Whitney unit of United TechnologiesCorp.
However, U.S. weapons-buying rules bar the Pentagon from negotiating multiyear deals for the Air Force, the Marine Corps. and the Navy until 2019 at the earliest.
Gen. Bogdan told reporters that this would allow overseas governments to secure cheaper pricing than the U.S. and others who didn’t sign up for the multiyear deals, though didn’t detail the potential savings.
A contract for the latest batch of F-35s—known as LRIP-8—is expected to be completed with Lockheed by Thanksgiving, said Gen. Bogdan. The two sides have reached a preliminary deal that would reduce the cost of the planes—which are destined for the U.S. and five other countries—by 3.4% from the previous batch.

This article has my spidey sense tingling.

He's going to offer multi-year buys to boost production?  Does he really think allied air forces are going to go for this?

Uh...NO!

The only thing this will do is to add a bit of clarity to the entire situation.  Everyone is waiting to see how this turns out, and foreign forces will still wait.  No one trusts a fire sale and that's what the Program Manager is offering.  All this will do is take the cost excuse off the table.  Looks like allied generals will need to find a new excuse.

But what really has me jazzed is the blurb that the writer buried.  The Pentagon can't make multi-years buys by law until the plane has finished flight testing..and 2019 is the hoped for date.

I've lost track of the numbers but consider this exhibit XXXX-X to prove that the death spiral has already hit and the program office is scared shitless.