With the acquisition of 34 F-35A in October 2018 (4 billion euros), was Belgium too naive with Lockheed Martin and the United States? This is what the Belgian newspaper L’Echo suggests, which writes that the economic spinoffs linked to this 3.8 billion euro contract will not be very high. According to the Belgian daily, the industry in the south of the country should expect at best 700 million euros in industrial returns over the life of the contract, from the manufacturer Lockheed Martin and the engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, according to estimates made by experts for the Walloon Region. The first four Belgian F-35s will arrive in Florennes in 2025 when they were initially expected in 2023, as announced by the former Belgian defense minister, Steven Vandeput.
“This amount relates to the most optimistic scenarios and relates both to a participation in the manufacture of elements of the F-35 and to the maintenance of the aircraft for at least fifteen years”, underlined the Belgian newspaper.
By way of comparison, at the time, Dassault Aviation, which offered the Rafale, had promised Belgium returns equivalent to at least 100% of the initial investment (3.8 billion), even going so far as to speak of 20 billion over the life of the program, including it is true for this calculation, the existing activity of the members of the Rafale consortium in Belgium.
Tough negotiations
According to l’Echo, Lockheed Martin has not only promised nothing concrete, but leaves doubts about the outline of these future contracts, increasing constraints or evoking “secret defense” when it comes to giving details. However, the State Department of Defense had forecast in January 2018 that “compensation agreements will be necessary”. “All compensations will be defined within the framework of negotiations between the buyer and the seller”, he explained.
Finally, according to information from l’Echo, a meeting is to be held this Wednesday between Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès and the manager of the F-35 program at Lockheed Martin, Greg Ulmer.
