Fighter deal for Boeing would create 3,000 jobs

Associated Press

SEATTLE — If the Boeing Co. wins a contract to build the Joint Strike Fighter, the Seattle area could gain at least 3,000 jobs, the aerospace giant says.

Boeing is in fierce competition with Lockheed Martin for the $200 billion contract, which would produce 3,000 fighters for military services.

Lockheed Martin officials said earlier this week that its Fort Worth, Texas, plant and the 11,000 workers there would face a bleak future if it loses the contract.

Frank Statkus, a Boeing vice president and JSF general manager, accused the Bethesda, Md.-based company of political tactics to appeal to President Bush, whose home state is Texas.

"They (Lockheed Martin) are playing their political card, there is no doubt," Statkus told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The U.S. Department of Defense is expected to announce Oct. 26 which company will get the contract for the JSF program, including a 10-year engineering, manufacturing and development phase, followed by 30 years of fighter production.

The first fighter would be delivered to the Marines in 2010.

If Boeing wins the contract, the company said the new engineering and program management positions would likely be created within a year.

Some current Boeing workers are included in the job figure, but most positions would be new, said Boeing JSF spokesman Randy Harrison.

Boeing has said the contract would eventually mean at least 5,000 more jobs in St. Louis, where a new factory would produce the fighters.

If Lockheed Martin wins the contract, Texas would get nearly 32,000 new jobs and $2.5 billion in revenues over the next 40 years, according to an economic impact study by the Waco, Texas-based Perryman Group, hired by the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce.

California-based Northrop Grumman, a principal member of the Lockheed JSF team, said Thursday that a JSF contract with Lockheed is crucial for the company and would mean 5,400 jobs in California.

Statkus said both companies would be able to survive without the contract, which the Pentagon has said is a winner-take-all competition.

But Statkus said he agrees with industry experts who say the losing company will get a share of the JSF project.

"I believe what they intend to do is look at how you might accommodate the unsuccessful contractor after the downselect (the Oct. 26 decision). But not before," he said. "That way the process of competition and the means by which you will choose the winner will remain the same."