'Lockheed Martin, US Air Force in deal for new C-130s'
The Lockheed Martin Corp. has announced a 'verbal agreement' with the US Air Force to build a new fleet of C-130J Super Hercules aircraft.
According to the 5-year contract, Lockheed will deliver a total of 83 C-130 transport planes to the Air Force, Coast Guard and Marine Corps through 2020, Reuters said.
The company said it is planning to complete the remaining contract actions, certifications and congressional notifications and finalize the deal by the end of the year.
Pentagon documents show the value of a 79-aircraft deal was around $5.9 billion in 2013, when negotiations over the agreement first started.
"We have reached a verbal agreement on the C-130J multi-year II contract," Lockheed spokesman Joe LaMarca told Reuters. He did not provide any details on the value of the multi-year deal, or the amount of savings it would provide, compared to buying the planes on a yearly basis.
In September 2013, Lockheed officials said they expected the multi-year agreement to generate savings of at least $600 million for the US government, or more than 10 percent, compared to buying the planes one year at a time.
The agreement was reached late last week, more than two years into the negotiations. It was not immediately clear why it took the two sides so long to conclude the deal.
Lockheed has so far sold C-130J transport planes to 16 countries, with 330 of them either delivered or currently on order. The planes, capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings, are used in humanitarian relief missions, special military operations, aerial refueling, close air support, and search and rescue.
The Lockheed AC-130 is another variant of the strategic plane which is heavily armed with a wide array of anti-ground oriented weapons. The gunship was recently used in a US military attack against a hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz.
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