Decision on Joint Strike Fighter Near

Lockheed Martin and Boeing Competing for Huge Pentagon Jet Contract

The Pentagon is poised this week to pick a company to build its next-generation fighter jet, a program so vast that the winning contractor is likely to dominate warplane construction worldwide for the first half of this century.

Bethesda's Lockheed Martin Corp. is competing against Boeing Co. to build the Joint Strike Fighter. The Pentagon wants to buy about 3,000 of the planes at a cost of about $200 billion, and experts say the export market is at least that large.

"It without a doubt is the biggest single award that will occur not just in this administration but in this decade. . . . The significance of the award really can't be overstated," said Brett Lambert, a defense consultant with DFI International.

Lockheed Martin is widely considered the favorite, because its design is considered less risky. But Lambert cautioned: "This is not a conservative Pentagon in terms of acquisitions. They take chances."

The huge cost of the program has been a political liability for the Joint Strike Fighter. Britain helped ease congressional skepticism earlier this year by committing more than $2 billion to its development and saying the plane is crucial for future allied cooperation.

The prospect of an expensive, protracted war against terrorism has again muddied the outlook for the Joint Strike Fighter, as more immediate needs lay claim to resources. Nonetheless, the Bush administration has demonstrated a degree of commitment to the program simply by keeping the contract award on schedule for this week, while most other Pentagon business has been delayed.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is scheduled to announce the winner on Friday at 5 p.m., but key officials -- Air Force Secretary James G. Roche, Navy Secretary Gordon England and two counterparts from the British military -- are sitting down today to make a preliminary decision.

That choice will have to get the approval of another Pentagon panel on Wednesday. It will then be presented to President Bush on Friday. The chief executives of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, as well as members of Congress, will not be informed in advance, according to sources.

The single-engine jet is designed not only to evade enemy radar and maneuver at supersonic speeds, but also to play different roles for various branches of the military. It will be the fully wired backbone of tomorrow's Internet-savvy Air Force; the first stealthy fighter rugged enough to land on carriers for the Navy; and a hovering jump jet for the Marines and the British Royal Navy.

The race to win the contract has helped remake the defense industry. Venerable fighter builder McDonnell Douglas Corp. lost an earlier round of the competition, in 1996, and quickly sold itself to Boeing. Northrop Grumman Corp., also eliminated, signed up as a partner on Lockheed Martin's entry and declared that it will no longer be a prime contractor for warplanes. BAE Systems PLC, the former British Aerospace PLC, is also Lockheed Martin's partner.

Last year, the Clinton administration considered splitting the contract between Boeing and the Lockheed Martin team to preserve the nation's industrial base. Some believe the Joint Strike Fighter will be the last conventional fighter plane as the military moves toward remote-controlled attack aircraft, raising fears that the losing company would go out of the warplane business.

But the Pentagon ultimately decided it was more cost effective to stick with a winner-take-all policy. Officials at Boeing and Lockheed Martin have said there will be subcontractor work for the loser. The two companies have cooperated on many other programs; for example, Boeing builds one-third of Lockheed Martin's F-22 fighter plane.

Conventional wisdom among defense experts holds that Lockheed Martin is the favorite to win the Joint Strike Fighter design competition. Its entry is closely evolved from the F-22 -- a plane loved by the Air Force, which is to be the biggest single customer for the plane.

Boeing's entry is a stranger looking craft, with a stubby body and a gaping air intake on the front. Some innovations that caused excitement early in the program, such as a single-piece delta-shaped wing, had to be redesigned. And while Boeing builds the Navy's F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet through its acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, the corporate parent has not designed and produced a fighter plane in decades.

On the other hand, Boeing is widely seen as having superior assembly line technology -- a must on a program that is counting on production innovations to hold down costs. And with the company having to shed 30,000 commercial aircraft workers because of the terrorist-related slowdown in air travel, Boeing supporters have lobbied hard for the company to get at least some of the work building the new fighters.

Boeing has said the program could add as many as 8,000 jobs at its facilities in Seattle and St. Louis. Lockheed Martin officials have said a victory could add as many as 4,500 positions at its factory in Fort Worth, which now builds F-16 fighters.