US defence giant Lockheed Martin is reportedly closing in on an international deal for F-16 fighter planes and has offered to eventually build all the jets at a proposed plant in India in case it was a bigger order to supply the Indian Air Force. Randall L Howard, who heads the company's F-16 business development, said Lockheed is offering to make India the sole F-16 production centre, so eventually it will make the planes not just for India, but also for other countries.
It is currently closing its F-16 production line at Forth Worth, Texas and will supply new orders from a new facility at Greenville, South Carolina. The plan, however, was to eventually build the planes in India, Howard said. Lockheed is in race with Sweden's Saab to equip the Indian military with at least 100 single-engine jets that have to be produced locally under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Make In India plan.
Howard said, “Our next customer, which we believe to be very soon... We will produce those aircraft out of that (Greenville) facility. As you look beyond that, the opportunity for India is to them move all of that into India and that's what's being proposed... to have a single production line in India that would service the new production requirements of global demand and the global market.”
The Indian government will issue a formal request to Lockheed and Saab over the next few days to provide information about their plans to design, develop and produce combat jets in India, a government official said. The planes will be produced under a new 'strategic partnership' policy under which the foreign aircraft maker will collaborate with an Indian firm to develop a world-class indigenous aeronautical base that India has struggled to build for decades. While the American company has picked Tata Advanced Systems as its local partner, Saab is yet to announce its Indian collaborator to produce the Gripen E aircraft that it has offered to the Air Force.
Howard stated that winning the Indian contract worth billions of dollars will protect thousands of jobs at Lockheed in the United States as well as at dozens of components suppliers, since the Indian facility will come up gradually.
