U.S. aerospace firm Lockheed Martin is in talks with the Indian government to build the latest version of F-16 Fighting Falcon warplanes in India, a company official said on Thursday. The firm has offered to move its only production line for the fighter jets from Fort Worth, Texas, to India from where F-16s could be exported.
Lockheed’s national executive (India) Abhay Paranjape, however, clarified that establishing the production line here was conditional on assured orders from the Indian Air Force.
“We have had multiple discussions with the government and the industry. There has been a level of interest …we have not been told to go away,” he said. Lockheed has proposed to build the latest variant of the fighter – F-16 Block 70 – under the Make in India program.
For the complete story by Rahul Singh of the Hindustan Times, click here.
Is there something in the water here in America?
What else besides some weird pollutant can explain the continued selling out to foreign interests by some of our most capable companies?
Lockheed should be ashamed of itself just like Apple should be.
Perhaps in the future there will be a “Make in America” program so we can gain some insight into the superior foreign technology that other countries want to sell us!
Lockheed Martin should be banned from any future contracts with the US Government if they go ahead with this. Exporting our weapons technology and jobs to other countries in this manner is treasonous in its nature.
I think that our F-16 fighters should be built in the USA and keep american workers at the helm, building the Jets. There should never be any more company’s shifting to an overseas country. It’s not good business for our country. I hope our future president Trump will see to it that it comes to an end.
I strongly suspect that President Trump will “persuade” LM to keep American jobs in America – or risk losing more F-16 contracts, as well as other contracts. I can’t imagine why LM wants to do this, but since the USAF funded their tooling and all the rest, we Americans ought to have a say in where our planes are built – and I think this idea will be DOA – or LM will be DOA.