2023-12-11 15:38:00
“Leaving the factory” is not the same as delivery. Updates to the device are required. Belgium will therefore still have to wait until mid-2025 to see this first new combat aircraft, registered FL001, land on the Florennes runway.
“More impact”
In the meantime, our country’s aeronautical industry is collecting contracts. This Sunday, during this factory exit ceremony in Fort Worth, Sabca, Safran Aero Boosters and BMT Aerospace signed partnership agreements with two American companies, the aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin and the engine manufacturer Pratt&Whitney.
“Belgium was completely ripped off by purchasing the American F-35 fighter plane”
The resulting contracts have a value of around 1.5 billion euros, according to data provided by the companies involved. And “there will be more” economic benefits for Belgian industry following the purchase, in 2018, of 34 of these fighter-bombers, assured Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. “Belgian industry has a lot to offer,” he told Lockheed Martin executives.
The first agreement, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), was signed by Safran Aero Boosters (SAB), in partnership with the company BMT Aerospace, and Pratt&Whitney. It concerns a Research and Technologies project to produce, using innovative processes, structural parts of the F135 reactor which powers the F-35 in its three versions.
The expected industrial tools and commercial returns – around 700 million euros, according to SAB CEO François Lepot – will be shared between Flanders and Wallonia. SAB also signed a second agreement with Pratt&Whitney relating to the implementation of a new manufacturing technology applicable to a family of F135 engine components. Sabca, for its part, concretized on Sunday, by signing a definitive agreement, an MoU dating from the last Paris Air Show, in June, with Lockheed.
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