The Air Force Asked L3Harris: Can You Build Us a Fighter Plane for Less Than $50 Million?

Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), I'll bet, shaper of the F-16 Falcon, the F-22 Raptor, and the F-35 Lightning II. Boeing (NYSE: BA), too, probably, with its F-15 Strike Eagles and F/A-18 Hornets. You astir surely bash not think of L3Harris (NYSE: LHX), which is champion known for producing radios, sensors, and (since acquiring Aerojet Rocketdyne) rocket engines.

And yet, it turns retired that the Air Force's newest combatant level is built by -- you guessed it -- L3Harris.

The U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) awarded L3Harris a $3 cardinal declaration successful 2022 to present 75 modified Air Tractor AT-802U Sky Warden turboprop aircraft. SOCOM plans to usage these single-engine, fixed-wing, heavy armored combatant planes to supply "close aerial support, precision strike, equipped intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), onslaught coordination and guardant aerial controller" missions successful uncontested aerial environments. Essentially, the planes were to instrumentality implicit the kinds of roles played by A-10 Warthog combatant jets successful Afghanistan and Iraq.

Amazingly, the contracted terms of the planes implies each of the caller fighters volition outgo arsenic small arsenic $40 million, oregon little than fractional the outgo of a Lockheed Martin F-35.

But what would these planes look similar erstwhile finished? And what would they beryllium called? The answers to these questions came conscionable past week, erstwhile the U.S. Air Force announced it volition rename its OA-1K to "armed overwatch" conception the "Skyraider II."

An homage to the A-1 Skyraiders that performed adjacent aerial enactment missions successful Korea and Vietnam, the recently named Skyraider II is based connected a civilian harvest duster design, and is designed to run retired of unimproved airfields with abbreviated runways. USAF is inactive moving retired precisely what weapons it wants connected the Skyraider II, with everything from 2.75-inch Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System rockets to Hellfire missiles to Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles and Harpoon anti-ship missiles nether consideration, making the level dependable similar a Swiss service weapon of capabilities. However configured, the level volition beryllium capable to transportation up to 6,000 pounds of ordnance -- astir equivalent to the interior load capableness of an F-35.

Since the archetypal declaration was awarded, the Air Force has had to pare backmost its bid to conscionable 62 planes. Even so, the $3 cardinal people terms implies a per-plane terms of little than $50 cardinal -- $48.4 cardinal to beryllium precise.