WASHINGTON — The Pentagon awarded Lockheed Martin a $1.3 billion advance payment for the tenth lot of F-35s, but a final deal — originally projected to occur this year — will likely not be settled until 2017, a government spokesman said.

The low rate initial production (LRIP) 10 order covers 90 joint strike fighter aircraft, which will begin delivery in the first quarter of 2018. The final price per aircraft will not be set in stone until a contract is finalized.

The down payment to Lockheed was provided through a mechanism called an "undefinitized contract action" (UCA), which allows the government to obligate funding ahead of a final contract. The UCA modifies an existing advanced acquisition contract to allow the government to authorize up to $7.19 billion for LRIP 10.

The F-35 joint program office hopes to have a handshake agreement with Lockheed "during the next few months" and finalize the deal in 2017, JPO spokesman Joe DellaVedova said in a statement.

"With a complex production line and a dynamic supply chain, it was important to obligate funds via a UCA so that no major delays would be seen in production," he said. "We are confident the finer terms of the LRIP 10 contract will be settled over the next few months.

According to the contract announcement, LRIP 10 will include funds for 76 F-35As, 12 F-35Bs and 2 F-35Cs, with aircraft going to the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy and several international partners and foreign military sales customers. The UCA also provides funding for redesign and management of obsolescent parts, non-recurring engineering, unique requirements for international customers, and changes made to the aircraft to correct deficiencies resulting from concurrency between production and development.

The LRIP 10 advance payment was likely in the works for some time. Since August, Pentagon officials, including its acquisition chief Frank Kendall, had confirmed that the government was negotiating a UCA with Lockheed.

In a third quarter earnings announcement in October, the company reiterated that it needed more money to fund F-35 production, and that the lack of a deal had negative effects on its cash flow.

"Despite not yet receiving funding sufficient to cover its costs, the corporation continued work in an effort to meet the customer’s desired aircraft delivery dates," a Lockheed news release stated. "Currently, the corporation has approximately $950 million of potential cash exposure and $2.3 billion in termination liability exposure related to the F-35 LRIP 9 and 10 contracts."

Although this is the first undefinitized contracting action authorized for lot 10, the government has relied on such agreements extensively throughout the LRIP 9 negotiations. The Pentagon obligated $625 million to Lockheed through the first LRIP 9 UCA in November 2015. Initially, the JPO anticipated a contract award for both LRIP 9 and 10 in early 2016, but as negotiations stretched on, Lockheed officials claimed that current funding was insufficient to sustain production. The company had already paid about $1 billion out of pocket to its suppliers, Lockheed chief financial officer Bruce Tanner said in July.

Then in August, Defense News reported that another payment of about $1 billion was transferred to Lockheed. In October a further $743 million was added to the existing LRIP 9 UCA.

Lockheed and the JPO were ultimately unable to come to a deal on the LRIP 9 contract, and the Pentagon went forward with a unilateral contract worth $6.1 billion.

Valerie Insinna is Defense News' air warfare reporter. She previously worked the Navy/congressional beats for Defense Daily, which followed almost three years as a staff writer for National Defense Magazine. Prior to that, she worked as an editorial assistant for the Tokyo Shimbun’s Washington bureau.

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