Trump reopens Boeing v/s Lockheed rivalry with a tweet

President-elect Donald Trump upended years of Pentagon procurement planning with a tweet announcing he had asked Boeing to price an upgrade of its F-18 Super Hornet jet that could replace Lockheed Martin's F-35, the most expensive US weapon system ever.

"Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!" Trump said Thursday in a post on Twitter.

That probably isn't possible. Lockheed's $379 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is intended to be the mainstay of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, replacing several older planes including early models of Boeing's F-18. Advanced development of the F-35 started in 2001, and Lockheed is planning to build more than 3,000 of the aircraft for the US and allied forces, a project that will create tens of thousands of jobs at factories across the country and overseas.

In his trademark, 140-characters-or-less style, Trump did more than pit two iconic US companies against each other: he sidelined decades of policy and practice in how the government spends billions of dollars annually on military hardware.

Moreover, by plunging himself personally into the complex arena of government contracting, Trump appeared to short-circuit a process that requires rigorous decision-making about what the Pentagon needs, an effort to create a level playing field, reviews by experts in defence policy and military hardware and congressional oversight.

Trump's comments were "bizarre," Richard Aboulafia, a military aircraft analyst with the Teal Group, said in an e-mail. "The Navy remains the only US customer for the Super Hornet, while the Marines are completely dependent on F-35Bs and the Air Force is sticking with the F-35A," he said. "Thus, Trump's tweet is both late to the game and completely irrelevant."

The exact impact of Trump's tweet wasn't immediately clear. 

Bloomberg