A F-16 Fighting Falcon at the European F-16 Training Center in Fetesti, Romania.

Lockheed Aims to Churn Out F-16 Pilots
At New Romanian Training Center
Audrey Decker / Defense One

https://www.defenseone.com/business/2024/08/lockheed-aims-churn-out-dozens-f-16-pilots-year-new-training-center/399069/

(August 26,2024) — Lockheed Martin just graduated the first students from its F-16 training center in Romania, but the company is already looking to expand it and double its production of pilots as the US and its allies struggle to meet demand for training.

“We could probably do upwards of 30 to 40” pilots per year with expansions, Frank St. John, Lockheed’s chief operating officer, told Defense One.

The first group of eight Romanian pilots graduated from the center last month, and a second class of pilots is heading in.

St. John said the center is ready to train Ukrainian pilots if it is asked to.

“As Ukraine and the US government determine what the best approach is for training Ukrainian pilots, if they determine that doing that in the Romanian center is the right approach, then we’ll follow their lead and do that,” he said.

Ukraine, which recently received its first F-16 jets, has been frustrated by the slow production of pilots to fly them. Some are being trained by the US military, while others are being trained in Denmark, but Denmark plans to close its facility after this year, and the US pipeline must also handle commitments to train other countries’ pilots as well.

To keep Ukraine’s F-16s flying, Kyiv and its allies will need to build out an extensive maintenance and logistics network. How exactly the US will help with maintenance and repair is still an “active conversation” between the two governments, but when they reach a final agreement, Lockheed is ready to help, St. John said, “but we haven’t been put on contract for anything at this point.”

Ukraine’s F-16s could be serviced at Lockheed’s maintenance hub in Poland, which was built so the hundreds of F-16s operating in Europe don’t have to come back to the US to get major maintenance work and upgrades, St. John said.

Loockheed-Martin operational facility in Poland.

“Our intention for that facility is that it’ll be a regional facility, and so Ukraine is certainly in the region. So again, all of this comes under the guidance and auspices of the US government and so it’s certainly capable of doing that, but we’ll follow the government’s lead on how they want us to work Ukraine support,” St. John said.

While Lockheed expands its infrastructure in Europe, some US defense companies have been in talks with Ukraine about joint production. Northrop Grumman recently announced it will make ammunition inside Ukraine, but it won’t have any people on the ground. St. John said the company is open to co-production deals in Ukraine, but they don’t have any plans in the works.

“As Ukraine begins to expand its build out of its own industrial base for defense, and as their requirements evolve, long term, we would look to apply a similar model there, as we’ve applied in places like Poland,” St. John said.

The company is planning to stand up more regional maintenance hubs beyond the one in Poland, potentially in Western European countries, as well as Australia and elsewhere in East Asia, he said. “It’s a model that we’ve had some success with early on, and now we’re looking to replicate it.”

Lockheed is also building out its infrastructure stateside to increase the production of two key weapons for the Pentagon: the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) and Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM).

Amid reports that US officials are considering supplying Ukraine with JASSM, which would give Kyiv’s F-16s the ability to launch cruise missiles at targets more than 200 miles away, the company received a $130 million contractearlier this month to increase JASSM and LRASM production.

The new contract would give Lockheed the tooling and equipment necessary to fully outfit its facilities to support an increased build rate of 1,100 JASSMs and LRASMs combined, St. John said.

“We think that with the US government requirement, and then multiple international customers, that we’re going to see that 1,100 build rate continue for several years, at least through the end of the decade,” St. John said.

Comments
Nickolas Davies — Mercenaries to fight proxy wars…. no boots on the ground or USAF or USN pilots in the air. War with plausible denial and no accountability.

Buzz Davis — Here is peek at reality. During the Vietnam War, I was at a training signal corps school for officers and lived in a barracks with other officers, some from foreign counties. One night, I went in to the living room and sat down near a young Thailand officer.

He was quite upset. That day he had talked with one of his teachers and explained that he could not understand much of what was being taught because his English was not very good. The America officer said oh that it was all right. “We just pass all our foreign officers.” The Thai officer was shocked. He was raised learning only those with the best scores, etc. get ahead in schools.

The Am. officer then explained that they used to test and score all foreign officers but they had flunked out a Turkish officer in the course and he was sent home. Once “home,” the Turkish military executed him as an example. Thus all foreign officers were now “successful” in military school no matter what they learned and they all graduated.

Ugh what a system.

Today, flying these high-tech planes, pilots have to be very highly trained. The maintenance people have to be very highly trained. Much of the time (I understand) very complex machines like helicopters during Vietnam were grounded for maintenance. issues and fighter jets especially the most high tech were grounded also for maint. issues.

With today’s fighter jets (fighter is not good term today because they hardly every fight other jet pilots they just kill people and destroy things). Anyway, the very high-tech. killing planes have abnormally high “grounded rates.”

My guess is Lockheed may well be turning out foreign national pilots who fly our jets just great according to the public info officers but the reality might be far different.

So we can all be assured that when one of the high-tech killer jets, that can carry nuclear weapons, streaks across Russian or Chinese skies at supersonic speed that the good Russians or Chinese will NOT THINK THAT THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF A NUCLEAR ATTACK. They will be very understanding and say “Oh, hold your fire that is one of those Lockheed-trained pilots that punched the wrong button and has lost control of the plane.”