Lockheed might offer F-35 for the Czech Republic

The U.S. Lockheed Martin arms concern has confirmed its interest in a tender for fighters for the Czech military worth billions of crowns and it would probably offer its F-16 aircraft, the Ekonom.cz server has reported. However, F-16 is rather an old type and it failed in 1999 when the Czech Republic was considering purchasing supersonic fighters for the first time. At the end, the government decided to lease the Swedish-made Jas-39 Gripen fighters.

The lease expires in 2015. This is why the Defence Ministry asked France, the United States, Sweden and the Eurofighter consortium in December for a preliminary bid of supersonic fighters for the Czech military. Lockheed is the second arms maker to publicly announce its interest in the tender, after the Swedish Saab that would like the Czech Republic to keep Gripens, Ekonom.cz writes.

If the Czech government decided to upgrade its air force, Lockheed Martin is prepared ho help with it, company spokeswoman Laura Siebert told the Ekonom weekly.
The server wrote that the concern would probably again offer F-16s that are used, for instance, in the neighbouring Poland, in Belgium and Denmark. However, they would probably not succeed in the tender.

“If we sought a new quality, we would definitely not speak about F-16,” the server quotes Czech fighter wing commander Jaroslav Mika as saying recently.
Lockheed might also offer its new stealth aircraft F-35. But they are still being developed and on top of that, they would be too expensive for the Czech Republic, the server writes.

Five companies bid for the order in 1999 preliminarily: U.S. McDonnell-Douglas/Boeing (F/A-18 plane) and Lockheed Martin (F-16), French Dassault Aviation (Mirage 2000-5), EADS (Eurofighter) consortium and the British-Swedish BAE Systems/Saab consortium (Jas-39 Gripen).

The Czech Republic originally planned to buy the Gripen ultrasonic fighters. The contract of purchase worth 60.2 billion crowns was approved by the Social Democrat (CSSD) cabinet of Milos Zeman in April 2002, but it was not passed by parliament.

The Czech military in the end leased 14 Gripens for 19.6 billion crowns in 2004.

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