Davis Backs Site for Aircraft Project

To boost California’s chances of landing the Joint Strike Fighter project, Gov. Gray Davis has notified Defense Department officials that the state would provide incentives worth $2.2 billion should the Pentagon build the aircraft in Palmdale, officials said Tuesday.

In a letter to Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, Davis said the nation’s largest defense contract should be awarded to California, where preliminary work on the project is underway.

Design teams for Lockheed Martin and Boeing are at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale building competing prototypes for the $300-billion fighter program, which will be awarded to one of the companies early in 2001.

Davis hopes Pentagon officials will select Palmdale over production facilities in Texas and Missouri because the High Desert site previously has been used for production and modification of the B-2 Stealth bomber.

“The JSF program requires new technologies, stealth capabilities . . . qualified suppliers, security, a trained work force, specialized testing and more,” Davis wrote. “All this is currently available at the California site with no additional investment.”

The incentives would result in enough savings to build 55 additional aircraft, Davis said.

Even so, Lockheed executives have made it clear they will manufacture the fighters in Fort Worth, Texas, while those for Boeing say their plane would be produced in St. Louis.

But last November, Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) and Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) tried to make California’s case by introducing a bill calling for the Pentagon to compare the cost of building the aircraft in Palmdale with sites in St. Louis and Fort Worth.