Fighting costs
Pentagon spending on major weapons programmes02/02/2010
President Obama has proposed to slow Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme, the Pentagon's costliest purchase at about $300bn over the next 25 years.
The Defense Department wants $10.7bn to continue F-35 development and to buy 43 of the radar-evading fighters in fiscal 2011, down from $10.8bn this fiscal year, according a Pentagon budget overview.
The following is a list of how Obama would fund other major weapons programs:
* The Navy would spend $1.9bn to buy 22 Boeing Co F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter jets, up from $1.7bn for 18 in the fiscal 2010 budget enacted by Congress.
* The Navy would spend $1.1bn to buy 12 Boeing E/A-18G carrier-based electronic attack aircraft, down from $1.7bn for 22 this year.
* The Pentagon would spend $1.86bn for new unmanned Predator and Reaper planes built by privately held General Atomics, up from $1.18bn.
* The Army would spend $1.25bn on Boeing CH-47 helicopters, and $587m on AH-64 Apache Longbow helicopters, also built by Boeing.
* The Air Force budget includes $864m to begin replacing its aging KC-135 refueling planes, a competition that pits Boeing against Northrop Grumman Corp and its European partner EADS.
* The Pentagon would spend $3.4bn to sustain the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle program in fiscal 2011 after adding $1bn to complete the programme this year.
* The Pentagon also would spend $9.9bn on ballistic missile defense programmes, up from $9.2bn. The funding includes $1.56bn for Lockheed's Aegis missile defense system, $1.3bn for the company's Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile system and $1.3bn on a ground-based midcourse defense programme run by Boeing.
* The budget would spend $12.9bn for munitions and missiles, including $1.2bn for Trident II ballistic missiles built by Lockheed, more than $700m for Standard and Tomahawk missiles made by Raytheon Co and $253m for precision-targeted Joint Direct Attack Munitions made by Boeing.
* The budget includes over $25bn in procurement and research funding for Navy shipbuilding programmes. These include $2.73bn for a new carrier built by Northrop, $2.97bn for DDG-51 Aegis destroyers built by Northrop and General Dynamics Corp and $5.4 billion for Virginia-class attack submarines, also built by GD and Northrop.
* Spending on space programmes totals $9.9bn in the fiscal 2011 base budget and war supplemental budget, a decline of just under one percent from a year earlier. The request includes $911m for a next-generation communications satellite built by Lockheed, $598m for an additional Advanced Extremely High Frequency Satellite, also built by Lockheed and $1.2bn for launch vehicles built by a Lockheed-Boeing joint venture.
