President Donald Trump said Monday he's been able to slash some $600 million from the latest deal to buy about 90 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters – the Lockheed Martin aircraft he has blasted in the past for cost overruns.
The F-35 has a per-unit cost of about $100 million, which the company pledged to bring down before Trump became involved in the cost issue for the high-tech warplanes, CNBC reported.
"We cut approximately $600 million off the F-35 fighter, and that only amounts to 90 planes out of close to 3,000 planes," Trump told reporters, attributing that figure to Lockheed chief executive Marillyn Hewson.
Trump has been pressuring Lockheed for a better deal since late December, when he blasted the warplanes program for cost overruns – and asked Boeing to "price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet."
In its statement on the deal Monday, Lockheed did not address how Trump got to the $600 million figure, CNBC reported.
On Friday, Defense Secretary James Mattis ordered a review of the F-35 program to "determine opportunities to significantly reduce the cost." The total cost of the program is an estimated $400 billion, CNBC reported.
"They were having a lot of difficulty. There was no movement. And I was able to get $600 million approximately off those planes. So I think that was a great achievement," Trump told reporters, suggesting the savings would be even larger as more planes are bought and as the administration looks at other contracts.
"We will be savings billions and billions and billions of dollars on contracts."
Reuters contributed to this report.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.