The U.S. Department of Defense last week awarded Lockheed Martin a contract worth more than £80m (US$102.2m) to deliver the initial training, engineering, maintenance and logistics support for the UK’s F-35 Lightning II fleet over a three year period.

Lockheed Martin has sub-contracted work worth £40m to BAE Systems and together the two companies will form a team of more than 100 technicians at RAF Marham, which will provide engineering and technical expertise, deliver air-crew and ground-crew training, facilitate routine maintenance and help to manage the jets’ global supply chain.