In Idaho, where officials predict a $1 billion boost from up to 3,000 personnel and 144 planes, even the state-sponsored lottery is in act: Its website urges gamers to join the effort to lure F-35s to Gowen Field Air National Guard Base in Boise and Mountain Home Air Force Base, 50 miles to the east.
“We feel strongly that it would be foolish to not support this, with the state of the economy,’’ said Adam Park, a spokesman for Boise Mayor Dave Bieter.
Meanwhile, Tim Amalong, a general aviation business manager at the Tucson International Airport in Arizona, is talking up the local Air Guard station’s attributes — and trash-talking rivals. Four-season weather above the Sonoran Desert’s 1.9-million-acre Barry Goldwater Training Range makes for better flying than colder airspace in Utah or Idaho, Amalong insists.
So far, Lockheed Martin Corp. has built just a few of roughly 2,400 F-35s the United States has said it wants to buy, but the plane’s cost already has more than doubled to some $113 million apiece.
What’s more, the joint strike fighter — “joint’’ because different versions are also being built for the US Marines and Navy — isn’t likely to be ready for Air Force operations until 2015, two years behind schedule.
Air Force officials responsible for the F-35 didn’t return repeated phone calls.
Five sites are training-mission candidates, where American and foreign pilots from US allies that buy the planes would come to learn their way around the cockpits: Gowen Field; Tucson; Luke Air Force Base, also in Arizona; Eglin Air Force Base in Florida; and Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.
Operational squadrons are slated for another six bases: Mountain Home; Burlington International Airport Guard Station in Vermont; Hill Air Force Base in Utah; Jacksonville Air Guard Station in Florida; and Shaw Air Force Base and McEntire Air Guard Base, both in South Carolina.
