Almost $81 million in contracts awarded to build military facilities at Ebbing - Talk Business & Politics
Two special construction projects totaling almost $81 million have been awarded to support the F-35 foreign military training center at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith. Both projects. . .
Two special construction projects totaling almost $81 million have been awarded to support the F-35 foreign military training center at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith. Both projects were awarded to a firm based in Birmingham, Ala. The U. S. Department of Defense (DOD) announced in April a $41. 781 million award to Birmingham-basedBL Harbert Internationalto build a 25,000-square-foot, 3-bay aircraft maintenance hangar for the F-35A fighter jet. On Aug. 3, the DOD awarded BL Harbert a $38. 958 million contract to build a “Special Access Program Facility” (SAPF) at Ebbing. Both projects received bids online. The hangar project received seven bids and the SAPF received six bids. BL Harbert provides preconstruction, design-build, construction management and hard-bid estimating services for a wide range of projects, including private, government, and industrial. The the company reports revenue of $1. 6 billion in 2025 revenue and more than 10,000 employees worldwide. Ebbing, a base co-located with the Fort Smith Regional Airport, was selected in March 2023 by the U. S. Air Force to be the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program pilot training center supporting F-35 fighter planes purchased by Singapore, Poland, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Czechia, Greece, and Romania. Planes from Poland and Finland were the first to train at Ebbing, with German pilots expected to arrive in late 2026. The hangar maintenance bay has a completion target date of March 23, 2028, with the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Tulsa District contracting the work. The SAPF facility has a completion target date of Jan. 31, 2029, and the USACE Fort Worth, Texas, office is contracting the work. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a SAPF is a building “that satisfies the criteria for generating, safeguarding, handling, discussing, and storing classified or unclassified program information, hardware, and materials. ”Randall Townsend, chief of public affairs with the USACE Little Rock District, said the squad operations facility is part of the original plan and will support the academic training center now under construction. Work on the 44,000-square-foot academic training centerbegan in Mayand is estimated to cost $74 million. Col. Jonathan Esparza, 188th Wing commander, said the training center will house classrooms and four F-35 simulators that will provide extensive and sometimes “classified environments” for pilot training. The 188th Wing is based at Ebbing and provides support to the foreign pilot training center. Townsend said other foreign pilot training center construction projects are in the pipeline at Ebbing, including an F-35B vertical landing pad estimated at $10 million, and an F-35 three-bay hangar estimated to cost between $25 million and $100 million. The Air Force has estimated the cost to complete the foreign pilot training center base is $807 million. An initial estimate, provided by federal and state officials, ranged between $850 million and more than $1. 2 billion. About $600 million in federal funds has been appropriated since 2021 for the pilot training center. Related