The chief of the JSF project, Lockheed Martin vice-president Tom Burbage, will visit Canberra next month for talks with Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon and senior Defence officials.

Mr Burbage will brief Mr Fitzgibbon on the JSF program's progress and make Lockheed Martin's pitch for Australia to lock into what will be our biggest defence procurement.

The Defence Department is planning to spend about $16 billion to buy up to 100 of the new fighters to replace the air force's ageing F/A-18A fighters, the soon to be retired F-111 bombers and the interim fighter-bomber, the F/A-18F Super Hornet.

Some estimates of the total project acquisition and life-cycle costs for the JSF purchase range as high as $40 billion.

Despite reported poor results for the JSF in a recent United States Air Force wargame exercise in Hawaii, Mr Fitzgibbon has expressed confidence that the F-35 is ''the right aircraft for Australia'', provided Lockheed Martin can provide an acceptable delivery schedule at an affordable cost.

A former US Navy aviator, Mr Burbage has run Lockheed Martin's JSF program since 2001.

The project has suffered setbacks, including delays and rising costs that have been criticised by US government auditors. At present only two prototype aircraft have flown.

The global financial crisis is likely to increase the risks of the project for Australia as a lower Australian dollar will reduce Australia's purchasing power for a purchase in US dollars.

At the same time budgetary pressures in other countries involved in the JSF project may result in fewer aircraft being purchased with the result that under the agreement between the project partners Australia will carry a significantly greater proportion of shared development and production costs.

A Finance Department source familiar with the JSF project told The Canberra Times this week that financial risks were now the biggest cloud hanging over the proposed acquisition.

''Defence hasn't left Fitzgibbon and the Government with much choice other than to buy the JSF, it was always pretty much a fait accompli'', the official said.

''The real issue is going to be how many do we buy and over what time period with things looking the way they are, Defence might not get all the capability they want.

''They might have to squeeze a lot more value out of those Super Hornets.''