The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a family of single-seat, single-engine, all-weather, stealth, fifth-generation, multirole combat aircraft, designed for ground-attack and air-superiority missions. It is built by Lockheed Martin with support from many subcontractors, including Northrop Grumman, Pratt & Whitney, and BAE Systems. The United States Air Force is currently installing Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance Systems (Auto-GCAS) onto the Air Force F-35A and F-35B variants. Lockheed makes two types of Auto-GCAS, the XKE and the XJE, one for each variant. The XKE is installed on the F-35A and the XJE is installed on the F-35B. The USAF has contracted with Lockheed to produce and deliver 3000 XKE and 2000 XJE systems as soon as possible.

Each Auto-GCAS system is composed of a base housing unit, which "houses" a switch, a circuit card, and a fan. The base housing unit is the same for each system, but the three "inside" components are slightly different.

Lockheed's problem is that they have limited capacity to build the base units and the three components, themselves. They are restricted to 200 manufacturing hours. However, they can contract out and buy as many base units and components as is needed. Once all base units and components are on hand, Lockheed will assemble the systems and deliver them in one large shipment.

The following table lists Lockheed's unit cost to make each item, the unit cost to buy each item and the number of Lockheed manufacturing minutes each unit requires.