LO...
While LM's predictions of costs are low-balled somewhat for
PR purposes, I firmly believe that the government accountants are deliberately high-balling theirs... and by a greater margin than LM's fudging.
I fully expect when the F-35 enters full-rate production, that when each batch is delivered at a particular price (likely 10% or so above LM's predictions), the accountants will then predict a 30%-40% increase for the next batch.
And that, no matter how often they are proved wrong, they will continue to vastly inflate their predictions of the next batch.
There is precedent... just look at how Denis Healey killed CVA-01... he presented a price to Parliament that included a CVA-01, its aircraft, its escorting T82, and other costs... and told them that was the cost
per CVA-01 "just the ship, nothing else"!
For some reason, the government accountants are deliberately inflating their estimates of F-35 costs far above what simple error can account for.