kbrockman,
Have no fear, the up front and through life cost of the F-35 (any variant) is entirely eclipsed by those who are transfixed by the significantly smaller sum of converting the Prince of Wales with EMALS and AAG. JSF must be very happy that the spotlight is on someone else.
The irony is that for some the reponse is 'we can't afford cats and traps; we must live within our means..." etc etc. But that doesn't apply to the cost of JSF.
Very few acknowledge that whilst cats and traps do increase early year spending - but not as much as the rather bizarre tabloid £2billion - the final cost will be pretty close to the figure being worked up now.
I don't know a single person working in the JSF programme who can say that the final figure for JSF is any where near the current and they still haven't come up with a public revised figure post the 179 aircraft punt to the end of the programme and the Italian canx of 30%.
In the US a DoD organisation called CAPE (Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation) came up with a figure for what the likely cost of each JSF variant would be. This figure was much higher than the DoD (or Lockheed Martin) wanted to hear and the DoD decided on a figure much lower. Wrangling between the 2 and they settled somewhere in between.
If I were CAPE, I would be putting a few bucks on my figure being much more likely a final figure than the DoD. The numbers are climbing that way at a rate of knots and we haven't even considered what a US budget under 'sequestration' is likely to do.
But anyway, let's get back to the real issue of how expensive those cats and traps are. After all, why would anyone want to buy a CV aircraft where you get 11 of them for the price of every 10 STOVL, goes further, stays there longer, carries more and costs less to operate for every flying hour.
Clearly living within our means only relates to ceratin aspects of our defence procurement.