F-35 Ops Cost Exceeds F-16 By 10% 18 Apr 2013 Amy Butler
F-35 Ops Cost Exceeds F-16 By 10%
"The long and sometimes contentious wait for a cost-per-flying-hour for the new F-35 is over.
The single-engine F-35A is expected to cost about 10 percent more to operate than the F-16 it is intended to replace for the U.S. Air Force and other international military services, according to U.S. government officials.
USAF Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, program executive officer overseeing the F-35 program, told Dutch lawmakers that the cost-per-flying-hour for the F-35A, which The Netherlands intends to buy, is
$24,000, according to an Air Force spokeswoman. He [Bogdan] provided the data to Dutch legislators, including a “side-by-side comparison of flying hour costs between the F-16 and the F-35,” she says.
She says Bogdan characterized the figures as “preliminary.”...
...The Air Force has worked for months to refine this cost-per-flying-hour figure. In January, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said his staff and Lockheed Martin were trying to reconcile two different numbers for a cost per flying hour.
The company's view of ownership cost is lower than that of the service. "It was characterized in a different way, a different format," Welsh said. Of interest to Welsh and other customers is an "apples to apples" comparison to the F-16 and A-10 that F-35 will replace.
Company officials had argued the cost of some subsystems, such as the electro-optical target system, or information technology systems used to support the aircraft, should not be included in the F-35 lifecycle estimate because they are not calculated in the price of operating legacy aircraft."