Part 2 of the "Times" F-35 cost series.
The cost of an F-35 is currently increasing, more than likely to remain high, and very unlikely to even approach the low levels being articulated by Pentagon managers and documents.
But F-35 costs are clouded by the calculating ways that the Pentagon reports them.
The applicable empirical data – the most informative — have been obscured. They also call into question the long-range projection just made by the Defense Department in its new Selected Acquisition Report that total program costs for the F-35 will come down by $4.5 billion. The detailed F-35 SAR, made available by the Project on Government Oversight last week, is widely viewed as the gold standard of a weapon program’s cost. ……………………………..
– The Program Acquisition Unit Cost (PAUC) divides the total acquisition expense, including research and development (R&D), procurement and military construction funds, by the total number of planned test and operational aircraft (2,457)………………………………….
The SAR also lists something called Unit Recurring Flyaway (URF) costs. The URF does not include the support and training equipment, technical data, initial spare parts or even the gas and lubricants to make an F-35 useable. It also does not include the upgrades and fixes that testing and other flying experience reveals to be needed.
Bottom line: the unit recurring flyaway cost will not get you an F-35 you can fly away, not for combat, not for training, not even for the delivery hop.
A favorite of F-35 lobbyists and marketers, the URF for the F-35 aircraft is $65.9 million. Want an engine? Make it $76.8 million; that’s in base year dollars; the SAR doesn’t do the calculation in the slightly higher then-year dollars. Moreover, that ridiculously understated $76.8 million is only for the Air Force’s A version; the pricier C model for the Navy has a URF (with engine) of $88.7 million, and the Marines’ B model (with engine and lift fan) is $103.6 million.
In fact, the average F-35 unit cost will be more than the $135.7 million then-year APUC, and it will even be more than the $159.2 million then-year PAUC. Those numbers are grounded in analytical quicksand.
Alphabet Soup: PAUCs, APUCs, URFs, Cost Variances and Other Pricing Dodges | TIME.com