Part 3 of the "Times" F-35 cost series.
– First, contemporary F-35 unit costs are today in excess of $200 million, well above the Average Procurement Unit Costs (APUCs) and Program Acquisition Unit Costs (PAUCs) that the military’s Selected Acquisition Reports report to be unit costs for the complete F-35 program. It should also be noted that contemporary unit costs are literally a multiple of the commonly cited Unit Recurring Flyaway (URF) cost ($78.7 million—for the F-35A) or of the $85 million envisioned in the future by the program manager, General Bogdan. (See my second post for a discussion of these acronyms and the flawed cost calculations they represent.) The program has a very, very long way to go to even begin to approach the learning curve reductions that the official documentation for the program predicts.
– Second, by the end of 2014, the F-35 will have been produced in significant annual amounts for seven years. The statement of Vice Admiral David Dunaway of the Naval Air Systems Command that the F-35 is now a “fairly mature air vehicle” is accurate—regarding production. There has been ample opportunity for the learning curve to have demonstrated some level of decreasing unit cost—for Lockheed and its major subcontractors to have worked out the kinks associated with manufacturing any new complex piece of hardware.
– Third, there is a discernible trend in F-35 fabrication costs: they are increasing. As figure 3 clearly shows, they have been rising since 2011 (or since 2012, if the comptroller’s reports are wrong and the 2011 unit cost was $218.5 million, not $199.8 million).
The Deadly Empirical Data | TIME.com