Last part of the
Time series on the F-35. Not exactly on the fence about it.....
On Final Approach to Fighter Fiscal Sanity
.......It is not unreasonable to expect the cost of future F-35s to be about where they are today, averaging more than $200 million per aircraft. It is also reasonable to doubt that F-35 unit costs—for a complete, operable F-35 force—will decline significantly, especially to a point anywhere close to the amounts currently projected for 2018 and beyond, pegged by Bogdan at $85 million. The history of combat-aircraft acquisition warns us that F-35 unit costs will be much higher than are currently projected by the Pentagon and Lockheed-Martin, and will remain well above what can be characterized as affordable.
The data reported to the public and Congress on F-35 costs and production, from the Defense Department’s comptroller, do not conform to the data in other Pentagon reports. Even the number of F-35 units authorized to be produced, and the number to be delivered, are in dispute.
Without a complete and independent audit of the F-35 program, including any costs that may not now be a formal part of the program as reported in Selected Acquisition Reports, it is impossible to discern which F-35 cost reports, if any, are accurate, and precisely what F-35 costs are today and will be in the future. The Defense Department’s SAR, and its seeming wishful declaration of the F-35’s total program costs coming down, should be audited by an independent and competent party. That GAO’s latest report on the F-35 has sided so clearly with the new hopefulness of program advocates for the F-35 calls into serious question whether GAO, or rather its current management, should be the party to such an accounting.
American taxpayers, the U.S. military services, and foreign purchasers — all of whom have been promised F-35 aircraft for as little as $85 million each — are in for a rude awakening. When real F-35 purchase prices unfold in the future, they may be as much as they are today—averaging more than $200 million per aircraft. It remains inevitable that as actual costs sink in, fewer aircraft will be purchased.
This toxic stew of the F-35’s high cost, abetted by concurrent production, lagging performance and continuing design problems, has put U.S. and allied air power into a dive. The dive will steepen so long as F-35 production at the currently-projected rates continues.