I think we were at cross purposes.
If by "cross purposes" you mean we're talking past each other, I agree (is this a Brit vs American English problem?)
I'm seeing Boeing making a
load of money from GISP today. I'm not sure at what point it became profitable.
Indeed we are. I'm part of the C-17 GISP program right now, sitting in San Antonio with a whole bunch of USAF and FMS C-17s (including the UK's) undergoing maintenance/mod. But may I politely make a few points:
1. PBL is a
component of GISP. It is
not GISP.
2. It took a long time to make both PBL and GISP profitable.
My point is that the EARLY years of the PBL program were not profitable. It's
very hard to build the database upon which PBL is based and while that database is being built, you have to guarantee performance of the aircraft. The result is that the vendor ends up paying lots of penalties for not meeting the logistics requirements. The PBL contract must be very carefully crafted if the vendor is not going to lose his shirt in those early years. LM's lawyers and contracts folks are going to have their hands full crafting such a contract for the F-35, which appears to be much more complex than the C-17. In addition, they must support three very different versions of the F-35 being operated by three very different services. And the F-35 is going to have a bunch of foreign sales/deliveries very early in the program. Boeing had nearly a decade to sort out PBL before they delivered their first FMS C-17.