MSOCS,
...but it isn't a job creation scheme ORAC. It's a Fighter creation scheme. Those who secured the lucrative industrial contracts to manufacture and supply bring money to the country. Ergo, the Fighter creation scheme is (for some countries at least) a money creation scheme to one's treasury.
Good new! Cadillac has a new purchasing scheme tailored for your needs. In that we, at Cadillac, don't know yet what the cost of 2019 car is, we would like to make you a Cadillac participating partner. Then, we will a bill you occasionally for development and long lead-time items and as time goes on we will send you bills for manufacturing and parts that you must pay. Then, when your new Cadillac is ready for delivery in 2019, you can just add up the bills you paid so you know how much it cost. Good deal, eh? Ready to sign up?
That is what the USAF, USN, USMC and all participating partners have done. In fact, nobody knows what the cost of an F-35, or price if you would, really is. Everything is an estimate to this day. Everyone believes it is expensive. Only US Foreign Military Sales countries, Israel, Japan & Korea know, because they are buying their F-35s at a negotiated price with the US government, not LM.
Now Frank Kendall, bless his soul, swore on his grandmother's bible that F-35 contracts would be changed from cost plus to fixed price contracts with the transition starting in Lot 4 sometime ago. Lot 5 was to be even more fix price than Lot 4. We are now up to Lot 9 and the transition is still in process. But, there is no indication any meaningful fixed cost price contracts have been applied to the airframe (prime contractor), for the engine, the first move was late 2014
To give you an example as to how this all sorts out, first of 15 manufacturing contracts (of 30) issued for Lot 8 (43 jets).
2013
Feb 28 $333,786,000 fixed-price-incentive -- parts
Mar 25 $40,200,000 fixed-price-incentive -- parts
May 2 $20,100,000 fixed-price-incentive -- parts
Jul 18 $70,358,000 modification to previous contract-- parts
Sep 18 $99,010,000 modification
Oct 18 $30,000,000 fixed-price-incentive modification
2014
Mar 18 $65,280,712 modification to cost-plus
Mar 26 $10,242,104 modification - engine [ERROR NOTE: There was no previous contract to modify.]
May 13 $101,900,000 modification
Jun 6 $122,099,075 cost-plus modification -- parts
Aug 11 $46,197,710 cost-plus modification -- tech assist
Sep 11 $65,566,174 modification - engine parts
Sep 25 $331,408,457 cost-plus modification -- tooling
Oct 30 $793,051,336 modification to fixed-price -- engine
Nov 21 $4,123,746,486 [$4B] modification -- primary
[NOTE: Finally 21 months after the first Lot 8 contract they specify how many planes are being bought.]
Nov 2014- Dec 2015 -- fifteen more F-35 "modification" contracts
Contracts
Now if you were in charge of F-35 procurement, being a participating partner and having already paid millions of dollars in development costs to remain at the table, what would you do, having no clue, what the F-35 cost/price is ten years or more into the program? Like the country & western gambler's song, would you hold them or fold them? As far as the money creation scheme is concerned, LM is the treasury...