Pentagon's Joint Strike Fighter Drops Another Load

[unhappycamper]

Pentagon's Joint Strike Fighter Drops Another Load
Winslow T. Wheeler
Director, Straus Military Reform Project, Center for Defense Information
Posted: April 9, 2010 11:04 AM

This week some Pentagon officials morphed into street cleaners as the Defense Department's F-35 "Joint Strike Fighter" left yet another load of unpleasantness on the street for all to see. It came in the form of major new revelations from Jason Sherman at InsideDefense.com with an article titled "DOD Warns Congress JSF Costs Could Skyrocket To $388 Billion." The new, higher cost estimate intensified the sticker shock for the already unaffordable F-35. The word went out from the "E" ring of the Pentagon; reporters and others - including myself - were told it was all "shaky math," "garbage," "totally wrong."

It was also directly from a DOD report, sent to Congress, obtained by InsideDefense.com and other reporters, and released to subscribers at the InsideDefense.com website.

The "Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) F-35 As of December 31, 2009" repeated some earlier information about F-35 costs, but it also dropped a new load of unwelcome new data. Previously, Congress had been told that the average price for each F-35 would be $79 million to $95 million, with primary emphasis on the lower figure.

~snip~

So it looks like the $97 million, or rather the more honest $134 million, unit cost estimate is about to be overtaken by events. We've got the new, higher estimate ($115 million), but it is only in those worse than useless "base year" 2002 dollars. Nowhere do we find in the report the more straightforward "then year" dollar cost for the $115 million. Luckily, however, eight grade math and ever-helpful inside the Pentagon sources both provide the same answer: $158 million per aircraft. So, it's not $79 million per aircraft; it's not $134 million; it's $158 million. That's twice what the Pentagon was pretending last month.

Those same sources, and the same math, enable us to convert the old - soon to be over taken by events - cost for the entire program to what insiders in the Pentagon now expect: $388 billion, or what Sherman reported in his April 6 article. It was this figure that caused the major E ring eruption. However, on April 8, officials in the Pentagon admitted to Sherman, and the public, he was basically right - "in the ballpark."



Rest of article about this $239 million dollar boondoggle at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/winslow-t-wheeler/pentagons-joint-strike-fi_b_531705.html



unhappycamper comment: Mark my words - the 'final' cost will be around $239 million dollars for a fly-away F-35 by time we stop making them.

[Dead_Parrot]

1. Bloody hell

Wouldn't it be cheaper just to buy the country you're at war with?

[Sherman A1]

4. Agreed

[unhappycamper]

2. D'oh.

I guess I should have read the whole article:

". . . For the next Pentagon budget proposal for fiscal year 2012, the unit cost - counting only production, not RDT&E, costs - appears painfully reasonable: the Navy will produce 21 copies of its F-35 versions for $5.1 billion. That calculates to $243 million each. That is what Navy F-35s are actually costing these days."


Mission Accomplished!

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

3. how many f4's and f14's

or for that matter f18's is that?

[Sherman A1]

5. Well the F$ & F14 lines are long gone, but the FA18's are

still in production as far as I know and I think we could do just fine with them.

[Tesha]

8. Yes, but how much would it cost to re-create the F4 production lines?

And hell, if outsourcing is so grand, maybe we could just contract for
them from India or China.

$388 Billion is absurd. Maybe the age of the manned fighter is over?

Tesha

[unhappycamper]

6. The current cost for an F/A-18 is somewhere between $70 million and $80 million.

Wikipedia sez the F-4E was around $2.4 million dollars when new.

And the cost of the F-14 was around $38 million dollars.

[MadHound]

7. Better question, how many teaching jobs, post office jobs, construction jobs,

And other jobs could that money save. 5.1 billion would do wonders for the states if passed on in the form of a good old fashioned Keynsian job stimulus program.

[Sherman A1]

9. Agreed

:thumbsup:

[DCKit]

10. Hey Teabaggers, THIS is where your tax dollars really go. n/t