F-35 fighter fleet's price may be double forecast

[Guest guest]

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/100320/science/science_us_lockheed_fighter

F-35 fighter fleet's price may be double forecast

Fri Mar 19, 8:17 PM

By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The estimated total cost of Lockheed Corp's F-35

fighter jets being bought by the Pentagon may be nearly twice as high as

originally forecast, the Defense Department said Friday.

The bill for 2,443 F-35s is currently estimated at $278 billion to $329 billion,

up from the $197 billion projected when the development program began in October

2001, taking into account inflation, a one-page Pentagon F-35 " unit cost " report

said.

The percentage hike per aircraft is even higher than for the fleet overall

because the Pentagon now plans to buy 409 fewer F-35s than the 2,852 it

originally planned.

The single-seat, single-engine F-35 is built to evade detection by radar. Also

known as the Joint Strike Fighter, it is the Pentagon's costliest arms

procurement program.

Three highly common models are being built for the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps

and Navy as well as eight international partners and other prospective foreign

buyers.

The eight U.S. co-development partners are Britain, Italy, the Netherlands,

Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway.

Defense Secretary Gates fired the Pentagon's F-35 program manager in

February. He also added 13 months and $2.8 billion to the development phase plus

four more test aircraft.

The Government Accountability Office, in a report to Congress Friday, said the

latest Pentagon steps should " improve outcomes and provide more realistic cost

and schedule estimates. "

But further cost growth and schedule extensions are likely, the Congress's

non-partisan audit and investigative arm said.

Lockheed , the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier by sales, said it had no insight

into how the Pentagon established its estimate averaging up to $112 million per

F-35. That figure was up from a baseline projection of $59 million in real,

inflation-adjusted terms.

" We expect the average unit cost of the F-35 to be far below that number, "

Christian Geisel, a company spokesman said, replying in an email.

[Guest guest]

Many reasons exist for these cost overruns.

1. New technology. The biggest cost driver with these planes isn't the radar evading features but all the computers and electronics in the plane. Top of the line avionics and other computers are very expensive. Some of the controls on the engine are also complex and new.

2. Changing specifications. Over time, more and more missions and requirements are added to the plane's profile. Each of these changes requires a redesign of more than just that one component, but often much of the plane. Each of those changes means more changes, and so on.

3. Changing numbers on the order. As you can see, the number of planes ordered has been cut and cut until it is about 1/5 what it had originally been. That means higher cost per unit and also more expense because all of those changes, etc., have to be recouped with fewer planes.

Trying to make the plane a Jack of all Trades is also probably a mistake. I don't mean a fighter for all services, but one that also does scouting, bombing, ground support, etc. All of these roles has different requirements and squeezing all of that into one airframe makes it less effective all around.

An example of all of this is the F16. It was planned as a light, short range, daylight only, pure fighter. They were also to be quite cheap so large numbers of them could be built to counter the swarms of Russian planes. However, it ended up much larger, a bit less agile, and many times more expensive as it became and all weather fighter bomber. On the other hand, planes like the F 15 could have easily been modified as a fighter and bomber variants. I read once where plans existed to increase the fuel supply on the plane and put the pilot and bombardier side by side in a redesigned cockpit for the bomber version. This version would have had longer range, heavier payload and would have be more capable than the regular version, and the development costs were extremely low. Never got pursued though, which is ironic because such a plane (not stealthy but with high capacity and high endurance on station) is exactly what is needed now more than a stealth plane.

Last thing: It is also kind of amusing that we are building these planes in the first place. They are primarily land based planes and our likely targets than will need that kind of technology are far beyond land-based range. Think China, Russia, Iran. What the military planners are counting on is nations letting us have forward air bases close enough to use these planes. That's not terribly likely to happen, not if China or Russian threatens to start dropping nukes on those little countries. I really don't think most Americans would be willing to eat a couple of nukes if China nukes Taiwan or Japan and threatens to hit us next if we retaliate. Those other nations will know this and might not let us operate from their lands. Thus the planes are useless. China is also developing some interesting anti-carrier weapons, so carriers might also have to stay well away from the coast, thus against neutralizing the planes.

In a message dated 3/22/2010 6:22:50 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

F-35 fighter fleet's price may be double forecast