Posted on 04/04/2010 1:32:06 AM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
When the Pentagon’s top buyer appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee, most observers expected Ash Carter to tell lawmakers just how much each F-35 costs and how much the plane is likely to cost over time. That didn’t happen. Winslow Wheeler, a bipartisan conagreassional defense budget expert now at the Center for Defense Information, penned a detailed analysis and commentary picking apart the Pentagon’s numbers and their underlying assumptions. One area sure to spark disagreement is his discussion of F-35 production. This plane is supposed to be the first advanced fighter built on the closest thing to an assembly line since World War 2. The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin say it will not be hand built, as was the F-22. But Wheeler argues that stealth materials will make it virtually impossible to build F-35s relatively quickly and efficiently. Winslow’s commentary follows. — Colin Clark
Ashton Carter, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, and Christine Fox, director for Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, presented new unit cost estimates for the F-35 during two recent hearings in the Senate and House Armed Services Committees. Those estimates are extremely optimistic and very incomplete.
The F-35 unit cost estimate is incomplete because the $114 million to $135 million “Average Procurement Unit Cost” (APUC) Carter and Fox announced, in “then=year” dollars, to buy 2,443 aircraft does not include any research, development, test and evaluation money for the F-35. The best available estimate of those additional development costs is about $60 billion (to add to the estimate of $278 to $329 billion to produce the F –35s). Including those costs would add about $25 million to the cost of each aircraft, making the Carter-Fox total program unit cost somewhere between $139 million to $160 million.
(Excerpt) Read more at dodbuzz.com ...
Wow, three substantial paragraphs, and no explanation of the abbreviation “JSF”. I guess I’m supposed to go to the article at the link for more mind-numbing details in hopes that they explain the abbreviation somewhere. No, I think not.
Well, I am limited to how much I can post.
At some point in the evolution of fighters the pilot will control the plane remotely from a bunker on the ground. That technology can’t be far off if it doesn’t exist already.
When are these people going to stop including sunk costs (i.e. R&D) in their production cost numbers. It makes sense when you are deciding whether or not to fund a new project, but in this case the R&D money has already been spent, so all that matters from this point forward is cost of production.
Correct. R&D, as well as testing projects are paid under separate contracts to the prime and sub contractors. Those costs have nothing to do with the final production contract.
Seems that Gates and this Obama regime want to puff up the cost per aircraft to either show how much they spend on defense or to show how much is wasted on defense. ??? Why in the hell would the F-22 or the F-35 programs be curtailed? Could it be for healthcare insurance for illegal aliens and “kids” as old as 26?
When Cheney was SecDef, he kept cutting spending on the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor and caused many jobs to be lost in the industry. The program was given CPR and the V-22 has been performing very well in Iraq and Afghanistan. .....Gates can’t even tote Cheney’s jock strap and he’s making even worse decisions on defense spending (and Rules of Engagement).
Wow, three substantial paragraphs, and no explanation of the abbreviation “JSF”.
JSF=Joint Strike Fighter=F-35
Godsdpeed
They divide all R&D costs into the number of jets manufactured so far. This makes each jet appear artificially expensive, and they can claim that we need to cut production because these jets have been costing billions more per unit than planned. They will never tell us what they would cost per unit if we built more of them.
I understand that, and that’s exactly what I was complaining about. Sunk money is gone. What matters is costs going forward.
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