Posted on 03/11/2010 7:31:20 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
The Joint Strike Fighter next generation warplane for US and allied forces may end up costing more than 100 million dollars per plane, a Pentagon official told Congress Thursday.
This would mean the final cost would be double the initial estimate when the contract was awarded in 2001 for the JSF, the costliest weapons program to date for the Pentagon.
Christine Fox, director of the Defense Department's Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "the current program estimate based on jet two numbers will be somewhere between 80 and 95 million dollars in constant year (2002) baseline dollars. We are refining that estimate now."
That would mean between 95 million and 113 million dollars per unit in current dollars, irritated lawmakers pointed out.
"The taxpayers are a little tired of this, and I can't say I blame them," Senator John McCain told the hearing.
US officials now estimate Washington's bill for the program will be more than 300 billion dollars. Washington expects to buy more than 2,400 of the new aircraft to update the fleet of warplanes for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
The plane also known as the F-35 to be manufactured by Lockheed Martin is expected to be ready in 2016, well behind the original schedule of first deliveries in 2012.
The fighter's development was funded by an international consortium led by the United States.
Britain, Australia, Canada, Italy, Denmark, Turkey, Norway and the Netherlands have signed on for the next phase of production and follow-on development of the fighter.
(Excerpt) Read more at ca.news.yahoo.com ...
Also, if you consider the Government bailout of entities, there would be enough money for several Air Wings.
Norman Augustine will (sadly) eventually be proven right.
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Surely a simple solution is to build penalty clauses into the contracts.
Shame on me. I was assuming due experience the penalty clauses existing were as selectively enforced as so many of our laws.
yeah...ok...point taken.
Right. When the Chinese J-10 came out, they were talking about its stealth characteristics, which even I, as a non-engineer had to laugh at, when they showed it loaded up with external tanks, missiles and bombs.
The JSF at least can carry a load of ordinance internally (according to this description of the armament)
The F-35A carries a 25 mm GAU-22/A cannon internally. The standard internal weapons load is two AIM-120C air-to-air missiles and two 2,000-pound GBU-31 JDAM guided bombs. Optional internal loads include eight GBU-38 small-diameter bombs, as well as a wide variety of air-to-ground missiles, dispensers and guided weapons. The internal weapons bay is reconfigurable for all air-to-ground ordnance, all air-to-air ordnance or a blend of both. When stealth is no longer required to execute a mission, the F-35A external pylons are loaded with ordnance, giving the aircraft a weapons payload of more than 18,000 pounds.
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