Upcoming: A Five Part Series on F-35 Unit Cost

On Monday, June 3, Time magazine's Battleland will start running a five part series I have written on the past, present, and future unit cost of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.  The series will appear at about 9:00 AM each day next week at http://nation.time.com/category/battleland/.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, F-35 Program Manager Lieutenant General Christopher Bogdan and DOD's new F-35 Selected Acquisition Report all assert the cost to buy an F-35 is coming down.  As a result, of course, they imply the US and its foreign partners should continue with their commitments to buy it.   

The empirical data say otherwise.  In fact, F-35 unit costs, which are now on average above $200 million per copy, are going up, and -- even more against the grain of the newly optimistic conventional wisdom -- promises that the F-35 will become affordable defy history, reason and the available data.

This five part series will address –

1)      The new era of good feelings for the F-35 being rolled out by Secretary Hagel, General Bogdan, the new SAR, and even GAO.

2)      How the Defense Department’s official documents, and others, cook the books on F-35 costs.

3)      What does a generic F-35 actually cost today?

4)      Does the story change when you look at the Air Force’s and Navy’s F-35 variants, and what are the most likely future trends?

5)      What conclusions and recommendations can observers take from the actual F-35 cost history?

 

As the series rolls out, I welcome any comments or questions.

_____________________________
Winslow T. Wheeler
Director
Straus Military Reform Project,
Center for Defense Information at the
Project On Government Oversight (POGO)
301 791-2397 (home office)
301 221-3897 (cell)