F-35 and sequester dollars and cents
With constant delays due to significant engineering issues and design flaws, the cost of the F-35 has risen to $395.7 billion. But that’s just to build the planes. When you add in the cost of testing, operations and support, it will cost an additional $1.1 trillion — bringing the overall price tag to an incomprehensible $1.5 trillion.2
Think about this — the sequester, which cut $1.2 trillion from the budget, is actually less money than the entire F-35 program. Instead of cutting vital programs like Medicare, education, Head Start and unemployment insurance, we could end the F-35 program and invest in jobs and crucial services in our communities.
GAO 13-309 report on F-35.
http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/652948.pdf
The F-35 Initial Operating Capability (IOC) which is when it can be “called to war” is TBD. That means there is no definition of what capability it will provide. It will spend an average of $12.6B a year just to buy it through 2037. A useless $1500B franchise for the military industry complex.
It needs to be cut.
In GAO 13-294sp, the annual report on Selected Acquisition Programs, the $1600B ($4800B in ownership costs) in 86 largest wasteful projects F-35 is marked again.
http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/653379.pdf
However, GAO succinctly relates the engineering problem, bad system engineering common througout defense acquisitions:
Knowledge Observation 2: Less than a third of programs reporting on drawing (most do not get decent drawings) had designs not solid/stable (not enough Design Test and Evaluation) at CDR so they are “bending metal too early”, dismal!
Forgive me if I’ve got this wrong. But my understanding is that the whole point of the F35 program is that everyone gets the same basic plane. All four services.
Thus, yes, the total program cost is horrendous. But it’s actually less than developing a series of different planes for different uses and services.
This is very different from cost over runs and so on. But that basic fact is, as I understand it at least, why the whole thing is so damn expensive. Precisely because it’s all fighter planes for all services all in one program. Which should (might?) save money over all.
Tim, when the cost is $1.5T and the fucking thing doesn’t even work I would suggest that the word “save” has no place in the conversation. Of course on the other hand we should not lose sight of the fact that even a $1.5T boondoggle benefits someone or some group of people.
It’s that old zero sum game again. One large groups enormous expense/loss is some smaller groups humongous income. The trick is to figure out how to be on the receiving side of that equation. A stint in either Congress or the Pentagon is likely to give one a leg up.
Tim
you must love your Swiss Army Knife.
I learned a long time ago that when you try to do too many things with the same tool, you can’t do any of them well enough to be worth a damn.
The F35 might cost less than developing a new plane for each service (or might cost more).
It will cost far more than buying planes with old designs, F-15s F-16s F-14s and F-18s, for all four services.
Of course the lower cost option would be foolish, because we have to keep ahead of the North Koreans or something. I mean those old planes are just not good enough. If we stick with them sooner or later one will be shot down (actually I think one f-16 was already shot down once).
The USA is exhausting itself running victory laps after winning the arms race. The assumption that we must continually develope new and even more mind bogglingly expensive weapons is not based on any defensible threat assessment.
On the bright side — or the dim side, or something — people might want to reflect that this is probably the very last piloted military airplane that will ever be produced in the US. Maybe, maybe, maybe there’ll be a tanker or cargo carrier that enters service in the next couple of decades, but that’s just guess work. Otherwise, the future belongs to drones and missiles, and a century long tradition of manned military aircraft will finally have come to an end. The giant production plants in which such planes were built will be closed; the engineers and technicians who designed and tested them will be retired or laid off; the pilots who flew them will not be replaced. It will never be politically or economically feasible to repeat their creation.
A thread of history will have ended, to be remembered by future generations with uncomprehending awe, much as medieval cathedrals are today. Contemplate this and you might understand while the Defense Department and the US government is so reluctant to terminate the F-35 program and embrace the future.
All in all GAO is soft on selected weapon acquisitions which has been on their “risk for fraud” list for over 20 years.
F-35 commonality is way oversold.
The engines were common between the F-16 and F-15 as were much of the avionics which have become commodities.
Late 1950’s F-4 was same as the Navy and Air Force F-35’s.
What went wildly off track on F-35 was the “engineering”, which GAO refers to but does not shout!
The most critical find from GAO 13-309 is that 11% of F-35 test points have been “proven” to questionable statistical confidence, while 34% of the testing is complete. Which means even though it has no baseline, it is saving the hard tests for last.
Or as SW developers know it takes forever to finish the last 50% of the project.
F-35 is a $1500B welfare program.
Mike Shupp,
The “pilot union” has delayed unmanned combat systems for a couple of decades.
Not so cheap Global Hawk will run about $50M a copy not including “bolt ons”.
Obama’s FY 14 budget ignores sequestration and asks much more for the unwarranted influence mill.
http://antiwar.com/blog/2013/04/11/why-obama-wont-cut-defense-spending/
War profiteering and fraud paid by saving entitlements with “reform”.
SS preserved for the military industry complex.
“the future belongs to drones and missiles, and a century long tradition of manned military aircraft will finally have come to an end.” m. schupp
This cannot be correct. What about Luke Skywalker and all those individually manned Star Fighter aircraft? Isn’t that from the future?
Jack —
That was a long time ago, and in a galaxy far far away. And even with the aid of the Force, the Republic fell — which is a terrible precedent.
We, facing the future with no one about us but Republicans and Democrats, must fear.
Shupp,
Ditto that thought.