WASHINGTON, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- One of the most expensive procurements in Pentagon history, the Joint Strike Fighter program, has recently been estimated to cost just over $299 billion for nearly 2,500 aircraft.
This attempt to modernize America’s tactical aircraft inventory is shackled by cost growth and production during and after an insufficient testing period.
Some used to call this “concurrency”; “buy before you fly” would also be an accurate description. This program is a good example of historic problems in the weapon acquisition system of today’s Pentagon -- problems no one is doing anything to address.
The F-35 is currently under development and production by Lockheed Martin in cooperation with BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman. Lockheed Martin was selected by the Pentagon on October 26, 2001, after beating out competition from McDonnell Douglas and then Boeing in early design and demonstration phases of the program from 1994 to 2001.
The aircraft will be powered by the Pratt & Whitney F135 engine. Designated Lightning II, the F-35 multi-role aircraft design includes three variants. A Conventional Take-Off and Landing, or CTOL, aircraft is being built for the U.S. Air Force, which is looking to replace or complement F-16, A-10, F-15E, and F-117 aircraft.
A Carrier Variant is being built for the U.S. Navy to serve as a “first day-of-the-war” deep-strike stealth bomber. A more complicated Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing, or STOVL, version is being built to replace F/A-18C/D and AV-8B aircraft in the U.S. Marine Corps and Harriers in Britain's Royal Navy.
JSF is also a multinational acquisition program in partnership with Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Australia, Norway, Denmark and Canada. These program partners and other allied governments, including Israel and Singapore, will have the opportunity to purchase JSF aircraft upon production.
The JSF program evolved out of the Joint Advanced Strike Technology program of the early 1990s to respond to the high cost of tactical aviation. It was asserted that increasing commonality among aircraft for various missions would reduce both acquisition and lifecycle costs and would adequately address future threats.
This is not the first time the Air Force promised that new, more complex aircraft would have an affordable procurement cost and an even cheaper cost to maintain and operate than aircraft being replaced.
The F-15 was promised to be less expensive to support than the Vietnam era F-4; however, reality proved otherwise, and the F-15 was significantly more expensive to operate. The Air Force promised the F-22 would in turn be 40 percent less expensive to operate than the F-15; information from the Office of the Secretary of Defense indicates it is actually 30 percent more expensive to support. Being significantly more complex than the F-16 it purports to replace, the F-35 is virtually sure to follow this well beaten path.
The same trend marks the F-35’s acquisition cost, which the U.S. Department of Defense has failed to control.
Compared with early cost estimates of $35 million per copy, the Pentagon currently predicts the development and production of 2,458 F-35 aircraft for $299 billion. Each F-35 would cost $122 million. For this reason, the F-35 can already be said to have failed to achieve its primary objective: low cost.
Furthermore, the current cost estimate assumes no further cost overruns from the current immature state of the aircraft. We can expect even more cost growth, which is already about three times the original promise. We can also expect more shrinkage in the total number Defense Department plans to buy; which is, after all, a typical way the department manages cost growth.
In addition, the F-35 is in danger of inadequately fulfilling the needs of the military services by attempting to satisfy them all with a common “multi-role” aircraft design.
Like many of its multi-role predecessor aircraft, the F-35 may well turn out to be a “jack of all trades but a master of none.”
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(Next: Continuing performance uncertainties)
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(Elise Szabo is a research assistant for the Center for Defense Information's Straus Military Reform Project. She received a bachelor’s degree in international relation from Saint Joseph’s University in May 2007.)
(Winslow T. Wheeler is the director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information.)
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(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
