WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has asked the Air Force why the prices of F-15 and F-16 fighters have risen more than 40 percent in the past five years, a Defense Department memorandum says.
Builders of both aircraft do not dispute the cost increases and said Monday they are based on continuous upgrading of the planes the Air Force directed.
The jets, which have been produced since the 1970s by two contractors, form the backbone of the Air Force's fighter strength.
James Wade, the acting undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, sent a memoradum to Assistant Air Force Secretary Thomas Cooper June 14 asking for a report by June 30 on why the prices for the F-15 and F-16 jumped 41.8 percent and 45.5 percent respectively between 1980 and this year.
Contents of the memorandum were made available to United Press International by a private Pentagon watchdog group, the Project on Military Procurement.
'The average unit flyaway cost of the F-15 and the F-16 have increased substantially since 1980,' Wade wrote in arcane Pentagonese. 'If we had been procuring the same aircraft in each of these years, we would have expected ... a small decrease in average unit flying cost in constant dollars.'
Unit costs of major weapons generally decrease once they are in production and their research and development have been paid for, unless there are big shifts in the numbers manufactured or design changes.
'Flyaway cost' is the price of an individual plane without research and development costs included. 'Constant dollars' is the cost of the plane in the first year it was produced and does not include inflation.
The Air Force had no immediate comment about Wade's memo.
In an attachment to the memo, Wade said the price of an F-15 as calculated in 1970 dollars rose from $5.5 million in 1980 to $7.4 million this year. The actual cost of an F-15 in current dollars is $26.3 million, he said.
The plane is built by the McDonnell Douglas Corp. of St. Louis.
The price of F-16 increased in 1975 dollars from $3.9 million in 1980 to $4.8 million in 1984, the memo said.
In today's dollars, an F-16 is $14 million, Wade wrote.
The plane is built by a Fort Worth, Texas, division of the General Dynamics Corp.
A McDonnell spokesman acknowledged the price increases and cited changes in production schedules and improvements in 1984 to the plane's central computer and weapons system display package as the reasons for the rising costs.
McDonnell built 60 F-15s in 1980 for $5.5 million each and is building 42 this year for $7.4 million each, he said.
Further, the spokesman said the price will jump to $7.8 million per plane in 1970 dollars next year when the Air Force will introduce the fighter-bomber 'E' model of the F-15.
Originally, the F-15 was designed only as a dogfighting interceptor, not an attack aircraft capable of dropping bombs and launching air-to-surface missiles.
A spokesman for General Dynamics said the F-16 'has been within or below target costs' since production began and, 'Any cost increases have resulted from increased capabilities which were directed by the Air Force to meet new threats.
'If we were producing the same plane as we were eight years ago, the price would be generally the same.'
