Forum: General F-35 Forum

The F-35 is not a $1 trillion program
Winslow Wheeler | CDI | March 23, 2012

"The 2010 DOD Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) noted the F-35 "operating and support cost" (O&S) at $1,000.5 billion (then year dollars). (See the last page.) There's the trillion dollars, but you also need to buy it first. According to the new GAO testimony, the acquisition cost is $397.1 billion (then year dollars).

Make it $1.4 trillion.

Both the O&S and acquisition costs will be going up.

As GAO noted, the $397 billion was an "interim" estimate, and it will be increased in the next SAR in April.

The O&S cost should increase as well. I had an interesting conversation with an Air Force cost expert. He quite literally smirked at the SAR estimate that F-35 costs would be just 20-30 percent more than F-16 flying costs. The F-35 is far, far more complex; that number is going no where but up. He expected significant increases in that estimate."

http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm ... =index.cfm

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Point No.2 is relevant along with others depending on your reading - so read it all at the URL....

F-35 Fighter Costs: Six Ways To Make A Bargain Seem Unaffordable 3/26/2012 Loren Thompson, Contributor

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthomps ... ffordable/
OR (all 3 pages on one page here)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthomps ... ble/print/

"...Maybe you’re incredulous that the real reason the F-35 program has become so controversial is government behavior. After all, I advise many of the companies involved in the program so I’m not objective, right? Fair enough. I’ll abandon generalities and provide concrete examples of what the Pentagon has done wrong (the examples aren’t hard to find). Here are six ways that the military acquisition system makes a bargain seem unafforbable [sic].... [unaffordable babble? Smile

]

...2. Issue cost estimates nobody understands. A year ago, the Pentagon provoked a political firestorm by revealing that it would cost over a trillion dollars to operate and support F-35s once they had been produced. Nobody in Congress had ever seen a weapon system that cost so much, and some legislators concluded the system must be unaffordable. What got lost in all the noise was that the F-35 was the first big aircraft program ever that the Pentagon tried to project costs for over a 50-year period.

And I don’t mean in today’s dollars. The trillion-dollar cost projection was in what the Pentagon calls then-year dollars, meaning with inflation included. That’s right, the Department of Defense really thinks it knows what the inflation rate is going to be in 2035, so it’s included in a cost estimate that stretches from 2015 to 2065. Try applying that same methodology to the four-dollar latte you buy each day, and you’ll discover that over the next five decades it will cost you more in nominal terms than a typical house currently sells for in Cleveland. So of course Congress was upset. The Pentagon didn’t have an estimate of what the program would cost in today’s dollars, but it helpfully threw in an estimate in “base-year” 2002 dollars. How confusing is that?..."

The epic battle of the competing mouthpieces... (Wheeler of Center for Defense Information vs. Thompson of the Lexington Institute/LM)

When it comes to believing government or industry, I'll automatically believe industry unless proven wrong.

johnwill wrote:

When it comes to believing government or industry, I'll automatically believe industry unless proven wrong.

I'm more inclined to believe those free of vested interests.

Seriously...who cares anymore?

Anyone with any common sense at all should know and understand that the more complex and advanced things are, there are more issues and more maintenance involved. Costs too.

Bottom line is there is a need for the 22 and 35...anyone who thinks otherwise has no real involvement with the Air Force...they just sit in a chair somewhere. Same thing with the tankers.

Free of vested interests???

Those people with "vested interests" are tho ones who have access to the real data, not the made up stuff.

You do realize that if it were up to Wheeler, we would have never built the F-22, the F-16 would have never had a radar and it would never have become the successful multi-role fighter that it is today.

checksixx wrote:

...they just sit in a chair somewhere.

While others bury their heads in the sand...

Cost is the single biggest danger to the F-35 program. It doesn't matter who is responsible for past increases (in my view, all are,) only that failure to adequately control further increases will result in fewer units to be acquired, much like what happened to F-22 and B-2.

SpudmanWP wrote:

Free of vested interests???

Those people with "vested interests" are tho ones who have access to the real data, not the made up stuff.

You do realize that if it were up to Wheeler, we would have never built the F-22, the F-16 would have never had a radar and it would never have become the successful multi-role fighter that it is today.

I only realize that the contractor is in the business of maximizing ROI for its shareholders, Congress wants to get reelected, the services are interested in getting workable weapons systems, auditors are interesting in getting what has been specified, contracted and paid for, and citizens expect to be properly defended and not fleeced. Wheeler, the gadfly that he is, is not making his figures up. Shoot the messenger all you want, but it doesn't change the numbers that show how much the program will cost.

maus92 wrote:

I only realize that the contractor is in the business of maximizing ROI for its shareholders, Congress wants to get reelected, the services are interested in getting workable weapons systems, auditors are interesting in getting what has been specified, contracted and paid for, and citizens expect to be properly defended and not fleeced. Wheeler, the gadfly that he is, is not making his figures up. Shoot the messenger all you want, but it doesn't change the numbers that show how much the program will cost.

And writers want to get published. Wheeler is no gadfly in the classical sense; he just needs to sell his work. As the F-35 gets closer to IOC, its critics are growing desperate in the same way that propagandists everywhere have become more shrill, even as their dictators' statues were being pulled down.

Unless a viable 5th generation competitor jumps onto the market out of nowhere to steal orders, I suspect that the F-35's costs will be easily defrayed by sheer numbers. That said, LM still has a long ways to go before this program is out of the woods.

Wheeler and his smirking USAF source really have no factual basis for their O&S projections. His numbers aren't credible.
The JPO will manage to arrive at a more informed cost figure only after enough aircraft have been operated and maintained for a sufficient length of time to provide an adequate sample of data. IIRC this would take a couple of year's of real world operations. So it would appear that Wheeler and his buddy are projecting based on data that is currently unavailable and using assumptions applicable to the old O&S paradigm for legacy jets. This would not factor in the specific supportability capabilities built into the JSF nor the re-engineered logistical system processes specifically intended to reduce man hours costs, inventory carrying costs, etc. In due time, more accurate and dependable cost figures will be available.

Why do people still listen to this bloke? I say that as he thinks the only fighter that counts is a light weight and uncomplicated fighter, something which no cutting edge modern fighter actually is anymore. Take a look at the worlds four best fighters, the Rafale, Typhoon, Flankers and F-22 and you'll see non of them adhere to his fighter design philosophy. He's living in the past, a true dinosaur of the LWF mafia era.

SpudmanWP wrote:

Free of vested interests???

Those people with "vested interests" are tho ones who have access to the real data, not the made up stuff.

You do realize that if it were up to Wheeler, we would have never built the F-22, the F-16 would have never had a radar and it would never have become the successful multi-role fighter that it is today.

He spent a lot of time trashing the F15 as too complex, too costly and too big as well. His batting average isn't good.

Surely this mob could be sued for libel...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkcHT9FZohA

'munny' I like this comment by the poster about/from the video: "...The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur shares the kicker, which is that 12 other countries are looking to buy the plane after it's completed even though US taxpayers are footing the R & D for the project." OOHHWAAHH! Naughty Naughty. Bad other countries.

Forum: General F-35 Forum

Wheeler: Not $1T, more like $1.4T or more