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Home Front: Politix

F-35 looking more like white elephant

2011-01-14

Defense officials say the original cost estimates have now doubled to make each plane's price tag reach some 92 million dollars.
My. $92M would sure buy a bunch of UAVs, now wouldn't they.
Private analysts say the whole F-35 program is becoming a money pit.
I hope we didn't pay these geniuses for this analysis.
"The incredibly unfortunate phrase 'too big to fail' applies to this aircraft more than any other defense program," said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace industry analyst with the Teal Group.
I'd say it's already a failure.
"It's difficult to think of a civil or military program in the past decade that hasn't experienced similar delays and cost overruns."
So those aren't just Oscar-winning well-practiced looks of astonishment then?

Posted by:gorb

#24 OldSpook is right on this. Combining development cost into the acquisition cost is crazy. But that is not the real problem.

The real problem is that actually buying stuff is expensive. Developing stuff and studying stuff is cheap. The Marine's amphibious vehicle, the Army's FCS, and the Air Force's F-35 are development programs that are ready for production NOW.

The administration is unwilling to spend real money on procurement NOW. So those programs are canceled NOW. And that decision is probably reasonable given that there is no threat right NOW.

Don't lose faith happy warriors. The F-35 is a good design, but we don't need it NOW. F-18s and F-15 Stealths will do the job for NOW. Buy some of them NOW.

It is time to start development on F-36's and B-3's NOW. We can buy them later, when we need them.

Posted by: rammer 2011-01-14 23:01

#23 They don't want the truth. They want to spend fifty billion building an assembly line for the F-35, then run off a half dozen prototypes and declare it a failure and shut it down. It's a way of phrasing the argument so that we're essentially disarmed.

Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-01-14 23:00

#22 One thing that has always irritated me about the accounting is that they roll the development cost into the production costs. Once we have budgeted for 175 aircraft, its false to imply that the per-plane cost of the first batch (with the development costs rolled in) will then be the per-plane cost of any additional planes.

We need the truth: This plane cost X to develop, and each airframe built and delivered has a price has a price of Y. Now that we have paid the development and production setup cost of X, how many of the planes do we wish to buy at Y?

Posted by: OldSpook 2011-01-14 20:04

#21 F-35

versus

* WAFF > THE TELEGRAPH: "BRITAIN MAY LOSE ITS TANKS". Britannia, fka "Gem of the Ocean", could realitically one day be defended by as few as 50 CHALLENGER II MBTS, ETC, OR LESS???

IIUC, the Brits will have no choice but to seek closer closer MILPOL COOPERATION + INTEGRATION WID ITS EU BRETHREN, PARTICULARLY FRANCE + RUSSO-GERMANY???

Posted by: JosephMendiola 2011-01-14 19:52

#20 Correctimundo, P2K. And he has a frightening graph that pretty much proves it. The book was written, what, 30 years ago, and it's right on track.

That's why new technologies, like UAVs emerge as low cost alternatives to the bloated end of technology life cycle behemoths. Can you imagine a 50" crt?

Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2011-01-14 19:47

#19 NS, I believe one of Augustine's Laws was/is that based upon cost projections sometime in the future the US will only be able to buy one aircraft which will then be shared by the Air Force and the Navy on alternating days, with the Marines getting it on Leap Day.

Posted by: Procopius2k 2011-01-14 18:23

#18 Reality check: why is an STOL version needed at all other than the vanity of the USMC, and to placate the Brits who no longer have a real aircraft carrier. Dump the STOL, and produce a regular and a navalized version. Put the savings into more F-22s and some UAVs.

Posted by: No I am The Other Beldar 2011-01-14 16:57

#17 "forged composites"

That name ought to give manufacturers in China a headache.

Posted by: gorb 2011-01-14 16:55

#16 Was reading an article in Road & Track during lunch today that dealt with "forged composites" They offer a way to lower costs involved with anything built with carbon fiber. Supposed to be able to work to +/- .001" but I take that with a certain grain of salt.

Posted by: Cheaderhead 2011-01-14 16:52

#15 We are soon going to get to a point where our government probably won't be able to develop anything at all.

Somebody should write a book about that.

Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2011-01-14 16:04

#14 Any time the number of aircraft purchased is reduced, the per copy price will go up. The development cost is the same regardless of how many are produced so if you produce fewer copies, that cost must be split across fewer aircraft making each aircraft cost include a larger percentage of the development cost.

We are soon going to get to a point where our government probably won't be able to develop anything at all.

Posted by: crosspatch 2011-01-14 14:19

#13 Oops! Sorry about the double entry.

Posted by: tipover 2011-01-14 13:03

#12 "The other thing we need to ask is why we have to build everything stealthy. We are fighting against an enemy that thinks the earth is flat."

Al, keep in mind that most of our civilian (and some military) electronics are made in China. And their theft of our Stealth tech is huge and ongoing. Don't forget the did first flight of their J-20 Stealth 2 days ago during Gates visit to China. Calling everyone stupid is not realistic and doesn't win wars. China hasn't spent itself into bankruptcy and has money to spent on new military tech.

Posted by: tipover 2011-01-14 13:01

#11 "The other thing we need to ask is why we have to build everything stealthy. We are fighting against an enemy that thinks the earth is flat."

Al, keep in mind that most of our civilian (and some military) electronics are made in China. And their theft of our Stealth tech is huge and ongoing. Don't forget the did first flight of their J-20 Stealth 2 days ago during Gates visit to China. Calling everyone stupid is not realistic and doesn't win wars. China hasn't spent itself into bankruptcy and has money to spent on new military tech.

Posted by: tipover 2011-01-14 12:59

#10 British discuss deployment of F-35B on their new Aircraft Carriers

Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC 2011-01-14 12:13

#9 Thing from Snowy Mountain,
I thought the F-35 was a lemon before the F-22 was cancelled. It was tremendously expensive before the costs went up, and its payload and performance kept getting cut "to bring costs down".

I thought at the time that we should keep the F-22 (which is a real game changer) and cancel the F-35. What we did was pure madness.

The other thing we need to ask is why we have to build everything stealthy. We are fighting against an enemy that thinks the earth is flat.

I think a mix of stealthy/nonstealthy weapon systems would be better. It would present the enemy with a wider range of threats and allows us to have airplanes for the bucks.

Al

Posted by: Frozen Al 2011-01-14 12:06

#8 Part of the problem is that the manufacturing tlerances are exceedingly tight and industry cannot meet them without huge costs ( either up front or in the MRB proces) The goal was to have a 'Lego-Like' aircraft that just snaps together, rather than the traditional hand work that previous aircraft assembly methods have enjoyed. JIT or one part flow is also invoked and while it removes the storage cost of extra assets, it does add to part set up time. with 3 variants being built at the same time, and in no particular sequence this can add a lot of cost upstream.

Posted by: USN, Ret. 2011-01-14 11:23

#7 Good Grief

Posted by: newc 2011-01-14 10:17

#6 I suspect the $ 92 million isn't incremental flyaway costs. They always use total sunk costs and pretend to be quoting flyaway costs when they want to cancel a program and start over.

Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-01-14 09:31

#5 You won't hear that from many people because now that we have so much money invested in it, and it's the only stealth aircraft program we have _now_, they're going the route that the only thing to do is cancel it and start over from scratch. Which gives us nothing.

The day _after_ the F-22 was cancelled and the F-35 was it, it started being described as the worst thing since the Brewster Buffalo. Which I think is an exaggeration.

Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-01-14 09:30

#4 I'm under the strong impression that most of the problems are related to the STOVL variant and that it's basically dragging the other two variants down.

Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-01-14 09:28

#3 It is indeed becoming a money pit, and I don't know why. Are we gold-plating the sucker, or are there other problems in development we don't know about?

For the kind of money our own military wants to spend on it, however, we could buy a couple hundred more F22s and make up the volume on F18Es. The latter may not be as 'good' as an F35 but it's comparatively cheap, and it's on the assembly line right now.

If we did that, of course, our allies who have invested in the F35 program would go nuts. We'd probably have to sell F22s to Japan, Australia and Israel, which would bring the unit price down -- hmm ...

Posted by: Steve White 2011-01-14 09:17

#2 Birth of the Aircraft Checklist

Short and interesting.

Posted by: Bobby 2011-01-14 06:41

#1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Another place to cut back that useless defense budget.

I read a couple of months ago the first B-17 (Boeing Model 299 test aircraft) was too complicated for one man to fly. The first flight crashed because the pilot forgot to release the ground-lock on the rudder and elevator.

Then someone dreamed up a pre-flight checklist, and technology moved on.

Posted by: Bobby 2011-01-14 06:37

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