F-35 operation and support costs eclipse the combined price tag of legacy fighters

[unhappycamper]

http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/fedbiz_daily/2014/09/f-35-operation-and-support-costs-eclipse-the.html



F-35 operation and support costs eclipse the combined price tag of legacy fighters
Jill R. Aitoro
Sep 24, 2014, 10:29am EDT

The annual cost to operate and support the Pentagon’s F-35 fighter is expected to be $20 billion. That’s almost twice the cost to operate and support four other Pentagon fighter jets combined.

The O&S price tag is for the period when the fleet of Lockheed Martin Corp. fighters reaches steady state — that is, when the number of F-35 aircraft and flying hours is expected to hit its highest point and plateaus, from 2036 to 2049, according to a Tuesday report from the Government Accountability Office. It was compared with the O&S costs at the high points of four legacy aircraft — the F-16 from General Dynamics Corp. and the F-15, AV-8B, and F-18, all of which were manufactured by McDonnell Douglas, now part of The Boeing Co.

For those aircraft, the cost was $11.1 billion combined; for the F-35, it’s expected to hit $19.9 billion, or 79 percent more per year. Two different Pentagon estimates put F-35 O&S costs at $1 trillion over its 56-year life cycle — and that doesn’t include reasonable fuel burn rate assumptions that reflect the likely future F-35 fuel usage, or for one estimate, reasonable assumptions about part replacement rates and depot maintenance.

As past GAO reports have noted, some in the Department of Defense call it unaffordable.

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Read the GAO report --> http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/666042.pdf