How much the F-35 Really Cost?

[unhappycamper]

http://defense-update.com/20140103_much-f-35-really-costs.html



How much the F-35 Really Cost?
January 3, 2014 by News Desk

There have been some wild assertions about F-35 unit cost recently. See the Lockheed claims as reported in Breaking Defense, Defense News and others that we should expect F-35A costs to be $85 million in 2019. None of these articles acknowledged that there are ways to measure F-35 unit cost other than by mouthing Lockheed and/or Joint Program Office prognostications for the future. Winslow Wheeler, Director, Straus Military Reform Project, CDI at the Project of Government Oversight (POGO) claims these predictions do not conform with the actual procurement of costs reflected in the real numbers listed in the 2014 budget spending.

“Try instead, empirical data from as recently as last month from sources that typically work hand-in-glove with the Pentagon.” Wheeler wrote in his blog. “They would be the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. Their National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was squirted through the Senate and signed into law on December 26. On questions like funding for high priority weapons, like the F-35, they virtually never act without consulting closely with the Pentagon, even if they don’t always cough up every penny requested. For their 2014 bill, they did indeed take a few nicks out of the F-35 program, but the numbers, released in their “Joint Explanatory Statement” for the 2014 NDAA, give a more revealing view of F-35 unit costs than what Lockheed and some uninquisitive articles asserted at the end of 2013.”

~snip~

“The 2014 procurement cost for 19 F-35As will be $2.989 billion. However, we need to add to that the “long lead” money for the 2014 buy that was appropriated in 2013; that was $293 million, making a total of $3.282 billion for 19 aircraft in 2014. The math for unit cost comes to $172.7 million for each aircraft.

To be fully accurate, however, we should add the additional procurement money authorized for “modification of aircraft” for F-35As for 2014; that means $158 million more, bringing the total unit production cost to $181 million per copy.