{"id":185813,"date":"2014-08-10T20:24:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T01:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/08\/10\/someone-runs-the-actual-cost-of-an-f-35-jsf\/"},"modified":"2014-08-10T20:24:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T01:24:00","slug":"someone-runs-the-actual-cost-of-an-f-35-jsf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/08\/10\/someone-runs-the-actual-cost-of-an-f-35-jsf\/","title":{"rendered":"Someone Runs the Actual Cost of an F-35 JSF"},"content":{"rendered":"

And the numbers are horrifying<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The F-35 is not just the most expensive warplane ever, it\u2019s the most expensive weapons program ever. But to find out exactly how much a single F-35 costs, we analyzed the newest and most authoritative data.<\/span>

<\/span> Here\u2019s how much we\u2019re paying.<\/span>

<\/span> A single Air Force F-35A costs a whopping $148 million. One Marine Corps F-35B costs an unbelievable $251 million. A lone Navy F-35C costs a mind-boggling $337 million. Average the three models together, and a \u201cgeneric\u201d F-35 costs $178 million.<\/span>

<\/span> It gets worse. These are just the production costs. Additional expenses for research, development, test and evaluation are not included. The dollars are 2015 dollars. This data was just released by the Senate Appropriations Committee in its report for the Pentagon\u2019s 2015 appropriations bill.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s go into the methodology for this article:<\/p>\n

The methodology for calculating these F-35 unit costs is straightforward. Both the president\u2019s budget and each of four congressional defense committees publish the amounts to be authorized or appropriated for each model of the F-35, including the number of aircraft to be bought.<\/span>

<\/span> The rest is simple arithmetic: Divide the total dollars for each model by the quantity.<\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> There are just two things F-35 watchers need to be careful about.<\/span>

<\/span> First, it\u2019s necessary to add the funding from the previous year\u2019s appropriation act to the procurement money the government allocated for 2015. This is \u201cadvance procurement\u201d for 2015 spending, and pays for \u201clong lead\u201d components that take longer to acquire.<\/span>

<\/span> Second, we have to add the cost of Navy and Air Force modifications.<\/span>

<\/span> For the F-35, these costs are for fixing mistakes already found in the testing process. With the aircraft still in its initial testing, the modification costs to existing aircraft are very low. But the 2015 amounts for modifications are surrogates for what the costs for this year\u2019s buy might be. If anything, this number can be an under-estimate.<\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> In a briefing delivered to reporters on June 9, F-35 developer Lockheed still advertised the cost of airplanes sans engines. Highly respected Aviation Week reported on July 22 that taxpayers put up $98 million for each F-35A in 2013.<\/span>

<\/span> In reality, we actually paid $188 million.<\/span>

<\/span> Some of these numbers are for the airframe only. In other cases, you get a \u201cflyaway\u201d cost. But in fact, those airplanes are incapable of operative flight. They lack the specialized tools, simulators, logistics computers\u2014and much, much more\u2014to make the airplane useable. They even lack the fuel to fly away.<\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> Here\u2019s another curious fact. The unit costs of the Marines\u2019 short-takeoff, vertical-landing B-model and the Navy\u2019s aircraft-carrier-capable C-model are growing<\/i>.<\/span>

<\/span> The cost of an F-35B grew from $232 million in 2014 to a bulging $251 million by 2015. The cost of the Navy\u2019s F35C grew from $273 million in 2014 to a wallet-busting $337 million by 2015.<\/span>

<\/span> The quantity numbers for the F-35B have not changed, remaining at six per year. The number of F-35Cs to be produced has slipped from four to two, but surely learning processes on the F-35 line have not been going so far backward as to explain a 23 percent, $64 million per unit cost increase.<\/span>
\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> Next time an advocate tells you what the current unit cost is for a program, ask: \u201cWhat is Congress appropriating for them this year?\u201d And, \u201cHow many are we buying?\u201d Then get out your calculator. The result might surprise you.<\/span>

<\/span> <\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At these prices, I cannot see how the United States can afford to buy this aircraft, much less the partners in the program, as well as other customers.<\/p>\n

BTW, to run some numbers, the F-35A has an empty weight of 13,199 kg, the price of gold is $42.01\/gram, and the price of silver is $0.64\/gram.<\/p>\n

Running the numbers then, a similar weight of gold would be $554 million, and for silver, it would $8.4 million.<\/p>\n

So, it costs about 1\/5 of its weight in gold, and pretty much every fighter since the F-4 Phantom II has cost more than its weight in silver.<\/p>\n

That is kind of depressing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And the numbers are horrifying: The F-35 is not just the most expensive warplane ever, it\u2019s the most expensive weapons program ever. But to find out exactly how much a single F-35 costs, we analyzed the newest and most authoritative data. Here\u2019s how much we\u2019re paying. A single Air Force F-35A costs a whopping $148 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1038,1008,1006],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-budget","category-defense-procurement","category-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185813"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}