{"id":186501,"date":"2014-01-05T22:27:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T03:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/01\/05\/unsustainable-dangerous-and-a-threat-to-the-american-way-of-life\/"},"modified":"2014-01-05T22:27:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T03:27:00","slug":"unsustainable-dangerous-and-a-threat-to-the-american-way-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/01\/05\/unsustainable-dangerous-and-a-threat-to-the-american-way-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Unsustainable, Dangerous, and a Threat to the American Way of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am referring, of course to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, whose price is twice what we are being told<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The massive government and industry lobbying and PR efforts behind the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are starting to pay off for JSF-maker Lockheed Martin and the military users of the radar-evading jet.<\/span>

<\/span>In recent weeks several news outlets have repeated the pro-JSF camp\u2019s assertion that the F-35\u2014planned to be the main warplane for the Air Force and Marines and half the Navy\u2019s future fighter fleet\u2014will soon cost just $85 million a copy or less in near-future dollars, thanks to an increasingly efficient production line.<\/span>

<\/span>The \u201cgood news\u201d helps bolster the $400-billion weapons program, the most expensive ever.<\/span>

<\/span>But it\u2019s not true. Not by a long shot. The much-maligned, single-engine F-35\u2014which suffers from a complex design and a lack of maneuverability\u2014currently costs twice what its proponents are projecting. And don\u2019t buy the argument that the jet\u2019s sticker price will substantially drop in coming years. Lockheed\u2019s been making that claim for a long time now, and it hasn\u2019t happened yet.<\/span>

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

<\/span>To put the F-35-boosters\u2019 claims in context, Winslow Wheeler, an analyst at the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C., has calculated the true current cost of an F-35. It\u2019s way more than anyone in official circles likes to admit.<\/span>

<\/span>Sticker shock<\/b><\/span>

<\/span>Forget the $85-million or $60-million figure being bandied about in the press. Each of the 29 F-35s the Pentagon is purchasing from Lockheed in 2014 costs between $182 million and $299 million. And that\u2019s leaving out research and development spending since the late 1990s, which could soon exceed $50 billion and add $16 million to true long-term acquisition cost of each F-35.<\/span>

<\/span>No, Wheeler calculated only the per-plane production <\/i>cost, which includes advance funding for long-lead parts, the main funding in the year of authorization plus modification funds to fix design flaws on the planes shortly after they roll out of the factory.<\/span>

<\/span>By that measure, one Air Force F-35A\u2014the simplest of the three JSF models\u2014currently costs $182 million. A vertical-landing Marine F-35B sets taxpayers back $252 million. The Navy\u2019s carrier-compatible F-35C, still mired in serious development problems, comes in at a whopping $299 million per plane.<\/span>

<\/span>Bear in mind that in 2010, Lockheed predicted an F-35 would soon cost just $60 million<\/a>. \u201cActual F-35 unit costs are today multiples of what Lockheed says they will be,\u201d Wheeler points out.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is insane.<\/p>\n

We are living the Arthur C. Clarke story Superiority<\/a>, (story here<\/a>, read it, it is a hoot) which depicts a war lost by a superior power because of its superior scientific achievements, and its continual grasping for a technological leap forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am referring, of course to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, whose price is twice what we are being told: The massive government and industry lobbying and PR efforts behind the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are starting to pay off for JSF-maker Lockheed Martin and the military users of the radar-evading jet.In recent weeks …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1038,1008,1025],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-budget","category-defense-procurement","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186501"}],"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=186501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}