--1997 DOD briefing--
It is interesting to note that we have not yet spent near $400B on the F-35. For development and LRIP we are well on our way to spending around $60B since the JSF concept started in the 1990s.
McCain is probably correct:
McCain, again quoting AOL Defense, said "that the path we are on is neither affordable nor sustainable... If things do not improve -- quickly -- tax payers and the war fighter will insist that all options will be on the table. And they should be. We can not continue on this path."
We still have a chance to stop the bleeding.
3 comments:
Hopefully McCain can redeem himself from participating in the F-22 political lynch mob back in 2009 and put an end to the Joint PowerPoint Fighter.
A half a trillion dollars later and counting, Lockmart is guilty of playing the central role in the most wasteful, inept, & incompetent military aerospace fighter program in history.
"F-22 political lynch mob", indeed...
That the F-35 is a full-bore cluster****, doesn't alter the fact that it is fully in keeping with the fine tradition initiated by LockMart with the oh-so "exquisite" Raptor. A fatally flawed prima donna Buck Rogers fantasy toy that is not only now projected to cost almost HALF-BILLION DOLLARS A POP*, but is so expensive to operate that Jane's reports that the USAF is going to cut flt hours by a third in 2012. This for a plane whose pilots averaged 10-12 hs/mth in 2010...
BTW, when did the DoD spend 500B USD on the JSF?
*$65B spent + approx 24B in upgrades for the approx 155 combat-coded fighters. And no Virginia, there never was a "$140M production cost Raptor". The numbers for the 2009 batch work out to $213M a piece.
JRL:
Gee what a surprise that yet another Lockmart product costs a fortune!
Still "Buck Rogers fantasy toys" don't kill ALL our other top line fighters in DACT with a 130-0 kill ratio.
Without air superiority all other air ops cease, and we'll lose wars/conflicts its just that simple! And with the arrival of the PAK-FA and the J-20 the need to build more F-22's becomes even more important.
On the cost of the F-35 your numbers are missing thousands of system and aircraft redesigns dating back to the 2004 SWAT, massive concurrency requiring the existing aircraft to be rebuilt right off the production line, and much higher then normal O&S costs for the test aircraft (F-35A 22% higher than the F-16 its supposed to replace).
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