"You hear Lockheed Martin keep talking about $65m, $67m. Well guess what. That's the cost back in 2004 or 2003.
"Who cares about that. I want to know what it costs the day I buy it," he said.
Actually, if you look at U.S. Government select acquisition reports, that was never the price back then either. LM's fantasy price also assumes everyone sticks to the buy plan. That is not going to happen. Bogdan is still low because the original business plan assumed that prices don't flatten out until you reach 1500 units...assuming everything works.
I would be interested how Bogdan would explain an F-35 cost-per-flying hour that is looking to be well over twice that of an F-16. And again, all this assumes the systems work.
I am also curious how Bogdan intends to help improve the price prediction ability for the alleged biggest buyer?
“It’s about $37 million for the CTOL aircraft, which is the air force variant.”
- Colonel Dwyer Dennis, U.S. JSF Program Office, 2002-
2 comments:
Sure, LM was pumping these price quotes whenever a VP was making a push for it's F-35 abroad.
But Bogdan needs to honestly slam the JPO office itself, first and foremost!
JPO is supposed to be the credible face and official voice behind marketing and managing the F-35 and they've merely been using LM's numbers without any critical, independen anaylsis?!?
Seriously?
For heaven's sake, sir, get this JPO office in order and shape them up!
And while you're at it...how about giving GAO and CBO a little public praise for doing some pretty good due diligence and fairly-well calculated estimating on this Program to date!
There's no way in hell the F-35 is even THAT cheap.
Have a look at the December 2011 Selected Acquisition Report;
http://www.acq.osd.mil/ara/am/sar/SST-2011-12.pdf
See how it says that it costs $213.7 Billion($35.229 Billion for it's engine, $178.479 Billion for the rest of it)? Now note that the Baseline Year is 2012. The "Baseline Year" is the date from which all costs are tracked. The DoD has a devious strategy known as "Re-Baselining", in which it will move the Baseline Year forward, and track costs only from that year --- one flick of a pen, and billions in expenses vanish.
Now consider that this SAR is for the 2012 budget, and that the F-35's Baseline Year is the same year. That means that $213.7 Billion was injected into the F-35 Program IN THAT YEAR ALONE.
Now have a look at the December 31st SAR;
http://www.acq.osd.mil/ara/am/sar/SST-2010-12.pdf
See that the Baseline Year suddenly becomes 2002, and the F-35 Program Cost is $233 Billion? Add the aforementioned $178.479 Billion to $233 Billion, and you get $411.479 Billion.
That's how much the F-35 Program ACTUALLY costs.
But let's not stop there --- let's keep going backward through the SARs until the Baseline Year changes again!
Flashback to the September 2001 SAR, and you see the Baseline Year change to 1994 (when this whole mess started), and the "JSF" (the F-35) costs $1.27 Billion;
http://www.acq.osd.mil/ara/am/sar/SARST0901.pdf
That brings to total to $412.749 Billion, for 2443 airframes, resulting in a Unit Cost of $168.951 Million for each F-35.
Of course, it's only that CHEAP if that many F-35s are ever built, and no more money is spent on the F-35 Project after 2012 (oops!).
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