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Here is a history of USAF F-35 budget predictions from a post I did last year. Settled a bit from previous years of bad guesses for this alleged biggest buyer of the F-35.
Here is an example of a stack of lies to one of our most important allies.
Steve O’Bryan, Lockheed’s vice-president for the stealth fighter program, said the “biggest misconception” of the F-35s is the cost. He said although the price tag of each jet has jumped $10-million U.S. from $65-million to $75-million, in today’s market that is still quite reasonable considering the jet’s value.
The F-35 has the lowest life-cycle cost in comparison to all it’s the competitors, O’Bryan said, emphasizing that the jet will last more than 40 years.
9 comments:
FY15 will likely be a pivotal year for transparency with respect to finally calling out the Program's 'schedule' estimates for giving better and more accurate guidance in what to look for, going forward.
Transparency in the past, even through FY14, could be pretty well hidden and blurred simply by kicking the can down the road, blaming slow-downs on this or that technical glitch, or blaming costs on this hurdle or that, soon to be overcome.
For one, the expected FY15 Unit Weapon System cost, in looking at that budget estimate Eric linked, is supposed to fall off a cliff down to around $142m per jet, vs $176m per FY14 jet!
Cough.
Perhaps it will be more realistic if USAF could afford even 22-23 F-35A units in the next FY15, up from 19 in FY14, but reduced from the current 30 units expected.
If USAF could get even a slight tick up in Procurement budget, over FY14 budget and afford say, 22-23 F-35A units @ a reduced Unit Weapon System cost of even around $170m (the pre-redesign retrofit unit cost?), they should feel fortunate.
That's nearly $4B +/- (including initial spares) for Tactical aviation Procurement. Not bad money in times of increasing Austere budget environments the country will be rebalancing to for at least another couple decades.
I think 60 JSF buy for FY2018 seems a bit optimistic...that is quite a ramp up from now or even FY14. You have to hope that from here on out nothing major goes wrong or suddenly pops up, that no production snafus come up and everything is fixed.
Oh yeah, hopefully by then we will have some semblance of a budget...
Do the costs for the USAF, i.e. $1075M gross unit cost for supposedly 60 planes in FY 2018, include development costs that partners are not supposed to pay?
Mark
Ottawa
That chart is procurement only. No R and D. Which of course, is yet another warning sign to the gullible joint strike fighter partner nations.
So how can o'Bryan give the $75M figure ($85M to CBC)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/04/07/pol-lockheed-martin-f35-pr-campaign.html
when the USAF numbers are in plain view?
Mark
Ottawa
He deceives. It assumes everyone buys to plan where no cost and development problems exist with aircraft....
Hard to do with 2020 being "maybe" for proven capability.
Mark,
The unit price of an aircraft is what has to be paid at the time you buy for putting a complete machine on the flight line and fully operational, including trained pilots, spares and logistics support.
With the F-35A JSF, paying $65M or $85M or even $228M in the case of the 14 aircraft in the first tranche of aircraft planned for Australia at a current budget figure of 3.2 Billion Dollars doesn't get you there.
The issue of representing the aircraft unit price (AUP) by a subordinate cost (URFC in this case) which is only one of the many costs that contribute to the unit price, is one of the biggest deceits of the JSF Ponzi Scheme.
One of the others is the claim that the JSF is "a truly 5th Generation Fighter".
As can be seen at -
http://www.ausairpower.net/jsf.html
there are many more.
To Mark..
To follow up on what Horde said:
Basically, this infamous price of $75-85m being quoted to Canada is likely for an estimated Unit Recurring Flyaway (URF), albeit in 2004 or 2005 Dollars, and which is only a part of Total Procurement (weapon system Cost) which a customer needs to pay in order to Procure an aircraft.
Another thing to compute is, once future buy orders are further restructured, the unit prices will most likely go up again and thus negate all 'estimates'.
Everything related to current Unit price estimates is based on the assumption that there will be no further restructurings and reductions in orders this decade, especially with the expected FRP order rates.
It's like the bleedin' TV ads. Now great price: JSF only $75M!*
Oh, hang on: *)conditions apply
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