F-35 LRIP 6 and 7 costs not being reported correctly in the news

I suspect that the F-35 cheerleaders will be all agog with this Reuters announcement by Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon (which is which these days?).

"Lockheed, Pentagon reach deal on 71 more F-35s – source"

Reuters quotes "sources" that an "agreement" has been reached with Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon for F-35 low rate initial production (LRIP) batches 6 and 7. Before this, each LRIP batch was negotiated on a year by year basis. This is two in one go. Considering that the F-35 is so high-risk and under-developed, I will leave it with the acquisition experts to decide if this is wise. My personal bias still points to the RICO statute.

I am curious about several things in this article because some significant points are not present.

It states that LRIP 6 and 7 together will total 71 F-35s (various models) for $7B.

But consider the following:

This deal is only for the basic purchase of manufacturing the airframes. That is: barely a "roll-away" price. And as the article states, it does not include the engines made by Pratt and Whitney. Where, the most expensive jet engine of all 3 variants is for the F-35B at $27M each. Source: DOD select acquisition reports (SAR).

Also not included in the Reuters figures are things like the large amount of money spent on long-lead parts and other associated pre-manufacturing and sourcing/contracting work. For example, as we can see here LRIP-6 alone, with only jet engine long-lead and no jet engine order) is closer to $6B,

Again,we will know more when we see a DOD F-35 engine order for Pratt.

How much LRIP-7 will total is at this time unknown but the total of both contracts for the jets is no where near $7M total inferred by Reuters (again not counting the pending engine order).

And that doesn't get your jet into service.

As we can see here the weapon system unit cost is what it takes, and if we are to believe USMC estimates, if the service sticks with their full buy of 311 aircraft, the acquisition price for F-35Bs will be $51B, or an average price of about $161M per jet.

So far, USAF estimates in their DOD budget predictions on F-35A cost, don't have a good history of accuracy. So I would expect the USMC F-35B to be much more as an average over the alleged life of the program.

I would also expect these costs to be much higher since what we are currently building are mistake-jets as there are no working missions systems and any number of other testing tasks that are way behind.

As an aside, LRIP-6 jets hold some importance as they are the first production lot that has the TR-2 hardware needed to drive the final version of Block 3 software. Every LRIP before that doesn't have TR-2 hardware and will have to be upgraded. I suspect the first few lots will be junked as-is if the program is allowed to survive.

And, what was LRIP-6 supposed to be back in 2003? 168 aircraft.