Friday, December 27, 2013

DOD comptroller, FY2014-- F-35


The DOD comptroller budget for 2014 is rather vague in some areas. To find out what a program actually costs, you will have better luck investing a lot of time tracking down each government contract. This rule also applies to the infamous F-35 mistake jet.

FY2014 procurement costs for the F-35 show this (PDF -pg.14) from the DOD comptroller:

Average cost (procurement) for all F-35 variants is $219.3M each. Further, the 10 USN/USMC F-35B/Cs combined cost $277M each. USAF's 19 F-35As cost $188.5M each. Source: Program acquisition costs by weapon system. (http://comptroller.defense.gov/budget.html)

Note that this weapon system is far from working in an operational sense. By design, this aircraft is too weak to take on emerging threats. It is too expensive to own and operate for lessor threats handled by other platforms. So, that is at least $8.4B of waste in the DOD 2014 budget, that could be better invested in paying to cancel the F-35 and produce something that has value.


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