WASHINGTON — The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has been hailed as a job creator of the highest order, a program that has a home in almost every state. But a new report claims that the job creation aspect of the fifth-generation fighter has been greatly exaggerated.
“Promising the Sky: Pork Barrel Politics and the F-35 Combat Aircraft” argues that Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor on the F-35, has purposefully inflated job creation figures to maintain support for the most expensive weapon system in history.
“What I found, which wasn’t too surprising, is that Lockheed Martin is exaggerating the number of jobs involved in the F-35 program,” said William Hartung, director of the Common Defense Campaign at the Center for International Policy and the author of the report. “What was more interesting was that the jobs were so concentrated.
“A lot of people assume these big procurement projects have work done everywhere and therefore it could never be cut back, because too many members of Congress have an interest in them,” he continued. “But the F-35 is not as widely distributed as claimed, and therefore I don’t believe it is as invulnerable in the Congress as the Pentagon and the company would like us to believe.”
Lockheed’s claims of job creation in 46 states has also been a key component in rallying support for the fighter. Using Lockheed’s own job numbers from the F35.com website, Hartung points out that the 71 percent of the jobs created under Lockheed’s own figures will go to just five states — Texas (32.54 percent), California (18.75 percent), Florida (7.66 percent), Connecticut (6.78 percent) and New Hampshire (4.67 percent). In total, 31 of the 46 states will receive less than 1 percent of the jobs created; 15 of those would receive less than one-tenth of a percent.
That Texas would receive the majority of jobs is not surprising, as Lockheed’s Fort Worth facility is where the F-35 is assembled. But Hartung argues in the report that to say the F-35 will have true economic impact on a state like Nebraska, estimated to receive .003 percent of jobs created, is “misleading.”
Lockheed claims on its F35.com website that “according to standard industry accepted economic forecasting, the multirole 5th generation stealth fighter is responsible for more than 125,000 direct and indirect jobs.” Of those 125,000 jobs, 32,500 would be “direct” jobs, such as workers who assemble the planes, while another 92,500 would be “indirect jobs” created at companies that help supply the larger companies with material or services.
Indirect jobs are a tricky thing to estimate, given the nebulous nature of measuring jobs created to help sustain and support another new job. Hartung looked at a pair of previous studies on defense industry job creation to compare whether Lockheed’s assumptions matched up.
Those two studies found a “multiplier effect” — the number of indirect jobs created per direct job — of less than two should be used when prognosticating job creation. As a result, Hartung believes the number of indirect jobs is more likely in the range of 50,000 to 60,000 — still a large number, but almost half of what Lockheed has claimed.
And the only thing "fifth-generation" about the F-35 is its level of failure.
Then there are the lost jobs. I haven't updated this chart since 2012 but the pattern still sticks: hundreds of F-35s should have already been made by now. Those are real job cuts.
Consider the report below which covers some of the over-estimates in F-35 job claims. The real take-away from this whole topic though is that we have a lot of talent involved building the wrong jet. Let us take that talent and have them build the right jet.
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-Time's Battleland - 5 Part series on F-35 procurement - 2013
-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Aviation Week (ARES blog) F-35 posts (2007 to present)
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)
-A look at the F-35 program's astro-turfing
-F-35 and F-16 cost per flying hour
-Is this aircraft worth over $51B of USMC tac-air funding?
-Combat radius and altitude, A model
-F-35A, noise abatement and airfields and the USAF
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H/T- A reader
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