(From 2003. It's dead Jim.)
Bad business plans can't be papered over. The truth comes out no matter if some want to hear it or not.
LM stated the other day things were gaining ground on the F-35 program. The lie of the $67M unit cost was "reported" by "journalists" with no follow up.
Years ago, LRIP-5 was supposed to be 120 jets. Today? hard to say; the contract isn't signed off on yet. Somewhere around 30-40-some; if the program is lucky.
Now we have additional news--again confirming what some of us already knew--alerting the faithful that the F-35 business plan is in trouble and if LM doesn't get some more cash for LRIP-6...by the end of the year...the company will hold over $1B in risk.
Big companies don't hold risk, they shed it. I suspect that since we are in a lame-duck Congress, LM won't see their money and, at some point, that big production line without big production orders, will be converted to something much smaller. And that assumes the large amount of technical difficulties don't get worse. All to build an aircraft ready to fight ALLIED FORCE 1999, which may be deployed for active service 20 or more years later.
More: someone who has been reporting what can only be unnamed sources, floats the idea that the Navy could ditch the F-35C. Big Navy has big grey floaty things to pay for which ignore the history of the Prince of Wales and Repulse.
So if the Navy kills the F-35C, that is less motor orders, less part orders, less of everything and...the death spiral of what was supposed to be a "model acquisition program", continues.
SME's (and their overly optimistic business plans), all the way up to the prime contractor, are in trouble.
