Alphonse,
From early in the program (1994ish 'Air International' reporting), the F-35 was 'supposed to be' 28, 32 and 35 million dollars for the A, B and C respectively.
Congress promptly cancelled the development effort, officially because they didn't like the Air Services pulling another LWF 'no really, they're not for production!' X-plane shennanigan. Unofficially because, pigs that they are, they recognized a license to print money when the saw it and were disturbed that they hadn't been by-district-bribed cut in on it.
In a few more years of negotiations, things 'hardened up' as people reached across partisan politics, under the table.
Yet as early as 1997, the GAO and CBO were advising slow downs in the F-35 program because materials were not considered ready and much of the 'fallout' systems technology from the F-22 was itself unproven because it's own EMD period had turned into a paper chase after a decade of expeditionary ops and one FOOL of a test pilot more or less ensured that there would be no flying prototype hardware before the initial squadron IOC (1998) had long passed.
These estimable fellows were saying 73-78 million each. And they were doubtful it could be kept so low.
Beltway Bandit 'institute' writers such as Michael O'Hanlon got on the bandwagon somewhere inbetween, predicting 55 million for the AF Baseline and 65 for the Naval.
This went on until AfSec Roche stated, in the October 2001 SDD program win announcement, that the baseline would be between 45 and 50 million dollars. When the reporter went on to ask if this was for any and all or one variant in particular he swept on to the next question without further comment.
i.e. In less than six years the cost had doubled for what was likely the cheapest variant. Something now quantity or inflationary adjustments could justify.
Yet nobody cared, nobody said: "Hey wait, lets plug in a few more billion to put Boeing back into the PWSC shortlist until Lockheed Martin proves they've got both programs under control!".
NOBODY wanted a backup plan. Or a 'First We Try, Then We Trust', incentive towards corporate honesty.
Even more so, on the eve of GWOT nobody would question the ethics or economic downturn effects of Presidential claims of Iraqi WMD as a precursor to entry into an ME war (now 600 billion and counting). Because that would have meant questioning why we couldn't find the ONE MAN that had created 9/11. As a law enforcement action.
And of course the Congressional Watch Dogs were right, for by late 2002 and into '03, rumors began flying that the jet was _seriously_ overweight. And still the PDR was 'passed with flying colors' without this weight being firmly identified or the nature of fixes defined (something only achieved by late mid 2005).
Truth be told, within DOD rules, you _cannot_ do this because the moldine hardening is actually part of a feedback loop decision tree which requires all unknown variables (as risks) to be quantified with solutions visible before the program manager can sign off.
It was indeed the 'weight vs. stealth' LIES which drove the A-12 into a contractual default in which it was discovered that the 'party of the first part' had engaged in a Deficiency (commiting to a program knowing that insufficient funds were present to fulfill it) and specifically a _Fraud In The Inducement_ (Allowing a contractor to maintain a bid based on faulty data knowingly supplied) based on underbilling the weight. Weight being the first order determinator of cost and complexity.
A fiduciary mistake (and felony crime) which later cost We The People FIVE BILLION DOLLARS when the Fed was not quick enough to CYA and GDFW/MacDac sued and were awarded damages and remuneration for work done in a federal court determination of 'termination for convenience not default' on the Avenger II by the DOD.
A situation which resulted in the Captan Nobody as SPO CMIC going to jail while the SecDef who knew exactly what was happening before he declared that the program be cancelled, went on to become our serving VP.
As such it is no wonder that the people tend to 'mutter and move on a lot' when price is mentioned in the current JSF program debates. Not least because the program itself, having started out at some 2,978 aircraft, is now down to about 1,763 + 140 + 170. (2,073 total, USAF/MC/N). Or roughly 70 percent of the original inventory buy.
The USAF which is being flown into the poor house pretending to do their job in Iraq and AfG are particularly urgent to make an even /deeper/ cut, to about 1,100 airframes. Which would drop the total buy to about 1,410 airframes. Or 47% of the original total.
And Congress won't allow it. Why? Because the cutoff on numbers is about 1,600 airframes before you see a sudden split between costs and buy totals, _exactly_ as occured on the F-22 (which would be 74-78 million each by the 335th airframe and was 'single unit fixed purchased' for 117 million dollars in FY-2003 dollars as a reward to Lockheed Martin for production line streamlining).
While a debt riddled Hill is /desparate/ (despite mounting evidence to the contrary on customer issues) to make this the next F-16.
The chief argument against which fallacy is that the real PAUC or Program Acquisition Unit Cost 'as now presented' (when supposed competition has effectively killed all other keep'em honest options) is about 104 million dollars per airframe.
And the EU'ians are busy building a 40-60 million dollar UCAV program around Swedish, French and German 'common not joint' export capabilities. Forget navalization. Forget STOVL. _Forget Pilot Training_. Any dictatorial runt can have a netcentric stealth bomber. Once BAe sells her FACO secrets as Janes predicts.
At which point, it becomes urgently necessary to realize that the JSF is NOT one aircraft but _three_, sharing a named father but not equal child$upport. And so it's R&D tab is /never/ going to be as streamlined as it would for just-one-jet.
Even as it also starts to become clear that everybody assuming that they should get significant contract percentages of the program (as technology base access as well as fuzzy-dice subsystem production) is ruining the overall effort to keep costs down and profits in-country.
Yet, for me, the REAL CRIME ONGOING HERE, is quite simply that nobody is helping us out in Iraq sufficient to be worth of Stealth. Yet the combination of Stealth and small-IAM is what is allowing these massive cuts in the overal _U.S._ inventory purchase.
Which in turn raises the 'layoff the R&D on the export clients' costs beyond the tennable. Even as it replaces lost U.S. inventory (and thus profit margin) with penny-ante foreign allotments on the order of 20-60 jets per country.
Trade 100's, give away stealth for free, gain questionable 'joint force' capabilites with theater-restricted city states that buy perhaps a few tens of replacements.
And assume that the price is not going to continue to get so much worse that NOBODY wants any.
That's an awful lot of Lunchmeat (Baloney Inc.) to swallow.
CONCLUSION:
1. Forget all the yells and screams. These are just the lawyers for the various customers trying to get their clients out of a runaway chain reaction on JSF costs vs. increasingly vaporous sales opportunities.
2. Understand that what destroyed the 'original JSF' (TFX) program scalars (some 600 produced and only about 300 flyable) was the fact that the USN pulled out of the F-111B side of buy. Destroying economies of scale.
3. And it was THIS SAME PHENOMENON (some say the AF getting even) which obliterated all hope for the A-12/ATA effort to bear fruit as the USAF knew the numbers as well if not better than the USN did and simply 'weighted them out' on a 10,000ft runway and 12,000lb payload requirement. The Marines having already bailed, the resulting PAUC skyrocketed to an astounding 176-183 million dollars per airframe and thus unaffordable as even an A-6 (10 planes per deck, just like the F-35C will be) replacement.
IMO, what you are seeing here (nearly 50 years after you'd assume we had learned our lesson) is effectively the collapse of a pyramid scheme in which nominally sidebar issues are being used-to-excuse participants before the last man at the table is once more left with the tab. That poor sod being John Q. Public, U.S. Taxpayer At Large of course.
What IRKS ME is that we feel we should 'try to pretend' to continue the farce if not fraud by subletting program elements to foreign countries who WILL DEFAULT when the cheap-fighter guarantee ramps up from the improbable to the impo$$ible. An act which will merely serve to pay them to help build U.S. inventory (IMO, less than 700 airframes before this is all over) while at the same time proliferating VLO composite technology and high datarate network avionics systems to and through their industry to further escalate the nominal (non existent) threat base.
So that we can 'declare a need!' for the next followon.
BOHICA doesn't even come close to describing my disgust.
KPl.
LINKS-
Issues For Congress (Congressional Research Service F-35 Report On Costs)
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL30563.pdf
Tactical Air Integration Plan (USN/MC Force Structuring Issues)
http://www.fas.org/man/crs/RS21488.pdf
Program Chief Admiral Steidle Says... 1,600 or Bust.
http://www.codeonemagazine.com/archives/1997/articles/apr_97/apr97_01/apr2a_97.html
England Orders QDR Consolidation (the lie from the other side of Procurement)
http://www.defensenews.com/channel.php?C=americamore
A-12, A Brief Precis`
http://www.afa.org/magazine/1991/0491down.asp
