(Air Force Times) Backtalk: More JSFs, lower pricetag

[unhappycamper]

More JSFs, lower pricetag
By Robert F. Dorr

The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter holds great promise — but the program is not going well.

Technical glitches, more than usual for a new plane, kept the first Air Force F-35 grounded for months following its maiden flight Dec. 15, 2006.

Early cost estimates have been left far behind. The brass anticipated we’d be able to buy a JSF for $40 million, or about 25 percent of the cost of an F-22 Raptor. Talk now is that the flyaway cost of the Air Force JSF will be about $70 million, and it may go up further.

Then there’s operating cost. Affordable operations were an early selling point for the F-35, but its “cost per flight hour now exceeds that of the F-16 legacy fighter,” the Government Accountability Office wrote last year, in one of a series of ongoing critiques.

The congressional watchdog agency also wrote in 2007 that “two-thirds of budgeted funding for JSF development has been spent, but only about one-half of the work has been completed. The contractor is on its third, soon to be fourth, manufacturing schedule.” Among problems, the GAO wrote, were “delayed delivery of parts and manufacturing inefficiencies.”


Rest of article on this $239 million POS that still can't fly above 40,000 feet: http://www.airforcetimes.com/community/opinion/airforce_backtalk_jsfs_092208/%2e