Dutch Reveal Cost of First JSF Aircraft

[unhappycamper]

Dutch Reveal Cost of First JSF Aircraft
Aviation Week's DTI | Joris Janssen Lok | October 18, 2007


The first Joint Strike Fighter aircraft to be ordered by the Netherlands, an F-35A to be used in the Operational Test & Evaluation (OT&E) program for the type, will cost approximately $142 million, the Netherlands defense ministry said October 17.

The Dutch are planning to participate in the OT&E program with two aircraft, the preliminary order for the first of which is to be placed at the end of this year.

According to the defense ministry, Lockheed Martin will start ordering long lead items for the OT&E aircraft at the beginning of 2008, and The Hague is expected to pay 10% of the cost of the first jet, an estimated $14.2 million, at that point.

The final and legally binding contract for the first aircraft is to be signed in 2009, the ministry says.

The second OT&E aircraft is to be ordered one year later.

The OT&E aircraft are standard F-35A production aircraft equipped with test instrumentation.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,153122,00.html




uhc comment: The Dutch version must have leather seats and a special bong. According to wikipedia,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-35

an F-35A cost only $48,000,000.

Global Security sez they're about $100,000,000 a pop.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-35-manufacture.htm


~snip~

But as of early 2005 it appeared that the JSF program will lack critical production knowledge when it plans to enter low-rate initial production in 2007. Between 2007 and 2013, when the program is scheduled to move to full-rate production, it expects to buy nearly 500 JSF aircraft—20 percent of its planned total buys—at a cost of roughly $50 billion. Under the program’s preliminary plan, it expects to increase low-rate production from 5 aircraft a year to 143 aircraft a year, significantly increasing the financial investment after production begins.

Between 2007 and 2009, the program plans to increase low-rate production spending from about $100 million a month to over $500 million a month, and before development has ended and an integrated aircraft has undergone operational evaluations, DOD expects to spend nearly $1 billion a month. To achieve its production rate, the program will invest significantly in tooling, facilities, and personnel. According to contractor officials, an additional $1.2 billion in tooling alone would be needed to ramp up the production rate to 143 aircraft a year. Over half of this increase would be needed by 2009—more than 2 years before operational flight testing begins.


Damn! Empire is expensive.

[Jackeen]

1. Read the fine print.

A contract for an aircraft (or indeed any military hardware) is not like buying a car in the dealer, paying the sticker price, and driving out paying for parts and fuel as you go. They invariably also cover various additional costs varying from spare parts through technical assistance and training. This gets enhanced even more greatly when there are only one or two units involved (such as in a pilot program) as the amount of overhead generally remains the same. Finally, the RNlAF simply don't have the same backup resources and infrastructure that the USAF/USN has so it stands to reason that they would contract for greater services from the manufacturer, at an accordingly higher cost.

[Eagle_Eye]

2. The Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) aircraft have engineering cost included

Not that these things will be cheap, but trying to get a handle on a defense program by assigning a price to an individual item in not the best way to characterize the costs.

The Joint Strike Fighter is a development program that costs billions over time. What is really needed is to look at the total costs over the life cycle of the system. Statements like they are spending $1 billion a month are better.

If a person wants to see the magnitude of defense costs, look at statements like:
It costs $7 million a day to keep the Enterprise underway. That is where the money is going right now.