"Perhaps this is why the F-35 Program is in Trouble" Topic

Headline – "Pentagon Math – Buying 15% Fewer Fighter Jets Will Cost Us 68% More"!!!

Sounds like a great shareholder return on investment (ROI) plan to me, which may just be part of the reason why the program is so far behind schedule:

link

"According to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen, Lockheed Martin's F-35 is probably the last manned fighter jet model America will ever build. If all goes according to plan, we may never need to build another".

I would go further, and state, if all goes according to plan, we may never be able to AFFORD to build another, especially if they turn out to be dogs, and get outclassed by better, enemy stealth fighters, and we lose aerial supremacy.

Follow the money……..

Economy of scale applies here as in anything else. Buy more and unit cost comes down, but of course overall cost will be high, plus higher associated costs for training, maintenance, etc. Buy less and unit cost goes up.

This is the economy of pork not scale…

Bringing new meaning to "less is more"……

I'm highly critical of the F-35, but we went through this with the F-22 and every other major procurement project.

With huge fixed costs, if you order less then of course the per-unit cost will go up. It's not just R&D. You've got plants, specialized equipment, specialized workers who have to be hired and trained, capital allocations. Oh and BTW, you allocated prior resources based on the assumption of a certain volume of sales; so you have to make it up by jacking up the price even further because your previous units sold didn't cover the costs you thought they would.

So a dirty trick you can play if you want to cancel a project is to cut the number purchased, then when the price balloons, act all shocked and outraged when the price goes up and insist the contractor must have been deceiving you. Then use that to justify further cutting the program, and complain about spiraling costs.

When have we seen this before? On the F-22. Who did it? Well, the usual suspects, plus advocates of the F-35. So while it's a dirty trick, in this case it's sauce for the goose.