F-35 Block Buy Could Cut Costs

These overhyped, overpriced ($135,000,000.00 USD each) sleds will never live up to the claims made for them.

Do the math.

One missile 1/100 th of the price can bring it down.

No no, let me guess.......An air-to-ground?

:D

'Double digit' cost savings? I'm supposed to feel better about our government bungling around on this project, to the tune trillions of dollars, with the prospect of saving tens of dollars!

.

I wish they would at least put a little more effort in their attempts to deceive us.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and guess they mean double digit percentage.

That means about 10%, I'd guess. And I don't believe that either.

Cost over-runs and mismanagement will drive the price through the roof and delay delivery.

Who are they kidding??? Only themselves!

It is a bad sign when the people calculating costs think 0.10 is reasonable to refer to as a double digit number, without further clarification. By that logic, if they had only been a little more precise in their estimation, they could have reported triple digit savings (0.100).

"they could have reported triple digit savings".

Sadly, no savings have, nor will ever be, reported.

How DOD's $1.5 Trillion F-35 Broke the Air Force - CNBC.com

"A single Air Force F-35A costs a whopping$148 million.

One Marine Corps F-35B costs an unbelievable $251 million.

A lone Navy F-35C costs a mind-boggling $337 million.

Average the three models together, and a 'generic' F-35 costs $178 million,"

Then, let's add the $1 Trillion US dollars that it will cost to maintain them over their projected life span!

Remember, these are just cost PROJECTIONS, not the actual, as built, cost.

Is there anybody in the room who thinks these actual costs won't go up?????????????????

While you are throwing numbers around, what will it cost to maintain the current fleet of aircraft for the same duration that the F-35 is slated to serve?

I agree that the program was poorly run and the cost estimates biased and mismanaged. However, what are you proposing as an alternative now?

Perhaps we could buy our next 5th generation fighters from China at Walmart online?

I suspect that in the end we will get the F-35 off the ground ad it will be a good aircraft. It may not be quite everything that was promised, but future revisions of avionics will only improve its performance (much like the block upgrades to the F-16).

As for cost overruns, how many government programs do you know that actually come in on-budget and on time?

I guess we just like to complain about it.

GA

I worked on the program briefly about 8 years ago (not at Lockheed). Early on, the program was saddled with the requirement to find and use companies from all the countries that were invested in the aircraft to help design and build the plane.

--As opposed to finding the best companies to do these tasks.

So the US engineers had to deal with a variety of software issues and language barriers, along with cultural barriers and the quirky vacation and 'shut down' schedules that exist in other countries.

This insane requirement created huge schedule delays and design problems that have taken a long time to overcome.

Yes 'the development' can be blamed for cost overruns and other problems, but the problems are not all Lockheed's fault. The politicians who imposed this form of 'multi-culturalism' deserve a lot of the blame.

Well, governmental requirements, (and that includes military) adds a huge number to the bottom line, and as far as returns on following these requirements are never seen. Which in my opinion originated from for filling political promises.

I started looking for back-up data, found some interesting stuff, but quit. It isn't worth it.

kramarat, rest his tormented soul, is gone on to more fertile (or is that futile) grounds and I don't want to follow his path of mining data to prove points.

You have a stronger interest in the aerospace industry, now, than I do.

I just don't like for politicians, big business, career military brass and bureaucrats to piss on my boots and tell me it's raining.

I just don't see the F-35 EVER doing what the Warthog did, well.

You can't build a Ferrari that will haul a pipe rack, and 500 pounds of pipe well.

I took double digit savings as, say $80 or $90 USD each plane. Percentage wasn't mentioned anywhere I could find.

Sadly it doesn't really matter either way. This particular military design project will probably go down in history and be remembered for all the bad and none of the good. So much money lining a small group of peoples pockets that could have been put into healthcare or stimulating the American economy in general.

About the only thing that can save the project's image now is if aliens attack America and F-35's save the day.

Come ooooonnnn alien invasion! I would settle for a remake of the movie Independence day with F-35s instead, but only if the alien mothership ran on Linux this time and not a Windows compatible OS.

Political speak is really getting lame.

Then, there's this:

Test pilot admits the F-35 can't dogfight

Sorry, Lyn, but that article is pretty bad.

It's just a hit piece and probably taken out of context.

When was the last time you heard of two fighters engaging in a close dogfight?

Yes, the US still trains for it (guns), but every kill is a missile kill and most are going to be BVR.

We've come a long way since the F4s and that was probably the last time we have really needed guns on a fighter, but David Axe is probably still playing war games on his PC and just doesn't know any better.

I didn't seek out the piece. I simply posted it after I ran across it.

What about the piece makes you think the pilot was lying and how is it taken "out of context"?

I thought it had value as it was about the F-35's lack of performance.

I would have posted it even if the result had been the opposite and the 35 actually performed as advertised, which it did not.

Your defense of a deficient weapon is telling.

The pilot made a report, but the relevancy of that report to modern warfare is trite and we don't know in what context that report was really made.

The fact that David Axe is making it the grounding argument that the F-35 is inferior is a fallacy of argument.

That means that either David is very ignorant on the F-35 in general and on how to formulate an intelligent argument, or is trying to be deceptive due to a personal bias.

I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to David that he knows how to formulate an sound and intelligent argument and how to research his subject.

So, I contend that guns on an aircraft have very low priority with respect to the broader range of missions that such aircraft are designed to meet. You might as well call the F-35 a failure because there isn't enough luggage space to carry a set of golf clubs. The F-35 does not have a need to provide space for a golf outing any more than it needs WW II close combat abilities.

Guns are the appendix of fighter aircraft, but we still train for them, probably because of tradition.

The only possible reason that guns might serve is to down an unarmed aircraft that a missile would either not accurately lock onto or would be overkill. I can think of a terrorist threat using a private aircraft as one scenario, but there is no need to go one-on-one with another fighter like the days of WW II or even Vietnam where missiles were not accurate nor reliable.

You are obviously biased toward the F-35.

That's fine.

I still content that a multi-role combat aircraft MUST make compromises, somewhere along the way.

Google: "The f-35 is better than the f-16" and see what comes up.

I fully agree that dog fights are a thing of the past, but, they are still on the books, and the results are in. Believe them, or not.

I've been out of the aerospace industry for 35 years and have not flown a plane in 20 years, so I'm hardly an expert on the subject.

"I still content that a multi-role combat aircraft MUST make compromises, somewhere along the way."

I don't think there is any contest about it. It must compromise and guns dogfight is a pretty useless feature these days, so no big deal, unless you are David Axe, who must believe he is a military tactical expert. I think his argument is silly and does not carry weight.

"I fully agree that dog fights are a thing of the past, but, they are still on the books, and the results are in. Believe them, or not."

I believe them, I just don't put much importance on them. It's a very minor consideration. It's like finding a car that you really like in every way that counts except the trunk space isn't shaped like the last car you had. Does it kill the deal? Probably not.

As far as dogfights, back in the 60's maybe even 50's, the 'experts' believed that dogfights were outdated, hence the F4 Phantom interceptor, which did not have any guns on them, at least the earlier ones..... The later F4"s was a different story.

Later models incorporated a M61 Vulcan rotary Cannon.