WASHINGTON \u2014 The Pentagon’s projected total cost for buying the F-35 shot up by $27.5 billion from 2015 to 2016, a spike mostly driven by slower-than-expected U.S. Air Force procurement, the program office announced.
Finally, it led to a “slight” increase in the cost per plane. For example, unit-recurring flyaway costs \u2014 which measure the average cost per plane over the life of the program \u2014 are currently estimated at $111.3 million per F-35A. The 2015 SAR put an “A” model at $100.6 million in then-year dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Air Force officials have said the service’s smaller maximum buy rate is the reflection of fiscal realities, not its need for the F-35. At an Air Force Association event Tuesday morning, Air Combat Command head Gen. Mike Holmes reiterated the service’s plans to ramp up to 60 aircraft a year; although without congressional intervention it will procure only 46 A models in fiscal 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Sixty is what we think is financially attainable in the best-case world. We really should be buying 80 or 100, and if I was going to fix the average life of ACC’s aircraft, I’d like to buy about 150 fighters a year and about 20 or 25 [remotely piloted aircraft]. If I was going to buy the average service life down, that’s what it would take,” he said. “But in the world I’m in, with the budget I’ve had, I’d like to get to 60.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 2016 SAR documented a number of other changes to the F-35 program’s estimated costs.\u00a0Research, development, test and evaluation expenses “have remained steady” for the most part, Winter said. However, a reallocation of funding from procurement to RDT&E was necessary to wrap up the program\u2019s development phase. That contributed to a slight hike from $55.1 billion in 2015 to $55.5 in the 2016 SAR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The total estimated cost of military construction associated with the F-35 program stayed exactly the same from 2015 to 2016, at $4.8 billion in then-year dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The program office noted that unit-recurring flyaway costs of the F-35B actually decreased when measured in base year 2012 dollars, which the JPO uses to show an apples-to-apples comparison without factoring in annual inflationary increases. In then-year dollars, “B” variants increased slightly from $122.9 million to $123.4 million per copy. When charted in base year 2012 dollars, the price dropped from $104.4 million to $103.7 million because of a larger Marine Corps program of record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, the Navy\u2019s carrier-launched F-35C also increased slightly, from $110.7 million to $112.4 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Projected operations and sustainment, or O&S, costs increased by $35.3 billion due to the rising cost of fuel and changes to the F-35 bed-down plan, the JPO said. The program office currently estimates total O&S costs at $1.06 trillion in then-year dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Without these two updates, the F-35 estimated O&S costs would have decreased by approximately $6.2B (base year 2012 dollars) from last year’s JPO estimate,” Winter said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Pentagon\u2019s projected total cost for buying the F-35 shot up by $27.5 billion from 2015 to 2016, a spike mostly driven by slower-than-expected Air Force procurement, the program office announced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":36045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":7,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"2":{"categories":["news","your-military"],"primary_category":""},"4":{"categories":["your-air-force","news"],"primary_category":"your-air-force"}}},"categories":[7,44,8],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3384],"class_list":["post-18374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air","category-budget","category-congress"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"JTEOL6EXIZFFPEDFSAEXYXKZXI","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2017\/07\/11\/air-forces-lower-buy-rate-drives-27-5b-spike-in-f-35-acquisition-costs\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n