F-35: $110 million each!

Holy golden Lightning II. At that flyaway price we won't even be able to buy 65--whatever the variant:

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s June 3 hearing on the cost of Pentagon weapon programs has thrown up a couple of nuggets that demonstrate just how politically vulnerable the Joint Strike Fighter program has become.

In his opening statement , SASC Chairman Carl Levin quoted a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report which estimated that recent cost overruns on the Pentagon’s 95 major weapons programs amount to $295 billion.

To put that figure into perspective, Levin said, “For $295 billion, we could buy, at current prices, two new aircraft carriers for $10 billion each and 8 Virginia class submarines for $2.5 billion each, and 500 V-22 Ospreys for $120 million each, and 500 Joint Strike Fighters for $110 million each (emphasis added-Ed.), and 10,0000 MRAPs for $1.4 million each -- all of that and still have enough money left over to pay for the entire $130 billion Future Combat System program."

Two of these figures deserve special attention.

The first is the $110 million that Levin quotes as the current unit price for the Joint Strike Fighter. This is the first time an official source has conceded that the JSF will cost substantially more than the $55-$65 million consistently quoted by the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin.

While neither it nor the Pentagon has challenged Levin’s figure, Lockheed continues to quote far lower prices to customers. Referring to a possible JSF sale to Israel, Lockheed spokesman John Smith told Reuters June 4 that the "average unit recurring flyaway costs" for the F-35A "have remained stable in the upper $40 million range in baseline 2002 dollars,” which is at variance from all other estimates.

(Admittedly, Levin’s price is in current dollars, while Lockheed’s is in FY2002 dollars, but six years of 3% inflation would increase Lockheed’s price by less than 20%, to well under $50 million.)

Levin’s $110 million price tag vindicates the GAO’s statement, set out in a March 11 report , that it has no confidence in the ability of the Joint Strike Fighter program office to accurately estimate costs.

GAO’s doubts were bolstered this week when the Project On Government Oversight, a watchdog group, released the executive summary of a November 2007 report by the Pentagon’s own Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) that states, in a nutshell, that Lockheed is virtually unable to control costs on the JSF program and that its system for tracking costs and schedules has generated "useless" or "suspect" data [my emphasis - MC, other bolding in original].