Fyi
Selective Acquisition Arithmetic
The latest Pentagon and Lockheed Martin figure touted in the press is $77.9 million for each F-35 in the Lot 14 batch for fiscal year 2020. But taxpayers pay far more than that for an F-35. This number, like the others trotted out to prove the plane’s affordability, hardly provides the full picture not just of the price per aircraft, but the program as a whole.
The services’ publicly available budget documents provide a more comprehensive picture of these costs. According to the Air Force’s aircraft procurement justification book for fiscal year 2021, the $77.9 million sticker price for the 2020 model F-35A jumps to $110.3 million per aircraft when all aspects of the program are added together. And this figure will rise in the coming years as aircraft purchased now receive significant upgrades.
When people quote the $77.9 million figure, they are talking about the unit recurring flyaway cost, which is only the cost of the parts of the aircraft and the labor to put them together. The doyens of the military industrial congressional complex always prefer to use this cost metric because it is the calculation that produces the smallest possible figure. In fact, it is merely the “sticker price” to get the F-35 off the proverbial lot. But it does not produce an aircraft that is ready for training, let alone for combat.
That price does not include the money spent in previous budgets to purchase parts for that lot of F-35s. Nor does it include the costs of other activities necessary to keep the program functioning, like standing up depot maintenance facilities, ground support equipment, simulators, and operating the maintenance network. The Air Force’s budget documents do include all of those costs.
According to the Department of the Navy justification book, which covers both the Navy and Marine Corps aircraft procurement, a Marine Corps F-35B costs $135.8 million and a Navy F-35C costs $117.3 million per aircraft.
For an even clearer picture of the real costs of a fully functioning F-35 and related support equipment, we can look at the F-35 contracts offered to foreign governments. The Swiss are considering purchasing 40 F-35s for approximately $6.58 billion, or $164.5 million apiece. This figure accounts for the spare parts, missiles, bombs, and bullets necessary for a fully functional weapon system.
Meanwhile, the design process for the F-35 is far from complete, even as the program limps toward full-rate production. Engineers couldn’t complete the design of many of the program’s promised capabilities within the original development budget and timeline. These changes have been designated as part of the program’s follow-on modernization program, also known as Block 4.
During this process, engineers will complete work that should have already been done in the original system design process, and will also add new capabilities. These changes will be integrated into the production line for the F-35s that will be built later, but added to the aircraft already in the fleet as part of a retrofitting process.
The overall cost of each individual F-35 will subsequently rise as more money is invested into them. The Government Accountability Office estimates that the total cost of the F-35 Block 4 program will be $12.1 billion, a sum that the history of the F-35 program suggests will rise much higher as the effort gets fully underway. The F-35 modernization effort is so large that the watchdog recommended in 2017 that it be classified as a separate acquisition program.
