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NEDERLANDS | ENGLISH
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4 February 2009 |
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|  | Star Telegram
Pentagon weapons buyer says F-35 [JSF] cost overruns were inevitable
By Bob Cox
The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer says the huge cost increases and delays incurred on the F-35 joint strike fighter program were inevitable because the Defense Department didn’t spend enough money upfront to build realistic prototypes.
In a recent memo, John Young, undersecretary of defense for weapons acquisition and development, said the failure to build true prototypes led Pentagon planners and the Lockheed Martin-led contractor team to come up with unrealistic cost and weight estimates. The F-35 "leads the way in all recent cost-growth analyses" of Pentagon weapons programs, Young said in the memo to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, reported Tuesday by Inside Defense. The most recent public cost estimate of the F-35 program, prepared in late 2007, is that it will cost the Pentagon $298 billion (in 2001 dollars) to develop and buy 2,400 aircraft for the Air Force, Navy and Marines, up from an initial estimate of $229 billion, according to Young’s memo. New estimates, expected to be released soon, are expected to show further cost growth. Young and Gates have both said recently that the Pentagon needs to spend early to develop prototypes of weapons systems so the technical difficulties and likely costs are understood. For the JSF program, the Pentagon contracted with Boeing and Lockheed to build "technology demonstrators" and not "true prototypes." As a result, Young said, "the future of JSF cost growth was largely written in 2001 when budget and pricing decisions were made . . . based on inadequate knowledge gained from the JSF technology demonstrators."
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