https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2019/02/11/f-35-will-cost-less-to-operate-than-older-fighters-heres-why-some-policymakers-dont-get-that/#6e5a7e212c73
By the end of this year, nearly 500 F-35 fighters will have been delivered to
three U.S. military services and various allies. The plane is meeting all of its
performance requirements, and the cost of each fighter is steadily declining. In
fact, the most common variant of the fighter now costs no more to build than the
latest version of the Cold War fighters it is replacing.
This is what success looks like in the aerospace business. And yet somehow,
policymakers in the Pentagon manage to find new facets of the program to
criticize. The latest issue is that the F-35 supposedly costs too much to
operate and support once it is in service. In fact, some people are claiming the
Air Force needs to keep operating Cold War planes in its fighter fleet, because
fighters like F-35.
That argument is wildly inaccurate. It can be easily demolished by citing a few
key facts and then applying elementary logic to the challenge of maintaining
U.S. air dominance through mid-century. What follows are the five most important
continuing to operate planes developed many decades ago.
I should mention that I have business ties of one sort or another to several
companies engaged in building the F-35, most notably airframe prime contractor
Lockheed Martin and engine prime contractor Pratt & Whitney.
* Pentagon estimates ignore wartime effectiveness. Policymakers rely on the
expense of sustaining planes. However, CAPE measures sustainment costs without
making any effort to correct for differences in capabilities. So, the fact that
F-35 is eight times better than legacy fighters at surveillance, six times
better at air-to-air combat, and five times better at striking ground targets is
missing from the calculations, distorting comparisons. If a last-generation
fighter needs to be supported by jamming planes to reach targets, support F-35
* Pentagon estimates ignore wartime attrition. Combat losses are also left out
and situational awareness would likely suffer horrendous losses in combat with a
target fighters with integrated stealth designs. But because replacing combat
of legacy planes might be shot down in combat is completely missing from
comparisons. Obviously, the need to replace lost fighters and train new pilots
would be a significant expense.
* Pentagon estimates fail to account for aircraft age. Aircraft have a
life-cycle, just like people do. When they are young, they need a lot of
support. As they mature, they become more efficient. But when they grow old, the
planes once again become expensive to sustain. CAPE ignores all this in
calculating sustainment costs, comparing F-35s that have been operational for
only two or three years with Cold War fighters that have been flying for
decades. By failing to correct for the very different maturities of new and
legacy fighters, it provides a misleading picture of what planes will actually
will become more expensive as they age out.
* Pentagon estimates fail to capture hidden costs of older planes. F-35 was
designed as a highly integrated system with on-board information systems that
could track and predict sustainment needs. Older fighters are too primitive to
costs of keeping the plane airworthy and ready, there is no easy way of
capturing all the support costs for older fighters. Items like targeting pods
a fighter are included in the estimate of F-35 sustainment costs, but largely
excluded from estimates for legacy planes. The Air Force tried a while back to
consolidate all the systems needed to track sustainment costs on legacy fighters
* Pentagon estimates fail to capture savings from new technology. One of the
drawbacks of relying heavily on past experience to project future support costs
is that it minimizes the savings afforded by new technology. The information
system that tracks logistical needs on the F-35 is far superior to anything on
legacy fighters, and Lockheed Martin is rearchitecting the system to incorporate
further advances since the program began. As new technology is leveraged to
enhance F-35 readiness and aircraft operating concepts are refined, there will
down the learning curve, but F-35 will see more marked improvement than past
fighters because digital technologies will be applied to every facet of the
sustainment challenge.
be stocked better, maintenance skills need to be honed, and subcontractors need
to be incentivized to perform at the top of their game. Both Lockheed Martin and
Pratt & Whitney have launched initiatives to greatly reduce sustainment costs as
the F-35 matures. Older fighters, though, are what they are; the opportunities
the intrinsic cost-effectiveness of the F-35 fighter.
*
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