Can It Be? F-35 Fighter Gets Cheaper?

Pentagon reports indicate a nearly $1-billion decrease in the cost to buy 2,500 F-35 stealth fighters for the Air Force, Navy and Marines. The Government Accountability Office disagrees with the assessment, claiming a $38-billion increase.

Who's right? Who knows. For the record, here's the Pentagon's "good news":

F-35 (Joint Strike Fighter)
– Program costs decreased by $981.3 million (-0.3 percent) from
$299,824.1 million to $298,842.8 million, due primarily to the application of revised escalation indices (-$1,955.8 million), lower material estimates because of prime contractor’s material agreements
(-$1,650.6 million), and incorporation of revised prime/subcontractor labor rates (-$879.4 million). There was an additional reduction for a revised estimate of support costs (-$7,445.0
million). These decreases were partially offset by higher estimates for elements of procurement nonrecurring costs (+$4,369.0 million), an adjustment to reflect manufacturing actuals for the System
Demonstration and Development (SDD) flight test articles (+$3,849.9
million), and a revised propulsion estimate to include additional hardware and increased lift fan cost (+$2,769.1 million). Overall, it should be noted that the Nunn-McCurdy unit costs are stable relative to the current and original baseline estimates.

Note that the decrease hinges on an estimated $8 billion savings in "support costs." In other words, somebody's guessing that the F-35 will be cheaper to fly and repair. If that's true, it'll represent an
unprecedented trend reversal, according to the Center for Defense Information:

This is not the first time the Air Force promised that new, more complex aircraft would have an affordable procurement cost and an even cheaper cost to maintain and operate than aircraft being replaced. The
F-15 was promised to be less expensive to support than the Vietnam era
F-4; however, reality proved otherwise, and the F-15 was significantly more expensive to operate. The Air Force promised the F-22 would in turn be 40 percent less expensive to operate than the F-15; information from the Office of the Secretary of Defense indicates it is actually 30
percent more expensive to support. Being significantly more complex than the F-16 it purports to replace, the F-35 is virtually sure to follow this well beaten path.

(Art: Air Force)