F-35 Lightning gets foreign orders
Hidden in all the late-breaking political hoopla Friday afternoon, when the media was in another Trump feeding frenzy over White House musical chairs, was an announcement by the F-35 Joint Program Office that a $3.69 billion contract for the F-35 Lightning had officially been awarded to Lockheed-Martin for its 5th generation fighter. Interestingly, around two-thirds of that order went to foreign buyers:
Most of the money, $2.2 billion, goes to buy one British F-35B, one ItalianF-35A, eight Australian F-35As, eight Dutch F-35As, four Turkish F-35As, six Norwegian F-35As aircraft, and 22 F-35As for Foreign Military Sales customers.
I say interestingly, because when I wrote a piece a few weeks ago about how my own assessment of this aircraft was changing after reading how awed pilots are who actually have flown the plane in simulated air combat against ground anti-aircraft defenses and aggressor air forces, our own in-house Wikipedia, Hondo, expressed some sincere doubt that the foreign buyers would come through on their agreed upon acquisitions. Those purchases, he correctly noted were going to be needed to drive down the overall unit cost of the F-35 which, in excess of $100 mil per copy has been the primary criticism of the aircraft. If the numbers published by Breaking Defense are correct, then it looks like the foreign purchasers are getting their birds for less than $50 million a copy. Of course that $2.2 billion could represent partial payment. It also includes no Israeli aircraft and that country has said it alone will purchase fifty F-35’s in its various iterations with other countries saying they’ll order almost twice that number if the price comes down.
Whatever, it’s a good sign for the American taxpayer that plenty of foreign governments are buying in on the Lightning. For a complete account on planned total purchases by country, go here:
Look Who’s Buying Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Now
Crossposted at American Thinker
Category: Politics
Well, if those other guys get them at a discount, we should be able to get a deeper discount.
Unfortunately, Ex-PH2, that’s not the way it works.
Uncle Sam has already committed the vast majority of the R&D costs associated with the F-35. Ditto a big chunk of the F-35’s test & eval costs. Both of those are money we’ll never get back. The US taxpayers will eat those costs, regardless of whether 1 or 1,000 F-35s are ultimately produced.
FMS will be on favorable terms for the buyer. Almost certainly, only the incremental cost of producing the aircraft, some spare parts, and (maybe) training costs will be charged to foreign customers. In effect, Uncle Sam will subsidize those foreign militaries who purchase the F-35 by paying for the R&D necessary to develop it, set up the production line, test it, etc . . . .
I probably should do an article on how DoD calculates and uses costs for each weapons system DoD develops. There are at least 7 different costs associated with a DoD weapons system; each is calculated differently. Which is publicized is typically a matter of politics and desired “spin”. And they all mean different things.
As I understand it, back in the good ol’ days, the US Army Air Corps would make a “wanted: new airplane” announcement, and rival companies would submit their designs for a competitive flyoff, may the best plane win. Each company would go all-out to turn out the best plane they could, as the contract was usually winner-take-all. The winner would make their R&D budget back in sales, while the losers would have to eat it. Those who didn’t think they could produce a competitive aircraft didn’t take the risk.
Of course, in those days there were dozens of competitive aeronautical manufacturers out there, and even the biggest ones could only afford to have one or two congressmen in their pocket. Nowadays Lockheed-Martin (the result of at least three mergers and God-knows-how-many buyouts) owns half the universe, while Boeing and Northrop-Grumman (more mergers and buyouts) split the rest. Maybe it’s time for a good-old-fashioned trust bust in the aerospace industry.
Reading a history of WWII aircraft and that’s exactly what Lockheed did with the P38. Spent $600,000 of their own money developing the P38. Sad how far they’ve come.
There’s a reason we don’t see that any more. It’s the extreme cost of today’s weapons systems.
In the early days of aviation, aircraft companies could do stuff like that. Financially, they can’t today. DoD systems are simply too expensive.
The P-38 was designed in 1937-38. In 1937, $600k bought roughly what $10.422M buys today. A strong company – then or now – could afford to risk that much and still stay in business if they didn’t “win the contract”.
If I recall correctly, the R&D, testing, and costs associated with setting up the production line for the B2 was on the order of $20 billion. No way in hell a current DoD contractor can risk that kind of $$$ on a venture where they might not get the contract.
Well then, for the assload of money DoD is throwing their way, it seems reasonable to expect the bugs to be worked out in the prototype stage BEFORE production begins. Not “oh yeah, we’ll fix that later.”
But I guess there’s enough senior leaders willing to sell their souls for a chance at a nice sinecure after they retire/
There is NO sanity left in DC! These freaks of nature sell our latest and greatest to all these foreign nations, half of which DO NOT LOVE US BOSCO!!!
Should we be worried that Turkey is buying the F35?
I don’t want the Russians and the Chinese to be able to replicate it.
The good news is, I don’t think you have to worry about China getting the secret F-35 plans from the Turks.
The bad news? They already have the info.
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-hacked-f22-f35-jet-secrets/
We done put well over 100 million in this plane that does us no good. Still don’t know if they fixed the oxygen problems they had with this bird.
If they can get it to work, and with a more realistic assessment of what it can and can’t do, great. Maybe the combined GDP of most of Africa won’t have been wasted after all. Does the gun work yet?
I will remain optimistic until proven otherwise.
Oh thank God. They didn’t go with the Pentium 100 processor after all. Whew! That’s a relief. Plus they’ve added Jane’s library of everything.
Just hope it helps troops on the ground. Period. Otherwise, keep the A-10 in service and in fact upgrade it. The A-10 is the B-52 of close air support. Taken care of it can last and perform it’s role for a long time.
We should also keep smoothbore muskets in our inventory because, you know, they work, unlike those new overated breachloading rifles.
Can the F-35 do a lot of things? Yes, if it works. Can it do the A-10’s job? No, no matter how well it works. The F-15 and F-16 can’t do the A-10’s job, either. That’s why the A-10 was built in the first place. The A-10 can’t do the job of the F-15, F-16, F-22, or F-35, either. One size will never, ever fit all.
Replacing the A-10 with the F-35 is a bad idea. Deploying a new-and-improved A-10, with an F-35 spotting targets and more F-35s or F-22s keeping the airspace clear is a potentially-asskicking setup.
Yef – If we were barely up to rifled muskets your comment might make some sense. Unfortunately…it doesn’t. And if you suggested M14s or M1s in place of M16 and related platforms…you would start a stampede.
Not saying that those numbers in the article you cite are BS – but I’d take them with a huge grain of salt, PT. Like maybe a cube 3″ on a side.
First and foremost: the article gives two different numbers for the amount spent to support foreign sales. The article title says $2.8B; the text says $2.2B. If the article can’t even get that straight, it’s credibility IMO is kinda suspect.
Second, it’s unclear from the article whether that cost is for the “whole enchilada” or just the airframes less powerplants. The cited article goes on to reference a separate – and yet to be finalized – contract for the F135 engine to be used in the F35. It’s unclear how much the engines will cost each, or whether that cost must be added to the cost of the foreign planes sold.
Finally, the numbers simply don’t add up to anything reasonable. The unit flyaway cost for the F/A-18 is estimated at around $60M. That’s a mature aircraft that had a rather extensive production run. The foreign price that one calculates for the F35 from data in that article, assuming that the contract here is for the full price of the foreign sales aircraft, is less than that. There’s no way in hell that’s correct – either someone else (Uncle Sam?) is subsidizing the crap out of those foreign sales, or something else is off. At this point in its development, there is simply no way that the incremental cost of building a single F35 is less than that of building a F/A-18.
In short: I’d have to see a lot of hard data before I’d buy that article’s implied price of somewhere between $50M and $56M for a F-35 to be sold to a foreign customer as being the full price for the item.
Addendum: here’s why I’d recommend taking the figures in the article PT references above with a freaking huge grain of salt.
In a recent Bloomberg article from about 3 weeks ago, VADM Mat Winter, PEO for the F35 program, is quoted as saying that he is “confident that we’ll meet our target of less than $85 million per jet in 2019.” That’s roughly $30M each MORE than the highest calculated figure based on the article PT cites (the figures there work out to $56M each, assuming the actual amount of the contract funding foreign sales is the higher $2.8B quoted in the “breakingdefense.com” article’s title). The Bloomberg article further indicates the actual cost of producing an F-35 today is considerably over $85M.
However, looking further at the F-35’s financials it gets even scarier. Because that’s not even the complete, “best-case” cost for an F-35.
The Bloomberg article goes on to give the current estimate for the F-35 program’s total acquisition cost (the “whole enchilada” re: procurement – e.g., including all development and production costs but not including operations & maintenance and eventual disposal. Today, that cost is estimated at $406.5 billion. For the current estimate of 2,456 total aircraft to be procured thru 2044, that works out to a total of $165.5+M (in 2017 dollars) EACH. That includes ALL sales, US and export.
FWIW: the article also says that O&M costs associated with the F-35 are estimated at $1.1 TRILLION over the F-35’s lifetime. Disposal costs aren’t mentioned.
The F-35 might be a nice plane. But at a cost of $165.5+ million each, it damn well better be or the US taxpayer is getting royally screwed. And even then, the cost is so damn high that it calls into question whether the design is actually one we can afford.
And the Brits are getting one; and one presumes and moe later.