Inside the Pentagon's Trillion Dollar F-35 Embarrassment

http://gizmodo.com/inside-the-pentagons-trillion-dollar-f-35-embarrassmen-1325863089



Inside the Pentagon's Trillion Dollar F-35 Embarrassment
Adam Clark Estes
Yesterday 2:00pm

It's not news that the Pentagon's fated F-35 program is riddled with dilemmas. For more than a decade, it's bumped into roadblock after roadblock. When the planes aren't grounded, they're forbidden to fly in bad weather, combat missions or at night. Vanity Fair just published a lengthy look at just how bad a mess it is.

It's a frustrating read as it catalogs problem after problem with the program and the complicated politics that dictate its future. Perhaps refreshingly, the challenges laid out seem to stem not from corruption but the overwhelmingly complex task of making the Air Force, Marines and Navy happy while also doling out capital to as many congressional districts as possible, through spending on contractors.

Again, we already knew there were problems. But that doesn't make the specifics any easier to swallow. Vanity Fair's Adam Ciralsky walks through the challenges one-at-a-time. Problem number one: these planes are friggin' expensive:

According to the Government Accountability Office (G.A.O.), which is relatively independent, the price tag for each F-35 was supposed to be $81 million when the program began in October 2001. Since that time, the price per plane has basically doubled, to $161 million. Full-rate production of the F-35, which was supposed to start in 2012, will not start until 2019. The Joint Program Office, which oversees the project, disagrees with the G.A.O.’s assessment, arguing that it does not break out the F-35 by variant and does not take into account what they contend is a learning curve that will drive prices down over time. They say a more realistic figure is $120 million a copy, which will go down with each production batch. Critics, like Winslow Wheeler, from the Project on Government Oversight and a longtime G.A.O. official, argue the opposite: “The true cost of the airplane—when you cast aside all the bullshit—is $219 million or more a copy, and that number is likely to go up.”