Winslow Wheeler: "The Defense Department’s SAR and its seeming wishful declaration of the F-35’s total program costs coming down should be audited by an independent and competent party. That GAO’s latest report on the F-35 has sided so clearly with the new hopefulness of program advocates for the F-35 calls into serious question whether GAO, or rather its current management, should be the party to such an accounting. US taxpayers, the US military services and foreign purchasers, all of whom have been promised F-35 aircraft for as little as $85 million each, are in for a rude awakening. When real F-35 purchase prices unfold in the future, they may be as much as they are today, averaging more than $200 million per aircraft. It remains inevitable that as actual costs sink in, fewer aircraft will be purchased. This toxic stew of the F-35’s high cost, abetted by concurrent production, lagging performance and continuing design problems, has put U.S. and allied air power into a dive. The dive will steepen so long as F-35 production at the currently-projected rates continues."
Posted on: Sun, 09 Jun 2013 00:49:16 +0000
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