DoD Acquisition Starting To Turn Corner? F-35 Costs Down 2% « Breaking Defense - Defense industry news, analysis and commentary: The simple lead for this story would be: F-35 costs dropped almost 2 percent over the last year.
But the real lead should be: after decades of botched programs, bloated budgets, technical screwups and long delays we may be seeing what Winston Churchill might have called the beginning of the beginning of the end of acquisition malfeasance by America’s military. The 79 major programs monitored for the Pentagon’s authoritative Selected Acquisition Report dropped $9.1 billion from last year.
The F-35 comprises 20 percent of the SAR portfolio, so its $7.5 billion (1.9 percent) price decrease from last year is an important driver behind the overall drop. Inflation and lower labor costs drove most of the decrease. (Readers can scroll down to see the prices for each variant of the F-35.)
“We are extremely pleased with the nearly $60 billion decrease in Operations and Support costs of the F-35 program during the last year alone,” Lorraine Martin, Lockheed’s F-35 general manager, said in a statement. “This is a result of a laser focus by the entire government and contractor team on reducing costs across the board whether it’s improving quality in manufacturing, increasing supply chain delivery speed, and dramatically reducing concurrency items.”
