The pencil-whippers at Ft. Fumble have reduced their estimate for the operating cost of the F-35 from a pasta-gazillion dollars to four-fifths of that.
That's based on some pretty iffy assumptions, one of them being a 55 year service life for the F-35. And they are also, believe it or not, saying that the price in current dollars will drop from $200 million a copy to half of that or less. Of course, they don't acknowledge that the damn airplanes will cost $200 million, but that's the reality of it.
By their fuzzy math, that would make the F-35 cheaper than the latest models of the F-15, which would be damn near unheard of in aircraft procurement history.
Which is why I call bullshit.
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Seems we are rapidly approaching "Silent Cal's" wish:
"Why don't we just buy one airplane and let the pilots take turns flying it."
— Calvin Coolidge, complaining about a War Department request to buy more aircraft.
You're right, it is... And it's STILL overweight/under-performing...
Actually, the F-35 has half the engines of the F-15 and is somewhat smaller (i.e., less materials to buy for each copy) so it *should* cost less than the F-15. The only reason it doesn't is because of a) small production numbers, and b) contractor incompetence. But once they get all the bugs worked out they should be able to produce copies for cheaper than the F-15 and operating expenses should be less than the F-15 (though never as low for either as for the F-16, which had an emphasis upon low cost of purchase and operation from day one). Emphasis on the "should".
The reality is that giving the F-16 a newer/better radar and avionics suite would result in a better fighter for 95% of what we need a fighter for than the F-35 will ever be, and the F-22 can take care of the 5% that the F-16 can't handle. I expect that logic to register with the Pentagon somewhere around the day that pigs fly, though. (And I ain't talkin' bout at a Pink Floyd concert either!).
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