Joint Strike Fighter Getting Pricey

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Lightning II, may turn out to be the most expensive airplane ever built, each costing more than some modern warships.

The Pentagon's cost-analysis office, which must comply with a law that demands an assessment of any weapons program that exceeds its original projected cost by 50 percent, said the JSF falls in that category.

It may rise as much as $51 billion beyond the $328 billion estimate given to Congress April 1, according to a worst-case Pentagon scenario. The cost per plane would then be $155 million, 91 percent higher than the $81 million projected when the program began in 2002.

The program's total cost, calculated in current dollars, would increase 64 percent to $379 billion. How much is a billion?

It usually means a thousand million (in Great Britain it's a million million, but they're not paying for it), or 1,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000. That's a one followed by nine zeros, or 10 to the ninth power.

The Pentagon must certify to Congress that the program is vital to national security and shouldn't be canceled.

Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, in opening a hearing on the plane's cost, said that while the panel has backed the F-35 program, "people should not conclude we will be willing to continue that strong support without regard to increased costs." Levin is a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the committee.

The original cost of one F-35 rose from the original estimate of $62 million to $115.5 million, not including inflation. Now it's up to $155 million, more than the gross national product of some countries ... for one airplane.

(Inside Defense reported that the Pentagon has advised Congress that F-35 costs could rise as high as $158.1 million per airframe, a record new high.)

When the Senate Armed Services Committee met March 11 the combined cost of all variants of the F-35  was $298 billion. The group's report won't be released until its assessment is finished June 1, though the findings to date have been shared informally with some lawmakers.

Chris Giesel, a spokesman for Lockheed, prime contractor and the world's largest defense company, said his firm has "not seen the new data figure of $379 billion."

"However," he said in an e-mail to Bloomberg News, "we can foresee no scenario in which F-35 unit costs are even close to the projections of the cost analysts." The company and its partners "are confident the actual aircraft costs negotiated will be substantially lower."

The program is four years behind schedule on key milestones, including completing the development phase and combat testing, beginning full-scale production and then declaring the first Air Force and Navy units ready for combat.

Congress is being asked to approve the purchase of increasing numbers of aircraft as flight testing accelerates - from 30 planes this year to 43 in fiscal 2011 to 113 in fiscal 2015, Bloomberg reported.