Why Does The F-35 Cost $243 Million Dollars? Answer - Lockheed Martin

[unhappycamper]

unhappycamper note: Since the ‘Pentagon’ (Righthaven LLC?) has ‘requested’ that I only post one paragraph from articles on Army Times, and Airforce Times, I’ve decided to give ya’ll an unhappycamper summary of the article and a link to the OP. To keep in that same (new) tradition, I will also do the same for articles on Navy Times, Marine Corps Times, stripes.com and military.com.To keep in that same (new) tradition, I will also do the same for for articles on Navy Times, Marine Corps Times, stripes.com and military.com.

To read the article in the military's own words, you will need to click the link.

Read all about Fair Use here. It sure is beginning to smell like fascism.

unhappycamper summary of this article: Sometimes one must ask - why is this stuff so expensive? In the case of the F-35 take your pick: greed or an inability to keep track of how much things cost.

I'm betting on greed.







DoD Buzz: EVMS Sword Hangs Over F-35
By Colin Clark Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 3:23 pm
Posted in Air, Policy

The Pentagon hasn’t decided what will get Lockheed Martin to improve its management of the Joint Strike fighter program, but it has decided the largest defense company in the world is doing an inadequate job of managing cost controls in the biggest defense program in history.

[stray cat]

1. How much can you make one for - what is your bid and would you even buy one from yourself?

[old mark]

2. Read the comments to the article - evidently the system developed to "track"

production costs is extremely complex and actually adds significantly to the cost of the finished product - the product it is supposed to control costs on. Also, it is a "flexible" program - if the product is not meeting the guidelines, the guidelines are changed so it suddenly conforms. This has been done with the F-35, and the program is now officially "ahead of schedule" - because the rules were altered to make it so.

This stuff is business as usual with the GOP in power and retired flag officers on the boards of the manufacturers. This is yet another job for some liberal Democratic politicians to tackle, if there really are any around to do it.

rec.

mark

[zipplewrath]

3. Don't put too much faith in EVMS

It is an attempt on the part of the government to see how much progress is being made. The presumption is that dollars spent has some relationship to progress made. It is also an attempt to determine if the dollars spent actually accomplished what was suppose to be accomplished. The problem is, that the relationship between dollars spent and progress made rests upon "guesses" by the contractor, up front, about what various activities "should" cost.

The problem comes in when those guesses go bad. Re-baselining is a way to "correct" that, or it is a way to move the goal posts. And it all costs ALOT of money.

[bemildred]

4. And we wonder why we are lose all our wars.

Well, yeah we beat tiny Grenada, and Gulf War I was a "success", but in GWI we had the sense to get out while we were ahead, once the photo-op was over.

[Pavulon]

10. After killing about 75,000 people..

Airplanes and people fighting a war in the desert make for a high body count. We do just fine when we dont try to make people who wear funny clothes practice western democracy.

When it comes to breaking stuff (nations infrastructure) and killing lots of soldiers, well.

[Angleae]

5. Cost overruns are usually the fault of the builder.

Though the defense dept sometimes is at least partillay at fault as they keep changing the necessary specifications, such as with LCS.

[hunter]

6. What a useless machine.

They'll burn a lot of fuel oil, pump some egos, maybe kill some people...



...and then they'll park them out in the desert to rot away.

Why can't we build something useful instead?

High speed rail? Replacements for fossil fueled power plants? Homes for the homeless, jobs for the jobless?

[Ron Green]

7. +1,000,000

[Pavulon]

8. You are looking at the work product of highly paid union labor

not Chinese shit that breaks.

[Ron Green]

9. He didn't say they aren't well-made; he said they're useless.

[Pavulon]

12. They had a use, the START treaty put lots of those there, then after collapsing the USSR

we did not need them all.

[B Calm]

11. The money for one F-35 could buy how many teachers?