Dueling articles.

Well I was waiting for the duel to start up again and it looks like we have Information Dissemination and Early Warning picking up the boxing gloves.

While we'll have to wait and see who's right and wrong, I found these to be the 'operative' passages from both articles.

This from ID's article...

And with the higher price, we almost certainly will buy fewer airframes. This is one part of Robert Gates legacy in waiting few want to acknowledge exists.

And from EW....

The official projections are so wildly wrong that the Senate Armed Services Committee directed last week, "cost estimates developed for baseline descriptions and budgetary purposes shall not become the basis for negotiations with contractors and the obligations of funds." Translation: the government's cost estimates for F-35 and other major weapons programs threaten to drive up costs if negotiators take them seriously, rather than holding them down. Further evidence of this fact will become available in June, when the government reveals that F-35s in the next production lot are priced about 25% below what Pentagon estimators predicted. Needless to say, the estimators aren't answering questions about how they came up with their ridiculous guess-timates.

I'll wait patiently to see who's right...but if my suspicions prove to be correct (read that to be Air Power Australia mouth piece) then expect a loud and vocal 'intervention'....one of these guys is wrong and needs to be called on it.  Arrogance must be exposed and I'll enjoy doing it.