via National Defense Magazine.
Anytime anyone moves airplanes to the right, the price goes up.”Anyone who thinks the death spiral hasn't started isn't paying attention.
The surest way to lower cost, he said, is to bring in more foreign buyers into the program. The SAR estimates, he noted, do not include a possible order of 40 F-35s by South Korea, or anticipated future purchases by Singapore and Israel.
“We are pretty sure that Israel is not going to stop at 19,” Bogdan said. Another potential customer is Japan, which has a fleet of about 200 F-15s, half of which have been modernized. “At some point they will have to make a choice,” he said. “I can't influence that decision, other than keep driving the price of the airplane down. Then these FMS [foreign military sales] customers will make choices.”
Today, about 30 percent of F-35 components are made outside the United States, which exposes U.S. aircraft buys to fluctuations in foreign currency rates.
Bogdan insisted that the impact of budget cuts by the United States and other F-35 buying nations on aircraft cost projections should not be underestimated. In the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal, the Navy delayed purchases of 33 aircraft and the Air Force postponed four. Turkey and Canada slipped their buys by one year, and the Netherlands slashed its order from 80 to 37. The cumulative effect of these changes, said Bogdan, is a cost increase of 2 to 4 percent to the price of each airplane. If sequester-level budgets are enforced by the Congress between 2016 and 2019, 17 fewer U.S. aircraft would be produced.
To hope that Israel buys more of these airplanes is a joke. The budget isn't there and they still have to figure out maintenance. Italy is about to slash its buy and Bogdan didn't touch on that. Additionally Japan has indicated that its going to build its own stealth fighter so that's another miss for the program.
Things are dark and gloomy, the USN is sold on electronic warfare being the future not stealth and this is just the beginning of the bad news.
The Advanced Super Hornet Growler is the workhorse that the Marine Corps needs to make the MAGTF more deadly. Utilizing the two seat approach to command UAVs, coupled with the airplanes inherent electronic attack that is useful across the spectrum of warfare and you have a combat multiplier extraordinaire (take that Pentagon speakers!) that WILL make the Marine Ground Combat Element more lethal.
