The F-35 is killing the USAF budget too!

via Air Force Times..

The F-35 is going to eat up so much of the Air Force’s procurement budget going forward that the service will likely have to reduce the number of joint strike fighters it buys to pay for other things, such as the Long Range Strike-Bomber, experts said on Tuesday.

Then this...

In order to pay for the bomber, the Air Force will likely have to reduce the number of F-35s and other procurement programs, said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst for the Teal Group.
“You’ve got so many competing requirements for the Air Force’s procurement budget, and on top of that, you’re inserting $4 to $5 billion a year for LRS-B – or more – I believe it peaks at a somewhat higher number than that. There’s no way right now to make that all work,” Aboulafia told Air Force Times after speaking at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

And this...

“One: You could grow the topline [budget], which is not likely,” he said. “No. 2: You can create this national strategic priority line which comes out of somebody else’s budget – a lot of people tried that. It generally doesn’t work. Three: It can die and become a bill-payer for all for the other programs, which would be sad. Or four: The other programs have to give ground, either in terms of year-by-year procurement numbers or total procurement numbers, or both.”
Since the F-35 represents the lion’s share of other procurement programs, the Air Force’s stated goal of buying 1,763 joint strike fighters has become “highly untenable,” Aboulafia said.

Repeat after me!  DEATH SPIRAL!!!

Thanks to the readers that locked onto this in the comments section of another post.  But you do get what's actually happening here don't you?  They're all but shouting from the roof tops that this program is about to take a SERIOUS HAIRCUT!  But wait.  It gets even better!

Meanwhile, Canada plans to withdraw from the F-35 program and Norway may follow suit, and that will increase the cost of each F-35, said Eaglen, who also spoke at the Mitchell Institute.

Yeah.  That sound you hear from the F-35 Program Office is a mixture of pure fear and desperation.  This thing is spiraling and I couldn't be happier.