Eric over at ELP Blog has a couple of short posts up about the F-35 that made me pause. Read them here and here.
The stark reality?
The F-35 isn't seeing the massive production ramp up that the Program Manager/Lockheed Martin insisted was needing to get the "cost curve" down.
Production has been flat for the past four years. Orders from Israel, and Italy have almost been cut in half. Japan isn't buying as many as fast as hoped and S. Korea appears to already be suffering some type of buyers remorse.
But the real kick in the pants should be this realization. The plane is still eating up an inordinate part of the budget, other more needed programs have been cut to protect it and we can't buy enough to force the price down.
This is just more evidence that the death spiral is already here.
UPDATE: Its worse than I initially thought. I was reading the comments over at ELP's Blog and ran across this...
Don Bacon • 33 minutes agoThe above information is verifiable. Additionally I remember the much ballyhoo-ed announcement and then nothing of the British Defense Minister signing a contract for the F-35's earlier this year and now...in the fourth quarter we get the news that the Brit order has been cut from 14 to 4. Aviation and Defense journalist should be all over this!
This just in -- The UK shoe has finally dropped, and it's a size four not a fourteen.
BBCNews, Feb 10
UK to spend £2.5bn on [14] F-35 fighters
The UK is about to commit to the F-35 fighter project, a US-led effort to produce 3,000 aircraft which is set to cost more than £600bn globally. The initial UK order for 14 F-35Bs will, with support costs added, cost about £2.5bn, Newsnight has learned.//
UK has been "about to commit" for eight months and now--
DailyMail, Oct 28
Britain says agrees to order four F-35 stealth fighter jets
(Reuters) - Britain has reached an agreement in principle to order four more of Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter jets, the Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday.
The contract, part of a plan to purchase 14 of the stealth fighters over the next five years, will be placed within the coming weeks, the ministry said. The aircraft are due to be delivered from mid-2016.