F-35 News. F-35’s cost per flying hour will flatten, and then increase as the aircraft age

via Defense Daily.

The Pentagon has made a “stretch goal” to reach $25,000 by FY’ 25, which is included in the department’s F-35 Lifecycle Sustainment Plan, he added. However, Robert Daigle, director of the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) Office in the department, told the subcommittee that his office “doesn’t see a path” to get to that number in that timeframe.

“That’s a target and it’s not our projections for where we’re actually going to be,” he said in response to a line of questioning from Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.), a colonel in the Army Reserves and subcommittee vice chair.

Daigle added that the CAPE office actually anticipates that after FY ’24, the F-35’s cost per flying hour will flatten, and then increase as the aircraft age and must be returned to the depot for maintenance.

Daigle told the subcommittee that CAPE currently projects that the F-15EX will operate at a cost-per-flying-hour of $29,000. By comparison, the Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornet operates at about $23,000 and the F-15E – as an older aircraft than the new EX model would be – operates at about $34,000 per flying hour.

Story here. 

Wow.

So the costs to operate the F-35 will flatten (presumably above the 25K hope) and then rise?

No way in hell the USAF can afford the programmed buy.