Miloch
February 12th 19, 05:29 AM
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2019/02/11/f-35-will-cost-less-to-operate-than-older-fighters-heres-why-some-policymakers-dont-get-that/#6e5a7e212c73
By the end of this year, nearly 500 F-35 fighters will have been delivered to
three U.S. military services and various allies. The plane is meeting all of its
performance requirements, and the cost of each fighter is steadily declining. In
fact, the most common variant of the fighter now costs no more to build than the
latest version of the Cold War fighters it is replacing.
This is what success looks like in the aerospace business. And yet somehow,
policymakers in the Pentagon manage to find new facets of the program to
criticize. The latest issue is that the F-35 supposedly costs too much to
operate and support once it is in service. In fact, some people are claiming the
Air Force needs to keep operating Cold War planes in its fighter fleet, because
it is too expensive to sustain a fleet consisting solely of “fifth-generation”
fighters like F-35.
That argument is wildly inaccurate. It can be easily demolished by citing a few
key facts and then applying elementary logic to the challenge of maintaining
U.S. air dominance through mid-century. What follows are the five most important
factors explaining why some policymakers can’t grasp the fact that F-35 is a far
more cost-effective solution to the nation’s tactical air power needs than
continuing to operate planes developed many decades ago.
I should mention that I have business ties of one sort or another to several
companies engaged in building the F-35, most notably airframe prime contractor
Lockheed Martin and engine prime contractor Pratt & Whitney.
* Pentagon estimates ignore wartime effectiveness. Policymakers rely on the
Pentagon’s Cost Assessment & Program Evaluation (CAPE) office to estimate the
expense of sustaining planes. However, CAPE measures sustainment costs without
making any effort to correct for differences in capabilities. So, the fact that
F-35 is eight times better than legacy fighters at surveillance, six times
better at air-to-air combat, and five times better at striking ground targets is
missing from the calculations, distorting comparisons. If a last-generation
fighter needs to be supported by jamming planes to reach targets, support F-35
doesn’t need, the cost of the jammers is left out of the comparisons.
* Pentagon estimates ignore wartime attrition. Combat losses are also left out
of the calculations. Fighters lacking the F-35’s stealth, electronic defenses
and situational awareness would likely suffer horrendous losses in combat with a
near-peer adversary. F-35 would fare much better because enemies can’t track or
target fighters with integrated stealth designs. But because replacing combat
losses isn’t part of the sustainment methodology, the fact that a third or more
of legacy planes might be shot down in combat is completely missing from
comparisons. Obviously, the need to replace lost fighters and train new pilots
would be a significant expense.
* Pentagon estimates fail to account for aircraft age. Aircraft have a
life-cycle, just like people do. When they are young, they need a lot of
support. As they mature, they become more efficient. But when they grow old, the
planes once again become expensive to sustain. CAPE ignores all this in
calculating sustainment costs, comparing F-35s that have been operational for
only two or three years with Cold War fighters that have been flying for
decades. By failing to correct for the very different maturities of new and
legacy fighters, it provides a misleading picture of what planes will actually
cost to operate in the future. F-35 will cost less to operate as it matures—a
fact already apparent in the most recent production lots—while legacy planes
will become more expensive as they age out.
* Pentagon estimates fail to capture hidden costs of older planes. F-35 was
designed as a highly integrated system with on-board information systems that
could track and predict sustainment needs. Older fighters are too primitive to
provide such data. So, whereas the F-35’s sustainment system captures all the
costs of keeping the plane airworthy and ready, there is no easy way of
capturing all the support costs for older fighters. Items like targeting pods
and defensive sensors that have sizable logistical “tails” over the lifetime of
a fighter are included in the estimate of F-35 sustainment costs, but largely
excluded from estimates for legacy planes. The Air Force tried a while back to
consolidate all the systems needed to track sustainment costs on legacy fighters
but eventually gave up—it was too complicated.
* Pentagon estimates fail to capture savings from new technology. One of the
drawbacks of relying heavily on past experience to project future support costs
is that it minimizes the savings afforded by new technology. The information
system that tracks logistical needs on the F-35 is far superior to anything on
legacy fighters, and Lockheed Martin is rearchitecting the system to incorporate
further advances since the program began. As new technology is leveraged to
enhance F-35 readiness and aircraft operating concepts are refined, there will
be huge gains in efficiency. That’s what always happens as new aircraft move
down the learning curve, but F-35 will see more marked improvement than past
fighters because digital technologies will be applied to every facet of the
sustainment challenge.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement on F-35. Spare parts need to
be stocked better, maintenance skills need to be honed, and subcontractors need
to be incentivized to perform at the top of their game. Both Lockheed Martin and
Pratt & Whitney have launched initiatives to greatly reduce sustainment costs as
the F-35 matures. Older fighters, though, are what they are; the opportunities
for savings on labor, material and overhead are limited. It’s a complicated
business, so we shouldn’t be surprised that some policymakers don’t understand
the intrinsic cost-effectiveness of the F-35 fighter.
*
By the end of this year, nearly 500 F-35 fighters will have been delivered to
three U.S. military services and various allies. The plane is meeting all of its
performance requirements, and the cost of each fighter is steadily declining. In
fact, the most common variant of the fighter now costs no more to build than the
latest version of the Cold War fighters it is replacing.
This is what success looks like in the aerospace business. And yet somehow,
policymakers in the Pentagon manage to find new facets of the program to
criticize. The latest issue is that the F-35 supposedly costs too much to
operate and support once it is in service. In fact, some people are claiming the
Air Force needs to keep operating Cold War planes in its fighter fleet, because
it is too expensive to sustain a fleet consisting solely of “fifth-generation”
fighters like F-35.
That argument is wildly inaccurate. It can be easily demolished by citing a few
key facts and then applying elementary logic to the challenge of maintaining
U.S. air dominance through mid-century. What follows are the five most important
factors explaining why some policymakers can’t grasp the fact that F-35 is a far
more cost-effective solution to the nation’s tactical air power needs than
continuing to operate planes developed many decades ago.
I should mention that I have business ties of one sort or another to several
companies engaged in building the F-35, most notably airframe prime contractor
Lockheed Martin and engine prime contractor Pratt & Whitney.
* Pentagon estimates ignore wartime effectiveness. Policymakers rely on the
Pentagon’s Cost Assessment & Program Evaluation (CAPE) office to estimate the
expense of sustaining planes. However, CAPE measures sustainment costs without
making any effort to correct for differences in capabilities. So, the fact that
F-35 is eight times better than legacy fighters at surveillance, six times
better at air-to-air combat, and five times better at striking ground targets is
missing from the calculations, distorting comparisons. If a last-generation
fighter needs to be supported by jamming planes to reach targets, support F-35
doesn’t need, the cost of the jammers is left out of the comparisons.
* Pentagon estimates ignore wartime attrition. Combat losses are also left out
of the calculations. Fighters lacking the F-35’s stealth, electronic defenses
and situational awareness would likely suffer horrendous losses in combat with a
near-peer adversary. F-35 would fare much better because enemies can’t track or
target fighters with integrated stealth designs. But because replacing combat
losses isn’t part of the sustainment methodology, the fact that a third or more
of legacy planes might be shot down in combat is completely missing from
comparisons. Obviously, the need to replace lost fighters and train new pilots
would be a significant expense.
* Pentagon estimates fail to account for aircraft age. Aircraft have a
life-cycle, just like people do. When they are young, they need a lot of
support. As they mature, they become more efficient. But when they grow old, the
planes once again become expensive to sustain. CAPE ignores all this in
calculating sustainment costs, comparing F-35s that have been operational for
only two or three years with Cold War fighters that have been flying for
decades. By failing to correct for the very different maturities of new and
legacy fighters, it provides a misleading picture of what planes will actually
cost to operate in the future. F-35 will cost less to operate as it matures—a
fact already apparent in the most recent production lots—while legacy planes
will become more expensive as they age out.
* Pentagon estimates fail to capture hidden costs of older planes. F-35 was
designed as a highly integrated system with on-board information systems that
could track and predict sustainment needs. Older fighters are too primitive to
provide such data. So, whereas the F-35’s sustainment system captures all the
costs of keeping the plane airworthy and ready, there is no easy way of
capturing all the support costs for older fighters. Items like targeting pods
and defensive sensors that have sizable logistical “tails” over the lifetime of
a fighter are included in the estimate of F-35 sustainment costs, but largely
excluded from estimates for legacy planes. The Air Force tried a while back to
consolidate all the systems needed to track sustainment costs on legacy fighters
but eventually gave up—it was too complicated.
* Pentagon estimates fail to capture savings from new technology. One of the
drawbacks of relying heavily on past experience to project future support costs
is that it minimizes the savings afforded by new technology. The information
system that tracks logistical needs on the F-35 is far superior to anything on
legacy fighters, and Lockheed Martin is rearchitecting the system to incorporate
further advances since the program began. As new technology is leveraged to
enhance F-35 readiness and aircraft operating concepts are refined, there will
be huge gains in efficiency. That’s what always happens as new aircraft move
down the learning curve, but F-35 will see more marked improvement than past
fighters because digital technologies will be applied to every facet of the
sustainment challenge.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement on F-35. Spare parts need to
be stocked better, maintenance skills need to be honed, and subcontractors need
to be incentivized to perform at the top of their game. Both Lockheed Martin and
Pratt & Whitney have launched initiatives to greatly reduce sustainment costs as
the F-35 matures. Older fighters, though, are what they are; the opportunities
for savings on labor, material and overhead are limited. It’s a complicated
business, so we shouldn’t be surprised that some policymakers don’t understand
the intrinsic cost-effectiveness of the F-35 fighter.
*