Will sequestration finally kill the F-35 boondoggle?

I've been following the sequestration debate with cynical amusement.  It's total nonsense, really.  We need to cut between one-third and one-half of all Federal government spending, right now, if we're to avoid the looming financial and economic disaster that's headed our way.  All the posturing and fuss over a few billion here or there is laughable by comparison.

However, perhaps the financial pressures exerted by sequestration might restore some sanity to defense procurement - particularly the monumental boondoggle of the F-35 Lightning II program.

The F-35 (shown above) is the poster-child for procurement bloat.  As I pointed out last year:

I fear the F-35 program has degenerated into nothing more or less than a monumental boondoggle, channeling hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money into the constituencies of Representatives and Senators who've allowed its costs to balloon to horrific proportions as a result.  It's simply no longer affordable.  Even if it were, the ongoing problems with its testing and evaluation suggest it'll no longer be adequate for the combat environment it will face by the time it reaches full operational capability.

I think it's high time the entire F-35 program was scrapped.  I realize there's no alternative on the horizon, so it may be militarily undesirable to scrap it;  but I submit it'll never be bought in the numbers desired by the USAF, USN and USMC anyway.  I doubt very much if it'll be bought in even half those numbers.  It's simply too costly.

We can no longer afford this bottomless money pit.  It's time to kill it before it drags the rest of the defense budget down with it.

There's more at the link.

It seems Boeing hasn't been slow to use this tack in its marketing to other nations.  CBC reports from Canada:

With Ottawa now reviewing its previous commitment to buy the F-35, Boeing is making an aggressive pitch to Canadian taxpayers, offering to save them billions of dollars if they buy Boeing's Super Hornets instead.

Boeing isn't pulling its punches. The Super Hornet, it says, is a proven fighter while the F-35 is just a concept — and an expensive one at that.

"We call it competing with a paper airplane," says Ricardo Traven, Boeing's chief test pilot for the Super Hornet. A Canadian who flew fighters for 15 years in the Canadian air force, Traven dismisses the F-35 as a "shiny brochure of promises," and contrasts it with "the real thing," which looms behind him in a top-secret hangar at Boeing's vast production line in St. Louis, Missouri.

All photographs and video are closely monitored by Boeing staff to ensure nothing classified leaks out. Many of the Super Hornet's best selling points, they say, are classified. The same goes for the F-35. The difference, says Traven, is that the Super Hornet is long since proven.

It has two engines to the F-35's one — and, unlike the F-35, it's ready now. Some 500 Super Hornets are already in service with the U.S. Navy. Dozens have already been sold to the Royal Australian Air Force, which, like Canada, was once committed to the F-35 but gave up waiting for it to prove itself.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin both say their plane is superior in various ways. Lockheed Martin's headline feature is stealth. Boeing's is price. But with defence budgets shrinking everywhere, price is increasingly what governments want to hear about.

On that, Boeing thinks it has a compelling case — and not just because its plane is cheaper.

The Super Hornet currently sells for about $55 million US apiece; the Pentagon expects the F-35 to cost twice as much — about $110 million. But only 20 per cent of the cost of owning a fighter fleet is the actual sticker price of the planes. Eighty per cent is the operating cost — what it takes to keep them flying. That means everything from pilots and fuel to maintenance and spares.

And that's where the difference between the F-35 and the Super Hornet rockets into the stratosphere.

. . .

According to the GAO, the Super Hornet actually costs the U.S. Navy $15,346 an hour to fly. It sounds like a lot — until you see that the U.S. Air Force's official "target" for operating the F-35 is $31,900 an hour. The GAO says it's a little more — closer to $32,500.

Again, more at the link.  It's an interesting and in-depth report.  Recommended reading.

US Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet over the Persian Gulf

The US Navy could drop the F-35 tomorrow, and carry on regardless - it funded the development of the Super Hornet some years ago as an interim measure, and is already well advanced in testing pilotless aircraft as a future replacement for its current strike aircraft.  Perhaps the US Air Force needs to learn from the example of its sister service?

I think the F-35's days are numbered.  No matter how technologically advanced it may be, it's simply unaffordable.  That's the bottom line.

Peter