One view of the F-35: Pentagon And Lockheed Martin Agree To Big Cost Reduction On F-35 Fighters. A slice: “The most common variant, to be used by the Air Force and nearly a dozen overseas allies, will cost less than $80 million to manufacture—below the cost of buying a new F-16… The F-35 fighter is a success, in fact one of the greatest engineering achievements of this generation.”
Here’s the alternative view: Deceptive Pentagon Math Tries to Obscure $100 Million+ Price Tag for F-35s. “The current estimate for the lot of aircraft currently in production is $89.2 million apiece. This figure is the unit recurring flyaway cost—the price tag for just the aircraft and engine [not including spares/repairs, simulators, support services, etc. etc.]… The Pentagon’s own budget documents list the FY 2020 procurement cost for those 48 aircraft as more than $101 million, nearly $12 million more than the figure rolled out for press reports. Using the Navy’s charts and the same math shows that the real costs for each F-35C is more than $123 million, while each F-35B costs in excess of $166 million.”
Related fighter news: “The defense bill authorizes the purchase of eight F-15EX fighters for approximately $1 billion… In terms of cost, the two aircraft are comparable, with the F-15EX coming in at $80 million and the F-35A at $78 million per unit.”
The Rot Starts At The Top. ComNavOps didn’t take too well to NavSec Spencer fuming at Congress due to their questions of the Ford-class carrier overruns.
The Three Frontiers of Innovation. Short-cut: “The first is making incremental technical improvements to an existing concept. DoD is really good at this. The second frontier of innovation is making out-of-the-box improvements to a current concept. DoD is a little slower here… The final frontier is rethinking the entire concept.”
Impressed by tests against low-flying drones, the services are collaborating to increase both power and precision of lasers to take on cruise missiles.
Must science be testable? Didn’t know this part: “the earlier formulation of Einstein’s theory actually contained a mathematical error that predicted twice as much bending of light by large gravitational masses like the Sun – the very thing that was tested during the eclipse. And if the theory had been tested in 1914 (as was originally planned), it would have been (apparently) falsified.”
DARPA scoping the market for small satellite launchers.
HBR: Why Innovation Labs Fail, and How to Ensure Yours Doesn’t
That ComNavOps post is legendary!