The Sydney Morning Herald offered a pretty shocking statistic the other day on the Australian government’s plans to buy 100 Joint Strike Fighters to replace an aging fleet of F-111s and F/A-18s. “At a cost of more than $1000 for every Australian man, woman and child, the program to buy the aircraft–and maintain regional air superiority–is the most expensive project ever undertaken by the Federal Government,” said Tom Allard, the paper’s national security editor. The next day, that paper ran this snarky opinion piece, which parodies a discussion between the Australian minister for defense, Brendan Nelson, and Angus Houston, the chief of the defense force.
Why are the Aussies so worked up? The whole purpose of the JSF was to reduce unit costs by building the plane on a massive scale. When the program first got going in earnest, it was assumed that the Pentagon would purchase approximately 2,800 F-35s. A few months ago that number stood at 2,450, with the Air Force getting 1,763 in total. Now the Air Force has indicated that it intends to buy no more than 1,400 in total. So as numbers fall, the price per unit rises. Initial per unit costs for the Air Force variant (which is less expensive than the Marine Corps’ STOVL variant) came in at less than $40 million a copy. That number has risen to approximately $55 million according to Richard Aboulafia, vice president of the Teal Group. If some Australians thought the program was a boondoggle at $40 million per, the recent cost rise has only confirmed their suspicions. But the Australian press seems to be working off the assumption that the U.S. Air Force will ultimately cut its final order to a mere 760 planes. That according to Peter Goon, co-founder of the organisation Air Power Australia, and also identified as “a long-time critic of the program.” Goon told the Sydney Morning Herald that “this reduction in numbers is so large it will affect overall program costs significantly.” But Goon’s assertion seems to be little more than speculation–not to say such a cut is inconceivable. According to Defense News, the JSF program “will almost certainly be ‘scaled back significantly‘ over the next six years.” And both the Navy and the Air Force prefer other aircraft. For the Air Force, the F-22, at seven-times the cost of the JSF, is a far more capable platform. While the Navy, which Aboulafia describes as “risk averse,” prefers the cheap and reliable F/A-18. Still, Aboulafia says, like it or not, the Joint Strike Fighter is “the wave of the future.” To some extent, the hyperventilating in the Australian press may reflect that government’s desire for a “certain level of negotiation.” With domestic pressure to keep prices low, the Australians will have a stronger hand in any negotiation with the Pentagon. But the Aussies have an aging fleet of aircraft, and even if they choose to buy “very reasonably priced and available” F/A-18s in the short-term, Aboluafia says that in the long-run they will need to participate in the JSF program. Still, it’s not all bad news for the JSF. Italy and Norway have both recently signed on to the program, though neither agreement guarantees a final purchase. But when military procurement programs–which normally garner so little attention from the press–become the butt of jokes on the op-ed page, there’s a problem. Like other Pentagon projects designed specifically to contain costs by building in greater quantity, the JSF isn’t producing the savings that many had hoped. That said, the Royal Australian Air Force doesn’t really have a lot of alternatives, unless they want to pony up for the F-22.
The JSF
