President-Elect Donald Trump started another Twitter wildfire on Monday morning, tweeting:
The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016
As the man who will be America’s next President, Trump’s tweets matter more than most. At the time of this writing, F-35 manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, has seen its stock lose 4% value. Those paper-losses represent billions of dollars.
Still, as with his tweet last week on Boeing’s new Air Force One, Trump has a point here. When it comes to the F-35, Lockheed Martin has lost the plot regarding budgeting. The program is $200 billion over budget and long overdue for completion.
It’s not just Trump who is upset. Take Senator John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Back in April, McCain stated that the F-35 procurement “has been both a scandal and a tragedy with respect to cost, schedule and performance.’’ Democrats have echoed these criticisms.
They are right to do so.
The central issue here is that Americans are not getting value for their money. Instead, we are feeding an obese procurement system that is used to receiving political insulation. Long reliant on a bipartisan shield against budget scrutiny, defense contractors are used to gouging the taxpayer. Where mistakes are made in research and development, contractors only ask for more time. And where costs overrun, they just ask for more money. Negative consequences are very rare.
After all, politicians are reluctant to challenge big defense firms because these companies provide jobs in many states. But they also give big donations to political campaigns. In the 2016 election cycle, for example, Lockheed Martin donated nearly $4 million to various politicians. And interestingly — perhaps earning Trump’s ire — Hillary Clinton was the favored candidate.
Ultimately, it’s unfair to blame the contractors alone. There’s an obvious structural problem in government: it is wasteful with spending. As former Defense Secretary Bob Gates frequently lamented, the Pentagon struggles to deliver big projects on budget. The F-35 is just one of many programs that are way over budget.
That said, Trump would make a terrible error in canceling the F-35 now. First off, for all its delays, the program is finally near completion. The US Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy are waiting for the jets to be delivered and air crews are prepared to employ them. If we cancel the F-35 now, we’ll have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars. We’d also have to spend further hundreds of billions on developing an alternate multi-role fighter. And finally, as Colin Clark reported last month, the government is actually starting to punish Lockheed Martin on increased costs.
Second, from the U.K. to Australia, U.S. allies around the world are waiting for their own F-35 deliveries. Correspondingly, if we cancel the program, we’ll betray a lot of important partners. That speaks to another issue. One of the strengths of the F-35 is that we’ll be using the same aircraft as our partners. That union allows for a useful pooling of resources. Foreign allied maintenance teams could, for example, fix damaged U.S. jets during a conflict.
Third, although birthed with great difficulty, the F-35 is actually a good jet. At a basic level, it will enable the U.S. military to penetrate advanced enemy air defenses. This capability would be crucial to American success in a prospective conflict with China or Russia. And the F-35 is also versatile. Unlike other jets, the F-35 allows U.S. commanders to launch strike-fighter, air support, and bombing missions all from the same plane. Abandoning these capabilities would hurt America’s wallet, and our security.
There’s a better alternative. Upon entering office, Trump should keep to the F-35 order framework, but pressure Lockheed to spend more of its own money fixing problems. More broadly, the new President should focus on making defense procurement more efficient and cost-sensitive. He should impose tough fees on defense firms that fail to meet their targets. And let’s be specific. Where early to mid-stage programs are over budget and irrelevant to current needs, they should be canceled. Conservatives have a responsibility to provide the American people with value for their money.
