The date is 2025 and you’re a fighter pilot sitting in the hanger at your forward operating base waiting for the call for troops in contact. You are relaxing, reading a book, and talking about anything else other than the potentially dangerous mission that lies ahead of you in the not so distant future. But soon enough the sirens flash, the air maintainers start to scramble, and you rush to put on your specially designed helmet and flight suit that enables you to see right through the floor of your plane. After you take off, you fly right through the advanced, Russian-built air defenses of the Syrian regime and they don’t even pick up as much as a blip. You look down and follow the path to the enemy position using a state of the art contour overlay that is broadcast into your helmet.
As you get closer you can see the enemy troops light up like bright contacts and start to line up your shot as the guns on your aircraft follow the movement of your eyes. You let loose with your ordnance, obliterate the terrorist stronghold, and save the allied troops below. As you start to head back to base, the Syrian army gets word of your mission and wants to stop you from broadcasting any intelligence back to friendly forces. They try and jam your aircraft with state of the art jammers but your aircraft not only stops the RADAR pulse it directs it back and jams the Syrians instead. You can then safely send video feed and pictures back to the intelligence analysts who would love to see the Syrian and terrorist positions.
Though this scenario might seem like science fiction it is all entirely possible with the F-35 fighter aircraft. However, the F-35 is still a few years away from being able to carry out missions like this mostly due to budget concerns over the enormous costs to develop and test this aircraft. But how much does the F-35 really cost? Since the initial estimate in 2001 of 38 million dollars per aircraft, the price tag has soared to over 158 million dollars today. In total, the cost of the program since inception has been estimated to be an eye-popping 1.1 trillion dollars. You heard that right, 1.1 trillion dollars with a “T”.
So why has the F-35 program continued to soar past all its initial cost estimates and continue to suck in more money every day to become the uncontested champion for the most expensive weapon program in history?
To understand why the F-35 program costs so much, it is important to know why it even exists in the first place. The F-35 can trace its roots all the way back to 1993 when the Clinton administration wanted to take a bottom-up review of Defense Department policies and programs. This was at a time when Congress was still spending at Cold War levels, even though America had emerged victorious years before, and now wanted to see what the military could cut and what it could keep. That review found, among other things, that the current status of aircraft acquisitions was fraught with waste and extra expenses that could be saved if all the services worked together instead of trying to develop their own, unique aircraft.
As a result of that initial assessment, the Joint Strike Fighter program was born in 1995 to address this specific concern, and to coordinate efforts to eventually build an aircraft that could replace all combat aircraft in the entire US arsenal. Three different defense manufacturing teams duked it out to win the contract for the prototype. A joint team of Boeing and Lockheed Martin's design called the X-35 won, and the name was soon changed to the F-35. In 2001, the program finally got off the ground with the first tests of its design. But right away the engineers knew there were going to be problems. First of all, even though the fighter is supposed to be a common aircraft for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines, only about 70-90% of the parts and systems were shared. That is because each service focused on their own unique requirements. The F-35A, the Air Force variant, is intended to replace the current F-16 and A-10 Warthog attack aircraft currently in its inventory.
The F-16 is the Air Force’s primary attack fighter and the A-10 is the famous tank buster from the First Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This version is focused on ground attack and taking off from long runways. It is not as stealthy or as capable in air-to-air dogfights as the F-22, but the F-35 is designed to operate together with it to make the F-35 and F-22 an unstoppable team of destruction. Because of this planning, the F-35A variant costs much less than the other two at 78 million dollars.
The Marine Corps version, the F-35B, is the most expensive version coming in at a whopping 101 million dollars mostly because of its VSTOL capability. VSTOL stands for vertical and/or short take-off and landing. This capability lets it take off and land vertically from the short decks of crowded amphibious ships that cannot support a full-length runway. The Marines also have advanced electronic warfare suites onboard that provide even greater capabilities against enemy attempts at jamming than the other F-35 types which is absolutely vital for Marines operating in areas when they are on their own. The Navy’s version, the F-35C, is designed to be launched from the catapults of aircraft carriers. This version is also the stealthiest of three since aircraft carriers often operate thousands of miles away from the nearest friendly forces. The increased stealth capability also comes in handy if they are conducting strike missions deep behind enemy lines since having the element of surprise is crucial if there isn’t going to be any backup available.
Because of this focus on stealth technology, the Navy version comes in at 94 million dollars. Even though there are different versions designed to meet various mission requirements, the one thing they all have in common is the need to develop new technology.
While some of the technologies and weapon systems have been around for years, many sound like they are straight out of a science fiction novel. For instance, the Electro-Optical Distributed Aperture System or D-A-S is a feature that combines the video feed from six different cameras and runs that information through an advanced software program to be able to alert the pilot to potential enemy missile launches, the location of other aircraft, and also allows the pilot to see clearly in both night and day vision.
The Electro-Optical Targeting System works hand in hand with the DAS by providing an accurate firing solution for any target the aircraft could face from a group of bad guys running on the ground all the way to a speeding plane traveling at supersonic speeds. The aircraft also gives pilots a way to view the battlespace like never before.
The cockpit was designed to address the common issue of pilots not being able to look down below, and now the pilot can easily look over the nose. But even more creative than that is the new helmet the pilot wears. The helmet is made to interface with the Optical Targeting System to give a real-time display of everything both inside and outside the aircraft, giving for the first time ever the closest thing to X-ray vision a human has ever possessed. The helmet follows the movement of the pilot's eyes and is so sensitive that technicians have to spend four hours every two days to make sure the helmet is perfectly fitted to the pilot’s head. One small error here could mean the difference between a successful mission and missing the target or, worse, hurting some of the good guys. The stealth feature of the F-35 has also not come without its costs. One of the hallmarks of the F-35’s design as a 5th Generation stealth fighter is its ability to detect, reflect, and confuse enemy RADARs that might be looking for it. Designers achieved this capability through a unique airframe design as well as acquiring and crafting new composite materials to make the F-35 as invisible as possible.
But of course, this takes time which added greatly to the research and development cost. Another major reason why the F-35 is so expensive is the massive amounts of delays the program has faced. It is estimated that the project is almost a decade behind schedule right now, and that is mostly due to the incredible amount of design flaws that are constantly discovered during testing. Though some of these can be contributed to the dozens of new technologies on the aircraft, there have been rumors that defense companies have been purposely sabotaging the program to keep a steady stream of public money flowing into their bank accounts. This is evidenced by the fact that by February of 2020, 883 design flaws had been found and 162 of these had no identifiable cause or way forward to fix them. These flaws have had a drastic impact on the amount of time these aircraft can even fly for
testing with the Navy and Marine Corps variants still unable to complete their minimum 8,000
flight hours to ensure safe operation, which has further delayed the program. But even as these flaws are found and fixed, as the few F-35s that hit the fleet operate more new issues are found every day which sets the program back further and increases the price tag for each one found. Making cost problems even worse is the logistics system that has been mired in controversy and mismanagement since its inception.
This ”logistics system” encompasses all of the individual pieces that make up the F-35 from the nuts, bolts, wires, parts, and every piece of gear needed to maintain that aircraft in tip-top shape. It is necessary to build a robust, cost-efficient logistics system since it is estimated up to two-thirds of an aircraft’s lifetime costs are rooted in spare parts. And with planes that can reach Mach speed in some of the world's most unforgiving environments, it is no wonder that spare parts are needed for constant upkeep of the F-35. But the problem is spare parts do not often get to the planes that need them. Up to 30% of F-35s are grounded at any given time due to delays on parts, and a 2019 Inspector General Report found that in a limited study of just the Fort Worth facility, the main parts facility for the F-35, there was over 2.1 billion dollars worth of unaccounted and lost parts. Compounding that problem is the fact that there are more than 350 such facilities across the country.
The problems at Fort Worth were not new or unique to that facility. A 2017 inspection of Edwards Air Force base, a major F-35 base in California, found that almost half a million dollars of spare parts were just sitting in the rain in cardboard boxes getting ruined. These parts problems will likely only get worse as new upgrades come out in the future that will facilitate the need for more and newer parts further complicating an already broken system. One of the last, and arguably biggest reasons for the high expenses, is politics. You see, the F-35 program was designed from the beginning to outlast any politician that wanted to kill it. As it stands, the program currently has contracts in 45 states and directly employs tens of thousands of people making it very bad politics for anyone who wants to cut a program that might lead to a loss of jobs. As if that weren’t enough, every major defense contracting agency also has a stake with companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northup Grumman, and BAE Systems constantly lobbying Washington to keep the program flush with cash. Simply put, there are too many fingers in the pot and the project is now too big to fail. The F-35, though innovative and ambitious, has fallen short of most of its testing and operational timelines. As a result of constant delays and new design flaws, the program gets further and further away from being operationally capable. Combined with the fact that the program was built with longevity and job security in mind, it is no surprise that any attempts at lowering costs or finding a cost-effective
and timely solutions have been squashed.
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