F-35 JSF: Becoming Your Own Peer Threat

Reports of the latest Joint Estimates Team (JET) MkII review of the JSF Program cost and schedule are sounding alarm bells around the western fighter community, as they should, though belatedly.

Back in April this year, based on analysing the data and the facts then testing the evidence, APA provided independent advice to you both, predicting well in advance what the second JET review has now gone a long way to confirm.

As ever, the many who tell you what they think you want to hear (or worse), once again are claiming this JET review to be a ‘worst case’. However, the quantum and levels of risks that were pushed to the right, early in the JSF Program, coupled with the quite large dis-economies of scale now inherent in the concurrent design, development, testing and procurement/production phases of the program say something quite different. Prudent assessments of these factors yield the harsh reality that the JET review estimates are, in fact, the ‘best case’ scenario for the JSF Program.

At this point, some may now be asking the question, “How can all this be?”

Respectfully, Mr Secretary, the advice you and others have been receiving in relation to the comparative costs of the F-35A JSF and the F-22A Raptor have been part of an elaborate, albeit well understood, pricing strategy known as ‘Goldilocks Pricing’. In part, this link reads:

- The term Goldilocks pricing is commonly used to describe the practice of providing a "gold-plated" version of a product at a premium price in order to make the next-lower priced option look more reasonably priced; for example, encouraging customers to see business-class airline seats as good value for money by offering an even higher priced first-class option. . . . More technically, this form of pricing exploits the general cognitive bias of aversion to extremes. This practice is known academically as "framing". -

Wikipedia - Pricing

This pricing technique of framing was further exploited quite early in the JSF Program by those with various agendas, ensuring the comparison provided to senior government officials and the people of the United States and countries like Australia was inappropriately skewed.

The upshot of their efforts resulted in the ‘comparison’ being between the total acquisition unit cost (TAUC) of the F-22A Raptor (including amortisation of all acquisition program costs such as the RDT&E costs) and the ‘a long way into the future’ estimated average unit recurring flyaway cost (avg. URFC) for the F-35A JSF, based upon a production run of several thousand aircraft and a learning based cost curve that beggars belief.

The attached chart of US Cost Definitions from the US DoD Acquisition University clearly shows any such ‘comparison’ to be a non sequitur, if not bordering on outright self deceit.

Some lessons from the A-12A Avenger II Program about providing overly optimistic and unrealistic estimates on cost and schedule as well as capabilities have clearly been learnt, but only in reverse.

The belief that the JSF Program is able to provide ‘more bang for the buck’ is, yet again, another non sequitur - one of the many logical fallacies in the marketing sophistry and spin that has poisoned the JSF Program from day one.

We and our professional colleagues around the world have been warning of this risk for some time. It is now at the eleventh hour and we consider it both prudent and timely to, respectfully Mr Secretary, ask that you “. . . Tear down this wall!”

A good place to start would be to revisit what Colonel Dwyer Dennis told us all ‘down under’ back in August 2002, and use the simple flight test methods described within to see whether the JSF does meet its Key Performance Parameters, such as Combat Radius, for real.