Trump sets price reduction target for F-35

Harold C. Hutchison
Nov 1, 2018 8:50 PM PDT
1 minute read
Air Force photo

SUMMARY

President-elect Donald Trump wants to lower the price tag for the F-35 Lightning II by about ten percent. That push comes as he also is trying to l…

President-elect Donald Trump wants to lower the price tag for the F-35 Lightning II by about ten percent. That push comes as he also is trying to lower the cost of a new Air Force One.


According to a report by FoxNews.com, the President-elect has been very critical of the high costs of the fifth-generation multi-role fighter intended to replace F-16 and F/A-18 fighters and AV-8B V/STOL aircraft in the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. The fighter's cost has ballooned to about $100 million per airframe. The President-elect reportedly asked Boeing to price out new Super Hornets.

An F-35 from Eglin AFB flies with an F-16 from Luke AFB at the Luke Airshow. (Lockheed Martin photo.)

Some progress is being made in bits and pieces. An Air Force release noted that an improved funnel system developed by the team testing the F-35 will save nearly $90,000 – and more importantly, time (about three days).

Foxnews.com also reported that President-elect Trump met again with the Dennis Muilenburg, the CEO of Boeing, over the Air Force One replacement. Last month, the President-elect tweeted his intention to cancel the program, which was slated to cost over $4 billion – an amount equivalent to buying over three dozen F-35s – for two airframes.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Muilenburg told Reuters, "We made some great progress on simplifying requirements for Air Force One, streamlining the process, streamlining certification by using commercial practices." Those efforts, he went on to add, could save money on the replacement for Air Force One. The VC-25A, the current version of Air Force One, entered service in 1990, according to an Air Force fact sheet.

One way costs per airframe could be cut is to increase a production run. A 2015 Daily Caller article noted that when the productions for the Zumwalt-class destroyer and the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle were slashed, the price per unit went up as each ship or vehicle bore more of the research an development costs. In the case of the Zumwalt, the reduction of the program to three hulls meant each was bearing over $3 billion in RD costs in addition to a $3.8 billion cost to build the vessel.

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