Quote Originally Posted by pangloss View Post
It isn't my analysis - I don't know if it is normalized for inflation. My comment about how easy it is to estimate costs is not serious - the services put extraordinary effort into their life cycle cost estimates. Based on their track record, you might think they're not good at it. I do not have that opinion.

The chart is from "Augustine's Laws" - an excellent and satirical book about defense contracting. 'Augustine' is Norm Augustine, the former CEO of Martin Marietta, one-time rumored to be Pres. G.W. Bush's nominee for Sec Def (before Rumsfeld), and the chairman of President Obama's 2009 commission of human space flight. He knows his stuff.

I believe one of the largest causes of unit and program cost growth is mismanagement by DOD program management. One example, they conduct rigorous design reviews, authorize the contractors to proceed, and then direct changes to performance and specifications. Those changes foul the engineering analyses, the schedules, budgets, planning, produciton planning and supply chains. Contractors cannot adequately assess the impact of the changes even after the DOD program offices have directed the change. I don't know if anyone in DOD or the beltway has studied the impact of poor change management, but they should.

Another huge cost growth predictor is whether the program has a "J" in the name. The "J" stands for Joint, as in Joint services. The F35 is also known as the JSF - Joint Strike Fighter. The Air Force, Navy and Marines are all supposed to be happy with the JSF. Each service has unique roles for the fighter and forcing one jet into all three roles is dopey. Don't get me wrong, it is a great jet. But it is now the highest cost program in US history and the J caused an enormous cost impact.


cheers
"J" stands for irony. The intent was to save money by building one plane instead of two or three (STOVL would mean three). They had tried this before in the 60s with the TFX which led to the F-111. The Air Force got a plane that could drop bombs, but the Navy version was a huge disappointment. In any case, the development of the F-111 was delayed, and so the Air Force decided to buy a variant of a Navy fighter -- the F-4 Phantom.

There might be something worse than the JSF, the LCS. The Navy wanted a smaller ship to operate in the littorals, but reinventing smaller ships with four different mission modules turned into a nightmare, with similar cost growth to the F-35. At least with the JSF, you're going to get a good aircraft, many in the Navy are still not sure if they LCS will provide any value at all.

You are spot on about DOD program management. All I learned about bureaucracy came from reading about came from DOD program management -- and War/Navy Dept. before the creation of DOD.

Still, calculating life cycle costs can't be easy when aircraft continue to fly long past the expected end of their service lives.