Thursday, October 28, 2010

Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) - Through Life Management Costs forecast to rise

In Testimony concerning the US Department of Defense 2011 Funding Authorization onFebruary 2nd, 2010, "NAVAIR recently determined that the Marine Corps and the Navy’s version of the Joint Strike Fighter may end up being too expensive to operate, with each flight hour flown costing about $31,000, compared with around $19,000 for a flight hour for the service’s current F/A-18 Hornets and AV-8B Harriers."

For the United Kingdom's recently completed Strategic Defence Review (named SDSR to differentiate it from the 1998 SDR), this data is somewhat problematic.

A decision to reduce the carrier programme and JSF buy serves logically to increase the unit costs of the aircraft and ship(s) procured. This data substantially affects the through-life costings into maintaining the fleet of JSF aircraft by the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.

One of the SDSR decisions is to retire the Harrier aircraft which means not only will Fleet Air Arm pilots on the new carrier(s) lack familiarity with carrier flight ops though also it will be more expensive. Factor in the challenges around Carrier Strike Group re-supply and the fact that the CVF design was fitted for however not with steam catapults could have been a good example of foresight making it through the procurement system.

No comments:

Post a Comment