What has happened to the F-35?

Seven years ago I wrote in the magazine about the genesis of the F-35 fighter plane, known back then as the Joint Strike Fighter or JSF. ("Uncle Sam Builds an Airplane," June, 2002.) At the time, the JSF was supposed to be the solution to one of the modern military's worst problems: relentless and "unexpected" cost growth. Year after year, ships, missiles, tanks, etc go up "surprisingly" much in unit cost, so year after year the numbers in the inventory go down. The JSF was explicitly designed to break the cycle. In three complementary models, it was supposed to suit the differing aviation needs of the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. Like a car or computer meant for a broad global market, it was intended from the start to fit the needs of a large number of allied militaries.

As part of the story said:

"The JSF matters because of both its scale and its conceptual ambition. The planners at the Pentagon and at Lockheed Martin imagine that as many as 6,000 of these airplanes may be bought, at a total cost of as much as $200 billion, over the next twenty-five years. If all goes according to plan, about 3,000 of the JSFs will go to the original "investors" in the program--the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, plus the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy in Britain. All have shared the cost of developing the plane. The other 3,000 are supposed to go to customers in the rest of the world."

That was then.

In this new column at Military.com, Winslow Wheeler -- part of the group of defense thinkers I mentioned yesterday -- talks about what has happened to the JSF as it has evolved into the F-35. Main plot line: cost has gone up, reliability has gone down, capabilities have fallen short of promises -- all of these "unexpected" changes forcing the planned number of purchases down, which in turn has pushed unit cost up further still. Check out the full account at Wheeler's column. And consider this part of the original article in light of what has happened seven years into the project: 

"The ambitious idea behind the JSF is to address several chronic problems of U.S. military acquisition policy simultaneously. If it succeeds, it will put military procurement on a more affordable, more effective track. If it fails, it will underscore how deep those problems are."