Pentagon acquisition boss John Young said June 6 it takes thoughtful analysis to understand the reasons for the cost growth in the F-35 program over the past five years. “You cannot simply look at this [program] and determine it’s out of control,” Young told reporters in the Pentagon. “Is the increase bad? Yes, but it’s not a crisis.” Three days prior, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said during a committee hearing with Young that the F-35 program’s projected total costs have increased by $37 billion over the last five years. Young on June 6 broke down the increases, pointing out that $13 billion followed increased cost of materials due to global demand. The Navy’s decision to cut the quantity of the Navy/Marine Corps buy by 409 airframes down to 680 caused per-unit costs to spike. And labor increases were also a factor. A further example that led to cost increases is the challenge of estimating materials, such as the size of a block of steel needed to carve down into a bulkhead, he said. “We were not as efficient there.” Those challenges alone drove some higher materials costs to the tune of about $11 billion over five years, he said. Incidentally, DOD’s most recent cost estimates for the F-35 showed that the program actually dropped in cost by about $1 billion, to $298.84 billion, down from $299.82 billion. This estimate covers the final quarter of 2007. This led Young to tell lawmakers in March that the F-35 program is “well managed and well run.”
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.