‘Joint Strike Fighter’ Really 3 Different Jets, Pentagon Says

The idea was to build a single jet that could take off from a runway, roar from an aircraft carrier — or just lift straight up into the sky. Sure, there’d be small differences in the three “variants” of the Joint Strike Fighter. But the common parts would far, far outweigh them — allowing the Defense Department to buy thousands of the planes at tag-sale prices.

At least, that was the plan. And that was what JSF-maker Lockheed Martin promised: three planes sharing 80 percent of their parts. But the Defense Department no longer believes it. An influential Pentagon team now says that the aircraft “being developed by the F-35 program [may] have as little as 25 percent in common,” Inside Defense reports.

Production costs once estimated at $59 million per plane today are looking more like $112 million. R&D costs have gone up another 40 percent, lifting the total price to $323 or so billion for 2,443 fighters.

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