Trump Joins Line of Critics of Costly Fighter Jet
Lockheed Martin Defends F-35 Costs
Jeff A. Babione, Lockheed Martin's F-35 program manager, said that the defense contractor had already cut the costs of the fighter jets after President-elect Donald J. Trump posted on Twitter about high costs.
By REUTERS. Photo by Rick Bowmer/Associated Press. Watch in Times Video »
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Monday that the cost of building the military’s next-generation fighter jet, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, had spiraled “out of control,” and he vowed to save billions of dollars on military programs once he enters office next month.
In a Twitter post on Monday morning and a series of comments since last week, the president-elect assailed cost overruns for the Lockheed Martin-built fighter jet that have pushed the project’s cost beyond $400 billion, making the plane the most expensive weapons system in military history.
“The F-35 program and cost is out of control,” Mr. Trump wrote in a Twitter post just before 8:30 a.m. “Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th.”
Mr. Trump’s verbal assault on the F-35 continued a pattern in which the president-elect has targeted businesses for criticism and threatened presidential action. Since winning the election, he has challenged Boeing to lower the cost of upgrades to Air Force One, stepped in to stop Carrier from sending jobs to Mexico and taken credit for billions of dollars in investment from the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank.
But in pursuing the F-35 program, Mr. Trump may be facing a target that even he cannot budge.
The president-elect is just the latest in a long line of critics in both parties who have beat up on the 15-year project, only to see it survive thanks to deep political support across the country. Lockheed has spread work on the F-35 to hundreds of subcontractors in most of the 50 states, and members of Congress typically oppose any cuts that would cost jobs in their states or districts.
It is unclear what alternative the president-elect could embrace if the military turns away from the F-35 this late in the jet’s development; the government has spent about $100 billion on the project, and 204 planes have been built. The Pentagon, under Robert M. Gates, the secretary of defense from 2006 to 2011, canceled a different fighter jet, the F-22, leaving nothing but the F-35 to replace aging fighters used by the Air Force, Navy and Marines.
Once in office, Mr. Trump could try to shrink overall costs by trimming back plans to buy more than 2,400 planes. But doing so simply pushes up the price of each jet. And that in turn could provoke diplomatic incidents with American allies who have contracted to add F-35s to their militaries. Higher costs per plane could exceed their budgets, as well.
In the end, Mr. Trump’s public criticism of the plane may be about sending a warning message to private companies that contract with the military. While Mr. Trump said throughout the campaign that he would rebuild the nation’s military, his Twitter post on Monday signaled to contractors that they should not try to fleece the federal government.
The immediate impact of Mr. Trump’s Twitter post on Monday was financial: After it was published, shares of Lockheed Martin had fallen by 4 percent around midday, reducing the company’s market value by about $4 billion, before rebounding somewhat. Lockheed shares ended the day down about 2.5 percent, closing at $253.11 a share.
Mr. Trump posted on Twitter just as Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter was in Israel to welcome the arrival of two F-35s, the first of a new-generation fleet meant to help maintain Israel’s air superiority in the region.
Speaking at the ceremony, Mr. Carter described the F-35 as “the most advanced aircraft in history” and said, “Israel is our first and only friend in the region that is flying” it.
Lockheed Martin’s program manager for the F-35, Jeff A. Babione, who was also in Israel for the planes’ arrival, said, “I certainly welcome the opportunity to address any question the president-elect would have about the program.”
Mr. Babione added that Lockheed had invested hundreds of millions of dollars to reduce the price of the airplane. Lockheed said that if the government stuck to plans to increase production, it could reduce the average price for each F-35 by 2020 to $85 million, about the same as less sophisticated fighters cost.
The F-35 was designed as a state-of-the-art aircraft for all of the branches of the United States military, with the goal of overwhelming adversaries with technological superiority. The jet would be able to evade radar and dodge sophisticated antiaircraft missiles while giving pilots a better picture of enemy threats advancing toward them.
But despite initial promises that the all-in-one plane would save taxpayer money, costs have veered sharply higher over 15 years of development.
Mr. Trump has not said how he will seize control of the project’s costs, which have risen despite repeated attempts over more than a decade to restrain spending and fix costly mistakes.
In an interview on Sunday, and in a speech to supporters in Michigan on Friday, the president-elect accused military officials of failing to negotiate good deals with private-sector contractors because they know they might be hired by the companies after their military service ends.
“The people that are making these deals for the government, they should never be allowed to go to work for these companies,” Mr. Trump said on “Fox News Sunday.” “You know, they make a deal like that, and two or three years later, you see them working for these companies that made the deal.”
Mr. Trump said military officials who were in charge of negotiating multibillion-dollar deals like the F-35 project should be barred for life from employment with the companies that they worked with, though he did not cite any examples involving the fighter plane. That would be an expansion of the president-elect’s proposal that people who work for his administration be barred from lobbying for five years.
In a hearing this year, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, demonstrated the dilemma for members of Congress and others who worry about the ballooning cost of the project. He hailed the plane as a needed part of the country’s arsenal even as he criticized the program’s inability to deliver on time and within budget.
“The full capabilities this aircraft will eventually provide are critical to America’s national security,” Mr. McCain said. “But at the same time, the F-35 program’s record of performance has been both a scandal and a tragedy.”
The technology in the F-35 and other weapons systems is increasingly complex, and politics tend to exacerbate the problems. To lock in congressional support, the Pentagon often starts building the weapons before testing is complete. Cutting funding in the middle of programs can increase costs in the long run if it reduces the economies of scale in the manufacturing plants.
Pentagon officials said recently that they needed an extra $500 million to finish development of the planes. They have also been wrangling with Lockheed over the price of the latest batch of planes.
The F-35 program is also sensitive diplomatically, and as costs per plane increase, the overruns affect the ability of other countries to buy the jets.
Israel, for example, has ordered 33 of the stealth fighters at a cost of more than $5.5 billion, to come from the assistance Israel receives from Washington, and the Israeli cabinet decided recently to increase the number of planes to 50.
P.C: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/us/politics/trump-f35-fighter-jet-tweet.html
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