As time goes on, the commonality is going down, not up, the price is going up, not down, and the TCO is going through the roof.
There have been umpteen project managers over the life of the project and now we’re closing in on a per-unit acquisition cost double initial estimates and a program cost approaching $1 trillion (with a “T”) dollars.
That’s absurd.
As a taxpayer, I don’t have to be patient. If the contractor cannot bring it in on time and on budget, then they should be canned or the project canned if no one else will bring it in on time, on budget.
I’ll remind you that the U-2 came in under time, under budget. The SR-71 came in under time, under budget - two past projects of Lockheed where they had only one customer and one mission. Likewise, we’ve gotten more than our money’s worth out of a large number of platforms over time (eg, B-52, C-130, F-16), but when we go into multi-mission, multi-nation projects, the costs go through the roof.
Any multi-nation project, even for a single-mission, will see costs that go through the roof.
I’m really not sympathetic to the notion that we should consider other countries’ acquisition requirements or their mission requirements in our warfighting platforms. I really don’t care about their needs. I care about our needs. If they want a shiny new fighter, they can pay for it out of THEIR tax monies.
May I remind you that both the U-2 and SR-71 were developed in a very tight, totally classified, project team environment with very little gubmint meddling and highly expedited approvals of all changes. Even so, no two birds of either type were of the exact same configuration, and there was no production run of either one. That is more akin to satellite development nowadays except for the gubmint meddling and gross funding instability...
JC