Software has made the F-35 the most expensive weapon development program in history.
The Joint Strike Fighter was conceived in 1997 as a low-cost light bomber capable of overcoming next-generation air defenses, the “double-digit” surface-to-air missiles such as the SA-10, -12, and -20. A combination of low observability (stealth) and supercruise (the ability to cruise at supersonic speed without using afterburners) make the aircraft a fifth-generation fighter. But with total program costs estimated to exceed $1 trillion dollars (and perhaps reach $1.5 trillion over its 55-year planned lifespan), the idea of low-cost long ago disappeared.
Lockheed Martin’s YF-35 eventually was selected by the Pentagon, and the plane has a variety of features that have increased the aircraft’s capability along with its price tag. Its most-publicized special electronic capability is its helmet, which allows the pilot to do many unexpected things, including looking down through the airplane, in effect, to see a 360-degree view from cameras on the fuselage. The pilot also benefits from cutting-edge passive electronic sensors and the ability to share and receive targeting data from a variety of other platforms.
Compared to the Air Force’s F-35A or the carrier-based F-35C, the Marine Corps’ short-takeoff, vertical landing B model has shorter range and carries a smaller payload. (It also was the first F-35 model to participate in combat, attacking targets in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2018.) With the heavy naval guns of the past long gone, the Marine Corps has come to conceive of its attack aircraft as flying artillery—fire support for the infantry—coupled with an effective air-to-air self-defense capability.
This “flying artillery” concept showed in the employment of Marine Corps AV-8B Harriers during the 1991 Gulf War. All Allied fixed-wing aircraft were supposed to be controlled under a unified air plan. In practice, the Harriers were not included in the plan, because Marine ground commanders wanted them to fly only close-air support missions, just as Army and Marine Corps attack helicopters did.
The Navy has taken the view that stealth is essential at the outset of a war; the F-35C is to be the “day-one attack aircraft.” Once it has destroyed the high end of the enemy’s air defenses, less-capable aircraft such as the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet can follow. The Super Hornet has limited low-observability, particularly when viewed head on, and sophisticated avionics, but none so elaborate or as expensive as the F-35’s. The Marine Corps cannot field a similar high/low mix, because no lower-end vertical takeoff fighter is in prospect and the service plans to replace its F/A-18C/D Hornets with F-35Bs rather than Super Hornets.
The F-35B cannot be turned into a low-end airplane by removing electronic systems, such as the external cameras. Despite a relatively modest flyaway cost, ranging from about $80 million for the A model to $115.5 million for the B model, the development costs increased the average unit price substantially. Software economics is similar to that of publishing; the prototype—say, a book’s first draft, or the beta of a program—is the most expensive. The marginal cost of reproduction is almost unbelievably small compared to the cost of development. High development costs are hidden from consumers by high sales volume—a game or program costs comparatively little because millions of units are sold. Despite a high degree of software commonality among all three versions of the airplane, there will not be enough F-35s built among all purchasers to amortize the cost efficiently.
There seems to be no means of estimating accurately what particular software features will cost (compared to hardware costs, in which, say, the price effect of a 10 percent reduction in speed can be estimated). The F-35 is the poster child for runaway software capability and, therefore, cost. The future of procurement will be dominated by such unpredictable costs, as software-controlled systems increasingly rule, thanks to their flexibility and sometimes-inexpensive hardware.
Compared to a carrier strike group, the one element missing from an amphibious ready group (ARG) or expeditionary strike group (ESG) is airborne early warning (AEW). The E-2D Hawkeye cannot operate from a large-deck amphibious ship, and although an “EV-22” AEW variant of the tiltrotor V-22 Osprey was proposed by the manufacturer, nothing seems to have come of the idea. Now that the software exists, the F-35B might be able to fill that role, at least partially.
The F-35 was given an elaborate and capable electronic intercept system because pilots need the best possible situational awareness to detect and identify all enemy radars before being detected themselves. So, the airplane has sensors and a datasharing capability that make it possible to see what all the nodes in the network can see. That datasharing system enables an F-35 orbiting over an ESG to cue the firing of antiaircraft, anti-ship, and antiballistic missiles beyond the ships’ horizon.
An F-35 would hardly be equivalent to an E-2, but it would significantly increase an ARG or ESG’s situational awareness compared to the present situation. The USS Wasp (LHA-1) carries six F-35Bs; that is probably an insufficient number to perform both the continuous situational awareness job and the artillery job; the Marine Corps and the Navy will have to decide how to balance the two. Possibly there would be a place for a longer-endurance, AEW derivative of the V-22, carrying some of the avionics the F-35 now carries, as a specialist situational-awareness platform. To the extent that it might use a slightly adapted version of F-35 avionics, it might not be too expensive.
