Congress delayed this, cut back on that. That’s whay costs became so high. The ONLY way to save money is to increase production.
Hopefuly, it will be a success, and more will be ordered.
It’s the Pentagon that goes in front of Congress and blatantly lies (“low-balling”) about how much these aircraft are going to cost, with hugely unrealistic figures for everything from how many aircraft they’re buying to how easy they’ll be to maintain (ask yourself- ever heard of a US military program that isn’t touted as “low cost, high capability, high affordability, low maintenance, effective dominance for the warfighter wank wank wank wank wank”)- and when it doesn’t work out that way and Congress finds out how much the thing is *really* going to cost, that’s when Congress starts cutting, because there’s only so much money to go around. Even if they wanted to cancel it, it’s *very* hard, because now that Congress has funded it for x period of time before they find out the real cost, the main contractor has been spreading out subcontracts all over the country, meaning lost jobs if the program is killed.
Seriously, the military has noone to blame but itself.
I also don’t see how increasing production “saves money”, that’s just being disingenuous- all it does is make individual airframes cheaper- that’s not the same. Those development costs have been sunk and paid, they have to come out of somewhere. Any extra planes bought will cost extra- at a reduced price from the initial batch, perhaps, but you’re still not saving money.
See “The Defense Budget Time Bomb” for the long term implications of this foolish practice (and others).
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