When I read statements about, well just about everything, I do mind experiments to try to better understand what I’m reading. The controversy over the F-35’s operating costs are a perfect example. Not so much the current numbers, but even the longer term direction. Now it is very difficult to get good numbers on operating costs because different sources have different numbers. I think that happens for two reasons. One is that some quote direct operating costs (e.g., how much fuel do you burn per hour) and others fully loaded costs (e.g., amortized cost of engine overhauls). Also costs are really reverse engineered from fleet-level costs. You have xxxxx aircraft, it cost yyyyy to operate and maintain those xxxxx aircraft, they fly zzzzz hours per year, so yyyyy/zzzzz gets you cost per hour. Of course if you have some old worn out aircraft and some shiny new aircraft, and the former require a lot of work and the later require very little, then this calculation is misleading. Just dump the old aircraft and buy more new aircraft and you have a much lower operating cost! And actually, this is part of the F-35s problem. Of the over 600 produced so far many are from before the design stabilized because of how the program was run. Buying aircraft concurrent with finishing its design means some number, I don’t know how many, are not representative of the Block 3F final configuration. So they add a lot of expense to the average as they are more difficult to maintain, require upgrades, etc. If that is 100+ aircraft then a big contributor to the cost reductions on F-35 operations is just making those a shrinking percentage of the fleet. But that isn’t what this blog post is about.

The biggest problem with the F-35 being the replacement for just about everything is that it is optimized for the high end fight. Let me give two scenarios to illustrate:

Commander(C): We have a unit pinned down by heavy enemy fire. You need to go eliminate the enemy position.

Pilots (P): They’re just finishing up a repair to the Distributed Aperture System on one of our aircraft. As soon as they close the panels and carefully apply the radar absorbent tape to get us our stealth back we’ll get to it.

C: We’ve already eliminated all air defenses in that area, all you have to worry about is ManPads. You don’t need stealth. Now go.

Two F-35s fly out and take care of the problem. Total operating hours 4 (let’s assume 2 aircraft, 2 hours each). Total cost at today’s ~$35,000 per flight hour is $140,000. At 2025 target cost of $25,000 per hour it is $100,000.

C: Hmm, I could have done that mission with an A-10 or F-16 for $50,000 or less.

Now you may think that a cost difference like this is nothing to worry about, but over the course of a conflict this turns into thousands of missions and many $Billions of dollars. And these costs are accumulating during training, patrols, ferrying aircraft, etc. too.

Now to be fair let’s look at a second scenario:

C: Our troops are pinned down by this enemy artillery position. Take your F-16s and eliminate the problem. There are reports of an HQ-16 in the area, but we haven’t located one. Better use standoff weapons.

P: No problem.

Two F-16s head off. Both are shot down with two pilots dead.

C: Damn, two pilots dead. And a $150 Million worth of aircraft lost. And the artillery still is pounding our positions. What happened?

Subordinate: Turns out they’d moved an HQ-9 into the area overnight but kept it silent so we never detected it. Their SDB’s kept them far out of range of the HQ-16’s missiles, but its radar queued the HQ-9 and they were able to get a lock on our guys, who were well within its missiles’ range. We fell right into their trap.

C: If our intelligence had given us any warning on this I would have sent F-35s. They would have taken out the artillery, and the *&U$#* HQ-9.

Now does the higher operating cost of the F-35 matter in this scenario? Of course not. Beyond the tragedy of two pilots dead, it cost $150 MILLION in lost aircraft to save $50,000 in operating costs. Alternatively you could send additional F-16s to perform the mission, with some dedicated to the Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses, mission. And others with electronic warfare pods to suppress enemy radars. I don’t know how many that would mean, 4? 6? In any case, once you do that any operating cost advantage is gone. You are spending the same or more then if you carried out the mission with fewer F-35s. And because each mission requires more aircraft, you can do fewer missions or need to buy many more aircraft.

There was a time when the Air Force, in particular, thought it better to have one aircraft type for all missions. Every fighter a stealth fighter. Now that doesn’t seem like the right strategy. They need a lot more high end aircraft then in the past because of the air defenses they are likely to encounter. On the other hand, they don’t need every aircraft to be a high end aircraft.