Word: 35s
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...strange predicament for the modest jet that was supposed to be the cheap end of the military's high-low warplane mix of F-22s and F-35s. The Pentagon launched the F-35 Lightning II program a month after 9/11. Over the past eight years, the price-per-plane has doubled - from $69 million to as much as $135 million - even as none of the 2,443 on-order planes have been delivered. The program's cost has soared from $197 billion to as much as $329 billion. Plans to profit from prospective sales of more than...
Just last summer, Gates toured the huge Fort Worth, Texas, factory where the F-35 is coming to life and declared himself satisfied. "My impression is that most of the high-risk elements associated with this developmental program are largely behind us," he said. Cheaper F-35s rolling off the assembly line seemed to bolster the wisdom of Gates' earlier decision to kill the F-22 fighter, because cheaper F-35s could fill any resulting...
...production line, which has delayed flight testing. How bad is it? Last year, engineers expected to churn out 200 changes - a month! - to the F-35's design, but actually generated about 500. Even after Gates' restructuring, taxpayers could spend close to $60 billion on more than 300 F-35s before flight testing is finished, meaning costly modifications will be required...