VA: F-35 jet fighter costs are soaring out of sight, reports say
Billed as “the world’s largest defense program,” the trillion-dollar tab for the new F-35 joint strike jet fighter is getting bigger by the day.
The Government Accountability Office estimates the project is running 42 percent over budget. The GAO figures the F-35 program will cost $395.7 billion, “an increase of $117.2 billion from the prior 2007 baseline.”
But the Project on Government Oversight, a defense watchdog group, says GAO badly underestimated the costs by using the wrong baseline year for its calculations.
“The cost documentation of the F-35 program started in 2001, not 2007,” says Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project and Center for Defense Information at POGO.
Read the full article, "VA: F-35 jet fighter costs are soaring out of sight," By Kenric Ward, VirginiaWatchdog.org, July 12, 2012.
