As the chart below illustrates planned production for the US services keeps slipping away.  Though I’m not convinced the aircraft is in a “death spiral” as the author of the post at Flightglobal suggests:

Johan Boeder, a Dutch defense analyst and editor of jsfnieuws.nl, has compiled a chart showing how the Department of Defense’s planned F-35 orders have declined since contract award in October 2001…

Learning curve theory posits that manufacturing costs decline by 12% each time output doubles. With each new delay that results in a further production cutback, the F-35′s affordability challenge becomes more difficult…

	2001	Sep-06	Nov-06	Apr-07	Nov-08	Aug-09	Jan-11
FY05	10
FY06	22
FY07	49	5	5	2	2	2	2
FY08	82	18	16	12	12	12	12
FY09	108	52	47	16	14	14	14
FY10	156	70	56	30	30	30	28
FY11	170	98	64	43	43	43	32
FY12	170	133	103	82	82	82	32
FY13	170	143	135	90	90	90	42
FY14	170	157	157	116	110	110	62
FY15	170	160	160	130	130	130	81
FY16	170	160	160	130	130	130	108
Totals	1447	996	903	651	643	643	413

Earlier:

F-35s for our Air Force in 2016? Good flipping luck

Canadian Government has no idea what the F-35 will cost…

Mark
Ottawa