Procurement Perspective: F-35C Lightning vs F/A-18E/F Super Hornet

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The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter is certainly one of today's most controversial procurement programs and is widely criticized for its extreme cost. In contrast, the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet is widely touted as an example of cost management and military procurement done right. But what happens if you dig a little deeper into the history of these two programs?

The first thing that must be done is to understand the timelines of the two programs. Because both aircraft are currently being procured (the FY2019 Navy budget requests twenty four Super Hornets and nine Lightnings), there is a tendency to think of the two planes as near contemporaries. However, this is far from true. The first F/A-18E/F prototype was ordered in 1992 and made its first flight in 1995, while for the F-35C those dates were 2007 and 2010. Procurement of both aircraft began in the same year that the prototype first flew. To put this into perspective, fifteen years separated the first flights of the Super Hornet and the F-14, while just twelve years stood between those of the F-14 and F-4. Thus, the F-35 and the F/A-18E/F truly belong to different generations in age as well as technology.

This decade and a half difference in timeline goes a long way towards explaining the Super Hornet's status as a mature system. But the fact that it's early issues are long forgotten (a speech in the 1999 Congressional Record described the program as "spectacularly mediocre" and "breathtakingly expensive" - both charges now leveled at the Lightning) is not the only advantage the F/A-18 has over the F-35C in the procurement debate. A huge difference is that the Navy simply has not committed to the Lightning to the same extent that it did with the Super Hornet.


As demonstrated in the above chart, F-35C procurement has occurred at what can only be described as an apathetic rate. Indeed, for all of the Navy's protestations that it is fully committed to the F-35 program, the numbers tell a very different story. No fewer than six hundred and fifteen Super Hornets were procured over the first nine years of its production while the same number of years saw only forty eight Lightnings ordered. This preference for the F/A-18 is only driven home by the fact that today the Navy continues single digit procurement of the F-35C while restarting Super Hornet purchases in much larger numbers.

The justification commonly given for this choice is the much higher cost of the Lightning. In 2018, the F-35C ran at $106 million each (recurring cost) while the Super Hornet was only $66 million. While it is only natural for modern equipment to be somewhat more expensive than the older items it replaces, a 60% increase is clearly excessive. However, it is here that we must return to the extremely low procurement rate of the Lightning. In the aircraft industry, unit cost will decrease by roughly 15% every time the number produced has doubled (an "85% learning curve"), and if we chart the historic price of the F/A-18, we can vividly see this effect.



As we can see, the unit cost of the Super Hornet steadily fell until that of the the final batch in 2013 (when procurement was halted for two years) reached just 31% of what the initial twelve planes cost. While the Lightning has seen similar production efficiencies, the limited quantity procured to date means that it is still at the beginning of its learning curve. Thus, comparing the current cost of an F-35C and an F/A-18E/F is highly misleading.


However, if we instead compare the Lightning to where the Super Hornet was fifteen years ago, a very different picture emerges. The first twelve F/A-18's cost $189 million each while F-35C's five through eleven cost $201 million. Moving down the curve, F/A-18's thirteen though thirty two cost $137 million while F-35C's twenty seven through thirty cost $145 million. Finally, F/A-18's thirty three through sixty two cost $109 million while F-35C's forty five through forty eight cost $107 million.

While this comparison is still extremely simplistic, it does reveal that the current unit cost of the Lightning is actually extremely close to that of the early Super Hornets. Although it remains to be seen if the price drop will be as dramatic as that of the F/A-18 (and there are questions about the efficiency of using one production line for all three variants), it is highly likely that the unit cost of an F-35C will eventually be much closer to that of the Super Hornet than many believe - at least it will if the Navy ever commits to the program and begins purchasing the Lightning in large numbers.

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