F-35 Jobs Card doesn't trump Cost & Performance

F-35 fighter jet struggles to take off - latimes.com

Lockheed's political reach - Spreadsheets - Los Angeles Times

LMCO's political donations may reach further than job creation.
After a dec­ade of ad­min­is­trat­ive prob­lems, cost over­runs and tech­nic­al glitches, the F-35 is still not ready for ac­tion. The mil­it­ary con­siders the pro­gram to be cru­cial to the na­tion’s de­fense needs.
The F-35 pro­gram also has polit­ic­al muscle from Lock­heed Mar­tin’s more than $2.8 mil­lion in dona­tions to polit­ic­al can­did­ates from all 50 states in the 2012 cycle, while the map shows those dona­tions along­side jobs, num­ber of sup­pli­ers and eco­nom­ic im­pact cre­ated in each state by the pro­gram.
 
New Report Questions F-35 Job Creation Claims | Defense News | defensenews.com

Lockheed Martin's claims of job creation in 46 states has also been a key component in rallying support for the fighter. Using Lockheed Martin's own job numbers from the www.F35.com website, Hartung points out that the 71 percent of the jobs created under Lockheed Martin's own figures will go to just five states --

• Texas (32.54 percent), 
• California (18.75 percent),
• Florida (7.66 percent), 
• Connecticut (6.78 percent), and 
• New Hampshire (4.67 percent). 

In total, 31 of the 46 states will receive less than 1 percent of the jobs created; 15 of those would receive less than one-tenth of a percent.


That Texas would receive the majority of jobs is not surprising, as Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth facility is where the F-35 is assembled. But Hartung argues in the report that to say the F-35 will have true economic impact on a state such as Nebraska, estimated to receive .003 percent of jobs created,
is "misleading".


Lockheed Martin claims on its www.F35.com website that "according to standard industry accepted economic forecasting, the multirole 5th-generation stealth fighter is responsible for more than 125,000 direct and indirect jobs". Of those 125,000 jobs, 32,500 would be "direct" jobs, such as workers who assemble the planes, while another 92,500 would be "indirect jobs" created at companies that help supply the larger companies with material or services.


Indirect jobs are a tricky thing to estimate, given the nebulous nature of measuring jobs created to help sustain and support another new job. Hartung looked at a pair of previous studies on defense industry job creation to compare whether Lockheed Martin's assumptions matched up.


Playing the Defense Jobs Card Isn’t Working Anymore - Defense One


In a new report by the Center for International Policy, we have found that Lockheed Martin has exaggerated the number of jobs associated with the F-35 by a factor of two. In addition, the jobs generated by the program will be much more concentrated than F-35 boosters would have us
believe, with over half of the jobs in just two states, Texas and California. And large portions of the aircraft will be built overseas.


In short, there just aren’t enough F-35 jobs in enough key locations to make the jobs argument a decisive factor in funding decisions about the plane. If the F-35 is to be fully funded, the contractors and the Air Force will have to prove that the planes can overcome current, serious
cost and performance problems, and that they are needed to address the most urgent 21st century threats. Given thatthe F-35 is slated to be the most expensive weapons program ever undertaken by the Pentagon, that could be a hard sell. And if recent history is any indication, making exaggerated claims about the jobs the F-35 program will create won’t be much help in making the case for
the plane.

Promising the Sky: Pork Barrel Politics and the F-35 Combat Aircraft | Research | Center for International Policy

Chief Pentagon Tester's Memo Partly Directed at the Joint Strike Fighter
In December 2009, Gilmore’s annual report on test and evaluation noted “the [military] Services and operational test agencies need to monitor the production-representative quality of” the first batches of JSF aircraft and support systems. “Given the concurrency of development, production, and test, shortfalls in capability must be recognized early to ensure resources are available to modify these aircraft and support systems so they are production-representative and ready for a successful” initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E).