Assessment of Beddown Alternatives for the F-35

Abstract : As currently planned, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the largest aircraft acquisition program in the history of the Department of Defense (DoD). According to the December 2011 F-35 Selected Acquisition Report (DoD, 2011), the total acquisition cost to procure 2,457 F-35 aircraft across the United States Air Force (USAF), Navy, and Marine Corps is $331 billion, with total operating and support (OS this analysis found that increasing the combat-coded PAA per squadron while maintaining a constant total number of PAA (thereby reducing the total number of squadrons) could significantly reduce maintenance manpower and support equipment costs. Based upon these findings, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force asked PAF to assess whether savings could be achieved by reconfiguring the USAF s 960 cocombat-coded-35 PAA into larger squadrons (i.e., increasing PAA per squadron), by adjusting the PAA mix across the Active Component and Reserve Component, and by adjusting the percentage of Active Component PAA assigned to continental U.S. home-station locations.