When this endless election cycle is finally over, and Congress is back in Washington to do the nation’s work, one of the many pressing issues will be passage of a bill to fund the Pentagon for Fiscal Year 2017.

Note that we are saying this is only one of the many issues Congress should be addressing. There are ten other spending bills to be enacted (the twelfth, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs, was passed as part of the Continuing Resolution currently funding government through December 9^th).  But if there’s one thing we can be certain of, it is that the Congress will make sure the Pentagon gets its money as either a stand-alone spending bill or it will have a full set of new spending figures in some larger piece of “omnibus” legislation.

Betting that this is correct, recently seventy lawmakers sent a letter to the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Appropriations panel who are tasked with negotiating on the FY17 Defense Appropriations bill. They asked them to press for an increase in the number of F-35s purchased in FY17 from the 63 aircraft requested by the Pentagon to 74 aircraft. The eleven additional aircraft would be spread across all three services: five for the Air Force, four for the Navy, and two for the Marines.

It doesn’t surprise us and it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that the lawmakers who signed this letter are mostly members of the “Joint Strike Fighter Caucus” or otherwise represent interests with a major financial stake in the F-35. Or both, since they’re really one and the same. The ringleaders of the effort were Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) and Rep. John Larson (D-CT). What’s in their districts? Well, the F-35 is being constructed in Granger’s Ft. Worth district and the engines come from Pratt & Whitney in Connecticut.

But one sentence in the letter jumps out at us:

“Increasing the production rate is the single most important factor in reducing future aircraft unit costs.” This is just flat wrong.

The House Appropriations Committee version of the Pentagon spending bill included these eleven additional aircraft but the Senate version of the same bill added “only” four more F-35s than the Pentagon requested. So these House Members want the House to demand these eleven additional aircraft when the House and Senate members meet to hammer out differences between the two versions of the bill. Again, we aren’t surprised by this.

But one sentence in the letter jumps out at us. “Increasing the production rate is the single most important factor in reducing future aircraft unit costs.” This is just flat wrong. Increasing overall production numbers can reduce unit cost. But how fast you buy the planes has nothing to do with how much each one costs. Buying more airplanes next year benefits Lockheed Martin, Pratt & Whitney, and the other contractors who work together to produce the F-35. It benefits them, and their shareholders, in the short term. But you can bet that they will also press for more planes to eventually be purchased by all three services. The program is currently planning to purchase a little more than 2400 airframes.

At TCS we have a long history of questioning the staggering cost of the F-35 program. The last thing we think is a smart use of your taxpayer dollars would be to buy more than the current estimate. But you can bet the farm that, if production rates are ramped up earlier than the current Pentagon plan, the contractors will want to sell more airframes when they reach that 2400+ number years earlier than the current plan.

We thought 63 F-35s was too many in the President’s Budget Request, but an increase to 74 airframes is really a bridge too far. We hope the House and Senate conferees inject some fiscal common sense and reject this increase to the F-35 production program.