It appears that the F-35 cost overruns have already placed the program in Nunn-McCurdy breach in all but name, and a lot of the problem is that the program was poorly managed from the very beginning:
The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer says the huge cost increases and delays incurred on the F-35 joint strike fighter program were inevitable because the Defense Department didn’t spend enough money upfront to build realistic prototypes.
….
For the JSF program, the Pentagon contracted with Boeing and Lockheed to build “technology demonstrators” and not “true prototypes.”
As a result, Young said, “the future of JSF cost growth was largely written in 2001 when budget and pricing decisions were made . . . based on inadequate knowledge gained from the JSF technology demonstrators.”
I’m so not shocked. In fact, I think that the DoD in general, and the USAF in particular do this on purpose to conceal the true cost of a program until it is too far along to cancel.
I’m beginning to think that the Pentagon needs to have its contracting authority pulled like the Coast Guard’s authority was late last year.