Denmark's National Audit Office (Rigsrevisionen) on Monday, June 8, published report containing assessment of entire F-35 fifth-generation fighter program lifecycle cost, including fighter procurement, technical maintenance, pilot training and so on, which proved 25% higher than previous defense department estimates.
If previously defense ministry estimated project at 57.1 billion Danish crowns (approximately €7.64 billion), now it involves already 71.2 billion (€9.53 billion) to be spent on fighter over 30 years. This is €1.89 billion difference. BFM reports this.
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Accordingly Rigsrevisionen emphasizes such defense department inability to predict real costs causes concern. Although long-term sum does not appear excessively significant, audit office laments that either overall spending will now need increasing or financing for F-35 program will need to be found through cutting other project spending.
Moreover, Denmark will hardly be able to reduce fighter orders to cut costs, as it already received 23 aircraft and remaining four should be delivered by early 2027. Thus total overspending per aircraft will amount to €70 million, again, this involves entire lifecycle.
Also under question whether spending increase will impact additional fighter procurement. Recall last year Denmark's defense department head announced plans to purchase additional F-35 aircraft from Lockheed Martin despite all U.S. President Donald Trump's Greenland annexation talk. Then 10 additional aircraft were discussed, now 16 are written about.
Overall it turns out F-35 fighter buyers should prepare for increased spending on these aircraft, as this is already not first such story. As example, Switzerland can be recalled, forced to reduce order from 36 to 30 aircraft due to price growth.
This also involves related costs, not only aircraft price. Previously problems with infrastructure deployment in Switzerland became known, when price grew from 152 to 252 million dollars immediately, and this is purely about basic minimum.
Previously, Defense Express reported that after 6 years of waiting first F-35s arrived in Poland.
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