The cost of the Northrop Grumman E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) project has risen by $350 million because of higher-than-expected modification and refurbishment costs. This is the single largest contributor to a $600 million rise in the cost of US Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition programmes.
The DoD's quarterly Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) filing, which monitors overall US defence spending, reports that the cost of the Pentagon's 71 major weapons projects climbed by $600 million in the quarter, to $705.2 billion.
As well as covering the rise in E-8 costs, the report is the first to include the Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missile programme's pre-engineering and manufacturing development costs, expected to amount to some $784 million.
Overall, the Pentagon expects to spend more than $3 billion on 2,400 missiles for the US Air Force and a still undetermined number of weapons for the US Navy.
The cost of the Sikorsky Aircraft UH-60L Black Hawk project rose by $53 million, when six additional aircraft were purchased.
The SAR registers a ten-month slip in the Bell Boeing CV-22 special operations tilt-rotor aircraft's critical-design review timetable.
Source: Flight International
