The top enlisted and top civilian Air Force officials on Monday said that the service’s misestimate of the Long Range Strike-Bomber’s research, procurement and support costs in its two most recent annual reports to congress has not and will not affect internal Pentagon planning for the new aircraft. “The mistake was a regrettable error, but it’s been corrected, and so it’s not going to affect us internally,” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said Monday during a Pentagon press conference. She added: “It occurred, in part, because of human error, and in part, because of process error, meaning a couple of our people got the figures wrong, and the process of coordination was not fully carried out in this case.”
Bloomberg originally reported on Aug. 17 that last year, the Air Force estimated the cost of LRS-B at $33.1 billion for fiscal 2015-2025 and this year, the service projected the 2016-2026 cost at $58.4 billion. The correct estimates were $41.7 billion for each period, according to that article. “Our internal documents are drawn from two things—a [Future Years’ Defense Program] that’s submitted each year, and the long-range projections, cost estimates, etcetera, that are revised,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said during the press conference. “The five-year number last year and this year were captured exactly accurately. That’s what we’re using as an air staff, and the updated projections and cost estimates or where the confusion came in, [stems from the fact that] we didn’t properly coordinate.”
James said the Air Force notified congress of the LRS-B cost projection error, and added that the service is counseling the people involved and has “tightened up on the process of coordination to make sure something like this doesn’t occur again.”
