Learning and forgetting in the jet fighter aircraft industry

Abstract

A recent strategy carried out by the aircraft industry to reduce the total cost of the new generation fighters has consisted in the development of a single airframe with different technical and operational specifications. This strategy has been designed to reduce costs in the Research, Design and Development phase with the ultimate objective of reducing the final unit price per aircraft. This is the case of the F-35 Lightning II, where three versions, with significant differences among them, are produced simultaneously based on a single airframe. Whereas this strategy seems to be useful to cut down pre-production sunk costs, their effects on production costs remain to be studied. This paper shows that this strategy can imply larger costs in the production phase by reducing learning acquisition and hence, the total effect on the final unit price of the aircraft is indeterminate. Learning curves are estimated based on the flyaway cost for the latest three fighter aircraft models: The A/F-18E/F Super Hornet, the F-22A Raptor, and the F-35A Lightning II. We find that learning rates for the F-35A are significantly lower (an estimated learning rate of around 9%) than for the other two models (around 14%).

Learning by doing, organizational forgetting, and the business cycle

“…Production costs reported by Lockheed suggested that depreciation of learning was an important factor and that costs rose when the rate of production fell. Bongers (2017) finds that simultaneous production of different versions of the same aircraft accelerates forgetting. Darr et al (1995) study the depreciation of knowledge in pizza stores and conclude that learning by doing depreciates rapidly in these stores.…”

An Additional Model to Control Risk in Mastering Defense Technology in Indonesia

“…Thus, purchases are made to shorten the technology mastery process and minimise investment [7]. However, purchasing licenses also has weaknesses, especially during the process, because (i) not everything related to the purchased technology is transferred [11], (ii) the transferred technology may not be absorbed by all because of differences in culture, language, and knowledge [12], and (iii) the transferred technology requires maintenance to be developed [13]. Furthermore, the transferred capabilities are limited to production capabilities.…”

Learning, future cost and role of offshore renewable energy technologies in the North Sea energy system

“…As discussed in the previous sections, the experience curve approach provides a strong analytical construct to describe and anticipate technology cost developments. The approach has also achieved overwhelming empirical evidence across many sectors, including, manufacturing [107], medical procedures [108], aerospace and defense industry [109,110], ship production [111,112], semiconductors [113,114], consumer products [115,116]; in addition to energy sector [31,43,77]. However, several limitations and uncertainties are found to distort the outcomes of the experience curve analysis.…”