The Endangered F-35

[Ryan Ruck]

Some Legislators Debate Need for JSF

The Navy Department's aviation budget request is $4.6 billion more than last year's plan for fiscal 2010, although the number of planned aircraft purchased has decreased by 20.

Now faced with a fighter gap that may be growing even more than expected and a tightening budget, some lawmakers are questioning whether the Navy and Marine Corps can hold out until the Joint Strike Fighter is ready.

"We can no longer afford unaffordable programs. I believe it is time to step back and build what we know works, make it better if and when we can, and get the capability to the sailor and Marine who need it today, not 10 years from now," Seapower and Expeditionary Forces subcommittee Chairman Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., said in prepared testimony Tuesday.

While there is little doubt that the stealth provided by the JSF would be a valuable asset, members of the House Armed Services subcommittee said too much money was being devoted to the program which is still in developmental testing.

"The JSF may be a great weapon system, but it seems to be the 99-percent solution that Secretary [Robert] Gates said we should avoid," Ranking Republican Rep. W. Todd Akin, of Missouri, said in his opening statement.

Lt. Gen. George Trautman, deputy commandant for Marine Corps aviation programs, said the Corps remains dedicated to the JSF.

The Navy Department requested $4.7 billion for 20 Joint Strike Fighters — 16 F-35B Short Take-off Vertical Landing variants for the Marine Corps and four F-35C carrier variants for the Navy. The Corps' F-35B is expected to replace the AV-8B Harrier, the F/A-18 A-D Hornets and a "large portion" of the EA-6B Prowlers.

"We are taking a long pause in buying tactical aircraft. We need the Joint Strike Fighter and we think the secretary and [President Barack Obama] made a wise choice to go after the Joint Strike Fighter," Trautman said after the hearing. "2012 is our initial operational capability and I see no impediments to getting there."

Navy officials declined to give exact figures Tuesday for the strike fighter gap, saying an ongoing analysis will reveal more detailed and accurate information this summer.

However, new estimates from the Congressional Research Service show that the Navy and Marine Corps will have a shortage of about 15 aircraft this year that will expand steadily to 50 next year, reaching a peak of 243 in 2018.

The department's aviation budget includes $277.7 million for the continuation of upgrades to the F/A-18 A/B/C/D legacy Hornet to the E/F Super Hornets.

Congress also questioned whether the department's electronic warfare capabilities are meeting combatant commanders' needs.

The EA-6B Prowler is used heavily in Iraq. The fiscal 2010 budget requests $11 million to operationally sustain the department's Prowlers and $128 million of research and development, test and evaluation funds for Next Generation Jammer analysis that was supposed to be operational in 2016 but now is slated for 2018, Rear Adm. Allen Myers, the Navy's director of Naval Warfare Integration, said at the hearing.

"The Navy and Marine Corps remain fully committed to the EA-6B as we continue to enhance our legacy capabilities. The EA-6B continues to maintain an extremely high deployment tempo, supporting operations against growing and diverse irregular warfare threats," according to prepared testimony. "The EA-6B when deployed to Iraq has the highest utilization rate of any aircraft in our inventory."

[Ryan Ruck]

F-35 Total May Be Cut By Half, Report Says

Oct 31, 2009

Rising costs, changing threats and rival aircraft — manned and unmanned — could cut nearly in half the number of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that ultimately are built, a Dutch defense analyst said in a report to the Dutch parliament. And if fewer planes are built, the price for each, already $100 million or more, will undoubtedly increase, analyst Johan Boeder warned.

A "likely estimate" is that 2,500 F-35s eventually will be built, Boeder wrote in a report delivered to Dutch lawmakers in September. The Netherlands, one of nine countries financing the development of the F-35, was expected to buy 85 planes, but may cut that to 57, Boeder said.

If his overall forecast is correct, the number of F-35s built would be far fewer than the 4,500 or more that F-35-maker Lockheed Martin said it expects to sell. The U.S. military has even predicted that the market for F-35s could reach 6,000.

Lockheed dismisses Boeder's forecast, saying that the company anticipates no drop in demand for F-35s.

"F-35 quantities have held steady for most of the decade," Lockheed spokesman Chris Geisel said. "Year after year, the program has received strong political and budgetary support."

Geisel said that "if F-35 numbers change, it is more likely that they will increase" than decrease. That's because hundreds of current fighters are approaching retirement age, and nations beyond the nine countries that are F-35 partners are expressing interest in buying the aircraft, he said.

But U.S. defense analyst Barry Watts agreed that, ultimately, it is likely that only half of the planned F-35s will be built.

Watts, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said history is against the F-35. In the four stealthy aircraft programs that preceded the F-35, the U.S. military declared a need for 2,378 planes, but ultimately bought only 267. Those programs were the F-117, A-12, B-2 and F-22.

Current plans call for the U.S. military to buy 2,443 F-35s, "but if history is any guide, I would not hold my breath waiting" for that many purchases to be completed. "I think the number is going to be about half of that," said Watts, who is a retired Air Force combat pilot and former chief of the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation.

Watts said he expects the Air Force to buy 800 to 1,000 F-35s instead of the 1,763 in current service plans. The Air Force can get by with fewer F-35s because it has decided to keep its A-10s and F-15Es in service.

And the Navy is likely to reconsider its F-35 buys because the plane does not have adequate range to permit U.S. aircraft carriers to operate outside the range of area denial weapons being developed by China and other nations, Watts said.

Unmanned carrier-based aircraft are expected to offer the Navy much greater range, he said.

Geisel, Lockheed's spokesman, said that the U.S. still intends to buy 2,443 F-35s, Britain plans to buy 138 and the seven other nations participating in the F-35 program plan to buy about 700. "There are no indications from any of the partner countries that they are going to trim back," he said.

In addition to those 3,281, Lockheed expects to sell F-35s to Israel, Japan, South Korea and other customers. The total "could reach 4,500 or more," Geisel said.

But Boeder, the Dutch analyst, said the U.S. commitment to the F-35 is already eroding.

Originally, the U.S. planned to buy 2,978 F-35s, but by 2005 had cut that number by more than 500. Since then, even lower numbers have been suggested. In 2007, Boeder said, the U.S. pushed acquisition of 515 F-35s far into the future — to between 2028 and 2035 — to ease funding problems. But Boeder said that move raises questions about whether the planes will ever be bought.

[Ryan Ruck]

USN Officials Raise Concern About F-35 Affordability

1/14/2010

The US Naval Air Systems Command's top cost estimator has warned in a new internal briefing obtained by Flight International that the Lockheed Martin F-35B/C variants are getting harder to afford.

Lockheed continues to insist, however, that cost estimates within the programme have not changed since 2007, which it says is supported by its recent contractual performance.

But the NAVAIR briefing, presented to US Navy officials on 4 January, adds fuel to a series of recent reports that the Department of Defense is taking a more conservative approach to estimating the F-35's overall costs, with potential production unit cuts likely in the fiscal year 2011 budget request scheduled for release in February.

According to NAVAIR's cost department, the F-35's total ownership costs, including development, production and sustainment, has doubled to $704 billion since Lockheed won the contract eight years ago.

Moreover, NAVAIR estimates the total of 680 short take-off and vertical landing F-35Bs and carrier-variant F-35Cs, ordered by the US Marine Corps and USN, respectively, will cost $30,700 to fly each hour. This compares to $18,900 for the Boeing AV-8B Harrier II and Boeing F/A-18A-D, the aircraft types the Joint Strike Fighter will replace.

Although NAVAIR projects the F-35 will fly 12% fewer flight hours than the AV-8B and F/A-18A-D fleets, the agency expects the modern aircraft to cost as much as about 25% more to operate at peak rates, the briefing says.

The unexpected cost increases mean the F-35 "will have a significant impact on naval aviation affordability", the NAVAIR document concludes.

Dan Crowley, Lockheed executive vice-president for the F-35, says the presentation reflects an ongoing dispute between the programme and the Joint Estimating Team (JET). The NAVAIR presentation bases its cost assumptions on the latest JET study.

The programme uses a "bottom-up" approach to estimate costs, while the JET and NAVAIR estimates use a parametric model, Crowley says.

But the dispute is not a trivial matter. If the DoD decides to submit a budget request based on the JET's higher estimate, Lockheed's orders for production aircraft could decline. Such a reduction sets the stage for the so-called "acquisition death spiral", as fewer orders lead to higher unit production costs, which in turn cause further cuts.

But Crowley says that a production cut next year would not necessarily trigger a death spiral. Under Lockheed's interpretation of recent acquisition reform laws, the company could deliver more aircraft to the government than are put under contract.

The first test of this theory could arrive during negotiations for the fifth annual lot of low rate production. "The government will be monitoring our prices for LRIP-5," Crowley says.

Meanwhile, Lockheed will continue to develop its capacity planning based on the assumption that it will deliver one jet every working day by 2015 or 2016, says Crowley.

[Ryan Ruck]

U.S. To Slow F-35 Testing, Acquisition

20 Jan 2010

The Pentagon is slowing down testing and acquisition of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz acknowledged Jan. 20.

"The path we were on was too aggressive, so there's an effort underway to reduce concurrency, to lengthen the period associated with testing, to increase the number of test assets and make the production rate somewhat less ambitious," Schwartz said during a briefing with reporters in Washington.

The F-35 will be ready for initial operational capability with the Air Force in 2013, Schwartz said.

"While it would have been ideal to go without adjustment, there are very few programs of this sophistication that I'm aware of that have not required some adjustment," said Schwartz. "This is in the larger interest of the larger attack community that will rely on" the jet.

He said the adjustment is meant to ensure that large numbers of F-35s can be built problem-free when it comes time to replace U.S. and allied fighter fleets toward the end of the decade.

Schwartz added that he did not think the jet was going to breach the Nunn-McCurdy statute's limits on cost growth in weapon programs.

His comments come a week after a leaked U.S. Navy analysis document said the F-35 would be considerably more expensive to operate than the Navy and Marine Corps' current tactical fighters.

"I have not yet had an opportunity to validate for myself the accuracy of that analysis," Schwartz said, adding that he did not accept the findings of this analysis "at face value."

Still, he said he acknowledged that operating costs are a serious issue, and that he would be troubled if the analysis turns out to be accurate.

"If there are issues related to cost of operations, we'll find remedies and mitigations; we have to," he said.

Many have said that the Pentagon has no choice but to make sure the F-35 program succeeds since the existing U.S. fighter fleet is rapidly closing in on its retirement date.

[Ryan Ruck]

Lockheed Strengthening Fuselage in Navy's F-35 Model

Jan. 29, 2010

Lockheed Martin Corp. is fixing a structural weakness in the Navy version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that limits the jet's ability to launch from aircraft carriers, according to a company spokesman.

Engineers in July discovered a "strength shortfall" in an aluminum structure in the aircraft's center fuselage that helps absorb stresses during a catapult takeoff, Lockheed spokesman John Kent said today in an e-mailed statement.

"U.S. Navy and program office engineers were apprised immediately and have been directly involved in approving design updates," Kent said. "A modification is already approved and ready to incorporate early this year prior to any catapult testing planned for 2011."

The modification doesn't affect the aircraft's progress toward first flight and is expected to have "little or no impact" on the plane's shipboard testing, he said.

"There was never a problem with landing -- only catapult launch," Kent said.

Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed plans to build the fighters in three variants for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. The current estimated cost is $298 billion.

The carrier version is the last of the three variants to go into operation and is scheduled to be used on carriers operating with Boeing F/A-18E/F fighters by 2015. The first development model is scheduled for its maiden flight by August 30, Kent said.

Ashton Carter, the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer, and Michael Gilmore, director of operational test and evaluation, declined to comment through Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin.

Pentagon Report

The issue wasn't disclosed in Gilmore's annual's report released last week. That report said F-35 testing so far raised concerns that engine blasts from the carrier model and Marine Corps short-takeoff and vertical-landing versions could cause deck damage and injure personnel.

The F-35 is the Pentagon's largest weapons program. The fiscal 2011 defense budget set for release Feb. 1 requests 42 fighters, up from 30 this year. As many as 20 jets are Navy and Marine Corp versions.

Kent said all design changes to strengthen the center fuselage will be incorporated before parts are made for the first production F-35Cs in the fourth initial production contract now under negotiation for 30 aircraft.

This is only a development-phase issue "and a minor one at that," Kent said. "This is part of our normal airframe development process, and is not a concern for the Navy."

Cheryl Limrick, a spokesman for F-35 military program manager Marine Corp. Major General David Heinz, didn't return an e-mail seeking comment today.

The Navy plans to buy as many as 680 carrier and short-take- off versions of 2,456 planned jets.

Deck Damage

The Pentagon's Gilmore said in his report that the engine and power-systems' exhaust on the Navy and Marine versions is powerful enough to pose a threat to carrier personnel. The blasts also may damage shields used to deflect heat on the deck, including on the CVN-21 carrier, the Navy's most expensive warship.

"Early analyses of findings indicate that integration of the F-35 into the CVN-21 will result in damage to the carrier deck environment and will adversely affect hangar deck operations," Gilmore wrote.

The Navy model's exhaust area is larger than the Boeing planes', making the jet-blast deflectors used during launch "vulnerable to warping and failure," he wrote.

Exhaust from the Marine Corp version's integrated power system deflect downward and may be "a hazard to flight deck refueling, munitions, personnel and equipment" located on catwalks, the report said.

Lockheed spokesman Chris Giesel said tests conducted with the JSF Program Office and the Navy "are showing positive results regarding compatibility of the F-35's exhaust with carrier decks and tarmac surfaces. The study will conclude in spring 2010."

[Ryan Ruck]

I decided to go ahead and start a thread dedicated solely to the future of the F-35 program which seems to be under constant threat made worse by new delays and cutbacks.

[Ryan Ruck]

DOD Memo Formalizes F-35 Program Overhaul

Mar 3, 2010

The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer late last week formalized the restructuring to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, extending the plane’s test phase to 2015 and delaying the start of its full production by 13 months to November of that year.

In a separate event, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley today told reporters today that the service is delaying its initial operational capability date for the JSF to 2015, two years after the service originally planned to field its first operational F-35 squadron.

In a three-page acquisition decision memorandum (ADM) published Feb. 24, Ashton Carter outlined the Defense Department’s rationale behind the retooling of the F-35 program that saw the government program manager for the program fired, cut production buys of the aircraft and extended its development phase to 2015.

The restructuring was done after numerous analyses by the Pentagon’s Joint Estimating Team (JET) and other groups led Defense Secretary Robert Gates to believe that the program was going to breach the Nunn-McCurdy statute capping per-unit cost growth on major weapons.

Gates’ restructuring of the program — as well as an ongoing DoD-wide F-35 program review that began in November — were done with the Pentagon thinking “as though” the program had breached the statute, according to the ADM.

“While the JET II was only an estimate, the Review was undertaken as though the JSF program was in Nunn-McCurdy breach,” said the memo, first reported by the Web site DoDBuzz. A copy was obtained by Defense News.

Carter expects the Pentagon to receive 122 fewer F-35s over the next five years than it had planned last year, the memo said.

“No fundamental technology or manufacturing problems were discovered in the Review,” the memo said.

The ADM formally orders the JSF program to extend system development and design to 2015, delay the start of full-rate production to later that year, add four test jets to SDD, add $2.8 billion to the test phase of the program and withhold $614 million in performance award fees from Lockheed Martin.

Gates announced the retooling during a Feb. 1 news conference at the Pentagon where he unveiled the department’s budget.

All of this is being done in an effort to get the program back on track after Pentagon estimates predicted that the program was up to 30 months behind schedule. Defense Department officials have said that, even with the restructuring, the F-35 will still be 13 months late.

The ADM also allows for the purchase of additional F-35s using any excess money in the program’s budget should Lockheed and the government program office be able to “execute program development and or deliver aircraft at lower costs.”

The document describes 2010 as a critical year for the F-35 with the “completion of hundreds of test flights, commencement of flight testing at Eglin [Air Force Base, Fla.,] and other key milestones planned.”

The Navy is also considering slipping its initial operational capability date for the plane, and along with the Air Force, is eyeing extending the service lives of its existing fighters.

This comes after a number of monthly progress reports written by the Defense Contract Management Agency from late 2009 show the program to have experienced a number of hiccups at Lockheed’s Fort Worth, Texas, F-35 production facility.

These reports, released by the Center for Defense Information (CDI), show that between July and November of last year, the F-35 production line was being “cannibalized” to support the test program and that low-rate initial production delivery schedule for the plane was an average of 80 days late and that F-35 parts were arriving late from the suppliers 25 percent of the time. Later in the fall, the program experienced a quality verification stand-down, which focused on software issues with the aircraft, according to CDI.

[Ryan Ruck]

JSF - Navy Ready To Abandon Ship?

1/15/2010

The Navy is not happy with the new joint-service fighter. It's gained weight during development, but more importantly, the Navy isn't sure that the capabilities it provides are what they want to spend more money on. It's tempting to scrap it and go with an alternative, from a company with recent carrier-jet experience. The obstacle is a headstrong Secretary of Defense who's staked his reputation on the joint program, but the signals are clear: the moment he's gone the Navy's going to bail.

Enough about the F-111. What about JSF?

For the service of "loose lips sink ships", the Navy leaked the blandly titled "Joint Programs TOC Affordability" document through more holes than IJN Yamato off Okinawa. This was no baby-seals-type accident. It's a deliberate hit at the highest level.



The key chart is page 10, which shows that - over the lifetime of the fleet - the carrier-based and STOVL JSF versions will cost the Navy 40 per cent more, in total operating costs, than the F/A-18C/Ds and AV-8Bs that they replace. (The older aircraft costs are taken from FY2008 and include a lot of aging-aircraft issues.) This is despite a smaller fleet and fewer flight hours: the new aircraft are expected to cost more than 60 per cent more to fly per hour than their predecessors.

The Navy report suggests that the total cost of the Pentagon's JSF program will be $705 billion in FY2002 dollars, just over twice the figure predicted at the program's inception.

Lockheed Martin and the JSF program office will respond that the Navy figures are conjectural, based on experience with legacy aircraft, and not applicable to the JSF's cutting-edge technology. This matters not a hoot. What matters is that the admirals and senior Navy leaders believe the report is roughly accurate, or it wouldn't be on the street in the first place.

So where are all those billions in extra O&S money going to come from? The answer is "nowhere". When the report states that "JSF will have a significant impact on naval aviation affordability", what it means by "significant" is "about the same as the ten torpedo and seven bomb hits on Yamato."

But wait - there's more. The Navy is not talking exclusively about the F-35B/C. If similar TOC comparisons hold for the F-16, USAF TacAir plans have some challenges ahead. Moreover, the Navy notes an "upward" pressure on the $705 billion - indicating that the program team will be doing well to hold it level.

The Navy is the only US JSF customer with a ready Plan B, in the shape of the Super Hornet. (And GE has developed a thrust boost for the F414 and Boeing has muttered quietly about stealth enhancements.) What would the Navy do about the Marines? That wasn't in the report's terms of reference.

The Navy is not identifying factors behind the per-hour TOC number. However, the JSF is Super Hornet-sized, and bigger than either of the aircraft it replaces. The F-35B includes a complex lift-system full of critical components. And JSF includes stealth technology, which has yet to prove as affordable in service as the engineers promised it would be.

No one presentation or study is definitive, but this latest disclosure places more pressure than ever on the JSF program to perform.

[Ryan Ruck]

Pentagon May Buy 124 Super Hornets

2 Mar 2010

The Pentagon is asking lawmakers for more time to decide whether to buy an additional 124 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets after receiving a "viable offer" for a multiyear contract on the jets from Boeing, according to a Feb. 26 letter sent to Capitol Hill from Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn.

"In the last few days" the U.S. Navy received the "viable offer" from Boeing for the 124 new aircraft, Lynn wrote. "I am writing to inform you that the Department of Defense continues to explore the possibility" of buying the additional Super Hornets."

Defense News obtained a copy of the letter.

Last year, Congress authorized the Navy to negotiate an additional multiyear purchase of Super Hornets and gave the service a deadline of early March 2010 to decide whether it wanted them.

In early February, senior Navy officials said that a Boeing multiyear offer for 89 of the jets did not provide enough savings to warrant the purchase.

Navy officials said the new Boeing offer would give the service 66 Super Hornets and 58 EA-18G Growler variants in 2010 through 2013, which would save the service 10 percent over buying the jets on a yearly basis.

"The Navy, working with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, needs additional time to properly evaluate the offer" because Boeing's latest bid came in so close to the service's deadline for informing Congress on whether or not it will buy the aircraft, a Navy statement said.

All of this comes as senior Navy and U.S. Air Force officials announced they are re-evaluating their respective initial operating capability (IOC) dates for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter following news that the newly restructured F-35 program will likely be delayed by 13 months. On March 2, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley told reporters that the air service is pushing its F-35 IOC date back by two years to 2015.

In 2006, the Chicago-based company proffered the Navy a multiyear package of 170 Super Hornets for $49.9 million a piece, an offer that officially expired last April.

[Ryan Ruck]

Lockheed Says F-35s Will Replace USAF F-15s

2/4/2010

Lockheed Martin has added all variants of the Boeing F-15 to an internal analysis of US Air Force platforms the company believes will be replaced by the F-35A Lightning II.

Lockheed now predicts the F-35A will replace the F-15C/D air superiority fighter and the F-15E Strike Eagle.

The USAF officially lists the F-35's conventional takeoff and landing variant as a ground-attack fighter complementing the air superiority mission, replacing only the Lockheed F-16 and the A-10.

The speculative and unofficial addition of the F-15C/D and F-15E fleets allows Lockheed to claim the USAF's requirement to buy 1,763 F-35As over the next 20 years remains intact despite recent policy changes.

Lockheed provided the analysis to Flight International in response to questions about the potential impact of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which proposes to slash the USAF's theatre strike wing-equivalents to 10 to 11 wings.

The reduction potentially devastates the USAF's demand for 1,763 F-35As. If the USAF maintains a 72-aircraft wing structure, only 720 to 792 combat-coded fighters are needed to perform the F-35's primary mission.

That role is currently performed by a mix of F-16s, A-10s and F-15Es. Lockheed's analysis assumes the mission would be performed exclusively by F-35s within 25 years.

"All the A-10s and F-15Es would reach their life during the USAF buy of F-35s (~2035) with no other tactical strike platform to replace their full capability other than F-35s", Lockheed's analysis says.

Lockheed also makes a second major assumption. The analysis assumes the QDR plan to operate six air superiority wing-equivalents will include two wings of F-22s and four wings of F-35As. Lockheed acknowledges the F-22 fleet is actually limited to 1-2/3 wings. The four wings of F-35As would replace the F-15C/Ds, according to Lockheed.

If the F-35A gains the new mission, the USAF requirement would rise to between 14 and 15 wings, totalling between 1,008 and 1,080 combat coded jets. Lockheed also estimates a need for another 593 to 636 jets required for training, test, depot and attrition reserve. The final number for the F-35A requirement ranges between 1,601 and 1,715 fighters, a total that Lockheed concludes is "in the noise" compared to the programme estimate of 1,763.

Steve O'Bryan, Lockheed vice president for business development, supported Lockheed's analysis, saying a single F-35 provides the capability of six F-15s in air-to-air simulations. Although the F-35's projected top speed of M1.6 falls short of the F-15's M2.5 maximum, O'Bryan says, the F-35's higher level of stealth offsets the F-15's speed advantage in calculations of overall survivability.

The F-35's prowess in the air superiority role has been debated, with one controversial Rand analysis in 2008 concluding the jet "can't turn, can't climb and can't run" fast enough to survive dogfights. According to industry sources, an unnamed senior USAF officer said last year, "JSF is not an air dominance platform and we understand that."

[Ryan Ruck]

USAF Chief: F-35 Programme Cost Increases 'Likely' To Force Recertification Process

2/22/2010

Cost-overruns on the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are likely to breach a statutory cap that would force the Department of Defense to formally recertificate the programme to Congress, according to US Air Force chief of staff Gen Norton Schwartz.

"It's a possibility and may be even likely" that the F-35 will violate a cost-overrun threshold set under the Nunn-McCurdy law, Schwartz says. The situation should become clear when the Pentagon notifies Congress of all such breaches in the next round of selected acquisition reports on 1 April.

"We have not been notified of a Nunn-McCurdy breach so it would be premature to comment," says Lockheed. However, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently proposed cutting production orders by four F-35s in fiscal year 2011, increasing pressure to maintain unit costs. He also withheld $614 million in incentive payments from Lockheed due to programme delays.

Regardless of the potential recertification threat, the USAF remains strongly committed to the conventional take-off and landing F-35A.

Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley says the service's overall plan to buy 1,763 F-35s remains fixed, despite reductions called for under the Quadrennial Defense Review. Its future force structure is expected to total around 2,050 manned fighters, also including about 186 Lockheed F-22s.

[Ryan Ruck]

USAF May Shift F-35 In-service Date

19 Feb 2010

Just weeks after the Pentagon announced a restructuring of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the U.S. Air Force is now re-evaluating when the plane will be considered ready for service, Air Combat Command chief Gen. William Fraser said Feb. 19.

"We're taking a look at and we're re-evaluating our [initial operating capability] date and what our definition of that is," Fraser told reporters at an Air Force Association-sponsored conference here.

The general said that the restructuring, which was announced Feb. 1 by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, will extend the plane's system design and development (SDD) phase until 2015. That's two years after the air service had planned to begin operating the aircraft.

"Whenever there are adjustments in any program, you've got to go back and take a look at if all the requirements are going to be met by timeframe X or Y," said Fraser.

The general said the service is also looking at how that extension will affect the number of aircraft, trained aircrew and spare parts the service has available by 2013.

"The IOC focus is on combat capability, not on a date," he said.

Earlier this week, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said the SDD phase of the program would be one year behind schedule. And yesterday, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz told reporters that the F-35 program is likely to breach Nunn-McCurdy limits on per-unit cost growth, which would likely require a formal notice to Congress.

[Ryan Ruck]

DoD: F-35 Costs Rise At Least 50 Percent

Mar 12, 2010

The F-35 Lightning II strike fighter program will breach the Nunn-McCurdy limits with a cost growth of more than 50 percent from the original 2001 program baseline, said a top Pentagon program evaluator.

Christine Fox, director of the Defense Department’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, told lawmakers Thursday that the formal declaration of the breach will occur April 1.

She said the Pentagon has known of this since October. That’s one month earlier than had previously been reported.

The Defense Department’s latest estimates predict that each of the jets slated to be purchased will carry a price tag of between $80 million and $95 million in 2002 dollars. That's $95 million and $113 million in 2009 dollars, respectively.

In 2001, the Defense Department pegged the cost per Joint Strike Fighter at $50.2 million apiece for 2,852 jets. The Pentagon updated that estimate to $69.2 million in 2007 for a planned order of 2,443 jets.

The Pentagon expects to have a final estimate on the plane’s cost ready in early June, when it completes the Nunn-McCurdy re-certification package, Fox told the Senate Armed Services committee during a hearing.

Fox compared the F-35 program to earlier Pentagon aircraft that ultimately produced planes that are “valuable to DoD,” such as the C-17 and the F-22. She noted that F-22 “repeatedly failed to meet key performance, schedule and cost goals throughout its development program,” yet Lockheed Martin was ultimately able to produce “a capable aircraft.”

Ashton Carter, defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology, and logistics, said at the hearing that the Initial Operational Capability dates for the U.S. Air Force and Navy F-35 have been shifted to 2016, a three- and two-year delay respectively. The Marine Corps date remains 2012, he said.

The Marine aircraft will use Block 2 software, whereas the Navy and Air Force jets will use the Block 3 version.

Carter said Air Force Secretary Michael Donley would inform Congress of the breach in several days.

[Ryan Ruck]

Seeing The Elephant

3/12/2010

There was an elephant in the room at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Joint Strike Fighter yesterday, and sometime this summer it's going to take a poo on Defense Secretary Robert Gates' office carpet.

Everyone acknowledged that the unit cost has gone up a lot - almost 20 per cent since 2007, as much as 90 per cent since the program started. That 90 per cent is not an exaggeration, and does not even include the inflated systems development and demonstration (SDD) cost.

Cost assessment and program evaluation director Christine Fox said that the average procurement unit cost (APUC) - the cost of production, including overheads and non-recurring production cost, divided by the number of aircraft - was estimated at just over $50 million in 2002 and is now estimated at $80-$95 million, all in base-year dollars (pages 4-5).

The Government Accountability Office gave the same numbers in then-year dollars - $69 million at program start and $112 million today (page 6). The latter figure, a 60+ per cent increase, corresponds to Fox's low-end estimate. At the high end, in today's money, the price tag for a real JSF, including the engine, could be over $130 million.

Compare $112-$130 million to the numbers bandied about by politicians in Europe. There's some good news - the number includes more costly F-35Bs and F-35Cs -- but the chances of an F-35A coming in anywhere south of $110 million are pretty slim.

But then there is the elephant.

The numbers from Fox and the GAO are based on the on-record JSF production plans, including 2443 aircraft for the Pentagon and 700 for the existing partners, and rising to rates of 200+ aircraft per year in 2015 and beyond. This would be realistic if the customers had 60-90 per cent more inflation-adjusted dollars, euros and kroner to spend on fighters today than they did in 2001.

But they don't, so it's not. Welcome to the death spiral.

The rates and total buy are going to decline and the unit costs will rise. Production capacity will be scaled back, and the program will stabilize at a lower rate and higher unit cost. The USAF fighter force will shrink, and some of the international partners may bail completely rather than get into fighter fleets numbering in the 20s and 30s.

Boeing's going to be out there preaching the virtues of the Super Hornet, with an APUC around $80 million. The Israelis, already wobbling because of the delays, will be taking a closer look at the F-15SE. Even Rafale and Typhoon start to look cost-competitive.

Sen John McCain was trying hard yesterday to get people to acknowledge the pachyderm's presence, including Cox and acting program office director Maj Gen CD Moore, who looked as happy as a rookie lieutenant caught in the weapons instructor's no-escape zone. But nobody wanted to go to the subject of production rates.

The problem is that, so far, nobody has the data to make an accurate estimate of where the numbers will end up.

Open questions include where the services set their priorities between now and 2010, and how much they have to spend (on more Super Hornets or life-extension programs) to compensate for JSF delays with IOCs in 2016. How much overrun can the international partners stand? Will Congress will put its foot down on concurrency, further raising costs and delaying FOC? Internally, too, the program will have to figure out unit costs at different production rates.

Some of this information will emerge as Ashton Carter's office completes its Nunn-McCurdy certification exercise and the "should cost" evaluation - so, by this summer, the customers should have some numbers that they can use in their budgets. And the math says that it's not going to look very pretty for JSF.

And let's not forget the F-22 supporters. A key plank in Gates' anti-F-22 platform was the idea that the F-35 was going to be far cheaper than the F-22, but yesterday the gap between the two aircraft became much narrower. Politically, the bad news is going to get a lot of play.

It all makes this report from Wednesday look like the Dewey Defeats Truman of aerospace market analysis.

[Ryan Ruck]

Internal Pentagon Memo Predicts That F-35 Testing Won't Be Complete Until 2016

March 1, 2010

An internal Defense Department document that surfaced Monday confirms that the Pentagon's own in-house cost, testing and manufacturing experts were much more pessimistic than top officials about the time and expense it will take to fix the badly lagging F-35 joint strike fighter development program.

The memorandum by Ashton Carter, the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer, spells out details of the F-35 program restructuring that Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a month ago.

After a number of studies and analysis by internal Pentagon experts, Carter and Gates settled on a plan for adding $2.8 billion to the development budget in 2011 and extending the timeline by 13 months. That means they don't expect all of the major flight and other testing of the airplane and its systems to be completed until about the end of 2014, if all goes well.

But the Pentagon's in-house Joint Estimating Team (JET II), comprising technical, testing and cost analysts, submitted a review in the fall that predicted at least 30 more months to complete testing, or not until mid-2016. In 2008, a similar group (JET I) predicted a 24-month delay and cost increases of $7.4 billion.

Carter's Acquisition Decision Memorandum, which amounts to a formal policy directive, acknowledged the more pessimistic forecast. But what Carter called "a revised JET II" estimate was made that took into account the increased funding and accelerated flight testing envisioned in his plan. That reduced the testing schedule delay to 13 months.

"I believe this revised estimate is a credible and realistic basis for the JSF program plan, and while the restructuring will likely be able to mitigate the slip from 30 months to 13 months, the contractor [Lockheed] will be incentivized to improve on the revised JET II schedule and cost further," Carter said in the memo, which was issued last week.

Tom Christie, former director of the weapons testing office and longtime veteran of internal Pentagon acquisition battles, said he's been told that lower level officials were not happy with Carter's decision to adopt the more optimistic scenario.

"They thought that 30 months was pretty optimistic," Christie said, but Carter "let Lockheed and the [F-35 program manager's] office talk him into adopting their plan."

Christie said he's dubious about the program meeting even the extended timeline because so little testing has been completed "and they haven't even gotten to all the hard stuff like avionics and software. That's where we got into trouble with the F-22."

Carter's decision puts off "full-rate production" of the F-35 until at least November 2015, when all development and early operational testing are to have been completed and reports submitted to the Pentagon. Lockheed is still expected to get significant plane orders each year before then, including 30 this year and at least 43 in the 2011 budget.

Lockheed officials have acknowledged that they are, on average, about six months behind a schedule revised in 2008 for delivering and testing airplanes. Other internal Pentagon documents, as the Star-Telegram reported Monday, show that as recently as mid-November production problems were worsening, not getting better.

Lockheed spokesmen did not respond to a request for comment.

The Air Force conceded last week that it won't have F-35s ready for operations until 2015; its previous expectation was 2013.

More bad news about the F-35 is expected in the coming weeks.

A formal Pentagon cost estimate, due soon, may show the F-35 is breaching congressional budget rules. And the Government Accountability Office, which has for years predicted that Lockheed would not be able to meet schedules and budgets, is due to deliver its 2010 report on the program to Congress.

[Ryan Ruck]

NavAir Admiral Tapped To Run JSF Program

16 Mar 2010

A three-star U.S. Navy admiral has been nominated to take over the troubled Joint Strike Fighter program, the Pentagon announced March 16.

Vice Adm. David Venlet, who runs Naval Air Systems Command in Patuxent River, Md., was nominated to lead the joint program office that is developing the F-35 Lightning II, the most expensive procurement program in Pentagon history.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the previous program manager, Marine Maj. Gen. David Heinz, in February.

Venlet, a former F-14 Tomcat pilot, has engineering degrees from the Naval Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School. He is also former test pilot at the Naval Air Test Center in Maryland.

The F-35 program and its lead contractor, Lockheed Martin, have been criticized in recent months for cost overruns and schedule delays.

The Pentagon plans to purchase more than 2,400 F-35s for use in the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

[Ryan Ruck]

Australia Unruffled By F-35 Delays

19 Mar 2010

Australia's minister for defense, Sen. John Faulkner, is unruffled by the latest cost and schedule difficulties afflicting the Joint Strike Fighter program. And senior defense officials in Canberra say they believe that Australia's plans to acquire up to 100 F-35A Lightning II aircraft aren't much affected by the JSF project's cost overruns.

That's because of budget and schedule buffers built into the Royal Australian Air Force's New Air Combat Capability (NACC) program, which is buying the planes, he said.

A senior defense official in Canberra said March 18 that Australia's budget for the program, and the timing of its orders, are based on the NACC program office's own independent estimates of the JSF program's cost and schedule. These take into account the estimates from the Joint Program Office in Washington and from Lockheed Martin, the JSF's prime contractor, but they include a contingency margin, he said.

So the NACC program office's conservative estimates mean that Australia doesn't really need to take any action or change any of its plans as a result of the JSF program's Nunn-McCurdy breach.

In a March 12 statement, Faulkner stood by the F-35A, calling it the right choice for the RAAF, and saying that it will enable the Australian Defence Force to keep "a strategic air combat capability advantage" until 2030.

"As with all highly complex and cutting-edge projects, risks are to be expected," Faulkner said. "The Australian government's staged acquisition strategy for the JSF includes significant cost and schedule buffers to deal with project risks which will ensure initial operational capability in 2018 is met."

The F-35s will replace the RAAF's 24 F-111C strike aircraft, which are due to retire at the end of this year, and its 71 "classic" F/A-18 Hornet fighters.

Sources declined to discuss the purchasing plans of other JSF partner nations. But a senior official said that if a partner nation withdraws from the JSF production program, it can't count on maintaining its existing workshare in the project, and the other partners would be very unhappy at the prospect of other nations enjoying the industry benefits of the JSF program without actually buying the aircraft themselves.

In November, Australia became the first of the eight JSF partner nations to order the warplane, announcing a 3.2 billion Australian dollar ($2.9 billion) purchase of 14 F-35As, along with initial training and support infrastructure. These are the first of 72 aircraft the RAAF plans to purchase under a combined Phase 2A and 2B of the NACC project, code-named Air 6000.

Those first 14 jets will be delivered beginning in 2014, with 10 remaining in the United States for training and operational testing and four F-35s scheduled to reach Australia in 2017. The RAAF plans to declare Initial Operational Capability (IOC) in 2018, and its third squadron will be operational in 2020-21.

"Approval of the next batch of aircraft and all necessary support and enabling capabilities, sufficient to establish three operational squadrons, will be considered in 2012," said Faulkner's deputy, Greg Combet, the defense materiel, personnel and science minister.

On March 18, Combet told students and faculty at Australia's Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies, at the Australian Defence College in Canberra, "This will fulfill our [2009 Defence] white paper commitment to acquire three operational squadrons comprising not fewer than 72 aircraft."

According to senior RAAF sources, Phase 2C of Project Air 6000 will acquire the balance of the F-35s, bringing the total up to 100. Funding approval for this is scheduled for the latter part of the next decade.

However, the RAAF's original schedule for Project Air 6000 stated an IOC of 2015. On that basis, the service's "classic" F/A-18 Hornets, which recently have been upgraded, were scheduled to retire by 2018.

Last year, a program to replace their center fuselage sections was cancelled at a saving of some 400 million Australian dollars because the aircraft had sufficient service life remaining until 2018. But if they are now required to serve a further two years, some of them may require a center barrel replacement to ensure their structural integrity.

Meanwhile, as a hedge against delays in the JSF program in 2007, Australia's then-defense minister, Brendan Nelson, announced a 6 billion Australian dollar order for 24 F/A-18F Super Hornets. The first four of the two-seat warplanes are due to arrive at the RAAF's Amberley base, near Brisbane, at the end of this month, where they will replace the service's aging F-111C strike aircraft.

The Super Hornets are intended to serve for 10 years before being sold back to the U.S. Navy, replaced in turn by the final batch of F-35s under Phase 2C of Project Air 6000.

[Ryan Ruck]

Critics: Time To Bail On Navy JSF

Mar 22, 2010

Is it the beginning of the end for the Navy’s F-35C?

A steady string of bad news for the Joint Strike Fighter program — which includes the Navy’s carrier variant — has some observers suggesting the service abandon its plans to purchase more than 300 of the fifth-generation jets to fill out the future fighter fleet.

The alternative: Continue buying F/A-18E/F Super Hornets from Boeing that have been on carrier decks for almost a decade.

“I think the Navy needs to walk away from the F-35C based on affordability concerns and continue with the Super Hornet,” said one congressional aide who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is still being intensely debated on Capitol Hill.

Navy support for the F-35C suffered in mid-March, when Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the service is open to buying more Super Hornets. The Navy had planned to stop buying Super Hornets in 2013 with the intention of replenishing the fighter fleet with JSFs starting in 2014.

[Ryan Ruck]

Denmark Bails From JSF – Report

3/15/2010

Denmark's defense ministry is ready to recommend designating the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet as its next fighter, in place of the delayed and more expensive F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, according to a report on Danish radio.

According to the report, the Danish decision has been in the works for some months and currently awaits an auditor's review before being forwarded to the full government and to parliament. The Gripen NG has also been ruled out - not a big surprise to Saab, which has scaled back its campaign in Denmark.

Uncertainty about the country's choice of the JSF has risen in recent months, in the context of the program's own difficulties and a recent series of major government procurements gone awry: EH101 Merlin helicopters which were sold back to the UK, Sagen Sperwer UAVs deactivated and sold to Canada, and the much delayed IC4 high-speed train project.

Denmark is also likely to delay both its decision and the delivery date for new fighters, which are expected to enter service in 2017-18. Delays to JSF and the Pentagon's continued consideration of a further multi-year Super Hornet buy mean that the Boeing fighter is more likely to stay in production until then, and extend its retirement date.

[Ryan Ruck]

Lockheed F-35 Is 62% Over Cost, Document, Data Show

March 19, 2010

Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 jet fighter, the Pentagon’s most expensive program, has risen about 62 percent in cost and is four years behind schedule, according to Pentagon documents and new data.

Production of the airplane was projected to cost an estimated $143 billion for 2,852 aircraft when it began in 2002. The Department of Defense now says it will cost as much as $232 billion for 2,443 aircraft when calculated in 2002 dollars, according to figures released today.

Development and testing, originally to be finished in March 2012, won’t be done until April 2016, the documents say. Full production of the planes also has been delayed four years from what was once an April 2012 date.

The delays and cost growth stem from a wing redesign, inefficient production, delays in parts deliveries by suppliers and test problems, according to Lockheed Martin, Congress’s Government Accountability Office and Pentagon officials.

“We are clearly not comfortable with the program’s cost growth and development delay,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said in an e-mail today. That is why Defense Secretary Robert Gates “made the difficult choice to dramatically restructure the program and he did so earlier than normal.”

‘Successful Aircraft’

Still, “There is nothing broken with the aircraft development,” and the plane “will be a very capable, successful aircraft,” Morrell said.

While a new GAO report gives the Pentagon credit for taking corrective measures, it said that under the current plan through 2014 the military plans to buy as many as 307 aircraft at an estimated cost of $58.2 billion “before development flight test is completed.”

“Risks are manifold -- mounting cost and schedule pressure, complex, extensive and unproven software requirements and a nascent, very aggressive test program that continues to experience significant delays,” the GAO said. “Given all these challenges, moving forward with the current plan for ramping up production does not seen prudent.”

Lockheed Martin spokesman Chris Geisel said in an e-mail, “There are several factors that have extended the program since 2001. When all of these are integrated, it is difficult to provide an exact comparison of original milestones to current program projections.”

The biggest factor was a 2004 decision for a wing redesign of the Marine Corps’ short-takeoff and vertical landing version to reduce the weight by more than 3,500 pounds, Geisel said.

Retooling and Redesign

“Every part of the aircraft was reanalyzed,” Geisel said. The redesign required retooling and distribution of 400,000 drawings to subcontractors, he said.

Delays by parts suppliers added two years to the production timetable and $5 billion to the cost, the Pentagon said in 2004.

The F-35 is designed for missions including bombing and air-to-air combat, and it will be used by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. It will replace such aircraft as the F-16 and A-10 and Harrier aircraft flown by the Marines and the U.K.

The program’s delays are being closely watched by eight partner nations contributing $4.4 billion of their own funds for development, including the U.K., Turkey, Italy, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. The allies plan to purchase at least 730 aircraft after Lockheed Martin enters full production.

Another factor is the F-35’s promise of 80 percent common parts to keep costs down for the three versions under development, Morrell said.

Three Variants

“Everyone counted on the three variants having more commonality in the original estimates than they do in the reality of building them,” he said.

The Air Force and Navy plan to declare their first combat- ready squadrons in 2016. That’s five years behind an original June 2011 Air Force date and four after the April 2012 Navy goal, according to program documents listing original milestones. The Marine Corps’s April 2012 date is two years off the original schedule.

The Defense Contract Management Agency in a November report said the program was revising the fifth version of its flight test schedule.

In spite of the cost growth and four-year delay “there is no alternative for the plane,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the industry-funded Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia.

“It is too late to start over because Cold War planes are getting old and there is no reason to believe that if we did start over, the results would be better,” Thompson said. “The Pentagon has got to bite the bullet and make this program produce.”

Lockheed Martin shares rose 65 cents to $86.59 in composite trading at 2:40 p.m. on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares have increased almost 27 percent in the last 12 months.