A House panel is largely supporting the Pentagon’s proposal for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, which the military already has called for slowing to allow for more-complete testing.
The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) will weigh policy-setting legislation for the Pentagon next week that, for the most part, backs its $9 billion request for the multi-service, multi-nation fighter jet. The show of support from the House comes Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.)–whose panel will craft its own version of the Pentagon policy bill next month–continues to voice concerns about the possibility of additional F-35 cost overruns and technical problems in the future.
“There continue to be major concerns with the (F-35) program, but the committee supports the requirement for a 5th generation stealth fighter due to projected increases in the effectiveness, quantities, and proliferation of threat anti-aircraft systems,” Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) said last Friday as the HASC subcommittee he chairs approved legislation authorizing $9 billion for the F-35 effort. That funding, from the HASC’s Air and Land Forces subcommittee, supports the number of aircraft the Pentagon wants while tweaking the program proposal only slightly.
Bartlett noted HASC members in past years expressed concern with the F-35 production plan being too aggressive, considering “lagging technology development, insufficient flight testing, and design instability.”
Yet he said the Pentagon has “now done what the committee advocated several years ago:” proposed reducing the number of F-35s it procures until research and development issues are better resolved in testing, so it doesn’t have to modify too many aircraft already built.
The FY ’13 budget request the Pentagon released in February seeks to restructure the Lockheed Martin [LMT] program, cutting $15.1 billion in previously planned spending by delaying the purchase of 179 F-35s over the next five years. Pentagon officials say they fully support the F-35 effort but believe it has too much concurrency, or overlapping aircraft testing and purchasing. The military stands by long-term plans to buy 2,443 F-35s for the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.
In the Senate, F-35 concerns have consistently been raised by McCain and, to a lesser extent, SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.).
McCain quizzed Frank Kendall, President Barack Obama’s nominee to be the next Pentagon acquisition chief, during his March 29 confirmation hearing about the potential for more F-35 cost overruns beyond $150 billion already incurred. He told Kendall to describe to the SASC in writing what potential “additional cost overruns associated with the development of this aircraft” might be.
Meanwhile, the HASC Air and Land Forces subcommittee approved its portion of the FY ’13 defense authorization bill last Friday without amending it during a markup session. The legislation, released last Thursday, calls for adding funding to the Pentagon’s budget to prevent a temporary shutdown of General Dynamics’ [GD] M1 Abrams tank and BAE Systems’ Bradley Fighting Vehicle’s production lines. It would prevent the Pentagon from shutting down Northrop Grumman’s [NOC] Global Hawk Block 30 program, while adding funding for additional vehicle and aircraft programs (Defense Daily, April 27).
The HASC’s Readiness subcommittee also approved its portion of the authorization bill last Friday without amending it. The subpanel’s measure, notably, would prevent the Navy from retiring three of the four CG-47 cruisers it wants to put to rest early in FY ’13.
Readiness Chairman Randy Forbes (R-Va.) said he is “concerned about the Navy’s overall fleet size and sustained demand for naval forces, particularly in light of the strategic rebalancing to the Pacific.”
“The Navy told us in testimony last year, “The cheapest way to afford our Navy with the force structure that we need is to maintain the ships that we already have,’” he said. “As such, by prohibiting (Department of Defense) DoD expenditure of funds on the retirement, deactivation or preparation to retire these assets–and by restoring the necessary funding–we expect the Navy to properly maintain and modernize these critical assets.”
The HASC will mark up the entire authorization bill May 9, after this week’s congressional recess.
Aides said they expect partisan fighting over the size of the defense budget during the full-committee bill-writing session. While varied figures are circulated in Washington for the size of military budget plans, some aides say the HASC’s plan would deal the Pentagon $4 billion more than it proposed. The HASC is using the Pentagon topline figure in the House-approved FY ’13 budget resolution, which calls for a $554.2 billion defense budget.
The full committee also will address matters not covered last week by the seven subcommittees. For example, it is expected to call for some reforms proposed by the HASC’s Panel on Business Challenges in the Defense Industry, which wants the Pentagon to help maintain the industrial base, improve communication with industry, and revamp its acquisition processes (Defense Daily, March 22).