By Emelie Rutherford

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program’s cost decreased slightly over the final months of 2007, and the effort did not experience a significant cost breach during that time requiring congressional involvement, according to a Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) on the delayed and over-budget effort.

The JSF program’s SAR, released by the Pentagon late yesterday, covers changes from September to December 2007.

The report says JSF program costs decreased by $981.3 million–from $299.8 billion to $298.8 billion–over the three-month period. That is “due primarily to the application of revised escalation indices,…lower material estimates because of prime contractor’s material agreements…and incorporation of revised prime/subcontractor labor rates,” a Pentagon statement says.

“There was an additional reduction for a revised estimate of support costs,” the release says. “These decreases were partially offset by higher estimates for elements of procurement nonrecurring costs, … an adjustment to reflect manufacturing actuals for the System Demonstration and Development (SDD) flight test articles … and a revised propulsion estimate to include additional hardware and increased lift fan cost,” the statement says.

“Overall, it should be noted that the Nunn-McCurdy unit costs are stable relative to the current and original baseline estimates,” it states.

JSF program officials are awaiting a memo from Pentagon acquisition executive John Young on whether he will allow the program to enter Low Rate Initial Production II. Sources predict he will give the green light for production of six conventional-takeoff-and-landing (CTOL) prototypes and for long-lead items for additional aircraft. The Defense Acquisition Board that Young heads considered the matter March 26. The Government Accountability Office released a report last month that said JSF’s cost has increased by more than $23 billion over the past year because of a seven-year program extension, future price increase and increases in the price of materials (Defense Daily, March 12). Pentagon officials disputed the GAO report when it was released.

The first test JSF–intended for CTOL flight–is in flight testing, after being grounded for several months last year. The delayed F-35B short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (STOVL) variant aircraft for the Marine Corps is expected to fly its first test flight–in a conventional mode–next month.

The JSF program–which is developing variants for the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy–is the Air Force’s largest acquisition program.

Lockheed Martin [LMT] is developing the F-35 with partners Northrop Grumman [NOC] and BAE Systems. Pratt & Whitney [UXT] is developing the JSF’s F135 engine, and a team made up of General Electric [GE] and Rolls-Royce is developing a second engine–the F136.

The SARs released yesterday show cost, schedule and technical-status changes with 96 major defense acquisition programs, with data as of December 2007.

Three programs have “significant” Nunn-McCurdy unit cost breaches, where costs increased by at least 15 percent: the Advanced Extremely High Frequency Satellite, Javelin, and the Joint Tactical Radio System Ground Mobile Radios efforts, a Pentagon statement says.

For “significant” Nunn-McCurdy breaches, notification and unit-cost breach information will be provided to the Congress. The Pentagon, however, is not required to go through the process of re-certifying the three programs, as it must for programs experiencing greater cost increases.