The heads of a Senate panel called yesterday for examining alternatives to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as Pentagon officials acknowledged the program’s current costs are too high.
Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) that price projections–showing that over the life of the program the per-aircraft cost of 2,443 F-35s has doubled in real terms–are “unacceptable.”
“It’s unaffordable at that rate,” Carter testified on Capitol Hill. “And that cost growth has been in every aspect of the production of the airplane: the air frame, the engine and so forth. And it’s just too much.” He emphasized concerns about sustainment costs of the aircraft, which is being developed for all the military services and eight partner nations.
Still, he insisted there is no alternative to the F-35. Pentagon leadership has increased oversight and control of the program, which is undergoing a “should-cost” analysis that scrutinizes every aspect of the airplane and work by prime contractor Lockheed Martin [LMT], subcontractors, and suppliers. The Pentagon recently delayed the start of full-rate F-35 production by a year, and put the Marine Corps’ short-takeoff/vertical-landing (STOVL) variant on a two-year “probation” period to work out technical kinks.
SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) told Carter the committee wants more details on cost-saving efforts for the F-35’s sustainment and “backup plans if these goals, targets are not met.”
“We need to know what the driver is to succeed here and part of that driver is to have a backup plan,” Levin said, adding “a number of senators” want that data.
SASC Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he is “deeply disturbed” the Pentagon has not achieved more progress in controlling the F-35’s cost overruns.
“It seems to me we have to start at least considering alternatives,” McCain said. “If the situation right now is not acceptable, we have to do two things, it seems to me: make it acceptable, but also think of alternatives if we cannot do that.”
McCain added he sees the F-35 program as being at a “watershed moment,” where officials must prove the aircraft can be delivered on time and budget because of the “austere defense budgets for as far as the eye can see.”
Carter maintained that the Pentagon “didn’t come up with any better alternatives to the Joint Strike Fighter” during a so-called Nunn-McCurdy review triggered by an F-35 cost breach.
“We want it,” he said. “At the same time, it has to be affordable, and at the moment in its projections it’s not. I think we’re determined to make it affordable, and those who are performing the work for us share in that objective.”
The Pentagon now estimates the average cost per aircraft is $95 million in fiscal year 2002 dollars, up from an estimate last year of $80 million derived by the F-35 program office, according to Christine Fox, director of the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office. The CAPE last year estimated the $95 million cost, in FY ’02 dollars, but had to analyze whether it’s figure or the program office’s estimate was most accurate. That current per-unit F-35 cost, adjusted for inflation, is $133 million in FY ’11 dollars.
Fox told the SASC an in-depth technical-baseline review of the F-35–which program manager Navy Vice Adm. David Venlet started after taking control of the troubled aircraft effort last year–has given Pentagon leaders much more accurate cost data.
According to the technical-baseline review, Fox said, the CAPE now estimates the F-35’s development will take an additional one and a half years and cost $4.5 billion more than was estimated in the spring of 2010.
The two main factors that increased the development cost and schedule, she said, are the price of integrating software and mission systems and the cost of the Marine Corps’ STOVL variant. Problems with the STOVL aircraft accounts for roughly 40 percent of the increase in development cost, she said.
The CAPE estimates the costs to operate and sustain the F-35 are less than those for the F-22 fighter jet, roughly the same as those for the F-15C/D, and more than those for the F-15 and F-18.
“Given the significant increase in capability, it is not unreasonable that JSF costs more to operate and sustain than some legacy aircraft,” Fox said. “However, the fact that it will cost about 33 percent more to operate JSF relative to the F-16 and F-18 aircraft it is replacing gives the department a significant bill.”
Both McCain and Levin talked at yesterday’s hearing about wanting the Pentagon to seek more savings from Lockheed Martin.
The Pentagon plans to release a new baseline cost estimate for the F-35 program later this month, following a Defense Acquisition Board review. Updated dates for when the aircraft are pegged to reach initial operational capability also are expected.