Australia announced it is delaying its first big order of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters as other nations question if they can afford their current plans for the stealth jets.
Australian Defense Minister Stephen Smith told reporters yesterday that the two-year delay in buying the 12 aircraft will save his country up to $2.1 billion as it seeks to control its budget.
Smith portrayed the change in F-35 plans as akin to the Pentagon’s decision to delay procurement of the aircraft to allow kinks to be worked out in testing. The Pentagon’s fiscal year 2013 budget request seeks to cut $15.1 billion in previously planned spending by delaying the purchase of 179 F-35s over the next five years, which reduces the FY ’13 buy by 13 aircraft.
“We are now essentially on the same time timetable for delivery of our first batch of joint strike fighters as the United States,” Smith said, according to Reuters. The Australian official said he spoke to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta about his country’s F-35 decision.
Eight nations are helping to fund development of the Lockheed Martin [LMT] aircraft. Partners including The Netherlands and Italy have reduced their orders, and debate continues in other countries about whether they can afford their planned purchases. Just this week the head of the Royal Canadian Air Force testified before a parliamentary committee that Canada’s military can still afford to buy 65 F-35s for $9 billion, despite skepticism within the government.
Panetta has talked to his counterparts in other nations about the F-35, which the Pentagon stands behind. Smith told reporters in Australia that he assured Panetta his country’s change of plans for the fifth-generation fighter jets would not impact the newly enhanced military ties between the two nations.
In Congress, lawmakers continue to scrutinize the Pentagon’s revamped F-35 plans. The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) will hold one of its final budget hearings next Tuesday, with the focus being on the F-35. The SASC Airland subcommittee hearing, which had previously been scheduled for April 24, will include Vice Adm. David Venlet, the F-35’s program executive officer. Two weeks after the hearing, on May 22, the Airland panel will craft its portion of the FY ’13 defense authorization bill in closed session. Subcommittee Chairman Joseph Lieberman (I/D-Conn.) has generally been supportive of the F-35, though SASC Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) has consistently criticized the program’s management and rising costs.
The House Armed Services Committee (HASC), meanwhile, is expected to largely endorse the Pentagon’s current F-35 plans when it marks up its version of the Pentagon authorization legislation next Wednesday.
The HASC’s Air and Land Forces subcommittee approved an early version of the bill last Friday that largely back’s the Pentagon’s $9 billion F-35 proposal. The panel, though, did call for trimming the Pentagon’s $293.4 million request for advance-procurement monies for future F-35s by $64 million, according to a memo sent to HASC Democrats.
Air and Land Forces subcommittee Chairman Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) said last Friday that 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.”
HASC members in the past were concerned about the Pentagon’s F-35 production plan being too aggressive, considering “lagging technology development, insufficient flight testing, and design instability,” Bartlett noted. Yet he said the Pentagon, by reducing the number of F-35s it procures until research and development issues are better resolved in testing, has done what the HASC previously wanted.