The head of a Senate panel that will quiz Pentagon leaders on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter on Wednesday said he wants to air developments with the program that he learned in private briefings.
Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee (SAC-D) Chairman Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) said no specific scandal or new revelation prompted him to call the hearing on the multi-service, multi-nation fighter jet program currently pegged to cost $391 billion.
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| Photo by Lockheed Martin |
“I have met with the service branches as well as the private contractors, but I think it’s time to have a public hearing and ask some of the same questions, so it will be on the record,” Durbin told Defense Daily Monday.
“We need to really ask and answer some questions, because I think we’ve learned some lessons here, about what works and what doesn’t, how to save money, how to deal with acquisitions in an age where technology changes so quickly,” he said.
Durbin noted he is still relatively new to the position of SAC-D chairman, and thus is looking at Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] F-35 effort with a somewhat fresh perspective. Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall told reporters last Thursday that the F-35 program is on track to ramp up production as planned in in two years “unless there is a significant surprise” (Defense Daily, June 14). Kendall, though, acknowledged there still is “plenty of risk” in the ambitious program, which still needs significant testing and development in aerodynamics, software, and weaponry.
Durbin previously expressed concern about the amount of concurrency with the F-35 program, when the aircraft are developed and built at the same time–a process that requires costly retrofits of the early-production models. The Wednesday hearing comes as the SAC-D is writing its version of the fiscal year 2014 defense appropriations bill and as Durbin is researching defense-acquisition reforms (Defense Daily, June 12).
“This whole concurrency issue is controversial and it deserves to be taken a look at, because it’s very expensive,” Durbin told reporters June 11. “They’ve found that this test-as-you-buy adds time and cost to the process. So I’m open to some ideas on it.”
He said at the time the SAC-D was holding the F-35 because it is “exhibit A because of its cost.”
Still, Durbin talked on Monday about the need to allow long-term weapons programs to be updated to reflect new technology.
“We have to be flexible enough to absorb the new technology to keep our troops safe and America safe, and when it comes to the F-35 , this is the most ambitious technological undertaking since the space program,” he said.
Durbin said the main thing he wants to learn on Wednesday is how “to save money and get the job done.”
The SAC-D will hear Wednesday during the first part of the F-35 hearing from Kendall, F-35 Program Executive Officer Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, and Assistant Marine Corps Commandant Gen. John Paxton. The subcommittee then will hear from a second panel comprised of Defense Director of Operational Test and Evaluation Michael Gilmore, Government Accountability Office Director of Acquisition and Sourcing Management Michael Sullivan, and Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon.
Congress has called for only slight changes to the Pentagon’s F-35 proposal for FY ’14 in the defense bills making their way through the congressional approval process.
The FY ’14 defense authorization bill that the House passed last Friday and the version of the policy legislation the Senate Armed Services Committee approved last Thursday both support the Pentagon’s request to buy 29 F-35s in FY ’14. The defense authorizers still call for added oversight, such as a provision in the House bill requiring the Pentagon task an independent team with reviewing the development of F-35 software.
The FY ’14 defense appropriations bill the House Appropriations Committee approved last Wednesday also supports buying 29 F-35s, but cuts $617.8 million from the Pentagon’s funding request. The reduction is intended to “address unjustified cost growth and unjustified concurrency estimates for the program,” HAC Defense Subcommittee (HAC-D) Ranking Member Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.) said.