The next time the Pentagon tries to build a strike fighter, it probably won’t be a joint effort. The experience of the F-35 appears to have soured the Defense Department on building variants of an aircraft, if you believe recent comments to Congress by an Air Force official.
Asked about lessons learned at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing late last week, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said the decision years ago to build a three-variant aircraft in the Joint Strike Fighter became a “complicated” issue.
“One of the big questions is, do you try and produce a joint program in an area that has this many products you’re trying to deliver?” Welsh said. “Three different versions of the same thing with different sets of requirements has made this very complicated.”
There were other lessons to be taken away from the program, of course. The most obvious is concurrency, or the practice of developing and producing an aircraft at the same time.
Welsh said the decision to re-baseline the program in 2011 turned out to be a success, and the Pentagon also needs to learn what it did right there.
“We need to look at the re-baseline that occurred in 2011 and look at what has worked from 2011 until today and why has it worked, because for the last three, almost three years now, we have been firmly on track with this program,” he said. “[Lockheed Martin] has met guidelines. Price curves are falling along projected lines. We know what the airplane costs. We’re operating the airplane. It’s moving along well. I’m very confident in where the F-35 is today.”