By Marina Malenic
Lockheed Martin [LMT] will “share” in the anticipated cost overruns of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the Defense Department’s top acquisition official said yesterday.
“We don’t want to be in a situation where the government bears the cost of schedule slips in a program all by itself,” Ashton Carter, under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told reporters at the Pentagon. “It’s reasonable that risk in a program be shared equitably.”
Earlier this month, the Pentagon acknowledged that its special assessment team has once again found that the F-35 program is at risk of significant cost increases. The Joint Estimating Team’s latest cost projection for the program “contain roughly the same figures and projections as last year’s JET estimate,” Carter said yesterday.
The earlier estimate, as reported by the Government Accountability Office early last year, indicates that the $300 billion program may end up costing the government some $16.6 billion more than budgeted.
Carter, who met with top F-35 program managers and Lockheed Martin officials over the weekend, said he is weighing options for mitigating the anticipated cost growth and further program slips. He said the F-35 flight test program could be “compressed” by quickly manufacturing additional test aircraft to iron out any pending technical difficulties sooner. Another option, he said, is adding personnel to the program’s software design team to finish that work more quickly.
Each of these options would rely on putting more money into the program up front in hopes of avoiding further cost overruns down the road.
“I think both the government and Lockheed should be prepared to share in those investments,” Carter said.
He added that his goal is to is to keep cost growth “somewhere in between” the JET’s projections and the F-35 program office’s aim of zero growth.
“I would like to do what we can to manage the program differently so that we get a better outcome” than the JET estimate, he said.
Lockheed Martin officials did not return calls for comment by press time.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates earlier this year decided to cancel additional F-22 production, instead putting all the department’s money on the F-35. The airplane is expected to enter service with the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. Several allied nations have also signed on to the effort to build three separate models of the stealthy fifth- generation fighter.
Meanwhile, Japan is moving closer to signing on to purchase the conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) version of the F-35 to replace its aging fighter fleet. A U.S. official familiar with the Japanese deliberations told Defense Daily that “the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force has essentially decided it wants the F-35A now that it appears the F- 22 is out of reach.” The official added, however, that the recent election results in Japan “may delay issuance of a request for proposal and final decision.”
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter model with short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) capability last week began preparations for its first vertical landing tests at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. The F-35B, which is expected to replace the Marine Corps AV-8B STOVL fighters, F/A-18 strike fighters and EA-6B electronic attack aircraft, will perform a series of short takeoffs, hovers and vertical landings over the course of the next several weeks.
The U.K.’s Royal Air Force and Royal Navy and the Italian Air Force and Navy are also committed to purchasing the F-35B.
The F-35B flight test schedule has slipped several times. According to the program office, the airplane is now scheduled to be flown in STOVL mode–the most technically risky aspect of the testing–sometime next month.