F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Becoming A Target for Cost Cutters (excerpt)

June 3, 2011 defense-aerospace.com

(Source: Politico; published June 2, 2011)

It’s the Pentagon’s largest acquisitions program — an ambitious effort to re-equip the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps with the latest stealth fighter technology designed to maintain U.S. air superiority over the next 25 years.

But the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has already become a target before it has even faced an enemy in the air, and many of its wounds are self-inflicted: The program is years behind schedule and now estimated to cost $1 trillion. And the delays have forced the military to buy upgraded versions of older aircraft to fill the gaps.

Lawmakers are questioning whether the U.S. military needs 2,400 advanced jets that cost an estimated $133 million each and are more expensive to maintain than current warplanes while the Pentagon is under intense pressure to reduce spending and recover from 10 years of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.

They aren’t alone. A commission appointed by President Barack Obama to study ways to reduce the national debt recommended in December that $9.5 billion could be saved through fiscal year 2015 by replacing about half of planned F-35 purchases with newer models of current fighters. The commission contended the military did not need that many fighters with the capabilities of the F-35.

The commission also recommended canceling the Marine Corps short takeoff/vertical landing version of the F-35, which has been plagued by technical problems, cost overruns and schedule delays. Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates put that part of the program on probation, threatening to cancel it if the problems aren’t quickly solved.

“The facts regarding this program are truly troubling,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said at a May 19 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the F-35 program.

Describing the $1 trillion cost of the program as “a jaw-dropping amount,” the former Navy carrier pilot said, “We need to know that the program is going to bring that number down.”

Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition Ashton Carter told lawmakers at the hearing that the Pentagon would review the program to see whether costs can be reduced, with a goal of shaving 10 percent to 30 percent off the $1 trillion figure.

“That’s what it’s going to cost if we keep doing what we’re doing. And that’s unacceptable. It’s unaffordable at that rate,” he said.

The F-35 program, which began in 2001, survived previous rounds of cost-cutting, which ended similar big-ticket weapons programs such as the F-22 fighter, because the military needs to replace current fighters, which are on average 20 to 30 years old and are approaching the end of their service lives. Pentagon officials argue that the F-35’s advanced technology is needed to counter the threat posed by China’s rapid advances in capability.

“We must field a next-generation strike fighter — the F-35 — and at a cost that permits large enough numbers to replace the current fighter inventory and maintain a healthy margin of superiority over the Russians and Chinese,” Gates said in a May 24 speech to the American Enterprise Institute.

A Chinese stealth fighter, the J-20, made its first test flight in January while Gates was visiting Beijing. Some analysts suspect the technology was at least in part stolen from the F-35 program, raising fears that China would benefit from the program’s innovations before the United States and its allies. (end of excerpt)

Click here for the full story, on the Politico website.