Early Warning on JSF Delays

Aviation Week and Space Technology ^ | 2/7/2011 | Bill Sweetman

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

This morning, Graham Warwick and Amy Butler's story on detailed changes to the F-35 flight test program goes live on the Check Six page.

Highlights: Development testing is not now due to be completed until October 2016, completion being marked by the end of testing on Block 3 software. The new program will include 7,800 flights, restoring the 2,000 test sorties that the JSF Program Office cut in 2007. See the full story for more detail.

In total, this represents a five-year delay since the program started. To take a more recent benchmark: in September 2008, the schedule called for Block 3 development testing to be finished in mid-2013, five years away. Today, that milestone is more than five-and-a-half years off: in short, the JSF program has gone six to nine months backwards in just over two years.

According to the Government Accountability Office's testimony of last March, development costs in then-year dollars had increased from a baseline of $34.4 billion on 2001 to $49.3 billion by that time. This was revised upwards to $50.8 billion as part of last year's Nunn-McCurdy review. The latest extension will cost an additional $4.6 billion, bringing the total overrun to $21 billion or 61 percent.

Cost overruns that equal the total cost of many large development programs may come as a shock, but they are not much of a surprise to JSF program director VAdm David Venlet.

[snowrip]

It’s time for a new procurement model.

[Blood of Tyrants]

The new program will include 7,800 flights, restoring the 2,000 test sorties that the JSF Program Office cut in 2007.

Good LORD! 7,800 TEST FLIGHTS? This sounds more like a way for Lockheed Martin to milk the system for as many billions of dollars as possible than a reasonable test program. Jeez, what if we had needed the F-35 for a war against a first class opponent? Would the Pentagon and Lockheed be content to spend $20 billion more dollars and wait another 5-7 years for the fighter to come online?

I have been saying for many years that our weapons procurement system is VERY broken. I suspect that it is now no more than a jobs program for highly connected retired generals and former political operatives.