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Last week, Pentaton officials formalized the restructuring of the Lockeed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, extending the current SSD test phase by 13 months to November 2015. The IOC of the F-35 is now expected in late 2015 as well, two years later than originally planned. Today, U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley told reporters that a major cost overrun, triggering a Nunn-McCurdy budget limit breach, is probable. “We’ve been taking all the mitigating and corrective actions we would take as if there were a Nunn-McCurdy breach,” Donley says. “But, exactly what the parameters of that might look like...

You probably thought when Secretary of Defense Bob Gates killed the Lockheed Martin F-22 last year, it was a good thing for the F-35. I'm not so sure anymore. I think Gates simply shifted everyone's target. As the MOST EXPENSIVE WEAPONS PROGRAM IN HISTORY, Lockheed's F-35 program, with its nearly $11 BILLION ANNUAL PRICE TAG (and that's only the US-funded portion), faces F-22-like scrutiny, but now with an unprecedented level of public disclosure. I spent most of my day reading the 25 reports posted by the Defense Contracts Management Agency (DCMA), an unexpectedly public archive that tramples all over the...

A senior U.S. Air Force official involved in procurement said that the service will be equipped with the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) jets in time to "have the required capabilities we need, when we need them." Barbara Westgate, the Air Force's deputy chief of staff for strategic plans, who spoke during a conference in Washington, D.C., said the Air Force would have enough F-35s despite the growing testing delays in the program, according to the Air Force Times. Her message comes on the heels of Defense Secretary Robert Gates' restructuring of the program, which involved cuts to the procurement funds...

If February was a bad news month for the Joint Strike Fighter, with the program boss fired, a 13-month delay in test and a two-year slip in Air Force initial operational capability, look out for March. A Government Accountability Office report is rolling down the tracks, along with a Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) which, as we told you in Defense Technology International a month ago, is almost certainly going to record a critical Nunn-McCurdy breach. Meanwhile, the flight test program continues to log an all-time slow record. In the first half of FY2010, as of Friday, the JSF program logged...

Scientists warned defence department against Joint Strike Fighter Cameron Stewart From: The Australian February 25, 2010 12:00AM AN internal Defence study warned that the new Joint Strike Fighter would be a high-risk venture for Australia, admitting that the plane had weaknesses, including poor engine thrust that made it difficult to dodge missiles. The blunt criticisms of the warplane contained in the study by Defence scientists in 2000 have never been aired publicly by the government. But the Defence Science and Technology Organisation study, obtained by The Australian, was far more critical of the other fighter jet options available to Australia...

Piloted by Lockheed Martin F-35 Test Pilot Jeff Knowles, the third F-35B Lightning II short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) stealth fighter landed at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., today. "Today, the third of our five STOVL test jets joined the F-35 fleet at the Test Center as our flight test program initiates the expansion of the F-35's flight-sciences envelope," said Tom Burbage, Lockheed Martin executive vice president and general manager of F-35 Program Integration. "Our focus remains on fielding the F-35's tremendous capabilities to our warfighters, recapitalizing our nation’s aging fighter fleet, and meeting our commitments to the F-35 partner...

US Air Force Chief of Staff Gen Norton Schwartz has warned F-35 cost-overruns are likely to breach a statutory cap that would force the Department of Defense to formally re-certify the programme to Congress and invite a fresh wave of scrutiny. "It's a possibility and may be even likely" the F-35 will violate cost overrun threshold set under the Nunn-McCurdy law, Schwartz told reporters on 18 February at the Air Force Association's Air Warfare Symposium. The F-35's status may not become clear until the Pentagon notifies Congress of all Nunn-McCurdy breaches in the next round of selected acquisition reports on...

Israel is pressing the U.S. administration to clinch a deal for up to 75 F-35 Stealth fighters but Lockheed Martin wants to sell the fifth-generation fighter to Arabs as well. Patrick Dewar was even at the Bahrain air show in January touting the Joint Strike Fighter that is being developed with foreign partners Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Turkey. The Americans may find that something of an uphill struggle because it's not likely that the version offered to Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies will include the state-of-the art weapons systems the Israelis will get. That's...

Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton, the Chief of the Air Staff, insisted that air power must not be seen as an “optional luxury” when Britain’s future defence capability is considered. Both Labour and the Conservatives are committed to strategic defence review after the election, and both acknowledge that cuts will need to be made to bring down the Government deficit. This has raised questions about high-price defence procurement projects. One of the most costly is the plan to buy more than 120 new Joint Strike Fighter aircraft for the RAF and Royal Navy, which will cost at least £10...

Lockheed Martin still disagrees that the F-35 program will face any new delays, but the jet's biggest customer now adamantly disagrees. If you believe Lockheed, adding a 14th aircraft -- an F-35C carrier-based variant -- to the flight test program, as proposed in the Fiscal 2011 budget request, allows the program to deliver the first operational squadron of F-35Bs to the US Marine Corps on time before October 1, 2012. But that's not what Deputy Secretary of Defense Bill Lynn thinks, according to the Australian press. Lynn in is traveling in Australia this week, and meetings with reporters have yielded...

THE Joint Strike Fighter program will cost Australia more than originally planned and be delayed by about a year, the US government says. Australia will buy 14 of the jets from the US and may purchase up to 100, but the Pentagon said today the price - as much as $100 million each - would rise. The US government has withheld performance fees to lead contractor Lockheed Martin and sacked General David Heinz, who was in charge of the program. US Deputy Secretary of Defence Bill Lynn said on Monday the steps would strengthen the program. "When we looked at...

Ahead of the United States’s planned withdrawal from Iraq, American military teams have visited Israel to consider the possibility of storing some of the equipment and ammunition that is pulled out in special storage centers at various locations here, according to senior defense officials. According to the officials, the Americans plan to leave a significant amount of equipment in Iraq to assist local security forces. Additional equipment, though, would be transferred to Afghanistan as well as possibly to Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. A security agreement between the United States and Iraq calls for withdrawal of all US forces by...

The much-debated carrier fighter gap stretches about 100 planes wide in 2018. That is what Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the House Armed Services Committee today. That is less than half of the Navy’s estimate, given to Congress last year. The Navy has pretty much stuck with a figure of 243 aircraft or, as some lawmakers have it, 48 planes a year. OSD’s old PAE shop performed an analysis last year that concluded there was in fact no fighter gap, if you took into account capabilities beyond those planes based only on US carriers, but that study was never publicly...

Unlike Julius Caesar, the JSF program will survive March. However, it may suffer a couple more wounds to go with those received earlier this year. The Pentagon’s Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs) will be released and are likely to show a critical breach of Nunn-McCurdy cost-escalation limits, leading to a mandatory program review. Also, the Government Accountability Office is due to issue another report on the program. Given the program leaders’ cavalier dismissal of GAO’s earlier warnings, it is likely to be harsh and seasoned with “we told you so.” Before or around that time, another schedule slippage is almost certain....

Lockheed Martin sees F-35A replacing USAF air superiority F-15C/Ds By Stephen Trimble Lockheed Martin has countered a potential cut in US Air Force orders for its F-35A by claiming the in-development fighter could fill an air superiority role as well as the ground-attack mission for which it is officially designed. The USAF officially lists the F-35's conventional take-off and landing variant as a ground-attack fighter complementing the air superiority mission, replacing only the Lockheed F-16 and the Fairchild A-10. But Lockheed has added the Boeing F-15C/D air superiority fighter and F-15E Strike Eagles to its own speculative and unofficial list...

Wyle air crew personnel have become the first aviators to aerially refuel the F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing variant (STOVL) of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) using a probe-and-drogue refueling system during a recent mission at Lockheed Martin's Ft. Worth, Tex. manufacturing facility. These first aerial refueling missions were performed by Wyle aircrew flying a Navy KC-130 tanker aircraft assigned to the U.S. Navy's Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Twenty (VX-20) at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. The refueled aircraft, designated the F-35BF-2, represents one of three variants of this fifth generation strike fighter, developed for the U.S. military and...

Defense: The administration decision to scrap a proven aircraft in favor of a supposedly cheaper, more flexible replacement is proving to be an expensive mistake. We may wind up defenseless and broke. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that was supposed to be America's frontline fighter for the foreseeable future is in big trouble. Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the general in charge of the program this week amid concerns of spiraling costs and program delays. Gates also announced he is withholding $614 million in fees from the prime contractor, Lockheed Martin. Daniel J. Crowley, one of Lockheed Martin's project managers,...

An internal Navy briefing obtained by CongressDaily suggests, without saying it right out, that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter ballyhooed by Defense Secretary Gates will cost so much to buy and fly that the service might have to find a cheaper plane to fill up its carrier decks. For those of us who watched the reputation of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara as a manager nose dive in the 1960s when he could not produce a carrier plane the Navy would accept, these newly expressed Navy doubts about the F-35 have a familiar ring that challenges Gates. The F-35, the Pentagon’s...

The Joint Strike Fighter was supposed to be the program that broke the mold, proof that the Pentagon could build something affordable, dependable and without much drama. But rather than being the Chevrolet of the skies, as it was once billed, the fighter plane, also called the F-35, has turned into the Pentagon’s biggest budget-buster. And with worries growing that the rise in costs could overwhelm other programs, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates fired the general in charge this week and said he would withhold $614 million in fees from the prime contractor, Lockheed Martin... The Air Force, the Navy...

A Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) stealth fighter today became the fifth F-35 to begin flight operations. The jet, known as BF-3, departed the runway near Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth plant at 4:02 p.m. CST for its first flight. During the one-hour sortie, F-35 Chief Test Pilot Jon Beesley tested the aircraft's handling qualities, engine functionality, landing gear operation and basic subsystem performance. BF-3 joins two other F-35Bs and one F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) aircraft currently undergoing active flight test. The first CTOL F-35, AA-1, is now preparing for live-fire testing. The F-35 program...