Trillion-Dollar Jet Has Thirteen Expensive New Flaws
Trillion-Dollar Jet Has Thirteen Expensive New Flaws | Danger Room | Wired.com
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The most expensive weapons program in U.S.
history is about to get a lot pricier.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, meant to replace
nearly every tactical warplane in the Air Force,
Navy and Marine Corps, was already expected to
cost $1 trillion dollars for development,
production and maintenance over the next 50
years. Now that cost is expected to grow, owing
to 13 different design flaws uncovered in the last
two months by a hush-hush panel of five
Pentagon experts. It could cost up to a billion
dollars to fix the flaws on copies of the jet already
in production, to say nothing of those yet to
come.
In addition to costing more, the stealthy F-35
could take longer to complete testing. That could
delay the stealthy jet's combat debut to sometime
after 2018 — seven years later than originally
planned. And all this comes as the Pentagon
braces for big cuts to its budget while trying to
save cherished but costly programs like the Joint
Strike Fighter.
Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's top weapons-
buyer, convened the so-called "Quick Look
Review" panel in October. Its report — 55 pages
of dense technical jargon and intricate charts —
was leaked this weekend. Kendall and company
found a laundry list of flaws with the F-35,
including a poorly placed tail hook, lagging
sensors, a buggy electrical system and structural
cracks.
Some of the problems — the electrical bugs, for
instance — were becoming clear before the Quick
Look Review; others are brand-new. The panelists
describe them all in detail and, for the first time,
connect them to the program's underlying
management problems. Most ominously, the
report mentions — but does not describe — a
"classified" deficiency. "Dollars to doughnuts it
has something to do with stealth," aviation guru
Bill Sweetman wrote. In other words, the F-35
might not be as invisible to radar as prime
contractor Lockheed Martin said it would be.
The JSF's problems are exacerbated by a
production plan that Vice Adm. David Venlet, the
government program manager, admitted two
weeks ago represents "a miscalculation." Known
as "concurrency," the plan allows Lockheed to
mass-produce jets — potentially hundreds of
them — while testing is still underway. It's a way
of ensuring the military gets combat-ready jets as
soon as possible, while also helping Lockheed to
maximize its profits. That's the theory, at least.
"Concurrency is present to some degree in
virtually all DoD programs, though not to the
extent that it is on the F-35," the Quick Look
panelists wrote. The Pentagon assumed it could
get away with a high degree of concurrency
owing to new computer simulations meant to
take the guesswork out of testing. "The
Department had a reasonable basis to be
optimistic," the panelists wrote.
But that optimism proved unfounded. "This
assessment shows that the F-35 program has
discovered and is continuing to discover issues at
a rate more typical of early design experience on
previous aircraft development programs," the
panelists explained. Testing uncovered problems
the computers did not predict, resulting in 725
design changes while new jets were rolling off
the factory floor in Fort Worth, Texas.
And every change takes time and costs money.
To pay for the fixes, this year the Pentagon cut its
F-35 order from 42 to 30. Next year's order
dropped from 35 to 30. "It's basically sucked the
wind out of our lungs with the burden, the
financial burden," Venlet said.
News of more costs and delays could not have
come at a worse time for the Joint Strike Fighter.
The program has already been restructured twice
since 2010, each time getting stretched out and
more expensive. In January, then-Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates put the Marines' overweight
F-35B variant, which is designed to take off and
land vertically, on probation. If Lockheed couldn't
fix the jump jet within two years, "it should be
cancelled," Gates advised.
Tasting blood in the water, Boeing — America's
other fighter-plane manufacturer — dusted off
plans for improved F-15s and F-18s to sell to the
Pentagon, should the F-35 fail. Deep cuts to the
defense budget certainly aren't helping the F-35"²s
case.
Humbled, Lockheed agreed to share some of the
cost of design changes, instead of simply billing
the government. The aerospace giant copped to
its past problems with the F-35 and promised
better performance. "There will not be another re-
baseline of this program. We understand that,"
Lockheed CEO Robert Stevens said in May.
But another "rebaselining," or restructuring, is
likely in the wake of the Quick Look Review. F-35
testing and production should be less concurrent
and more "event-based," the panelists advised. In
other words, the program should worry less
about meeting hard deadlines and more about
getting the jet's design right. It'll be ready when
it's ready. Major production must wait, even if
that means older warplanes — the planes the
F-35 is supposed to replace — must stay on the
front line longer.
Needless to say, that's got some members of
Congress up in arms. "It is at this exact moment
that the excessive overlap between development
and production that was originally structured into
the JSF program "¦ is now coming home to
roost," said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona
Republican and the ranking member of the Senate
Armed Services Committee. "If things do not
improve — quickly — taxpayers and the
warfighter will insist that all options will be on the
table. And they should be. We cannot continue
on this path."
