As lawmakers head into negotiations on fiscal year 2007 defense spending legislation, defense giant Lockheed Martin is peddling a compromise procurement plan for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter on Capitol Hill. If adopted, Lockheed's plan would nix a Senate-led effort to delay initial production of the fighter by one year, according to the company's top program official.

The plan would call upon Congress to fully fund production of four conventional takeoff-and-landing (CTOL) JSF variants in FY-07, which would make up the first stage of the program's low-rate initial production (LRIP) phase.

The second part of the new plan, as proposed, would give the Pentagon long-lead funding in FY-08 to begin work on six Air Force-specific CTOL and six Marine Corps short takeoff-and vertical landing (STOVL) variants, according to Lockheed's Executive Vice President and JSF Program Manager Tom Burbage.

Burbage outlined company's alternative procurement plan for the international, tri-service fighter during a Sept. 20 media roundtable in Arlington, VA.

The Lockheed plan is similar to the low-rate initial production blueprint hatched by the House Appropriations Committee, and later passed by the full chamber in its version of FY-07 defense spending legislation. That plan calls for the same amount of F-35s in the Lot 1 LRIP as the Lockheed proposal; however, the House-approved plan only would provide funds for eight total CTOL and STOVL fighters in the LRIP Lot 2 stage.

However, Senate appropriators struck out LRIP funding all together, opting instead to shift initial production of the JSF to the right by one year.

The House adopted its defense spending plan on June 20; Senate lawmakers signed off on their version on Sept. 7.

While proponents of delaying the LRIP phase argue more time is needed for additional testing and evaluation of the aircraft prior the formal start of production, Burbage contended this week that such a delay could have a detrimental effect on the company's ability to keep on pace for production of future batches of F-35s.

Once fully transitioned into the production phase, company officials envision a seven-month assembly time line per aircraft, with a 12-month order-to-delivery cycle. Any delay, especially ones that occur during that sensitive transition period between development and production would skew those projections significantly, according to Lockheed's Burbage.

“If you don't want to slow [future production] down, maintain the tempo in the factories,” Lockheed's F-35 chief said.

Burbage added that the Senate proposal would put Lockheed in the difficult position of trying to retain integral JSF support personnel during a lull in production.

“If we do not keep our eyes on those sets of balls, [Congress] is going to make some decisions that could be less than optimal to the program,” he said, adding the funding numbers pitched in the Lockheed-proposed LRIP strategy would ensure the program's existing production tempo and workforce would remain in place as the program moves into future aircraft production cycles.

Originally, the LRIP plan for the program included production of five CTOL variants of the fighter for the Air Force, with the second round of procurement covering a combination of CTOL and short take-off versions for the Air Force and Marine Corps. Pentagon acquisition czar Kenneth Krieg signed off on the plan in early April.

During its development cycle, cost overruns and issues with the aircraft's weight and interoperability concerns have forced the program's development track to the right several times.

Most recently, the total price tag for the three-service Joint Strike Fighter program shot up by nearly $19 billion during a four-month period in 2005, according to a Pentagon selected acquisition report (SAR) released April 7 after it was sent to Congress.

Prior to that significant increase, overall JSF cost growth set against the program's 2002 baseline estimates came in at $75 billion over a three-year span. “Base year” cost estimates for the JSF totaled just over $202 billion in 2002, states the April 7 report.

With that trend of cost spikes, the F-35s $276 billion price tag has placed it among the most expensive defense acquisition efforts in Pentagon history, according to defense officials and analysts.

Even though Lockheed Martin officials have been busy advocating their FY-07 alternative funding plan on Capitol Hill, one congressional aide told Inside the Air Force this week that such efforts may simply be too little, too late.

“My sense on the issue is that the Senate is fairly strong -- in both their statement and on the record -- that it is not good policy to start putting planes into the field with only one percent of flight testing completed,” the aide said.

While the congressional source noted that House-Senate appropriations conferees may not rubber stamp the Senate-backed JSF proposal, a six-month or one-year delay could be the likely outcome of the bicameral panel's deliberations.

“I would expect to see some version of it -- it might not look exactly like what the Senate has got right now, but there is going to be a slide,” the aide said.

In response to the detrimental effects a delay could have on long-term production and personnel, the aide noted that lawmakers are willing to incur “short-term costs versus what could potentially be a long-term problem.”

“You don't want to say 10 years down the road, ‘Well we have got this major problem with the plane, but we have now got several thousand of them,'” the staffer said. “One more year is not a bad slip.”

While noting design stability risk can never be completely eliminated, Burbage said Lockheed has taken tremendous steps to mitigate such risks on the aircraft, including a full simulated flight test of the F-35's systems at the company's Ft. Worth, TX, facilities.

“Historically, we have not been able to do that level of testing in the lab,” Burbage said. He also noted that “very little” of what is learned during preliminary testing and development result in wholesale changes to a system's design.

But the aide noted that at a program cost nearing $300 billion, lawmakers seem willing to take that perceivably small chance.

“I think that one, it is hard to sell to the taxpayers those billions of dollars in expense without the [additional] testing,” the staffer said. “Let's slip it one year, get a little bit more of the flight testing under our belts so we know what we are looking at.”

However, Lockheed's top F-35 official said he remains confident the company's proposal has not fallen on deaf ears. Burbage said he thinks company officials “have made the right arguments in front of the right people.”