The Pentagon is considering adding more flight test assets and software engineers to the $300 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program to avoid major delays to fielding the stealthy, single-engine aircraft.

A Joint Estimate Team, consisting of career cost estimators and program evaluators, has found the Lockheed Martin F-35 program is at least $16 billion over its project cost, and achieving the current flight test schedule is unlikely.

During a roundtable with reporters Nov. 23, Ashton Carter, the Pentagon's acquisition czar, said more flight test aircraft would help to conduct the extensive test program in a "compressed period of time." Another possibility is to add more software engineers, perhaps a shift of them, to "block and tackle" issues with the many lines of code needed to operate the aircraft and its mission systems, Carter says.

Though this would cost more upfront, Carter says what he calls an "investment" upfront would likely produce a more stable program in the long term. Achieving schedule -- or mitigating changes to it -- is key to maintaining interest from international partners planning to buy the aircraft.

Carter says some of these issues must be sorted out in the next "couple of weeks" to lay in the additional funding that would be needed in the Fiscal 2011 budget.

In past years, the Pentagon has actually removed two aircraft from the flight test program, citing confidence in the ability for Lockheed Martin to use modeling and simulation to validate the design. It is unclear whether this potential plan to add test aircraft signals a risk mitigation strategy or a concern that modeling and simulation will not suffice for some of the workload that it was to address.

Carter acknowledges that cost growth in the Pratt & Whitney F135 engine is a challenge, though he offered no specific remedies to that issue. He is receiving a briefing from the Joint Assessment Team formed to review the JSF engine.

An Independent Manufacturing and Review Team commissioned by Carter's office to assess the processes at Lockheed's F-35 assembly plant in Ft. Worth, Texas, may be able to outline some efficiencies that could amount to per-unit savings, Carter says.

However, he says that the government and Lockheed should share the burden of increased program cost. The final program price is not yet known; Carter's team continues to assess options. Lockheed CEO Bob Stevens and the company's JSF program leadership met with Carter on Nov. 22 to review these issues. "We don't want to be in a situation where the government bears the cost of schedule slips all by itself," Carter says. "It is reasonable that risk in a program be shared" with the contractor.

Carter also stuck to the Pentagon's position that supporting the alternate General Electric/Rolls Royce F136 engine is a liability to the program. He said that he sees no cost models that predict the benefits of competing two engines on the fighter will reap enough savings to justify the up-front cost of developing and producing it. Furthermore, he says that continuing to fund the engine from the JSF program "has been disruptive" to its progress.

Photo: USAF