Report: F-35 Behind Schedule and Over Budget

Work on the F-35 joint strike fighter program is far behind schedule and over budget despite the completion Saturday of a milestone test flight.

Reports prepared by the Defense Contract Management Agency for Defense Department officials show that Lockheed and other contractors are months late on deliveries of test airplanes and components for future production aircraft.

The program is even farther behind on testing, and the reports say Lockheed could exhaust its development budget within a year.

Problems cited in the documents, obtained by the Star-Telegram under the Freedom of Information Act, support a recent Pentagon assessment that F-35 development will require two more years and billions of additional dollars.

The Pentagon's top weapons buyer has called a meeting for this weekend to address the reports' conclusions and prepare recommendations for Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

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The senior Lockheed executive running the F-35 program, Dan Crowley, said in an interview that the reports are largely accurate. But the worst of the delays have been surmounted and good progress is now being made, he said.

"We're not drawing farther from the schedule. We're going to meet the schedule beginning in 2011," said Crowley, executive vice president and F-35 general manager for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Fort Worth.

The flight Saturday was only the fourth by a test airplane since the contract to develop the next-generation combat aircraft was awarded to Lockheed in late 2001.

The monthly reports prepared for Pentagon F-35 program managers show that Lockheed and its subcontractors badly trail the most recent revised schedule, adopted in May 2008. Key points include:

Production of test aircraft is running about six months behind.

Only seven of 13 test planes have been completed. All 13 were to have been completed and delivered for testing by early October. Only four have been flown.

Lockheed has had significant difficulty assembling the wing and major components.

Suppliers are late delivering finished parts and components not only because of manufacturing problems but also because of repeated design and engineering changes.

Lockheed is exceeding cost targets and at current spending rates would exhaust its budget in fiscal 2011, which begins Oct. 1.

Those conclusions were drawn from the management agency reports and correlated with information provided by Lockheed, the Government Accountability Office and other sources.

F-35 flight testing is far behind schedule. The program is due to complete 441 test flights by year's end; 128 have been flown.

The test aircraft that flew for the first time Saturday, the first conventional-takeoff F-35A-model (AF-1), a predecessor to those that will be built for the Air Force, was due to fly in June. The two B-model short-takeoff-vertical-landing aircraft that have flown so far (BF-1 and BF-2) have made only 37 combined test flights in nearly 18 months.

Crowley said production and flight testing has been repeatedly delayed because of late parts deliveries, as key parts were redesigned and then the suppliers, spread across the U.S. and in other countries, worked to incorporate changes.

The time needed to complete aircraft and move them out of the factory and into ground tests and, eventually, flight tests, is decreasing rapidly, Crowley said. Lockheed's production costs are also declining, he said, and the company need not exhaust the funds already budgeted.

No one should be shocked by the continuing delays and cost increases, said Hans Weber, a prominent aerospace engineering executive and consultant. "The airplane is so ambitious, it was bound to have problems."

The real problem, Weber said, is an old one. Neither defense contractors nor military or civilian leaders in government will admit how difficult a program will be and, when problems do arise, how challenging and costly they will be to fix. "It's really hard," Weber said, "for anyone to be really honest."

Not all of the cost increases are Lockheed's fault.

Pratt & Whitney, which is developing the main engine, has had cost overruns. Pentagon officials have repeatedly sought to cancel development of a second engine by General Electric/Rolls-Royce to save at least $2 billion, only to be rebuffed by Congress.

F-35 is the Pentagon's largest, most-expensive weapons development program, with a total cost estimated to exceed $300 billion for upward of 2,400 planes. The development schedule and budget have been revised three times. The May 2008 revision and cost increase were paid for by cutting two test airplanes and hundreds of test flights.

A year ago, as the 2010 defense budget was being prepared, a special Pentagon cost analysis concluded that the F-35 schedule and budget were still overly optimistic. The team reviewed the program again recently and came to a similar conclusion.

Gates has expressed strong support for the F-35. He canceled Lockheed's F-22, over the protests of many in Congress, saying the F-35 will be the U.S. military's primary combat aircraft. In his August visit to Lockheed in Fort Worth, Gates expressed confidence that development problems could be managed.

Ashton Carter, Defense undersecretary for weapons acquisition, has called a meeting for this weekend to address the cost issues, which complicate preparing the 2011 defense budget.

Defense procurement veterans said they fear that the Pentagon will be tempted to cut the flight-testing plan yet again to save money.

"You need to do the testing the engineers originally said needed to be done," Weber said. By cutting tests now, "you kick the can down the road," and someone else has to deal with problems that will inevitably arise later.

Work is under way on the first 30 production planes. Any design changes made as a result of flight testing would have to be incorporated in the other planes after they are built, which would drive up costs.