USAF Chief: F-35 program cost increases “likely” to force recertification process

[SBD-3]

By Stephen Trimble

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 1 April.

Scwhartz issued his warning nearly three weeks after Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said he was "not sure" about the F-35's status under the Nunn-McCurdy cap.

Gates released a Fiscal 2011 budget request on 1 February that proposes to slash production orders by four aircraft in the near-term. Gates also fired the military's programme manager and withheld $614 million in incentive payments to Lockheed.

Even greater numbers of F-35s could be reduced over the next five years, depending on unit cost trends. As production orders are reduced, the pressure increases on Lockheed to maintain unit costs.

"We have not been notified of a Nunn-McCurdy breach so it would be premature to comment," a Lockheed statement says. Last month, a leaked US Navy study showed the F-35's total ownership costs, which include development, production and sustainment, have doubled since the contract was awarded on 26 October 2001.

Lockheed has disputed the USN's cost analysis, arguing that the programme office's cost estimates have not changed since FY2007.

But that argument could be mooted if the Pentagon officially adopts a more conservative budgeting philosophy for F-35 cost estimates.

Despite Schwartz's belief the Lockheed stealth fighter faces new cost overruns, the USAF remains strongly committed to supporting the F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) variant.

Michael Donley, secretary of the Air Force, also told reporters that the service's overall plans to buy 1,763 fighters have not changed. That number remains fixed, says Donley, despite fighter reductions called for under the Quadrennial Defense Review. The USAF now anticipates a force structure with a total of about 2,050 manned fighters, including about 186 Lockheed F-22s.

 

[BlackenTheSky]

I read in news Paper that US was planning to buy more than 2400 Aircrafts in next 25 years.

 

[jha]

yes , i too had heard the same....what is with america..??? why do they need so many expensive fighters..??i mean F-15 and F-16 are enough to do their job...

 

[Chanakyaa]

And do remember f15 silent eagle.

 

[K^se]

In 25 years time, our F-16 and F-15, F-18's most of their platforms will be obsolete, so we need a large quantity of new generation fighters to replace them.

-We have a 708 billion dollar defense budget, that's what said on paper.. I'm not surprised if our defense budget is over a Trillion dollars, if you have money buy nice toys ;D..
-I don't want to hear any bickering from you Indians, Chinese, or Russian you're already planning your modernization efforts trying to stay on top of technological field as best as possible, we are doing in the same and that's staying on top on technological field ..

 

[Tiger Awan]

F-35 should not meet the same fate as of F-22

and for this another exercise with india should be planned in which F-22 should lose and Su-30MKI should win. This will put pressure on congress as it had done before.

 

[K^se]

^^ I'm going to explain something to you, the F-22 Raptor was a 65 billion dollar program, we produced 145 planes out of 187 that we wanted its 200 million per aircraft. So we paid 29 billion dollars for those planes, and that doesn't include the one billion dollar maintenance fee per aircraft, honestly name a country or a Continent that can actually have a budget of our caliber, and also have technological advances that are light years away from our competitors. "There are None"

For the F-35 Lightning program it was a Joint Strike Fighter program mostly funded by the U.S, U.K and other additional government. Most of the Avionics are coming from LockHeed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Britain BAE systems. It's the State of the Art 5th generation fighter plane, I'm not going to get into the specs, you can do it on your own time.. The whole purpose of this program was to have aircraft that doesn't cost more than your nations actual defense budget.