Inside the Air Force
Next-gen bomber must be adequately funded
YOUNG: GIVEN CURRENT WARS, F-35s ARE BETTER CHOICE THAN MORE F-22As
Date: June 6, 2008
Allowing the Air Force to buy more F-22As in exchange for fewer F-35
Lightning IIs does not make sense given the nature of the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, Pentagon acquisition chief John Young told reporters
this week. Any decision on buying more F-22As at the expense of F-35s
would have to be based on operational requirements that the service
identifies, Young said during a June 5 briefing. He will leave this
decision up to the Air Force. “The Air Force has taken some looks at
that and been uncomfortable with cutting some more Joint Strike
Fighters, so that’s coupled [to] a force-structure decision,” Young
said. The “Joint Strike Fighter is totally coupled to the requirements
and force-structure decision. It’s not a law of just buy fewer and see
if everything works out.” Both aircraft have unique capabilities that
are best suited for specific missions, he said. However, when looking
at the current conflict environment, Young said that the F-35 is
probably the better-suited airplane, pointing to the F-35’s ground-
attack capability and datalinks as advantages in the current wars.
“JSF is incredibly capable, half the price of the F-22 . . . I would
agree that any decision to buy more F-22s at the expense of JSF is not
a good choice for the taxpayer,” Young said. “F-22 is still working to
add the air-to-ground capability after the fact and at some
significant cost,” he said. Still, Young warned that future
requirements may change, especially with a new administration taking
power next year. Alluding to the Air Force’s next-generation bomber,
the acquisition czar also repeated comments he made earlier this week
claiming that he would not approve any program he determines is not
likely to stay on-budget and on-time. This week, Young told lawmakers
that he does not believe the Air Force will be able to field the
bomber by 2018 because of funding issues. “I’ve said it before and
I’ll say it again, the 2018 was a nice planning date in the
[Quadrennial Defense Review], it is not a mandatory date . . . the
degree to which the Air Force is willing to fund [the bomber] will
determine the date that [it] will be available,” Young said. Early
cost estimates for the bomber were “significantly less” than
comparable programs, especially given how quickly the service wanted
to field the plane, he said. He is now waiting for the results of a
Defense Science Board review into the costs and schedule for the
program before he will sign off on the program. “I do not want to be
part of another marquee failed program,” he said, adding that he hopes
to use their review in budget decisions about the bomber by 2009. Also
at this week’s briefing, Young told reporters that the C-5 Reliability
Enhancement and Re-engining Program could be challenged by the fact
that many parts for the 40-year-old airlifter are becoming obsolete,
and the service could face a supplier gap. “We are discovering that we
may have some suppliers who want to get out of that business space,”
Young said. “I may have some obsolete parts. [But] I have no authority
to go buy a life-of-type buy for that program” because of a current
law. He noted that, without being able to lock in current parts in a
multiyear deal, he will be forced to find new parts that will have to
be re-qualified and retested, causing the costs to rise by tens of
millions of dollars. “So the law will force me to let those parts go
obsolete, and then I’ll have to go spend $10 [million], $20 [million],
$40 million to re-qualify and test the new parts and I can’t do it,”
he said. In an effort to reign in costs, the C-5 RERP program has been
slashed to 48 aircraft from 108, allowing the Pentagon to save $9.8
billion from the program which was re-certified earlier this spring
after breaching the Nunn-McCurdy statute that caps per-unit cost
growth in military programs. The Pentagon recently ordered the Air
Force to infuse another $1.8 billion into the program which DOD
expects to cost $7.7 billion through 2015. The C-5 RERP is meant to
make the airlifters 75 percent more mission capable than current C-5s.