F-35's Costs Climb Along With Concerns

"Shmaryahu b. Chanoch" wrote in message
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F-35's Costs Climb Along With Concerns
Fort Worth Star-Telegram | April 26, 2006

The maiden flight of the first F-35 joint strike fighter prototype is
still
months away, and Lockheed Martin's giant development program is already
generating budget-busting headlines.

Pentagon officials, in their most recent estimate of major weapons system
costs,
projected a $276.5 billion cost for developing the F-35 and purchasing
2,500 of
the planes for the U.S. and British armed forces.

That's $20 billion more than the last estimate, in January 2004, and about
a $75
billion increase since the program was launched in October 2001.

Skeptics in and out of government fear that it may not be the last big
cost
increase because the F-35 is still in its infancy and much remains to be
done to
develop and perfect the warplane's high-tech systems.

The question that continues to loom over the F-35 program and prime
contractor
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. is whether, unlike so many other programs
including Lockheed's F-22, the JSF can be delivered without encountering
major
technical problems, long delays and huge cost overruns.

Defense acquisition experts with the watchdog Government Accountability
Office
recently urged Congress to keep a tight rein on F-35 spending until
Lockheed and
the other contractors show that they can design and build the airplane and
meet
performance and cost goals.

Michael Sullivan, the GAO's acquisition analyst, is concerned that the
program
is attempting to do too much too fast. Congress has already appropriated
funding
to begin work on the first seven "production" airplanes even though basic
flight
testing of a "production representative" airplane won't occur until 2008
at the
earliest.

"Our message is they still have a lot of risks in these things until they
fly
the airplane," Sullivan said in an interview last week. "There are
technologies
they're counting on that have not been tested yet."

Lockheed spokesman John Smith said some of the assumptions behind the
recent
cost estimate and pessimistic forecasts do not "recognize lessons that the
F-35
has learned from the problems of those other programs" and assumes that
the same
mistakes and problems will arise again.

Program and Lockheed officials say the first flight of the first test
aircraft
will likely take place in west Fort Worth sometime between late August and
early
October.

"I've told everyone we'll work to August [flight date], but we'll fly when
we're
ready," said Rear Adm. Steven Enewold, the top military official
overseeing the
program. "We don't want to rush to make a first flight and then have
something
bad happen."

Enewold acknowledged in a telephone interview last week that there are
many
questions yet to be answered and probably some questions that aren't even
known
yet. But he said he is reasonably confident that the F-35 program is on
track to
deliver mission-capable fighters beginning in 2011.

How confident?

"I'm fairly comfortable through first flight and through the end of this
year,"
Enewold said. "After that, the risks [of encountering major technical
obstacles]
get bigger."

After recently conducted design reviews, Enewold said indications are that
the
contractors can successfully manufacture the critical parts and components
needed for the test planes and early production aircraft, and "we're not
going
to have to do a bunch of scrap and rework." He said there has been
"demonstrable
progress in the delivery of hardware and systems" to laboratories for
testing
and certification.

The recent Pentagon estimates attributed most of the expected cost
increases to
rising costs of metals and other materials and higher inflation
predictions.

"We're seeing 200 percent increases in aluminum, 500 percent in titanium,"
Enewold said. "That's a big issue."

But the GAO, in reports and testimony before Congress, says the real
danger of
huge cost increases lies in the program's plans to begin building
production
airplanes before most of the flight testing is done on all three versions
of the
F-35.

Being forced to stop production midstream to make design changes, as
Sullivan
says has happened in many other programs, "is a huge driver of costs."

The program should wait at least another year, preferably two, Sullivan
said,
and complete plenty of flight tests before beginning to build the first
production aircraft.

"To us, it's measure twice, cut once," Sullivan said.

Program and Lockheed officials as well as other experts say that would
take too
long and also drive up costs.

"The problem with that reasoning is we don't have a half-century to field
a
next-generation fighter," said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute,
a
defense think tank. "Slowing down is just another way of spending money."

Smith, the Lockheed spokesman, said the F-35 "possesses very high levels
of
technical maturity and extremely low levels of technical risk for a
fighter at
this stage of its development," as shown by the recent successful design
review.
"Much of the F-35's technical risk will be reduced before flight testing
begins."

Every step taken in the F-35 program, Smith said, is done with the goal of
maintaining the airplane at a price U.S. and other armed forces can
afford.

The F-35 program, Enewold insists, is proceeding on a deliberate basis
with
plenty of opportunity for government officials to slow the process down
and make
corrections if major problems arise.

"We're going to go to an acquisition review to get permission to spend
production money every year until 2013," Enewold said.

http://www.military.com/features/0,1...ESRC=dod-bz.nl

How were they able to design and bring the P-51 into production within one
year
back during WW2? Why is it so expensive and take so long now?

You didn't really just ask that question, did you?






"If you beat your swords into plowshares, you'll be plowing for those who
didn't."