CRS On JSF

The Congressional Research Service last week issued a report on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. The report (originally obtained by Secrecy News) states:

The F-35 program is behind schedule and over budget. Congress may wish to review the causes of these issues, whether the plan put forward in February 2010 and subsequent procurement delay in February 2012 are sufficient to recover schedule and stabilize costs, and/or the credibility of projections by DOD, GAO, and others regarding the program's likely future performance.

Inside the Navy recently reviewed a Defense Department report to Congress, which found that three of the five fixes to the Marine Corps' short-takeoff, vertical-landing JSF variant involve a temporary solution with a more permanent fix needed later on, and one of those fixes would require corrective action on the part of the pilot in some cases. ITN further reported this week:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced Jan. 20 that the F-35B would come off of its two-year probation a year early because the JSF program office had found engineering fixes for each of the five problems identified on the aircraft. In a report to Congress on the F-35B's probation status also dated Jan. 20, Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's acting under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, detailed the F-35B's problems and explained what fixes the program is implementing.

The report focused on five areas: the bulkhead (cracking developed after 1,500 hours of fatigue testing); the upper lift fan door (vortices of air were rolling off the door, creating excessive loads on the auxiliary air inlet doors); the lift fan clutch (crews encountered clutch heating intermittently during up and away flight); the driveshaft (metal was expanding due to excessive heat, causing "thermal growth" which affected horizontal movement of the aircraft); and the roll control nozzle (the nozzle was overheating during STOVL operations at low air speeds of less than 60 knots).

Of those fixes, only two of those appear to be permanent, according to the report. The bulkhead has been "redesigned for production, with fixes identified for retrofit as needed," and fatigue testing on the aircraft resumed Jan. 19, the report states. That testing had been halted in November 2010.

The program also began flight testing on a redesigned upper auxiliary air inlet door in December, and "analyses of the results from early test flights are promising," the report states, adding: "Ordering of modification kits for aircraft retrofit began in parallel with this testing in order to gain clearance for fleet STOVL mode operation as soon as possible."

However, the program doesn't have permanent fixes for the three other problems yet. For the clutch heating issue, the program has incorporated a temperature sensor to alert the pilot to take corrective action "if the clutch exceeds acceptable temperatures." Meanwhile, the program has begun a detailed root cause investigation for a permanent fix.

Last week, Inside the Air Force reported that the service is budgeting to spend $29.5 billion on all aspects of the JSF over the next five years, including about $1 billion to pay for concurrency changes to early production aircraft. Further:

In its fiscal year 2013 budget request released this week, the Air Force announced it would slow its F-35 procurement rate, delaying the purchase of 98 F-35 aircraft into the future and saving money in the short term. But budget documents show that the service still hopes to invest close to $5 billion in the program in FY-13 alone, a year in which the Air Force will now procure 19 instead of the originally planned 24 jets.

The service will gradually buy more F-35s in the future years defense plan (FYDP) between FY-13 and FY-17, culminating with a purchase of 48 conventional-takeoff-and-landing JSFs in the final two years of the window. At this time last year, the Air Force planned to buy 80 per year by FY-17. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor on the program.

Lockheed spokeswoman Laurie Quincy said in a Feb. 14 statement that the company will work with the Defense Department to ensure the program continues to move forward, even as DOD buys fewer JSFs than expected in this five-year cycle. The Navy and Marine Corps also slowed their F-35 procurement rates, and in total, 179 aircraft were moved out of the FYDP.

"We understand the funding constraints that require the Department to reduce the number of aircraft procured to 29 in FY2013 and to move 179 aircraft out of the five-year plan, and we will continue to partner with the Department to implement the changes as efficiently as possible," the Lockheed statement reads. "We believe the program will stabilize around the new acquisition strategy, and we are confident that we will deliver an effective and affordable program."

Of the $4.9 billion the Air Force is requesting for FY-13, the majority -- $3.4 billion -- would go toward procurement. But the service is also planning to spend $1.2 billion to continue development and testing activities, as well as $148 million to retrofit jets already procured by the service to account for necessary concurrency changes.