F-35 JPO assessing risk of flying grounded jets before they're fixed

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD -- The F-35 joint program office is conducting a risk analysis to determine whether some of the 15 F-35A aircraft recently grounded due to faulty avionics cooling line insulation may be able to return to flight before they're fitted with a fix.

Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, program executive officer for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, said during a Sept. 20 panel here at the Air Force Association's annual conference that the program has identified a solution to the issue that affected 13 operational Air Force jets, two of Norway's operational jets, and 42 pre-delivery jets. That solution will be fielded first on the 15 grounded production jets, Bogdan said, but that work won't be completed until December.

Bogdan said that in order to mitigate the operational impact of the repair process, the program is assessing the risks associated with flying the aircraft before the fix is made.

"We're doing a risk assessment right now to see if any or all of them, based on the damage we've seen from inspections, could get back in the air while they're waiting to get fixed," he said. "We should have the assessment done in the next week or so."

He noted that the decision to fly without a fix is up to the services, not the program office.

"We present that information to the warfighter and then the warfighter decides, 'Do I want to keep flying these airplanes?'" Bogdan said.

The program will begin to field the solution on the remaining 42 jets sometime in November.

The faulty insulation was provided by a secondary supplier, which prime contractor Lockheed Martin tapped for one lot of aircraft, so the problem does not extend to other aircraft outside of that lot, including Marine Corps or Navy jets. The affected lot did include jets for Norway, Israel and Japan.

Bogdan said Lockheed has agreed to pay the repair costs.

"To Lockheed's credit, at the highest levels of the corporation they have committed to doing the right thing and the definition of doing the right thing is they will pay for all of the engineering and manufacturing and all of the modification for all 52 airplanes," Bogdan said.