Your Presence Requested

Lockheed Martin, the Joint Strike Fighter's prime contractor, has responded positively to an invitation to testify in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday. Tom Burbage, the company's top fighter aircraft official, will appear alongside Vice Adm. David Venlet, the F-35's program executive officer.

Burbage will be part of the hearing's second panel, according to the committee's website. Burbage, a retired naval aviator, held the same position in the company's F-22 Raptor program office before taking over JSF activities. He will join Venlet and Michael Sullivan, the director of acquisition and sourcing management at the Government Accountability Office, in front of the committee late Thursday morning.

The committee will first hear testimony from some of the Defense Department's top officials involved in the JSF program: Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter; Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation Director Christine Fox; Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation; and David Van Buren, the Air Force's acting acquisition executive. They make up the first panel of the hearing, which is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m.

The Senate Armed Services Committee hosted a similar hearing to review the status of the F-35 program in March 2010, but Venlet had not yet been put in charge of the program and no Lockheed officials testified that day.