Now that the F-35 joint strike fighter program has gotten a pat on the back and morale boost from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, officials at Lockheed Martin hope to put their recent run of bad report cards and bad press behind them.
All those problems with the F-35 that have been reported of late? They're not that bad; they're being fixed. Just watch, they say."We're starting to see a lot of good stuff happening," Tom Burbage, Lockheed's co-executive vice president and general manager overseeing the F-35 program, said in an interview last week.That view would seem at odds with recent Defense Department reports and officials' comments. An internal Pentagon report leaked last month cited numerous shortcomings in the testing performance of the three versions of the F-35, some key components and the design of the aircraft.The program's top manager, Vice Adm. David Venlet, was frank about his concerns with the number and scale of problems in a published interview.Without directly contradicting the reports or Venlet, Burbage downplayed the scale of the F-35 program's problems."We're in a test program. We're testing the most technologically advanced aircraft ever built," Burbage said. "There's going to be some problems along the way. That's why you test."On one hand, the F-35 made progress last year. The pace of flight testing exceeded plans overall, if not always meeting specific goals.But the program is still three-plus years behind schedule, development costs have risen sharply and defense budgets may shrink significantly, so the performance and political pressures on Lockheed aren't diminishing.Panetta announced Friday that the F-35B was no longer on probation, which was of symbolic significance but had no practical effect on spending or testing. The F-35B is the Marines' version built for short takeoffs and vertical landings.The Pentagon remains "committed to the development of the F-35. It's absolutely vital that we get it right," Panetta said. But "it's not out of the woods yet."One of the more glaring problems spotlighted in recent weeks by news media and critics is that the tailhook on the F-35C, the version intended for the Navy to operate off aircraft carriers, failed repeatedly to snag the arresting wire in mock carrier landings last summer.The Pentagon report that revealed the tailhook problem left no doubt that officials considered it potentially a very serious problem. Fixing it, the report said, might require major changes to the aircraft design, adding more delays and still more costs to the already soaring bills for the F-35.Burbage, a former Navy pilot who made his share of carrier landings, understands the significance of the problem as well as anyone. There won't be many carrier landings if the tailhook doesn't catch and stop the plane when it lands.It's a challenging issue, a more complex engineering problem than with past Navy planes because of the "stealth" design of the F-35C. Tailhooks ordinarily extend from the back of Navy planes at all times. The F-35C tailhook must be shorter and retract into the body of the aircraft so it doesn't ruin the plane's low visibility to radar signals.Burbage says he's confident that Lockheed and the Navy can solve the problem without major and costly delays."We put our A team on it," Burbage said, with Lockheed engineers working closely with the Navy's top engineering and carrier aviation experts. "We did detailed engineering analysis. There are some physics problems related to the way the [arresting] wire reacts when the plane rolls over it."By the end of the month, Burbage said, he expects the tailhook to be redesigned and new parts ordered from suppliers. By midsummer the new version should be flying at the Navy's Lakehurst, N.J., base, where carrier operations are tested on the ground."We'll go back and check it and see if we have to tweak it again," Burbage said, adding that he's confident that the F-35C will be ready and cleared for initial carrier testing schedule for 2013."I believe that's where we are. We need to prove it to people."Similarly, Burbage says, improvements are coming steadily on other problems. Significant progress has been made recently on the helmet-mounted display that's supposed to be an integral part of the F-35, Burbage said. The helmet is being developed by Rockwell Collins and Elbit Systems of America, an Israeli defense company based in Fort Worth.Burbage also questioned the prediction of Pentagon officials overseeing the program that the F-35 structure will be more prone to stress cracks than predicted and need more fixes and parts redesigned.Results from the drop tests of the F-35C, resembling the impact of carrier landings, were better than expected, Burbage says, and static endurance tests of the F-35A, the Air Force version, are far along and going well.Bob Cox, 817-390-7723Twitter: @bobcoxictHave more to add? News tip? Tell us
