F-35 is far behind schedule and over budget, reports show

By BOB COX

rcox@star-telegram.com

Work on the F-35 joint strike fighter program is far behind schedule and over budget despite the completion Saturday of a milestone test flight.

Reports prepared by the Defense Contract Management Agency for Defense Department officials show that Lockheed and other contractors are months late on deliveries of test airplanes and components for future production aircraft.

The program is even farther behind on testing, and the reports say Lockheed could exhaust its development budget within a year.

Problems cited in the documents, obtained by the Star-Telegram under the Freedom of Information Act, support a recent Pentagon assessment that F-35 development will require two more years and billions of additional dollars.

The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer has called a meeting for this weekend to address the reports’ conclusions and prepare recommendations for Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The senior Lockheed executive running the F-35 program, Dan Crowley, said in an interview that the reports are largely accurate. But the worst of the delays have been surmounted and good progress is now being made, he said.

"We’re not drawing farther from the schedule. We’re going to meet the schedule beginning in 2011," said Crowley, executive vice president and F-35 general manager for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Fort Worth.

The flight Saturday was only the fourth by a test airplane since the contract to develop the next-generation combat aircraft was awarded to Lockheed in late 2001.

The monthly reports prepared for Pentagon F-35 program managers show that Lockheed and its subcontractors badly trail the most recent revised schedule, adopted in May 2008. Key points include:

Production of test aircraft is running about six months behind.

Only seven of 13 test planes have been completed. All 13 were to have been completed and delivered for testing by early October. Only four have been flown.

Lockheed has had significant difficulty assembling the wing and major components.

Suppliers are late delivering finished parts and components not only because of manufacturing problems but also because of repeated design and engineering changes.

Lockheed is exceeding cost targets and at current spending rates would exhaust its budget in fiscal 2011, which begins Oct. 1.

Those conclusions were drawn from the management agency reports and correlated with information provided by Lockheed, the Government Accountability Office and other sources.

F-35 flight testing is far behind schedule. The program is due to complete 441 test flights by year’s end; 128 have been flown.

The test aircraft that flew for the first time Saturday, the first conventional-takeoff F-35A-model (AF-1), a predecessor to those that will be built for the Air Force, was due to fly in June. The two B-model short-takeoff-vertical-landing aircraft that have flown so far (BF-1 and BF-2) have made only 37 combined test flights in nearly 18 months.

Crowley said production and flight testing has been repeatedly delayed because of late parts deliveries, as key parts were redesigned and then the suppliers, spread across the U.S. and in other countries, worked to incorporate changes.

Looking for comments?