Pentagon leaders tell Congress that F-35 program is making progress

Defense Department officials defended the embattled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program Tuesday, insisting the warplane is still on track despite continued financial and technical glitches.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, the program’s executive officer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that since a 2012 restructuring, the program’s overall cost continues to decrease, and delays are not as bad.

The Government Accountability Office agreed on those points. But the GAO said the F-35, being built by Lockheed Martin at its west Fort Worth complex, is still over budget and behind schedule. The Pentagon must continue to lower costs and increase efficiency to make the fighter combat-ready.

Although the program has managed costs very well since 2012, said Michael Sullivan, of the GAO, it still poses significant funding challenges for the Pentagon. This is especially true, Sullivan said, when balanced against other funding priorities like the Ohio-class submarine and the B-21 bomber.

Armed Services Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., wasn’t satisfied. He called the program “both a scandal and a tragedy in regards to both cost and performance.”

McCain, a former fighter pilot, said the F-35 is the most expensive project of its kind in Defense Department history. However, he added that “the full capabilities this aircraft will eventually provide are critical to our nation’s national security.”

The stealth fighter is meant to replace aging warplanes like the F-16 and the A-10 and allow the United States to maintain superiority in the skies against technologically advanced enemies.

The program’s cost dropped from $391 billion in 2014 to $379 billion in March. But a GAO report released earlier this month said defects in the jet’s “computer brain” — called the Autonomic Logistics Information System — could raise costs by up to $100 billion.

The GAO’s Sullivan called the information system the most worrisome and expensive part of the F-35 and also the most important for its warfighting ability.

But Bogdan told the committee that “challenges and discoveries,” with the ALIS and other parts of the fighter, are what’s to be expected at this stage of development.

“We believe we’ve identified the root cause of the problems and are now completing flight tests with these solutions,” Bogdan said. He estimated the program should have enough data to consider the current issue closed by the end of the month.

“The F-35 is no longer a program that keeps me up at night,” Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, told the committee.

This story was originally published April 26, 2016 at 12:10 PM with the headline "Pentagon leaders tell Congress that F-35 program is making progress."