Documents detail serious problems with F-35 program

[unhappycamper]

Documents detail serious problems with F-35 program
By BOB COX
[e-mail]
Posted Sunday, Feb. 28, 2010

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other Pentagon officials have made it clear in recent weeks that they are unhappy about the F-35 joint strike fighter program.

~snip~

Monthly reports prepared by the Defense Contract Management Agency show that as recently as mid-November, development of the F-35 was in serious disarray. Lockheed Martin and other contractors were producing key components and completing airplanes more slowly, not faster, documents show.

The reports are heavily redacted to prevent disclosure of detailed financial information, but indications of major problems leap off the pages. They include:

Nine flight test aircraft, all of which were to have flown by the end of 2009, were behind schedule by 41/2 to 81/2 months when the report was written, in November. Only one of those planes has flown since then.

The next plane expected to fly is now 11 months behind the schedule that was rewritten in early 2008.


Rest of article about this $239 million (and rising) piece o crap at: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/02/28/2003601/documents-detail-serious-problems.html



unhappycamper comment: If you go to page two of the article, Secretary Gates plans on adding another $2 billion into the development pot in the 2011 military budget. I wonder where that money is coming from?

[msongs]

1. lol the F 35 is designed to attack the US treasury nt

[unhappycamper]

2. And it's doing a damn fine job.

I wonder how much those nine airplanes have cost us?

[PacerLJ35]

4. The first examples always cost a lot

Because they factor in all the R&D...once they go into production, unit price falls. Simple economy of scale...it takes a fixed cost to develop and produce even one example...just like cars. Small-quantity vehicles like Ferraris cost a lot because only a few are produced, whereas if they made several hundred thousand I'm quite sure the unit price would go down significantly.

[PacerLJ35]

3. This and other program issues shows there needs to be an overhaul of the procurement system

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, it took only a few years to develop new aircraft. I've had people tell me "yeah, but those aircraft aren't as sophisticated as today's aircraft". No, they weren't...but for the 1950s they were perhaps even more ahead of their time, and they were developed with half the timeline of today's system. The contractors aren't the only one's responsible...Congress is also a huge player in this broken system. Instead of simply funding a program and getting it done with, they trickle the money out...but the problem is the contractor needs expenses to pay for its overhead, which doesn't change...so it turns into a cash cow for the contractor...they get to stay in business, pay employees and turn a profit while providing very little "development"...this is what results in it taking 20 years to develop a new fighter jet when 50 years ago it took about 2-5 years.

It's easy to make the contractor the bad guy, but if somebody walked up to you and said "hey, I'll pay your mortgage, pay your bills, put a little extra in your savings account, and then pay you about $50 a month to do $50 worth of work for the year", you'd be hard pressed to pass that up too. Instead they should be doing it the old fashioned way..."deliver your product on time and on budget in 5 years or less or you lose the contract". But also, back then there were dozens of aircraft manufacturers chomping at the bit to get contracts, so there was lots of competition. Mergers have effectively whittled the field down to about 3-4 real aerospace contractors for the military...Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. Back in the 50s, there was Lockheed, Boeing, McDonnell, Grumman, Vought, Douglas, North American, and dozens more smaller companies.

It might just take the failure of such a large program to prompt a demand for change. I thought the Air Force's tanker debacle would have done that but thus far it hasn't.