Pentagon to Review Lockheed's ($243 million dollar) F-35 Jet Program Amid Delays in Development

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Pentagon to Review Lockheed's F-35 Jet Program Amid Delays in Development
By Tony Capaccio and Gopal Ratnam - Thu Nov 18 18:53:34 GMT 2010

U.S. Defense Department officials responsible for weapons purchases will review Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 jet program next week to investigate delays in development, Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman, said today.

The review, scheduled for Nov. 22 and led by Ashton Carter, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, comes as the F-35 program manager, Vice Admiral David Venlet, is conducting a so-called technical baseline assessment of the $382 billion Joint Strike Fighter, the third such study in less than year.

The assessment by Venlet is a “deeper dive so as to avoid future surprises about this program,” Morrell said at a news conference today. Already the Pentagon has found that there is more software code “left to be written than what we thought,” he said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates will take into account the review’s findings to determine the 2012 budget for the program, Morrell said.

A December 2009 assessment of the F-35 jets, the Pentagon’s most expensive program, led Gates to mandate a 13-month extension of the development phase to November 2015, shift $2.8 billion in production funds for continued research and delay the purchase of 122 jets to beyond 2015.