With air superiority at the heart of NATO's current - and future - military doctrine, the cost debate over the alliance's next generation strike fighter has become critical to say the least.
The issue becomes all the more poignant as the world watches some of the most advanced air assets in the US Air Force's inventory being put to the test in the ongoing NATO-run air strike campaign on Serbia.
For the biggest risk to the future of NATO's air power is not conflict, but cost. And if the bean-counters inside the US Department of Defense's Joint Strike Fighter programme office are allowed to have their way for the sake of short-sighted budget-keeping, not only will NATO's air forces be facing a spiral of increasing development costs, delays and programme cuts but also, and potentially even more damaging, an erosion of the very capability they need to guarantee air superiority in the first place.
What is at stake is whether the final decision by the JSF planners, expected in the next few weeks, will allow for additional funding of the competing Boeing and Lockheed Martin teams to complete their rival JSF concept demonstrations with minimal risk. The alternative is to back the work under the concept demonstration phase to keep to schedule and cost. The risk for this option is that the winning team will have to enter the crucial engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase with a design with higher than acceptable technical, schedule and cost risks. And higher-risk aircraft can only spell unforeseen difficulties and spiralling costs further down the road.
All the indicators suggest that the US Department of Defense wants to scale back the work under the CDA phase to compensate for cost overruns by both teams and keep the project on track and on budget. All of which is admirable given that the cost targets were set down from the start. The concept was to design an aircraft which can be built for $28 million ($35 million for the navy version) with everything tradable to get to that final production cost figure. So it is crucial to reduce the risk now to be sure that the programme costs that sum and only that sum. All that makes the now critical to the programme, with the risk elements needing to be determined and minimised before the EMD phase begins.
With both teams still faced with high workloads under the current phase, which involves proving technology, refining the design and ensuring that the costs and technical performance do not change right through to production, it appears that a more sensible approach would be to allocate more money now and perform the work that is necessary now. Rather this than agree to carry more risk into the next phase to meet budget targets. The benefit of hindsight with programmes like the F-22 should dictate that paying now is better than paying later.
While the Boeing team has adjusted its work to fit the budget, it still has its work cut out, compared with the budget available, to match the capability requirements. But Lockheed Martin is in worse shape. Although its design is closer to the final configuration it plans to propose in 2001 for the development and production phases, huge cost overruns, reportedly more than $100 million over the $700 million cap put on the four-year concept demonstration phase, mean the company could be unable to get back on track in time if the cost parameters are not reviewed.
The issue is not how to manage an over-budget programme, but estimate how much more work still has to be done now to avoid costly, high-risk development later. The cost overruns are regrettable but the importance of the work that still needs to be done is so critical that the programme office needs to respond responsibly now to make sure there are two low risk, competitive proposals on the table for JSF to succeed.
The prospect of production contracts for up to 5,000 aircraft for the USA and UK and for export customers worth up to $700 billion means there is too much at stake to be timid about taking action. If more money and time is needed now to keep the risk down and prove that the JSF can be built on budget, then so be it. To recoup the savings later, the services need a stable design now and not 10 years from now!
Source: Flight International
