The USA's top weapons buyer is considering changes for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme, seeking to prevent further delays and cost overruns.
Ashton Carter, deputy undersecretary of defence for acquisition, technology and logistics, plans to immerse himself in the F-35's programmatic details over the next month, the Department of Defense has confirmed.
His review will consider all aspects of the F-35's current plan, including design, manufacture and flight test. Carter specifically singled out the flight-test phase as a potential source of changes during an interview with Defense News.
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The tri-service F-35 programme has already exceeded its original budget estimate by more than $70 billion, and is running two to three years behind schedule.
Last year, a joint estimating team (JET) evaluated the programme and concluded that a further two-year delay and $7 billion cost overrun was possible. A follow-up report still being finalised reportedly warns that the potential cost overrun estimate has more than doubled.
Lockheed officials have argued that the JET conclusions are flawed because they are based on previous fighter acquisitions. The F-35 has access to a new generation of design and simulation tools, they add.
Carter has not set a timeline for determining a new baseline schedule for the programme.
Pentagon officials are in the process of preparing the fiscal year 2011 budget request, which will be submitted to Congress in February.
The F-35, meanwhile, continues to face new flight-test delays. Aircraft BF-1, the first short take-off and vertical landing prototype, remains at Lockheed's facility in Fort Worth, Texas. It is already several weeks late in ferrying the aircraft to Patuxent River, Maryland, where it must complete its first transition from forward flight to vertical landing.
Lockheed's first weight-optimised conventional take-off and landing flight test aircraft, AF-1, also has still has not achieved its first flight.
Source: Flight International
