Graham Warwick in Washington DC
Lockheed Martin is warning that moves by Congress to delay production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will push up costs, but believes political and international support for the programme is strong enough to avert the cuts.
Concerned that production JSFs are being funded before the first development F-35 has flown, two key Congressional committees have passed differing proposals to delay initial procurement.
The two recommendations “have fairly different impacts”, says Tom Burbage, Lockheed executive vice-president and general manager F-35 programme integration. The House Armed Services Committee plan funds the first five low-rate initial production (LRIP) aircraft, but cuts the second batch from 16 to five. The Senate Armed Services Committee wants to cut the first five aircraft altogether.
“The first five aircraft are for operational test and evaluation [OT&E]. If we don’t build them, we don’t start OT&E on time and we have to stretch out SDD [system development and demonstration], which costs money,” says Burbage. “And if we don’t build the aircraft there is a hiatus in production and we have to start up the learning curve again, which implies cost.”
Congress also wants all production aircraft to be fixed-price, Burbage says, where the first three LRIP batches are planned to be cost-plus. “This shifts risk to the contractor, which will have to increase its price, making the programme more expensive.”
Delaying production will incur disruption costs and inflate the average unit cost, says Burbage, warning of the “classic death spiral” that afflicted the Northrop B-2 and Lockheed F-22 – unit costs soaring as numbers were slashed. “The programme is buy-to-budget. If there is no top-line relief we have to eat the extra costs.”
The large number of F-35s planned for the LRIP phase means there is room to slow the production ramp-up, suggests Ed Linhart, vice-president production operations. “There are more aircraft in LRIP than in most production programmes. You can take 20 or 50 out and there are still a lot of aircraft,” he says.
Plans call for the initial LRIP batches to be produced by Lockheed and its principal partners Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems, but for second sources of major subassemblies to be established within the international partner nations to support higher-rate production.
Source: Flight International
