F-35 fighter price could soar if project is further delayed

F-35 fighter price could soar if project is further delayed

WASHINGTON, Sept 8 2006 (Reuters/Jane’s/DefAerospace) – Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, funded by the United States and eight other countries, initially could cost another $12 million to $16 million apiece if production is curtailed in early years, the project’s top general said on Friday.

The first flight of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), originally scheduled to take place in August, could be pushed back as late as December, Brigadier General Charles Davis, Program Executive Officer for the F-35 Program Office, has said.

Gen Davis said the JSF will probably not be ready for first flight on 31 October – the most recent date to be cited by officials at prime contractor Lockheed Martin. The USD276 billion JSF programme is the most expensive acquisition in the US Department of Defense’s (DoD) history.
“If I had to guess, I’d say we probably won’t make that [31 October date],” said Gen Davis, citing “small technical problems” as the reason for the delays. “We’ve got too many little things – a fan, like the fan you would put in your bedroom, failed yesterday, and that’s not such a big deal except it takes an amazing amount of work to go through the side of the airplane and take it out.”

Gen Davis said the JSF would fly in 2006, but did not specify when. “The bottom line is that the plane will fly when its ready – safety of flight is the highest priority – and being the first plane assembled – there is a learning curve,” JSF spokesperson Kathy Crawford said in a follow-up statement.
It was earlier in June, design tweaks that helped to reduce a weight growth problem two years ago have now come back to haunt the propulsion system for the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).

The Pratt & Whitney F135 engine for the short-take-off vertical landing (STOVL) variant was running about 5 per cent, or 190ºF (88ºC), hotter than the system’s limit in tests, according to programme officials. The issue could reduce the engine’s service life, but thrust power should not decline. About half of the temperature increase, or 100ºF, is being blamed on the 2004 decision to compensate for the aircraft’s weight growth by raising engine thrust levels.

The over-heating issue has been revealed about four months after the US Department of Defense (DoD) proposed to cancel the JSF’s alternative engine programme: the F136. DoD officials justified their decision partly by citing the low-risk nature of the F135 design, which is derived from the F119 powerplant for the Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor.

The F135 STOVL variant, which incorporates a Rolls-Royce lift fan system, roll-posts and a swivel exhaust duct, is due to make its first flight in around the second quarter of 2007 – a critical target for the F-35B programme. The JSF team plans to fix the over-heating issue in time to meet the schedule using two different methods, said Rob Burnes, chief of the JSF joint programme office’s propulsion directorate.

The propulsion team knew from the start that it needed to lower the engine core’s temperature by about 60ºF, said Burnes, and those design enhancements have been in development for several years and are being carried out on schedule. The programme, however, did not anticipate that the design change that boosted engine thrust by 1,300 lb (589 kg) would cause a 100ºF temperature over-run in the engine core, he said. In 2004, the air inlet was enlarged and the exhaust nozzle was widened to increase the flow of air and generate more thrust.

However, there was a side effect. The design change altered not only the volume but also the pattern of the air flow entering the engine core. The engine’s turbine sections, which steer the air flow into the exhaust chamber, have to be adjusted to reshape the air flow pattern in a way that will reduce the overall temperature by 100ºF, he said.

The new turbine vane design was due for introduction mid-August and that fix alone should solve more than half of the temperature problem, Burnes said. Burnes noted that the need for the design change does not change the programme’s thinking about the low-risk nature of the F135 design. The F136 STOVL engine is undergoing the same turbine vane redesign, he said.

The DoD’s willingness to now delay first flight to work out small technical problems before flying the first aircraft may actually come as welcome news to some members of the US Congress. The US Senate panel’s recent hard-line stance on blocking all low-rate initial production airframes in Fiscal Year 2007 (FY07) for JSF – now called the F-35 Lightning II – sets up a clash with a more moderate budget cut recommended by the House, which is only seeking to reduce the first production lot from 12 aircraft to five.

However, both sides agree that they believe the Lockheed Martin fighter programme is making the transition from development to production much too quickly. “Procuring aircraft before the airframe structure and design have been validated through flight testing and before key ground tests have been completed presents high risks in terms of cost increases and schedule delays,” the Senate panel wrote. “‘Buying before flying’ is a known problem that can be avoided.”

Lockheed Martin has maintained that slowing the F-35 production schedule will itself trigger cost growth and that new methods in computer design and automated manufacturing allow the aircraft to safely enter production much earlier.

All this could eat into purchases by projected early buyers such as Britain, Australia and the Netherlands, Air Force Brig. Gen. Charles Davis said in an interview, urging Congress to take heed.

“We’ve said all along the Joint Strike Fighter is as much an instrument of the Department of State as it is of the Department of Defense,” said Davis, the Pentagon’s program executive officer. He called on U.S. lawmakers to weigh the international impact of steps toward cutting or delaying production, describing the F-35 as the centerpiece of a powerful emerging coalition.

The co-development partners are Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Australia, Norway, Denmark and Canada. Singapore and Israel are also participating to a lesser degree.

“Just think about the power of that as an instrument of either deterrence (or) as an instrument of war,” he said, referring to the ability to operate together. “It’s a big deal.” Based on a 2002 projection and unadjusted for inflation, the price of the F-35 ranges from $45 million for the conventional take-off and landing model to $60 million for a version designed to land on aircraft carriers. A short take-off-vertical landing model would be priced in the middle of that range.

Davis said internal studies showed that F-35s in early batches could cost as much as an additional $12 million to $16 million if you “just basically slow down the first production significantly.”

“There is no one figure, every scenario is different,” he said, adding the key cost component was “very, very much tied to how many airplanes you buy early in the program, how fast. They get much cheaper very quick,” he added.

In written responses to questions, the F-35 program office said it expected to deliver the first aircraft to Britain in 2010. Each of the other partners are tentatively scheduled for deliveries from 2011 to 2016, said Michael Dorman, the international program manager.

The U.S. Senate voted to delay by one year a Bush administration plan to spend $1.4 billion for the first five F-35s in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. The move follows a recommendation from the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog that says less than 1 percent of the flight test program has been completed.

The House of Representatives voted to fund four of the five and to cut Bush’s $4 billion request for continued F-35 development by $140 million. Differences in the bills are being worked out by a conference committee. For their part, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are tentatively planning to cut by 35 the number of short take-off and vertical landing F-35 models they would buy from fiscal 2008 to 2013, bumping them to later to free up more than $1 billion for other priorities, leaked internal documents show. A Lockheed spokesman, John Smith, said no technical issues would keep the company from starting low-rate initial production of the F-35 in the coming year, as sought by Bush.

“The government will save time and money if they keep the program on track,” he said. Key F-35 subcontractors include BAE Systems Plc and Northrop Grumman Corp.

Davis said the F-35’s first test flight now appeared likely to take place toward the end of November or early December, rather than by the end of October as he said he had first hoped. “We’d rather have the airplane ready to go do testing, more than to just go do a first flight,” he said. “That means when it flies it should be able to fly again … doesn’t just become a media show just to get the airplane up one day.”