JSF News…and not good!

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GAO: Delay JSF Decision Until Technology Matures

By Stephen Trimble/AviationNow.com

19-Oct-2001 10:57 AM U.S. EDT

One week before the Pentagon plans to award the Joint Strike Fighter contract, the investigative arm of Congress is urging the military to delay the decision until both contractors are better prepared.

A General Accounting Office report slated to be released Friday afternoon warns that the both rivals for the $200 billion contract — Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co. – may need more work in eight technology areas.

“Although the program has made good progress in some technology areas,” the GAO reports says, “the program is at risk of not meeting its objective because critical technologies are not projected to be matured to levels we believe would indicate a low-risk program.”

The JSF relies on several technical advances in avionics and stealth design to achieve the Pentagon’s requirements for the roughly $30 million-per-copy aircraft.

The fighter is expected to reach new levels of stealth by using novel ways of disguising air inlets and radar reflections. Small, powerful radars the size of bathroom tiles are key to the fighter’s guidance system. Plus, the JSF relies on a new integrated core processor to assemble mounds of data streaming in from new types of radar sensors, helmet-mounted displays, touch-control screens and three-dimensional audio commands.

The U.S. Air Force and the JSF program office did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment, but an Air Force statement says it “fundamentally disagrees” with the GAO’s conclusions. The Pentagon plans to award the contract Oct. 26.

The GAO’s findings match a report issued nearly 20 months ago, in which the audit agency cited concerns that eight areas of technology used by the contracting teams were not matured.

Failures of any single technology area may add significant costs to the potentially 6,000-fighter program.

In March 2000, the GAO found that substituting one planned technology with a backup could add a $9 billion bill to the program over its lifetime.

GAO used the NASA-developed technology readiness standard to assess the fighter program’s reliability. By last year, only two of the eight technical areas were expected to meet the basic readiness requirement.

But a delay in the program could spell trouble for the U.S. Marine Corps, which is projecting a shortfall of fighter aircraft by the JSF’s scheduled arrival in 2008.

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