Texas news

As LA- times seems to be a biased source according to some, here’s the same news as reported in Forth Worth, home of LM. But this is probably biased, too, as any newspaper featuring news from the pentagon. (Boy, this Pentagon must have become some sort of subversive institution) 😉 , The figures are similar, only the cost increase has risen to 7.5 billions and there’s a lot more comments and elaborate explanations.

Experts expected setbacks on F-35
By Bob Cox
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

It was no shock to veteran defense observers when word came out of the Pentagon last week that the F-35 joint strike fighter is behind schedule and over budget.

The F-35 program, observers say, is a classic example of the Pentagon/defense industry practice of starting weapons programs by promising to do too much, too soon, and at far too low a price.

“I’m not surprised at all,” said Philip Coyle, the former head of the Pentagon’s weapons testing office and a consultant with the Center for Defense Information. “It’s too bad these kinds of things keep happening with these programs.”

Defense Department officials were cautioned well ahead of time that their expectations might be overly optimistic.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, twice warned the Pentagon that it was headed for trouble in the two years before the first $18.9 billion JSF development contract was awarded to a team headed by Fort Worth-based Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in October 2001.

By the Defense Department’s own standards, the GAO said, the technology needed to design, develop and build the jet, as well as the complex systems to be used in it, was far from ready. As a result, the GAO said, the program would probably encounter delays and cost increases.

“No one should be surprised this has gone the way it has,” said Katherine Schinasi, who heads the GAO’s oversight of defense acquisition. “The risk of [not] meeting the cost and performance goals was too high when they made the decision” to begin development.

In its December 2000 and October 2001 reports, the GAO noted that the Pentagon had relaxed the performance standards and increased the budgets for Lockheed and Boeing as the two companies built the concept aircraft used to compete for the full-scale development contract.

Schinasi said that in the late 1990s, when the program was in its infancy, military and civilian officials overseeing the JSF program pledged to follow private business practices and make sure the needed technology was mature. Only when the risks had been minimized would the government begin spending billions to design and build airplanes.

“The problem was, once it got into the acquisition process, those goals fell by the wayside,” she said.

Now, two years into the planned 10-year F-35 development program, the Defense Department estimates it will cost $40.5 billion, an increase of $7.5 billion, and take a year longer to complete than expected.

To pay for the added costs, Pentagon officials reallocated $5.1 billion from the 2005 through 2009 development budgets by delaying purchases of F-35s for the Air Force and Navy. The first production order for the planes, originally slated for 2005, will be deferred to 2006. The Pentagon says it will buy 90 airplanes through 2009, down from the 160 it had planned.

Senior Defense Department officials and Lockheed Martin officials downplayed the significance of the budget decision and the extent of problems being encountered in the design of the F-35.

The Pentagon’s top procurement official said the new time and cost goals for the F-35 reflect the challenge of designing a family of planes for the Air Force, Navy and Marines. The design effort “is taking longer and is more complex than we had originally anticipated,” said Michael Wynne, acting undersecretary for weapons acquisition.

Lockheed is meeting the contract schedule, spokesman John Smith said. The company is “on track” for a key milestone, the “critical design review” of the Air Force version of the F-35 in April, he said.

That is the first of the three planes Lockheed will produce, and it is the simplest to design and build, but Lockheed and its partners are having a difficult time getting the empty weight of the plane down to the desired goal of about 29,000 pounds.

The latest weight review, completed last month, showed there had been little progress in shaving the needed 1,500 to 2,000 pounds off the design.

“We don’t think we’re where we need to be,” Smith said.

Pentagon officials decided to budget more money and delay plane orders because they are concerned that Lockheed will find it even more difficult to meet weight goals for the Navy and Marine F-35 variants.

The Navy’s version of the plane has a larger wing and must have a stronger structure for carrier landings; the Marines’ version requires heavy equipment, including a 5,000-pound lift fan, to support short takeoffs and vertical landings, but it is supposed to weigh only a couple of thousand pounds more than the Air Force version.

Weight is a crucial factor in any aircraft, but it is especially important in combat jets. A few hundred extra pounds can reduce a plane’s speed, range or weapons payload.

Smith said design and weight have been troublesome because the plane’s systems, weapons and fuel storage must be inside the structure so that the F-35 remains hard to detect by radar. The dimensions of the planes were set a year ago.

“The challenge is, we’ve got a finite amount of space in which to put a lot of things,” Smith said.

Although cost increases and delays on weapons programs are common, there is a political consideration with the JSF: Eight other countries have pledged more than $4.5 billion toward the development costs, and the U.S. government and Lockheed expect to sell planes to those nations.

Aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia said the F-35 program could face credibility issues if problems are not resolved quickly and costs held in check. International partners won’t balk now, Aboulafia said, “but anything else could be a problem.”

Another observer said he doubts the F-35 will have the kinds of ongoing problems that have plagued other aircraft-development programs.

“This program is actually coming along very well,” said Loren Thompson, an analyst with the defense advocacy Lexington Institute. “This is not like the V-22 or some other programs where you’re trying to do something really revolutionary.”

But Coyle, the former Pentagon official, warns there are many technical obstacles ahead for the F-35 team, particularly when it comes to integrating a complex system of untried computer systems.

“It’s one thing to say faster, better, cheaper,” Coyle said, “but when you do things for the first time, they don’t always work out.”

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/business/local/7690301.htm

Originally posted by Distiller
LA Times articles! Don’t want to say more.

But the workshare problem is more severe. Has a lot to do with expectations.

I’m glad to see that there’s some acknowledgement. It really can’t be in US- interest if business partners start dropping out one by one. Either trust them and act accordingly by involving them or do everything your way yourself. But then you shouldn’t be suprised if they opt for a different airplane.

As for LA- times: All they did was reporting higher costs and a delay for the JSF. The article seems rather factual, no opinion voiced. I don’t assume they got this out of the blue. Or are you saying these figures are all made up?

Originally posted by Vortex
why buy milk when you got a cow at home
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Well, this is it! Why shouldn’t Europeans do likewise? Why Chinese? Why Indians, why Brazilians? See where this is getting us at…?

So: obviously your answer’s far from a wholehearted “yes”. Then why insisting on my ignorance? Talking about hypocricy…:rolleyes:

Originally posted by Vortex
about your ignorance….what make you so sure these European equipment don’t have something similar? What make you so sure that Russian stuff is clean also? [/

Well, there’s no indication of that up to now, or is there? The European defence industry would cut its own flesh if it would start adopting US- American policy, just like the US does. It could be quite simple: Trust your allies or lose them. And: don’t export to countries you don’t trust.
But mistakes are made everywhere, here too. PC-7s were exported to Iraq and being used to gaz the Kurds. Others went to Central American dictators. If you’d have read my previous posts you’d see that I aknowledged American concerns. Here it is:

You might have had some incidents in which other powers or even enemies could profit from your knowledge (even though this didn’t seem to be the case with Phoenix- AMOS) and now try to prevent this. You might feel you would want to be in control of the aircrafts you sold to other nations out of a sense of responsibility.

There are certainly advantages of these gadgets looking at it from your standpoint. I’m not denying that. I’m just saying that there are big disadvantages to this sort of gadgets that might outweight the pros, especially (but not exclusively, by the way) if you look at it from a different/our standpoint. You seem to ignore these subtleties to conveniantly put me into a category. Here it comes:

Originally posted by Vortex
Or is it going to be that one day you suddenly become little bit less ignorant then you’re going to say “Well, we need that to protect it from going into the wrong hands…hey even if it’s going to somebody we trust, for now…” kind of hypocritical thing? And…again to harp on the ignorance, isn’t it obvious that i won’t have any of your pent up anger because i think it’s obvious to most here by now that i let you have it exactly what i feel, quite blunt i warn often… 😀 [/

To be emotional and angry is all right, just try to be sober enough to address the questions raised instead of becoming personal exclusively. And another thing: It’s not bad to question your own government’s decision now and then. It’s even part of the great democratic ideals promoted by your founding fathers. Live it!

@ SOC:
It’s just that we all live in our own small environments that tend to make us look at things from a specific viewpoint. I noticed that (US-)Americans posting here tended to see primarily the benefits of the JSF- gadgets described above. I try to understand these benefits putting myself into your position, too: You might have had some incidents in which other powers or even enemies could profit from your knowledge (even though this didn’t seem to be the case with Phoenix- AMOS) and now try to prevent this. You might feel you would want to be in control of the aircrafts you sold to other nations out of a sense of responsibility.
But there are obviously disadvantages, too. They seem to be overlooked by quite a few of the US-Americans posting here.
I didn’t want to imply that (US-)Americans are generally misguided or stubborn.
On the contrary: I’m very certain that most (US-)Americans would understand perfectly the points I made above. Certainly most would reasonably concede:
“Heck no, we wouldn’t want to buy a foreign fighter jet, as good as it would be, that can only be repaired by foreign engineers and the functioning whichof is at the mercy of some president from a country overseas.” They would probably not elect a president willing to buy such foreign fighter jets under the given conditions.
Some that were convinced of the greater benefits of tamper proofing and other measures mentioned above might even reconsider. This was the purpose of my last post.
The reversed case scenario was just tailored to a (US-) American perspective, which is relevant in the case of the JSF and its gadgets.
I’m sure with a little creativity you could come up with a similar reversed case scenario concerning primarily Europeans. Go for it. It might increase mutual understanding!
😉