thedrifter
08-20-06, 02:56 PM
New jet, cleared to land at Miramar, flying in turbulence
Effect on S.D. airport issue, production push criticized
By Steve Liewer
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 20, 2006
When the tires of the first F-35 Lightning II smack the runway at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station a few years hence, the next-generation fighter jet will have run a gantlet tough enough to make any grizzled Marine vet proud.
Born in the Defense Department's post-Cold War quest for economy, the F-35 – commonly known as the Joint Strike Fighter – has weathered controversy and ballooned into a quarter-trillion-dollar program that is by far the Pentagon's biggest-ever weapons system.
If plans hold, the U.S. military eventually will field 2,443 of the F-35s bearing the colors of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, with modifications for each branch. Eight other countries have invested in the aircraft's development and are likely to buy it as well.
“The skids are greased,” said Winslow Wheeler, an analyst for Center for Defense Information, a Washington think tank and watchdog of Pentagon spending. “It's going to go forward. There's no opposition to it in any of the services or in Congress.”
The F-35 has stealth capability and advanced avionics that make it easier to fly and harder to spot than the F-16 and early-model F/A-18 fighters it replaces – though critics fear adding heavy electronic baubles to the airframe would limit its payload and cut its range.
Last week, the Marine Corps issued orders to Miramar officials to begin preparing for the F-35's arrival in 2012.
Coincidentally – or cleverly, skeptics contend – the Miramar announcement buttresses the Pentagon's contention that the base is crucial to Marine aviation and can't be the site of a civilian airport to replace Lindbergh Field. A referendum on joint civil-military use of Miramar is scheduled for Nov. 7.
San Diego-based aircraft carriers will see F-35s starting in 2014 at the earliest, said Navy spokesman Lt. Trey Brown.
Under the gun
Even as its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, prepares the first flight tests this fall, the F-35 continues to draw criticism. A 2005 Government Accountability Office report showed that development costs had climbed 80 percent and the aircraft delivery date had slipped by two years since the program's inception in 1996.
A spiraling price and slipping schedule are old news in the defense-acquisition world. But a second GAO report, issued in March, harshly criticized plans to start full-scale production of the F-35 years before its flight-testing is complete. The move could boost costs even higher, the report said.
The nagging worries about the cost and performance of the military's next-generation fighter looks to some experts like an old-fashioned headache. “The F-35 is in deep trouble,” said Wheeler, the defense analyst.
But the opinion is far from universal. The Joint Strike Fighter's troubles aren't unusual, said Loren Thompson, a military analyst for the pro-defense think tank Lexington Institute. They stand out only because the program itself is so big, he said.
“The truth of the matter is, the JSF program is progressing quite smoothly,” Thompson said. “There's little glitches, but I just don't see any major problems with it.”
In the mid-1990s, the Pentagon pushed hard for an aircraft that all three services could use in hopes of saving billions in development costs. (The fourth, the Army, doesn't use fighter aircraft.)
Building the jet in the first place was a tough sell, given the forces' differing needs and rivalries. The services settled on three versions of the fighter that share about 80 percent of the basic airframe and avionics. They include:
An Air Force version designed for conventional airfields to replace the F-16 and A-10 while complementing the new F-22A.
A Navy version suitable for carriers, to complement the F/A-18 E/F.
A Marine Corps version, to replace the F/A-18 A/C/D and AV-8B Harrier, that can take off from short airfields and land vertically.
Testing, testing
Five years ago, Lockheed Martin beat Boeing to win the F-35 contract. Last month, the plane was christened “Lightning II,” reminiscent of the World War II-era P-38 Lightning.
Also in July, the company unveiled a model of the aircraft at an air show in Farnborough, England. Engine testing is scheduled to begin this month on the first of 22 test-model F-35s, said John Kent, a Lockheed Martin spokesman.
Tests on the three models are scheduled to stretch until 2013 as the company adds advanced missions systems; crucial avionics software for those systems is still being developed.
By that time, the GAO said in its March report, the Pentagon already will have spent $49 billion to buy 424 fighters. If problems turn up late in the testing – which the GAO noted has happened frequently on past projects – costs could mushroom. Each plane is expected to cost $100 million, according to the GAO report last year.
“The large amount of uncertainty in this approach has already led to poor cost and schedule estimates for the JSF program, and a reduction in DOD's buying power,” the report cautioned.
Pentagon and Lockheed Martin officials believe the GAO is worrying too much. Sophisticated, modern design methods make it easier to detect problems while an aircraft still is on the drawing board, Kent said.
“We essentially know exactly how this airplane is going to behave before it flies,” he said. “The airplane is actually operating in a virtual environment already.”
The actual flight tests, he added, “are less a test than a validation of what we already know.”
Cooling their jets
Pentagon watchers say the Joint Strike Fighter's future is safe because the services and Congress all have a big stake in keeping it going.
“Two things are certain,” said Steve Kosiak, a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “The program will not be canceled, and the program will be dramatically scaled back.”
After an era of fat defense budgets, it's the F-35's misfortune, Kosiak said, to come along as the Pentagon is getting lean.
“It's far too costly to go forward as planned,” he said.
Already, the Navy and Marine Corps have scaled back their planned purchase of F-35s to a total of 680, from 1,089. The Lexington Institute's Thompson said the Air Force is likely to cut its order from 1,763 to 1,100 to 1,400.
“The only real question is whether the nation needs to be buying so many fighter jets,” Thompson said. “We're buying so many fighters when it seems like we need so many other types of aircraft.”
The Navy and Air Force, at least, have other modern fighters to fall back on if the F-35 program falls further behind. The Marines do not.
With orders now in hand, the Miramar command must ready the base for the plane.
That likely will mean lengthy environmental reviews and mundane chores such as reconfiguring aircraft parking areas and widening hangar doors, said Tom Caughlan, a retired colonel who supervised the Marines' 1997 move from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County to Miramar. He's glad the base command is getting a six-year head start.
“You have to start earlier now,” he said. “It makes good sense to do it like this.”
He's proud to hear the military's new jet will make its home at Miramar.
“I'm glad it's happening, but it's not a surprise,” Caughlan said. “It's the future of Marine aviation.”
Union-Tribune research librarian Denise Davidson contributed to this report.
Steve Liewer: (619) 498-6632; steve.liewer@uniontrib.com
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060820/images/news_jet430.gif
Ellie
Effect on S.D. airport issue, production push criticized
By Steve Liewer
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 20, 2006
When the tires of the first F-35 Lightning II smack the runway at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station a few years hence, the next-generation fighter jet will have run a gantlet tough enough to make any grizzled Marine vet proud.
Born in the Defense Department's post-Cold War quest for economy, the F-35 – commonly known as the Joint Strike Fighter – has weathered controversy and ballooned into a quarter-trillion-dollar program that is by far the Pentagon's biggest-ever weapons system.
If plans hold, the U.S. military eventually will field 2,443 of the F-35s bearing the colors of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, with modifications for each branch. Eight other countries have invested in the aircraft's development and are likely to buy it as well.
“The skids are greased,” said Winslow Wheeler, an analyst for Center for Defense Information, a Washington think tank and watchdog of Pentagon spending. “It's going to go forward. There's no opposition to it in any of the services or in Congress.”
The F-35 has stealth capability and advanced avionics that make it easier to fly and harder to spot than the F-16 and early-model F/A-18 fighters it replaces – though critics fear adding heavy electronic baubles to the airframe would limit its payload and cut its range.
Last week, the Marine Corps issued orders to Miramar officials to begin preparing for the F-35's arrival in 2012.
Coincidentally – or cleverly, skeptics contend – the Miramar announcement buttresses the Pentagon's contention that the base is crucial to Marine aviation and can't be the site of a civilian airport to replace Lindbergh Field. A referendum on joint civil-military use of Miramar is scheduled for Nov. 7.
San Diego-based aircraft carriers will see F-35s starting in 2014 at the earliest, said Navy spokesman Lt. Trey Brown.
Under the gun
Even as its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, prepares the first flight tests this fall, the F-35 continues to draw criticism. A 2005 Government Accountability Office report showed that development costs had climbed 80 percent and the aircraft delivery date had slipped by two years since the program's inception in 1996.
A spiraling price and slipping schedule are old news in the defense-acquisition world. But a second GAO report, issued in March, harshly criticized plans to start full-scale production of the F-35 years before its flight-testing is complete. The move could boost costs even higher, the report said.
The nagging worries about the cost and performance of the military's next-generation fighter looks to some experts like an old-fashioned headache. “The F-35 is in deep trouble,” said Wheeler, the defense analyst.
But the opinion is far from universal. The Joint Strike Fighter's troubles aren't unusual, said Loren Thompson, a military analyst for the pro-defense think tank Lexington Institute. They stand out only because the program itself is so big, he said.
“The truth of the matter is, the JSF program is progressing quite smoothly,” Thompson said. “There's little glitches, but I just don't see any major problems with it.”
In the mid-1990s, the Pentagon pushed hard for an aircraft that all three services could use in hopes of saving billions in development costs. (The fourth, the Army, doesn't use fighter aircraft.)
Building the jet in the first place was a tough sell, given the forces' differing needs and rivalries. The services settled on three versions of the fighter that share about 80 percent of the basic airframe and avionics. They include:
An Air Force version designed for conventional airfields to replace the F-16 and A-10 while complementing the new F-22A.
A Navy version suitable for carriers, to complement the F/A-18 E/F.
A Marine Corps version, to replace the F/A-18 A/C/D and AV-8B Harrier, that can take off from short airfields and land vertically.
Testing, testing
Five years ago, Lockheed Martin beat Boeing to win the F-35 contract. Last month, the plane was christened “Lightning II,” reminiscent of the World War II-era P-38 Lightning.
Also in July, the company unveiled a model of the aircraft at an air show in Farnborough, England. Engine testing is scheduled to begin this month on the first of 22 test-model F-35s, said John Kent, a Lockheed Martin spokesman.
Tests on the three models are scheduled to stretch until 2013 as the company adds advanced missions systems; crucial avionics software for those systems is still being developed.
By that time, the GAO said in its March report, the Pentagon already will have spent $49 billion to buy 424 fighters. If problems turn up late in the testing – which the GAO noted has happened frequently on past projects – costs could mushroom. Each plane is expected to cost $100 million, according to the GAO report last year.
“The large amount of uncertainty in this approach has already led to poor cost and schedule estimates for the JSF program, and a reduction in DOD's buying power,” the report cautioned.
Pentagon and Lockheed Martin officials believe the GAO is worrying too much. Sophisticated, modern design methods make it easier to detect problems while an aircraft still is on the drawing board, Kent said.
“We essentially know exactly how this airplane is going to behave before it flies,” he said. “The airplane is actually operating in a virtual environment already.”
The actual flight tests, he added, “are less a test than a validation of what we already know.”
Cooling their jets
Pentagon watchers say the Joint Strike Fighter's future is safe because the services and Congress all have a big stake in keeping it going.
“Two things are certain,” said Steve Kosiak, a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “The program will not be canceled, and the program will be dramatically scaled back.”
After an era of fat defense budgets, it's the F-35's misfortune, Kosiak said, to come along as the Pentagon is getting lean.
“It's far too costly to go forward as planned,” he said.
Already, the Navy and Marine Corps have scaled back their planned purchase of F-35s to a total of 680, from 1,089. The Lexington Institute's Thompson said the Air Force is likely to cut its order from 1,763 to 1,100 to 1,400.
“The only real question is whether the nation needs to be buying so many fighter jets,” Thompson said. “We're buying so many fighters when it seems like we need so many other types of aircraft.”
The Navy and Air Force, at least, have other modern fighters to fall back on if the F-35 program falls further behind. The Marines do not.
With orders now in hand, the Miramar command must ready the base for the plane.
That likely will mean lengthy environmental reviews and mundane chores such as reconfiguring aircraft parking areas and widening hangar doors, said Tom Caughlan, a retired colonel who supervised the Marines' 1997 move from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County to Miramar. He's glad the base command is getting a six-year head start.
“You have to start earlier now,” he said. “It makes good sense to do it like this.”
He's proud to hear the military's new jet will make its home at Miramar.
“I'm glad it's happening, but it's not a surprise,” Caughlan said. “It's the future of Marine aviation.”
Union-Tribune research librarian Denise Davidson contributed to this report.
Steve Liewer: (619) 498-6632; steve.liewer@uniontrib.com
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060820/images/news_jet430.gif
Ellie