PDA

View Full Version : F-35 Joint Strike Fighter costs could hit home



thedrifter
04-07-08, 08:53 AM
Technology
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter costs could hit home
Richard Burnett | Sentinel Staff Writer
April 7, 2008

The nation's capital is rumbling about the rising costs of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and the sound is reverberating all the way to Central Florida.

The Pentagon's top acquisition panel met recently to cast a newly critical eye on Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35 contract, which supports hundreds of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in Central Florida.

Government auditors recently cited the F-35 advanced stealth fighter jet among a group of high-profile defense programs that have run billions of dollars over their originally projected price tags.

At its current pace, the F-35 deal could cost nearly 50 percent more than the target of $203 billion set by the military in 2000, the Government Accountability Office said in its annual Pentagon spending review.

Lockheed Martin officials have insisted the work is on schedule and is being done as affordably as possible. The first planes are set for delivery in 2010.

The company's aircraft division in Fort Worth, Texas, is the lead contractor on the F-35. Lockheed's Orlando-based training-simulator division is building flight- and maintenance-training systems, while its Orlando missiles unit is building an F-35 weapons-targeting system.

A half-dozen Lockheed subcontractors in the region also are working on the F-35. And Melbourne-based Harris Corp. is providing a critical piece of the jet: its high-speed cockpit-communications and data-processing technology.

Combined with the rising costs of some other high-profile programs, the F-35's price tag is making senior defense-acquisition officials nervous. Other programs cited in the report include:

*The Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, an amphibious armored carrier developed by General Dynamics Corp. for the Marines, which is currently projected to cost $13.5 billion, up from a target of $8.7 billion in 2000.

*The Future Combat Systems project, a massive Army modernization effort led by Boeing Co. that will use next-generation communications technology to link manned and unmanned aircraft and vehicles. Price tag: $128.5 billion, up from $88.3 billion in 2003.

Analysts for the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, blamed many of the problems on inefficient Pentagon management. Overall procurement costs in 2007 jumped 26 percent from the baseline estimates for 72 major weapons programs, the agency said.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon took a swipe at another Lockheed Martin fighter-jet program -- the F-22 Raptor. The proposed defense budget for 2009 significantly reduces funds for the F-22, which is designed to replace the country's aging fleet of F-15 Eagles.

Lockheed's Orlando operations and Harris are also producing key systems for the Raptor, which been described as the most costly fighter jet in U.S. history -- though some industry experts say the F-35 is quickly catching up.

"Its costs have now jumped so much, it might not be that much cheaper than the F-22," said Nick Schwellenbach, an investigator for the Project for Government Oversight, a defense-watchdog group in Washington. "But the Joint Strike Fighter does much more. It has a bigger payload and fulfills close air-support missions. It would be hard to imagine the Pentagon cutting the F-35."




Information from The Associated Press was used in this report. Richard Burnett can be reached at rburnett@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5256.

Ellie