Air Power: Australia welcomes JSF restructure | ADM Feb 2011

Then acting minister for defence Jason Clare has welcomed the restructure of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Program announced by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates early this year.

This was the second program restructure in 12 months and follows a detailed six month Technical Baseline Review of the JSF Program’s progress by the US Department of Defense.

The restructure was prompted in part by delays in flight-testing of the F-35B STOVL variant of the JSF. It will see an extension of the current System Design and Development (SDD) phase and a reduction in the production rate in the earlier batches of aircraft. The US will fund the costs associated with extended design and test activity, Clare stated.

Gates announced on 6 January that he was placing the F-35B, whose principal customer is the US Marine Corps, on the equivalent of a two-year probation because of significant testing problems.

“As a result, the development of the Marine variant will be moved to the back of the overall JSF production sequence,” his statement said. “To fill the gap created from the slip in the JSF production schedule, the Department of the Navy will buy more Navy F/A-18s.”

Gates’s announced came ahead of this month’s formal announcement of the US Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 budget submission which is expected to call for a US$78 billion reduction in costs over the next five years, with no real growth in defense spending in FY 2015 and 2016 and a reduction in the size of the US Army and Marine Corps starting in FY 2015. Overall, Gates is seeking some US$150 million-worth of savings from his department over the next five years.

However, Gates confirmed the F-35A Conventional Take-Off and Landing (CTOL) version of the JSF, which both the USAF and the RAAF plan to buy, is on schedule and proceeding satisfactorily. In 2010 the F-35A bore the brunt of the flight test effort; despite the fact that three of the planned 12 test aircraft hadn’t been delivered, the program as a whole exceeded its flight test target, reporting 410 test flights, or 16 more than predicted, and achieving 50 per cent more of the test points than originally scheduled.

The F-35B problems relate to issues unique to the STOVL variant, so won’t delay platform flight-testing for the F-35A and -C variants. However, much of the JSF avionics software testing is being conducted on F-35Bs; it’s not clear what effect the restructuring will have on this aspect of the program, though neither the Pentagon nor prime contractor Lockheed Martin will tolerate delays to this most critical phase of flight testing.

Defence has advised Minster Clare that the restructure of the JSF Program will reduce overall program risk to Australia and shouldn’t affect Australia’s planned introduction date for the F-35A. Defence has also advised it is confident Australia has adequate buffers in place to withstand any changes to the cost and schedule, said Clare.

“Australia has always adopted a conservative approach to JSF cost estimates and has explicitly included contingency funds and buffers to the schedule,” Clare said in a statement. “While there is no need to change our cost and schedule estimates, Defence will continue to assess options to ensure that cost and schedule buffers remain adequate.”