In the grey skies over Avalon, the US Air Force’s finest did
their thing, showing just what Australia won’t ever fly and can’t afford
anyway. The F-22 Raptor certainly put on a show, its twin afterburners roaring
with pure power, its travelling roadshow team delivering a breathless
commentary in a manner which would not be out of place at a rodeo or a NASCAR
race.
They even had their own merchandise stand, selling various
patches plus F-22 baseball caps which fleetingly tempted your correspondent
until he saw the $40 pricetag. Seems nothing about F-22 is cheap.
This was all great airshow stuff, which the Russians do just
as well, but little to do with the type of air combat at which F-22 excels.
On the ground, the travelling media headed into a briefing
with Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan, a former US Air Force F-111 and B-2 pilot
who in December stepped up to the plate as executive officer of the Pentagon’s
F-35 joint program office. He knew what to expect as he’d served as deputy to
former JSF program director Vice Admiral David Venlet since July 2012.
Your correspondent emerged from this gathering mightily
impressed, for the general – who was in Australia for the Chief of Air Force
conference in conjunction with Avalon plus meetings in Canberra – spoke with a
candor perhaps not possible from the Lockheed Martin execs who have had to
carry much of the JSF selling in Australia.
“Don’t expect me to be a cheerleader for the F-35 program.
That’s not my job. My job is to execute this program. If I start becoming a
zealot or an advocate for this program, guess what, I lose my credibility and
no-one will listen to me,” he said. “What you are going to hear today is the
good, the bad and the ugly.”
LTGEN Bogdan said many people had opinions on JSF, based on
the program’s tragic past history which started out with great hopes of low
cost and high performance with minimal development issues.
Those assumptions collided with reality with the realisation
that the short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) variant was overweight,
requiring a slimdown program costing US$6 billion and two years.
As this was being
sorted, JSF effectively ran off the tracks around 2008-09, triggering what’s
termed the Nunn-McCurdy amendment and requiring the Pentagon to front Congress
and explain why the program should not be cancelled.
That resulted in the re-baselining of the program, injecting
around US$13 billion, all from the US Department of Defense not foreign
customers, to extend the development program for five years.
The long and the short of all this was that JSF now isn’t
doing too badly and that’s not too amazing, LTGEN Bogdan noted, considering the
extra funding and time it’s been given.
“Since we re-baselined that program in 2010-11, this is a
different program... and it is getting better. It is not getting better nearly
as fast as I would like it to,” he said.
LTGEN Bogdan hinted that Lockheed Martin had really needed
to be brought into line.
“I am not so sure that up until 2010-11, we, the Department,
was really in charge of this program, not sure.” Now, he said, there was not
the slightest doubt.
Under a new and rigorous systems engineering process,
solutions are in place to fix a range of well-known technical problems. LTGEN
Bogdan said he didn’t lose sleep over known technical issues.
Software remains one
potential problem, he acknowledged. But since 2011 a proven software
development system had been introduced with the latest block two software
development five months behind schedule, a delay inherited from the earlier
regime.
On January 31, the initial increment of software block 2B,
the first with warfighting capability, was delivered on time and with the full
level of promised ability.
On the issue of concurrency – production aircraft which need
to be retro-fitted to fix problems identified in flight testing – LTGEN Bogdan
said the time from discovery to remediation had been reduced from 18 to 13
months and was heading towards 12. Starting in 2012, Lockheed Martin was made
responsibility for half the costs, giving it “skin in the game” and driving the
improvements.
LTGEN Bogdan said his number one concern remained
affordability. In five years, the unit cost had fallen 50 per cent. For
Australia, that translates to a unit price around US$90 million in 2020
dollars.
“Sixty seven million dollars is the number you keep hearing
about. Guess what – that’s the cost of the airplane back in like 2004 or 2003.
Who cares about that? I want to know what it costs the day I buy it not what I
could have bought it for in 2001,” he said.
The general’s words appear to have significant implications
for Australia, with the government set to decide by mid-year whether to proceed
with acquisition of more Super Hornets, in line with the move in December to
seek latest price and delivery information from Boeing.
On the basis that Australia is aiming for JSF initial
operating capability by 2020, LTGEN Bogdan said there wasn’t much to be
concerned about.
“In 2015, I have to deliver that very same capability to the
US Marine Corps and they will probably declare IOC then. Eight months later I
have to deliver airplanes to Italy. At the beginning of 2017, I have to deliver
that same capability to the Israelis,” he said.
“Then we have a three-year wait until I have to deliver that
same capability to the Australians. Even if I screw this up royally, and I do
not intend on screwing this up royally, I am pretty sure I am going to meet
Australia’s 2020 date.”
Assuming the government agrees with the General’s judgment,
and as the principal representative of JSF’s biggest customer his judgment
carries plenty of weight, Australia won’t need to buy any more Super Hornets.
