One continues to admire the degree of frankness from senior Americans compared to Canadians–and LockMart keeps spinning its economy with the truth:
Air Force Warns New Fighter Jet Is Getting Too Costly, Urges Contractors to Take Action [Actually Lt.-Gen. Bogdan represents the Pentagon as a whole, not just the USAF]
The Air Force general in charge of developing the U.S.’s next generation of fighter jets warned on Tuesday that escalating costs could at some point make the planes unaffordable to operate and urged contractors to do more to rein in expenses.
Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan delivered his blunt assessment of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s development, which is already the most expensive Pentagon weapons program ever, to defense industry executives and foreign diplomats at an Aviation Week magazine conference in Arlington, Va.
“If we don’t start thinking about how to reduce [operational] costs on this airplane, it could potentially be unaffordable in the future,” Gen. Bogdan said…
With the Defense Department expected to scale back its own orders for F-35s because of budget cuts, Lockheed is looking to make up the shortfall by selling more planes overseas. Currently, 10 countries have signed on to buy versions of the F-35.
[As far as I know only Italy, the UK, Australia Norway, the Netherlands of partner nations have actually made firm orders, and those five countries in small numbers. Italy is at seven–see detailed listing for LRIPS 6, 7, 8 at link–but it looks now that Italy has no order in LRIP 8. The UK is at eight I think–see the LRIP listing here plus four in LRIP 8. Israel and Japan also have orders, with the U.S. is paying for the Israeli aircraft. That’s seven countries, not ten. Apologies for the somewhat confusing LRIP material but it’s not that easy to find.]
Bruce Tanner, Lockheed’s chief financial officer, said he would be “kidding himself” if the looming sequester cuts didn’t affect the number of F-35s destined for the U.S. military. However, Mr. Tanner said the company was looking to international sales to keep the unit cost of the advanced fighter jet from escalating.
“It’s not necessarily true that we’re going to have a reduced build rate,” Mr. Tanner said Tuesday at an industry conference in New York [stuff and flipping nonsense–see the rate of planned production at this post]…
Concerns about design and development problems have prompted some of Washington’s international partners, including Turkey, Canada and Australia , to re-evaluate their plans to buy F-35s [see here, here and here]. Any reductions are certain to increase costs for everyone else because of the lower volume, Gen. Bogdan said. For example, Turkey’s decision to postpone its plan to buy two F-35s will drive up costs of buying the plane by $1 million per plane, he said.
“We will all hang together, or we will all hang separately,” Lt. Gen. Bogdan told the conference.
Since he was named to lead the F-35 program last year, Lt. Gen. Bogdan has occasionally delivered blunt criticism of F-35 defense contractors for focusing too much on their own profits.
During a visit to Australia last week, Gen. Bogdan accused the companies of trying to “squeeze every nickel” out of the program [see: “Pentagon F-35 program chief lashes Lockheed, Pratt”].
On Tuesday [March 5], the general reiterated his frustration and called his comments a “shot across the bow” of the companies, who have assured the Pentagon that they are working to reduce costs.
While Gen. Bogdan expressed confidence that the program would remain on track, he outlined a series of challenges that could undermine it, including parts failures, software integration and technical problems in weapons bay doors…
Another look at the general’s remarks, a bit, er, softer:
3-star: F-35 comments a ‘shot across the bow’
The U.S. general in charge of the multinational F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program has softened the tone of the controversial comments he made about the program’s contractors last week, saying they were blown out of proportion and that the program is in good shape.
He did, however, acknowledge that he wanted to give a “shot across the bow” to prime contractor Lockheed Martin and engine-maker Pratt & Whitney.
“Part of my comments [in Australia] were a frustration with both contractors that affordability is my number one issue and every single day we have to attack that,” Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, head of the F-35 Joint Program Office, told a conference on Tuesday. “Every business decision and every action we take on the program needs to be thought of with affordability in mind, and that was just a sort of wake up call to let everyone know it’s still important to me.”
However, he said he felt his comments were taken “a little out of context.”
“I never said the program’s in trouble, and that’s not what should have been inferred from my comments in Australia,” Bogdan said. “What you should have inferred is what I said. I need everybody in this enterprise to worry about affordability. I need everybody.”..
The general talked about the need to be transparent with international partners that are injecting billions of dollars into the program.
“For us in the United States, a couple billion dollars here or a couple billion dollars there isn’t that much,” Bogdan said. “But if you go to a country like Norway or a country like the Netherlands, or a country like Canada, those billions of dollars are big bucks for them.”
That transparency is not limited to explaining where the partner’s investments are going. It includes opening up technical information to the air worthiness offices with all the partners — something made challenging by a previous decision to classify large reams of technical data…
“Early on in this program, for whatever reason, much of the technical data was stamped U.S. only. Now we have a backlog of technical data that is marked U.S. only that is not U.S. only,” Bogdan said. “Not a pretty situation to be in, because there’s reams and reams of data we have to go back and re-look at. But it has to be done.”
DoD is now working with contractors to make sure new data is classified correctly [so over the past few years our government was not that fully informed, yet in 2010 decided to buy the plane anyway].
While he told the audience he is confident the unit cost per plane will continue to go down during each successive buy [but by how much? LRIP production is hardly ramping up], Bogdan acknowledged that costs could rise if the international partners move their commitments.
“There isn’t a whole lot that I can do relative to the flyaway cost of the airplane if partners or the services move their production orders out [emphasis added],” Bogdan said. “That’s just economics – less quantities mean the unit cost of the airplane is going to go up in the short term. That is a fact of life.”..
Meanwhile, an exposé of LockMart marketing, for what it may be worth (the author also writes for Wired):
Jet Fighter Influence: How Lockheed’s Public Relations Efforts Keep the F-35 Sold
Mark Collins, a prolific Ottawa blogger, is a Research Fellow at the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute
Mark Collins 3Ds Blog 