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Lockheed: F-35 is on track

F-35 is on track despite speculation to the contrary, Lockheed says

Star Telegram

By BOB COX

As the Paris Air Show opens today, the glare and heat of the international spotlight will be on the progress of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 joint strike fighter.

The challenge for Lockheed officials will be convincing skeptical politicians and journalists, some of them being wooed by F-35 competitors, that substantial progress is being made.

With the Air Force and Lockheed no longer talking up the F-22 Raptor — or even allowing it to make a Paris appearance — the F-35 is the most ambitious, highest-profile and costliest (an estimated $300 billion and counting) warplane project in the world.

That has made it the target of speculation in the media and among politicians and aviation experts the world over. Facts, rumors and innuendo fill aviation media and blogs, leaving government officials in countries that are considering buying planes trying to sort out what’s real and what isn’t.

Dan Crowley, Lockheed executive vice president, said there’s no question that the F-35 is on track.

"The program has made huge progress in the last year and will gain altitude and speed over the next 12 months," said Crowley, who oversees development and production of the jet.

Civilian and military leaders from the U.S. and the eight partner nations gave the program "strong support" at a major program review last month, Crowley said.

A more skeptical view of the process comes from the Government Accountability Office.

Last month, its most recent report to Congress said, as it has before, that "JSF development will cost more and take longer to complete" than the Pentagon has yet formally acknowledged.

Even within the Pentagon, the GAO says, official estimates are that it will take one to three years and $2.5 billion to $7.5 billion more just to complete F-35 development and testing.

One longtime observer of Pentagon arms programs says reports of troubles with the F-35 program are exaggerated and being promoted by competitors.

"The F-35 program has not incurred significant new delays over the past six months," said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute defense think tank, who is a consultant to Lockheed and other defense contractors.

Thompson said he suspects Boeing is talking up any sign of F-35 problems to make a stronger case for the Navy and foreign customers to buy its F/A-18 Super Hornet.

"The Super Hornet is a fine plane," Thompson said, "but F-35 is a more survivable aircraft that is destined to replace it. By focusing on possible F-35 problems, Boeing bolsters the case for more Super Hornets. The problem is that some of the supposed problems don’t exist."

In interviews before they left for Paris, Lockheed executives said they’re continuing to make good progress despite recent further delays in delivering and testing aircraft.

With the eight-year anniversary of the launch of F-35 development approaching this fall, the program is still in the crawl-before-you-walk stage. Production and testing of the 19 development aircraft are considerably behind the revised schedule drawn up in 2004 after it was determined that the aircraft needed to be redesigned to reduce weight.

The 1/2 three completed test aircraft have flown only 99 flights in 2 years, including just a handful this year. That compares with the Pentagon’s goal of completing more than 400 test flights by the end of 2009, according to the GAO report.

"JSF flight testing is still in its infancy and continues to experience flight testing delays," the GAO said, adding that manufacturing the test aircraft "is taking more time, money and effort than planned."

Attention is now focused on the biggest fundamental performance requirement of the three JSF models — the short-takeoff and vertical-landing capability of the F-35B destined for use by the Marines and the British air force and navy.

Those tests, which were scheduled to begin last fall, were rescheduled for early this year after engine problems arose. The first F-35B test aircraft, using an earlier engine version, flew fewer than 20 flights last summer before going into the hangers for modifications and upgrades.

The new, stronger engine arrived in January, a month or more later than planned, and ground testing of the STOVL test aircraft was conducted in March and April.

But the plane won’t resume flying until next month as Lockheed makes additional engineering and software changes.

The test aircraft will be flown several times in July and August in Fort Worth to check out all the changes, after which the vertical flight tests will begin, Lockheed’s Crowley said.

It will then be flown to the Navy’s Patuxent River, Md., test center for more rigorous flight tests that are expected to result in full vertical landings "sometime in the September/October time frame," Crowley said.

A second STOVL test aircraft will begin flying this summer, and two more are supposed to begin STOVL tests before year’s end.

As recently as March, Lockheed officials said 11 planes would fly by year’s end. Six or seven is now the target.

Crowley, who relentlessly projects an "everything is under control" message, said, "We knew all along that 2009 would be a challenging patch to get all these jets out."

The testing delays can be made up, Crowley said, and won’t significantly affect the overall program schedule.

Testing so far has "cleared the full flight envelope" of the STOVL aircraft, and Crowley said he is confident that the aircraft will have no problem performing vertical takeoffs and landings.

"We’ve proven we can do vertical landings," he said, pointing to the JSF demonstration flights that won the completion for Lockheed.

Pentagon officials overseeing the program have recently changed their directions to Lockheed from simply getting planes in the air for a few flights to holding them back until they are ready, with all the most recent changes incorporated, for continuous flight testing.

The key to making significant progress, Crowley said, is having the planes fully updated and "ready for productive tests" when they are sent to the main testing bases at Patuxent and at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

The GAO report — the agency’s persistent skepticism in its reports to Congress is a source of constant irritation to Lockheed officials — highlights the continuing struggle Lockheed faces in getting many key parts produced and delivered by suppliers.

With a total of 50 planes, including test aircraft, flying, in production or on order, plus 32 expected to be funded in the 2010 defense budget, pressure is growing to get the production system up to speed.

That situation is gradually improving, Crowley said. On-time parts deliveries have improved from the low 80 percent range a year ago to around 90 percent, requiring a constant juggling act to keep on top of the hundreds of individual contractors and help them resolve their problems.

"We’re kind of like when you see a swan on the water," Crowley said. "It looks smooth on the surface, but underneath we’re paddling like hell."

Despite the accumulated delays and many testing hurdles yet to be overcome, Crowley said there is little reason to fear that major time-consuming, costly and hard-to-fix problems will be found.

Flight tests have shown that the design, modeling and simulation tools used by Lockheed and other contractors accurately predict how the components will react and perform.

"Only about 20 percent of the verification process is based on flight testing," Crowley said.

"I’m optimistic that, unlike the GAO and others who predict big discoveries, we won’t be finding out about major issues" as flight testing picks up.

"F-35 is succeeding," Crowley said, "where other attempts [to develop] joint and complex development programs have failed."