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Pentagon Reassessing F-35 Cost Estimates

Jul 30, 2009



By Graham Warwick

FORT WORTH, Texas — Lockheed Martin briefed U.S. Defense Department cost estimators July 29 as they reassess projections for the F-35 amid concerns that continued disagreement between higher independent and lower program office development cost figures could spell trouble for the Joint Strike Fighter.

Officials from the Pentagon’s Office of Program Analysis & Evaluation, Cost Analysis Improvement Group and Joint Estimating Team (JET) were to be briefed on progress with the development program July 29 at Lockheed’s plant here, F-35 Program General Manager Dan Crowley said at the July 28 rollout of the first U.S. Navy F-35C variant.

The previous JET report estimated development would cost an additional $5 billion and take two more years to complete than estimated by the Joint Program Office (JPO) in 2008. The team cited engineering destaffing, manufacturing span times, software development and flight-test productivity as drivers of expected cost and schedule growth.

Because of delays in flying test aircraft, JSF Program Executive Officer Brig. Gen. David Heinz does not expect the updated assessment to change the JET estimate by much. But Crowley hopes to convince the independent estimators that destaffing, manufacturing and software is on track to deliver the JPO’s lower projections.

“The JET has been tasked with updating its assessment in September,” Heinz says. “Without significant flight-testing, I do not expect a major revision.”

While it has been budgeting F-35 development at the lower cost estimated by the JPO, for fiscal 2010 the Pentagon opted for the JET’s higher estimate and added $480 million to the budget to cover projected cost growth in flight-test.

This raises the specter of a major cost jump for the development program, and potential cuts to aircraft procurement numbers, if the Pentagon abandons the JPO estimate and embraces the JET projections.

Crowley continues to hope the Pentagon and Congress will give the JSF program another year or two to prove its projected improvements in flight-test productivity over legacy fighter development efforts.

With 99 percent of drawings released for all three variants, engineering destaffing is “following a profile close to predictions,” he says, with the numbers working on the program expected to be cut from 4,000 to around 2,000 by year’s end.

Flight-test aircraft are between two and four months behind schedule, “but we are seeing rapid reductions in span times” as it begins assembling the first low-rate initial production aircraft, he says.

While the JET assessment expected growth in the amount of software needed and doubted the industry team could meet its software productivity targets, Crowley says software content is stable and productivity is beating estimates.

With only around 100 of a planned 5,000 development sorties expected to be accumulated by year’s end, flight-testing remains the biggest cost and schedule challenge. “It’s still difficult to estimate,” Heinz says.

Crowley says the team will not have enough data to support its flight-test productivity projections until it has completed 10 percent of planned sorties, expected late in 2010. “It’s too early to prove them wrong,” he says.

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