The head of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program expects the $400 billion fighter jet program to lift itself out of the concurrency "rut" by about 2017 or 2018 as the number of aircraft and engine faults discovered during developmental testing continues to decline.
Last week, the Government Accountability Office warned that the costs associated with retrofitting already-built Joint Strike Fighters will likely increase as the Defense Department ramps up procurement quantities over the next five years. The services plan to purchase another 339 aircraft through 2019 at a cost of $54 billion, despite 40 percent of the developmental test program remaining.
Speaking at the Norwegian-American Defense Conference in Washington April 17, Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan said the concurrency overlap and the number of new discoveries has come down significantly over the last few years, but conceded that the 130 airplanes already in the field will all need to be retrofitted at some point.
"This program started with an immense amount of concurrency," the general said. "We are going to find other things wrong with this airplane because we have testing left. Our job is to figure out how, once we find those things, we get it into the production line and stop building airplanes that are not appropriate for what we found -- and then putting a program in place to get all of the other airplanes out in the field upgraded to that new capability or to remove those deficiencies."
"We feel by about 2017, 2018 we will be out of this rut in which we are building airplanes that now have to be retrofitted because of a new discovery," he continued.
Bogdan explained that the cost of concurrency, $1.7 billion to date, will not be borne solely by the United States, but that international partners will also pay their share depending on an agreed retrofit plan tailored to their needs. His comments come as the first Norwegian F-35, AM-1, makes its way down the assembly line at Fort Worth, TX. The first two Norwegian jets will be delivered in 2015 as the European partner works toward achieving initial operational capability in 2019.
"Ultimately, it will be the partner's decision as to whether they want to modify their airplanes and up to what level," he said. "We will create a plan that allows every single airplane eventually by 2018 to have the full hardware and full software capability that we promised. We believe all the partners will fund it to that level, but they don't have to. We will keep the airplanes in a configuration they desire, but that's a bill we all end up paying."
Earlier in his presentation, Bogdan said the F-35 JSF program is big, complicated and sometimes very messy, but "this is not the same program it was five years ago."
Bogdan described Norway as a "model citizen" on the program and the only partner to bring its procurement profile of 52 fighter jets forward. The country was recently selected to host a heavy engine maintenance depot to service jets in Europe, and Bogdan said there would be many more opportunities for Norway and the wider European defense industry to participate in future sustainment work.
According to the general, European partners can expect to see a suite of new requests for proposals come out in the next two to three years as the program delivers more aircraft and moves closer to its initial operational capability milestones.
"The only two things that we've actually assigned so far are heavy airframe depot and heavy engine depot," he said. "In the future, over the next two to three years, we'll start discussing with the partnership how we'll set up capabilities to repair all sorts of systems: landing gear, hydraulics, avionics, support equipment, warehousing, and setting up the supply chain. -- James Drew
