More Money is Needed

At the same time as president Obama is struggling with the US finances, most ongoing military projects are reporting cost overruns. The KC-46 program recently reported cost overruns of $1.3 bn. Now the F-35 program reports cost overruns of $1.15 bn, on the first 28 aircraft alone!

A major Twitter-fight is now taking place between representatives of Lockheed Martin and US senator McCain.

Sen John McCain first revealed the $771 million figure in a tweet on 12 July, calling the cost overrun "disgraceful".

On 13 July, Lockheed Martin tweeted that the F-35 is showing "significant progress", which drew a quick response from McCain via the same online medium.

"To most observers, a $771M cost overrun for 28 F-35s doesn't qualify as 'significant improvement.' Taxpayers deserve better," he wrote.
The dispute could set up a clash in final negotiations over the Fiscal 2012 budget. The Department of Defense has asked for another $264 million to pay the initial overage costs. If McCain succeeds in blocking the additional payment, the money would have to be found somewhere else or F-35 orders could be reduced.

The first rumor stated $771 million in overruns, but that estimate has now been almost doubled.

The $771 million reflects the impact of the 2004 weight reduction redesign on Lockheed's production system, the company said. The redesign carved off thousands of pounds of excess weight, but suppliers could not keep up with the flow of design changes. That led to late delivery of parts, then extra labour hours to install them outside of the normal manufacturing sequence, it added.
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"The F-35 team is focused now on any opportunity to reduce the concurrency estimate and improve the final cost-to-complete on these early production lots," Lockheed said.

$771 million yesterday, $1.15 bn today. And this for the first 28 aircraft. What will happen in the future for the next 2.443 F-35 expected to be bought by US Armed Forces? Obama has a hard time with the budget and the Republicans. He will be forced to make some cut downs. But where?

Rather, the president appeared to be preparing for the ongoing debate on the issues of the debt, spending and taxes in next year’s presidential election.
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Even before Mr. Obama’s news conference, Republican House leaders told reporters that they planned a vote next week on a plan that would increase the debt ceiling in exchange for $2.4 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years and the passage of a balanced budget amendment.

This crisis may be over soon, but president Obama might be forced to make some serious cuts starting next year. 2012 is the presidential election and it will be up to the voters where the cuts will be performed. Do a majority of the voters prefer spending their money on the ongoing war in Afghanistan, buying new aircraft, paying the salary to government employees or letting their war veterans get their pensions?

My bet is that the F-35 program will have a hard time getting more money for future cost overruns. Most probably there will be reductions in the number of F-35 bought by the US. I also believe that US will keep one of the teen-series of fighters as an alternate aircraft program for European countries with bad economy if they can not afford the F-35 for a number of years.

DN1, DN2

Time For Delivery?

The first Dutch F-35 is now under assembly at the Northrop plant.

Northrop Grumman has completed the centre fuselage for the Netherlands' first F-35A Lightning II,
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It will then be integrated with the other major sections for the conventional take-off and landing aircraft: its Lockheed-produced forward fuselage, cockpit and wings; and BAE Systems-built rear fuselage.

The Dutch has ordered two F-35 to start with. These test aircraft will be used for training the first cadre of instructors. Norway are planning to buy four test aircraft to do the same. UK has bought three test aircraft and the first UK pilot has already flown the F-35B (even though as it looks right now UK will buy the F-35C conventional carrier version). Outside of the US these are the only F-35 that has actually been bought yet! The rest are just on the "to-be-decided"-list.

Some countries has not even decided which configuration of the F-35 they will buy. UK is choosing between F-35B/C. Canada is planning to buy the CF-35 with drag chute and drogue AAR refueling (there are ongoing discussions in the Canadian government regarding ordering a special version of the F-35, since it will be very costly for the Canadians). The drag chute is for landing on icy runways. Note: Norway might also be interested in this version of the F-35.

One thing that has not yet been decided, or at least not been made public, is the final export configuration of the F-35. There has been rumors about the stealth capability being less effective on the export version and that not all of the jamming capability will exported. Maybe this problem will be automatically solved if the US does not have money enough to finish the development of these capabilities.

Many F-35 customer are now facing problems with the non-existing time overlap between the last day of operations with their existing fleet of aircraft and the introduction of the F-35. E.g. the Norwegian F-16MLU and the Canadian CF-18 will probably be grounded for good before the first flight of the F-35 in their respective Air Forces. Maybe this will result in that some countries need to buy another aircraft. My guess is that the F-15SE and the F-18E/F will find customers among countries that today are on the F-35 interest list.

How effective will the F-35 be? RAND Corporation has done a simulation of F-35 and F-18E/F versus Su-30 for the Australian Air Force with some bad news for the F-35.

The clear implication of the RAND study is that the F-35 is very likely to wind up facing many more “up close and personal” opponents than its proponents suggest, while dealing with beyond-visual-range infrared-guided missiles as an added complication. Unlike the F-22, the F-35 is described as “double inferior” to modern SU-30 family fighters within visual range combat; thrust and wing loading issues are noted, all summed up in one RAND background slide as “can’t [out]turn, can’t [out]climb, can’t [out]run.”

Worst of all is that the price tag of the F-35 keeps going up. In combination with the bad European economy it will of course affect how many aircraft that will be bought.

But, instead of the poor European customers there are other potential markets coming up. President Obama has given go-ahead to Lockheed Martin to offer F-35 to India. In the FX-3 program in Brazil, F-35 will most probably be an contender. Israel is very interested after Saudi Arabia decided to buy Eurofighters and F-15E.

Finally I recommend this documentary about the F-35.