Seapower - May 2009

Critical Year for JSF
Program will meet major milestones, but must survive defense budget battle

By OTTO KREISHER, Special Correspondent

Performance Expectations

Obama’s proposed $533.7 billion fiscal 2010 defense budget, which is expected to require terminations or slowdowns in some big procurement programs.

According to a Feb. 17 report from the Congressional Research Service, the Defense Department’s quarterly Selected Acquisition Report of Dec. 25, 2007, estimated the JSF program at $298.8 billion for 2,456 aircraft. The average procurement cost is estimated at $103.9 million per aircraft.

Those figures, and the fact that the current per-unit cost estimates are more than 38 percent higher than estimates made in October 2001, according to the report, have made the JSF a prime target of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and critics of defense spending, and a likely hot topic during the upcoming defense budget debate in Congress.

In a written statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee in January prior to his nomination hearings as deputy secretary of defense, William J. Lynn III said it would be “very difficult” for the Department of Defense to keep all of its weapons development programs within the fiscal 2010 budget. In particular, he noted, “a critical question is the appropriate mix between the [Air Force’s] F- 22 and the F- 35.”

The F- 35 is the result of several efforts by the various services to produce a new tactical fighter, which eventually were merged. The goal was to produce a single aircraft that would meet the Air Force requirement for a lightweight fighter to replace its F-16s and A-10s, the Navy’s need for a carrier-based strike fighter with lower radar signature, or stealth, and longer range than its F/A-18s, and the Marine Corps’ demand for a jet that could replace its short-takeoff and vertical-landing (STOVL) AV-8B Harriers and supersonic F/A-18s.

Program officials say the stealthy F- 35 Lightning II will be equal or superior to any likely adversary.

■ The F-35A, or Air Force version, is expected to have a combat range of 1,200 nautical miles and a weapon load of 13,000 pounds.

■ The F-35C, or Navy carrier model, will be able to fly 1,400 miles — twice the range of the F/A- 18 — and carry 17,000 pounds of weapons.

■ The Marine Corps’ F-35B, a short-takeoff and vertical-landing version, is expected to have a range of 900 miles and a weapon load of 11,000 pounds.

The F- 35 Lightning II, or Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), which is to be the centerpiece of future Navy and Marine Corps tactical air capabilities, will take some major steps forward this year. That is, if the program is not shot down or stalled by defense budget action.

As it stands now, “2009 is shaping up to be a year of firsts for the F- 35 program,” said Dan Crowley, Lockheed Martin executive vice president and F- 35 program general manager.

Lockheed expects to complete the last of the 19 developmental and test F-35s and deliver the first production-model aircraft this year, as well as initiate full-scale flight test operations at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB), Calif., and Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. The initial multiservice training squadron should get its first F- 35 next year.

Those would be key stepping stones for the first Marine F- 35 squadron becoming operational in 2012, with Air Force and then Navy units to follow within three years.