The GAO says it produced 18 reports specifically on the F-35 between 2001 and 2018. Here’s an excerpt from the first:
Although the Joint Strike Fighter program has made good progress in some technology areas, the program is at risk of not meeting its affordability objective because critical technologies are not projected to be matured to levels that we believe would indicate a low risk program at the planned start of engineering and manufacturing development in October 2001.
These technologies remain at higher risk levels for engineering and manufacturing development because (1) they have not been developed to approximately the same size, weight, and configuration of the end product and/or (2) they have not been demonstrated to work in an environment similar to the planned operational system.
Based on our work on best practices in product development, and the importance of the Joint Strike Fighter to DOD and the industrial base, we believe that DOD needs to ensure that the program’s critical technologies are at demonstrated levels of maturity before making engineering and manufacturing investments in the program. Failure to do so could result in increases in both the production and long-term ownership costs, schedule delays, and compromised performance as problems arise in product development.
We disagree with DOD’s assertion that technology is mature enough to move forward.
Those were the days when Technology Readiness Assessments were the hot topic. Turned out to be a good assessment.
The F-35 went from a $69 million unit cost to now $140 million. But that unit cost estimate (APUC) is based on the total program out to 2044, so take it with a grain of salt. Full-rate production was supposed to start in 2012, it is still scheduled for 2019. We’ll see if that happens on time considering the following bold statement from the GAO in June 2018:
Congress should consider providing in future appropriations that no funds shall be available for obligation for F-35 Block 4 until DOD provides a sound business case for the effort. GAO is making two recommendations to DOD, including that it resolve all critical deficiencies before full-rate production. DOD concurred with both recommendations and cited that it would resolve all critical deficiencies before its full-rate production decision.
Good charts at the link. Here’s a bit more on that:
Program officials estimate that a delay of 5 months will contribute to a total increase of $532 million to complete development. The longer delay estimated by GAO will likely contribute to an increase of more than $1.7 billion, approximately $1.3 billion of which will be needed in fiscal year 2018.
Meanwhile, program officials project the program will need over $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2018 to start two efforts. First, DOD expects it will need over $600 million for follow-on modernization (known as Block 4). F-35 program officials plan to release a request for Block 4 development proposals nearly 1 year before GAO estimates that Block 3F—the last block of software for the F-35 baseline program—developmental testing will be completed.
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