F-35 makes headway amid criticism, US budget crunch

ABOARD THE USS WASP (Reuters) - The 16-ton fighter jet slowed to a stop off the warship's port beam, where it hovered like a floating rock as thousands of pounds of thrust from its engine and lift fan stirred up a cloud of mist from the Atlantic Ocean 100 feet below.

After a brief hesitation, the sleek, new gray airplane - a Marine Corps version of the radar-evading F-35 Joint Strike Fighter - slipped quickly sideways over the amphibious assault ship and then dropped to the flight deck with a gentle bump.

"It's just an incredible feeling to have that kind of precision control over that kind of power," Lieutenant Colonel Matt Kelly, a test pilot, said after watching a fellow flier land the jet during recent sea trials of the warplane. "It's a pilot's airplane to fly. It does what the pilot wants it to do."

The smooth test performance contrasts with the rough ride the F-35 development program has had, thanks to cost overruns and production delays, since it first began to take shape more than a decade ago in the secretive advanced projects labs at the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin.

Critics say the F-35, which comes in three variants, is an ill-conceived multipurpose aircraft that tries to do too many things and will ultimately excel at none. Its stealthy fuselage and high-tech systems, some say, are so complex to build and maintain they will inevitably make it unaffordable.

But advocates view the aircraft as a war-fighting platform for the networked, iPad generation that will revolutionize the way America fights.

"This airplane will give the United States and its allies tremendous capability for years and years, decades and decades to come," said Alan Norman, Lockheed's chief test pilot for the jet. "It gives us that quantum leap in capability that allows the pilot to really think about and dictate what he wants to do in the airspace."

First, however, it must survive budget cuts in Washington. Because the United States is trillions of dollars in debt, Congress has already ordered $450 billion in defense budget reductions over the next decade and may demand more as it tries to pare another $1.2 trillion in projected federal spending over 10 years.

The failure this month of Congress' "super committee" to reach a deficit-cutting deal could trigger automatic budget reductions beginning in January 2013, including an additional $650 billion of security spending. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has issued dire warnings about such reductions.

The F-35, the Pentagon's costliest weapons program at $382 billion, is a logical place to look for savings, especially since it started as a program to build an affordable jet but has ballooned in cost almost from its inception.

The Marine Corps version of the aircraft tested on the USS Wasp is under threat of cancellation, and the Air Force and Navy, which have their own variants, may have to scale back the number of planes they purchase in an effort to economize.

Lockheed officials privately concede the United States may not buy all 2,447 jets currently planned.

"Clearly it's on probation, even in the minds of top Pentagon officials because of the technological hurdles that it hasn't cleared and the spiraling costs of the program," said Chris Hellman, research director at the National Priorities Project, a left-leaning nonpartisan think tank.

"At a moment in time where ... they're going to have to come up with some substantial savings in their budget," he said, "it's sort of a prime target for deficit reduction."

DARPA AND SKUNK WORKS

The F-35 program began in the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as an effort to develop technologies for a successor aircraft to the Marines' AV-8 Harrier jump jet, with its short takeoff and vertical landing capabilities first developed by the British military.

DARPA sought assistance from Lockheed Martin's "Skunk Works" research lab - the brains behind the Cold War-era U-2 spy plane and the stealthy F-22 Raptor, the only so-called fifth-generation fighter currently in service worldwide.

Some military services also wanted an aircraft that could do everything from close-air support to air-to-air combat, enabling them to replace several aging planes with a single jet. Congress merged the programs in the mid-1990s.

Lockheed Martin beat out a Boeing proposal and on October 26, 2001, was awarded an $18 billion initial contract to develop its plane.

A key goal was affordability. Multiple supply chains could be eliminated by using the F-35 to replace a diverse set of aircraft, from the F-16 and AV-8 Harrier to the F/A-18 and A-10 Warthog.

Use of many common parts among the three versions would help reduce costs, as would having a single maintenance supply system for all the services instead of one for each.

Further efficiencies were sought by bringing allied partners into the project, a move meant to improve interoperability and lower costs in multinational operations. Eight other countries eventually joined the program and others plan to buy and field the aircraft.

But the program quickly ran into technological challenges. Development horizons lengthened, costs rose and the total aircraft buy shrank.

"The problem is built into the DNA of the airplane," said Winslow Wheeler, an analyst at the Center for Defense Information, noting that the F-35 was conceived by DARPA as a short-takeoff, vertical landing aircraft, an idea that was then imposed on Navy and Air Force notions of a multi-role fighter.

"Layer on top of that a third level of complexity derived from stealth. ... That complexity makes it an illusion that anybody can get the cost of this thing to a level that's affordable," said Wheeler, a staunch critic of the plane.

The initial estimated cost of developing and purchasing 2,866 of the aircraft was $231 billion, with the services expected to start flying it between 2010 and 2012, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Seven years later, officials now expect it will cost $382 billion for 2,447 F-35s, an increase of about 64 percent.

Lockheed expects the F-35 to cost about $65 million once the plane is in full production. With the jet currently only being built in small batches, the GAO estimated earlier this year it cost about $133 million per airplane.

The military services are not expected to put the plane into service until 2015, and the estimated cost of building and maintaining the fleet of aircraft over its lifespan of more than 30 years has risen from $589 billion in 2005 to about a trillion dollars now.