F‑35 Reaches Critical Juncture After Strong Year, Official Says

WASHINGTON, March 20, 2012 — The F‑35 Light­ning II joint strike fight­er pro­gram — the cen­ter­piece of future tac­ti­cal avi­a­tion and a key to imple­ment­ing new mil­i­tary strate­gic guid­ance — made strong progress in its devel­op­ment last year, a defense offi­cial said today.

Frank Kendall, act­ing under­sec­re­tary of defense for acqui­si­tion, tech­nol­o­gy and logis­tics, told the House Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee that the fight­er air­craft is essen­tial to the Defense Depart­ment, and that it made “strong progress” in 2011. 

“Last fall, the depart­ment engaged in a strat­e­gy and bud­get review, where every­thing — and I do mean every­thing — was on the table,” Kendall said. “After a care­ful look at the joint strike fight­er pro­gram, the depart­ment deter­mined that we do need the JSF [and] that we need all three vari­ants of the fight­er, and that we need the planned inven­to­ry of 2,443 jets.” 

That said, Kendall added, “you must rec­og­nize there is still a long way to go for JSF.” The F‑35 flight test pro­gram is only about 20 per­cent com­plete and “many of the more chal­leng­ing ele­ments of flight test are still ahead of us,” he said. 

Kendall not­ed the F‑35 devel­op­ment has reached a cru­cial point in the con­ver­sion from being con­cep­tu­al­ized to actu­al production. 

“The JSF pro­gram is under­go­ing the crit­i­cal tran­si­tion from devel­op­ment to pro­duc­tion,” he said. “His­tor­i­cal­ly, this is always a dif­fi­cult phase for any pro­gram, but par­tic­u­lar­ly so for a high-per­for­mance aircraft.” 

That tran­si­tion has been even more dif­fi­cult for the F‑35, Kendall said, because the pro­gram began pro­duc­tion very ear­ly, well before flight test­ing had begun. 

That deci­sion for ear­ly pro­duc­tion result­ed in an unprece­dent­ed lev­el of con­cur­ren­cy, which drove the need for sig­nif­i­cant changes in the pro­gram, he said. “With this year’s bud­get, I believe we are now set on a course for pro­gram sta­bil­i­ty,” he added. 

Navy Vice Adm. David Ven­let, pro­gram man­ag­er for the F‑35, also said the pro­gram now is on track. “The F‑35 has sched­ule and bud­get real­ism now going for­ward,” he said. “It is trans­par­ent in the dis­cov­ery and cor­rec­tion of issues aris­ing in test that are typ­i­cal in all fight­er air­craft development.” 

Ven­let told the Con­gress mem­bers he believes the F‑35 “is a crit­i­cal pres­ence in the com­bined force bat­tle space. It makes many oth­er sys­tems and capa­bil­i­ties and effects bet­ter because of the pres­ence of the F‑35’s sensors.” 

Ven­let called the F‑35 a “crit­i­cal pres­ence” to many nations, as well as being a bond of joint strength across all U.S. mil­i­tary services. 

“It is a bond of capa­bil­i­ty and a bond eco­nom­i­cal­ly across many nations that rais­es the lev­el of tech­nol­o­gy ben­e­fit in our mil­i­taries and our indus­tries,” he said. 

Ven­let called the F‑35 “the best pos­si­ble growth plat­form to incor­po­rate future advances in weapons, sen­sors and net­works.” The F‑35 also is an assur­ance to ser­vice mem­bers that “they will suc­ceed in every mis­sion and return home safe­ly to their loved ones.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →