TROUBLE FOR JOINT FIGHTER

Bad news for an already bat­tered Joint Strike Fighter pro­gram: the New York Times is start­ing to throw punches, too.
The Joint Strike Fighter is [sup­posed] to be a jet fighter for all peo­ple and all places. For the Air Force, it will land on run­ways. A ver­sion for the Navy will be able to land on air­craft car­ri­ers. And the one for the Marines will land ver­ti­cally to drop into global hot spots… Eight nations [are] join­ing with the United States to build it.
But now soar­ing ambi­tions are con­fronting hard real­i­ties. What was started five years ago as a stream­lined way to do busi­ness appears to be going the way of most other Pentagon weapon pro­grams: over bud­get, behind sched­ule and with big cuts in the num­ber to be produced…In 2002, the Pentagon esti­mated the entire pro­gram would cost $192.5 bil­lion. In the most recent Selected Acquisition Report, an inter­nal semi­an­nual report by the Pentagon on the costs of major weapon sys­tems, that num­ber had risen to $256.6 bil­lion…
On paper, all the money is being poured into build­ing a craft that would be the Chevrolet of the skies — afford­able, depend­able and ready to be sold in vast num­bers. It is to replace the work­horse F-​​16 Fighting Falcon fighter jet, per­haps the most suc­cess­ful in avi­a­tion his­tory…
[But] Tough design issues relat­ing to the [replacement’s] exces­sive weight have caused the pro­gram to fall two years behind sched­ule. Some of the inter­na­tional part­ners are becom­ing rest­less and have hinted they may not ulti­mately buy the plane. And a report last month, from the Government Accountability Office, the inves­tiga­tive arm of Congress, con­cluded that the pro­gram was so com­pli­cated as to be “unexecutable.” 

April 27th, 2005 | Planes, Copters, Blimps | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.