HASC Dems Put DoD On Notice: No Free Pass For F-35

WASHINGTON: Congress’ biggest defense body today warned that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter no longer gets a free pass and made clear that they are frustrated, worried and in many cases just plain mad.

“I’m gonna take a deep breath and try to contain my anger,” thundered Rep. John Garamendi, chair of the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee. “I don’t really I don’t know where to start, because every single piece of this is problematic. Every single piece.”

Garamendi pointedly recited the program’s failures over its 25 years of development and limited production — the jet has yet to reach full operational capability.

“The F-35 is the most expensive program in the history of the Department of Defense, and the sustainment costs are expected to exceed $1.2 trillion over the life of the program. The program’s over budget. It fails to deliver on promised capabilities, and additional capability rates do not even begin to meet the service thresholds,” he said. “There are going to be some hard decisions being made on this program,” he went on. “We’re not going to let it go any longer with a lot of happy talk. That’s not going to happen.”

Rep. Donald Norcross, who chairs the HASC’s tactical air and land forces subcommittee, made the threat to the program crystal clear in his opening remarks.

“If this program continues to fail … we may need to invest in other more affordable programs, and backfill an operational shortfall of potentially over 800 tactical fighters,” he said.

House Republicans by and large expressed continued support for the F-35 program, but also by and large agreed with Democratic concerns about the continued failures.

For example, Doug Lamborn, top Republican on the readiness subcommittee, said he remains committed to the F-35 — “because I believe it is necessary to maintain our advantage against adversaries like China.” But, he also pointed out the numerous issues that must be fixed — ranging from supply chain issues that are creating spare parts shortages to engine shortfalls to the need for new engines to support the latest generation of aircraft, to sustainability costs to its deeply-troubled ALIS maintenance software.

In particular, Lamborn fretted that if DoD and prime contractor Lockheed Martin are unable to push down the aircraft’s astronomical operating costs, “critics of the program will be dealt a stronger hand in their calls to gut the program.”

The F-35 program already is in the Biden administration’s cross-hairs for potential cuts as it finalizes it’s 2022 DoD budget request, primarily because of its life-cycle costs. Even Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown has intimated that the service’s ongoing study of its tactical aircraft fleet may result in a reduction to the service’s currently planned purchase of 1,763 fighters — re-optimizing the F-35 fleet to take on high-end adversary threats while a new F-16 successor fills in for other missions.

During almost four hours of testimony today– from representatives of Lockheed Martin, engine-maker Pratt & Whitney, DoD’s F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO), the Air Force’s F-35 Integration Office and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) — it was the issue of sustainment costs that lawmakers kept circling back to.

On that issue, the most damning testimony came from the GAO’s Diana Maurer, whose calm demeanor was a contrast to the visible agitation emanating from lawmakers. She explained that, as things are now, there is absolutely no way the Air Force, Navy and Marines can afford to fly the jets they intend to buy over the long term.

“One of the things we did in our most recent report was look at the affordability targets that each of the services have established, in other words, how much the Air Force, the Navy and the Marine Corps can afford to spend to sustain the F-35,” she said. “And what we found there was frankly quite troubling. There are substantial affordability gaps between sustainment cost estimates and the amount of money the services say they can spend to sustain the F-35.”

Maurer explained that while all three of the services face a funding gap, the problem is particularly acute for the Air Force.

“In the case of the Air Force, that gap is 47%. So, the estimated costs are 47% higher than what the Air Force says it can spend,” she said. “To put that in context, if starting tomorrow, Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney announced that all spare parts for the program would be free (emphasis ours) for the rest of the program, that would still not be sufficient to close that gap.”

In addition, those funding gap calculations are based on current sustainment costs — but GAO expects those costs to grow.

“One of the things that we have been tracking pretty closely over the last several years, are the cost growth in those sustainment costs,” Maurer said. “Rather than the trend line going down, we are concerned that sustainment costs are continuing to grow. They’re getting higher rather than lower. That’s a problem. And that’s despite more than a decade of concerted efforts to bring those costs under control.”

With this as a given, Maurer explained, DoD faces three choices — all of them very challenging:

• DoD can make “continuous efforts to squeeze cost savings out of the program” … but “there are limits to their ability to reduce sustainment costs just on cost savings alone.”
• The JPO can “take a hard look at the requirements for the program … including the number of flight hours, the level of readiness the services are buying through a sustainment strategy, as well as the number of planes that they have plans to purchase.”
• The services can simply “spend more” to sustain their F-35 fleets, but “that’s going to involve billions of dollars, and potentially crowd out other priorities.”

Lt. Gen. Eric Fick, F-35 JPO program executive officer, admitted that sustainment costs are a serious problem — and a clear danger to the program’s success — but stressed that DoD and contractors are making slow, but sure, progress to push them down.

“I see cost as our program’s greatest threat,” Fick said. “While we simultaneously have focused on driving down cost across the development, production and sustainment areas, we understand the sustainment affordability targets present both our greatest challenge, and our greatest opportunity. “Sustainment cost reduction therefore will continue to be my highest priority.”

Fick said the JPO, working with Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney, “have made some significant strides” on reducing cost per flying hour. “Between 2019 and 2020, the US Air Force F 35A cost per flying hour decreased 10% — from $37,000 per flight hour to $33,300 per flight hour in base year ’12 dollars. We are far from finished with our affordability efforts, however, but I see these actuals as movements in the right direction.”

The JPO’s long-standing goal is to reduce per-flying-hour cost to $25,000 by 2025 — a goal the Lockheed Martin officials insist is achievable.

Greg Ulmer, executive vice president of aeronautics at Lockheed Martin, said the firm is “very focused” on that reduction.

The company is taking a “full spectrum approach” to pushing down sustainment costs. This includes moving to improve the availability of spares, decrease “repair turnaround time,” improve diagnostics, better predict when parts will fail, and improve reliability/maintainability. We understand what the bad actors are in terms of parts and pieces on the aircraft, and we’re constantly working to improve.”

While it remains unclear whether the congressional handwringing (which has been a yearly ritual) will actually result in any major legislative action on the F-35, one thing is clear — the Democrat-led HASC is most certainly not going to follow in the footsteps of their Republican predecessors and continue to pump up the numbers of aircraft requested annually by DoD.

The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act approved 14 F-35 JSFs more than DoD requested: 12 F-35As and 2 F-35Bs. In addition, the Air Force was authorized to add six F-35s meant for Turkey to its own fleet.

HASC Chair Adam Smith told the Brookings Institution last month: “I want to stop throwing money down that particular rat hole.” While he acknowledged Congress can’t just “get rid of the program,” he said he favored a future air fleet with less dependence on the F-35 and a more balanced “mix of fighter/attack aircraft.”

“Do not expect to have more planes purchased than authorized in the president’s budget. That’s not going to happen,” Garamendi said bluntly. “The 97 planes that were added over the last seven years have simply created a bigger problem for the sustainment of this fleet.”