Chief says he’s feeling better about F-35
YourAirForce By John Reed
jreed@defensenews.com
Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz is “more optimistic” than he was a few months ago about the future of the F-35 Lightning II program because of the progress being made in testing the plane.
“I am more confident than I was, to be sure,” Schwartz said, citing a string of testing successes with the F-35A, the version of the Joint Strike Fighter that the Air Force will fly.
The fighter is considerably ahead of its flight test schedule for this year and hasn’t had a single structural failure during stress testing or “software reboot” problems that plagued the F-22 Raptor at a similar phase in its development, he said.
“I think we flew 46 [test] sorties in June, when 28 were scheduled; another indication that things are beginning to accelerate,” he said.
Most importantly, Schwartz said, price negotiations for the upcoming purchase of 32 low-rate initial-production jets, known as LRIP-4, “give me some confidence that we’re on a good recovery path.” While the Air Force chief declined to discuss specifics of the negotiations, officials from F-35-maker Lockheed Martin have repeatedly said the final price tag for LRIP-4 jets will be 20 percent to 30 percent below the Pentagon’s prediction late last year that the jets will cost $76 million apiece.
Many F-35 watchers see LRIP-4 as crucial because the fixed-price contract commits Lockheed to meeting the price it has negotiated with the Pentagon for the jets. If the company can deliver the planes for the price it quoted, it will assuage F-35 doubters in Congress and cash-strapped allies who will be buying the jet, analysts have said. If the price of the jets ends up being as high as the Pentagon estimates, nations may buy fewer F-35s than anticipated, which will increase the per-plane price in a process called an acquisition death spiral.
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