The Defense Department plans to bring two aircraft carrier variants of the F-35 to a carrier in November for a series of tests, according to the head of the F-35 program.
F-35 Program Executive Officer (PEO) Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan said Thursday the Pentagon is deciding whether both airplanes that go to the carrier or just one will be capable of doing both arrestments and catapult launches while the other stays on the deck to perform logistics testing. The F-35C is the Navy’s carrier variant.
“The November deployment will happen,” Bogdan said during a news conference in Norway. “It will likely happen with two airplanes. Whether both airplanes are fully capable of doing all the work remains to be seen because we have a little more work to do there.”
Bogdan was in Norway along with Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition Sean Stackley and Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition William LaPlante for a joint executive steering board (JESB) meeting. Bogdan said the JESB, which meets every six months, is comprised of representatives from the eight partner nations and the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, which discuss various issues with the F-35 program and upcoming decisions.
The F-35 partner nations are Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
DoD will also decide in the next three months, Bogdan said, on which partner nations in the European and Pacific theaters will perform airframe and engine maintenance. Bogdan said DoD has partitioned the world into three theaters for long-term F-35 sustainment: Europe, North America and the Pacific.
DoD spokesman Joe DellaVedova said Thursday the Pentagon is exploring, for now, two sites in both the European and Pacific theaters, one for airframe and another for engine sustainment, for a total of four sites. Site assessments are currently being conducted, DellaVedova said. Bogdan said last week DoD is accelerating plans for a global F-35 sustainment network and will add 17 locations worldwide over the next five years (Defense Daily, Sept. 15).
Bogdan also addressed a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released Tuesday that said it was unclear whether DoD’s F-35 operation and support (O&S) costs reflected the most likely costs the program will incur. GAO said DoD has two primary F-35 O&S estimates that each total around $1 trillion over a 56-year lifecycle and that these were “comprehensive,” but did not include all analyses necessary to make them fully reliable.
Bogdan said, while he welcomes GAO’s recommendations and plans on implementing all eight, he’s less concerned about cost estimates that occur 50 years from now because he said those are fundamentally based on a whole lot of assumptions. If you change even a “little bit” of those assumptions, Bogdan said, those cost estimates change greatly. GAO recommended DoD develop better informed affordability constraints; address three risks that could address sustainment, affordability and operational readiness; and take steps to improve the reliability of its cost estimates.
“We are…more concerned about what (we are) doing today to ensure that the long-term costs on this airplane are affordable for the partnership,” Bogdan said.
South Korea also finalized its formal selection of the F-35 for its F-X fighter acquisition program, announcing Wednesday its intent to sign letters of offer and acceptance (LOA) with DoD. F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin [LMT] said South Korea will acquire 40 F-35A conventional variants with initial deliveries beginning in 2018. Boeing’s [BA] F-15 and the Eurofighter Typhoon, developed by BAE Systems, Airbus and Alenia Aermacchi, were also in the running, Lockheed Martin said.
South Korea is the third Foreign Military Sales (FMS) customer to procure the F-35, joining Israel and Japan, according to Lockheed Martin. The F-35 is developed by Lockheed Martin with subcontractors BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman [NOC]. The F135 engine is developed by Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies Corp. [UTX]. Alenia Aermacchi is a division of Finmeccanica.