Forum: F-35 Lightning II

The Navy will be reduced to eight aircraft carriers (from 12 planned) and seven air wings.

AIR FORCE Magazine
August 2010

USAF’s Indispensable “Failures”
By Peter Grier

The F-15, AWACS, and C-17 were derided as boondoggles early on. Things changed.
Congress Is in Doubt Over Cost and Need in Air Force Buildup," blares the headline in the New York Times.
Among the charges under this headline: The Air Force is buying needlessly complex and expensive fighters, and it is asking for more warplanes than it needs.
Critics were particularly incensed about USAF’s fighter recapitalization plan. Why does the Air Force feel it has to have new models when the Navy has already developed a perfectly good modern fighter both services could use?
"This is a dubious purchase costing billions," the Times quotes Sen. Carl Levin (D) of Michigan as saying. "Why not use a less expensive plane?"



This article sounds like an assault on the Air Force’s F-22 and F-35 fighter programs, but it isn’t new at all. Rather, it is from April 8, 1982. Levin was not chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, as he is today, but a low-ranking member.
The aircraft purchase he was objecting to was the F-15, which in decades to come would prove to be one of the most successful combat aircraft in history.
To be fair, Congressional critics at the time were complaining about Air Force plans to purchase large numbers of F-15s for defense of the continental US, while many felt the Navy F-14 could do that job at a lower price.
But this news piece from the past points out a basic fact of warplane development. For 30 years, most new models have been the subject of caustic criticism. Technical setbacks are treated as surprises which threaten a system’s viability—or its very existence. Airframes always seem to be too complicated, too high-tech, too expensive, and not what the US really needs. That’s the criticism, at least.
Lost in the volume is recognition of the fact that modern warplanes are among the most complex machines ever designed. It takes patience and hard work to make them deployment-ready. Many of today’s Air Force legacy systems came out of "a long, arduous, and turbulent process," notes a RAND Corp. monograph on fighter acquisition. "Nonetheless, these often vitriolic debates ended in the design and development of several of the world’s most capable fighters."
The F-15 Eagle, E-3 AWACS, and the C-17 Globemaster III, to pick three, all had significant teething problems, and all developed into aircraft the Pentagon can’t do without today.
A look at the history of some current USAF systems puts the criticisms of today’s development efforts in perspective. The F-15, from its very conception, was the target of a group of mostly retired officers and midlevel Pentagon systems analysts whom the press eventually named the "military reformers."
In the mid-1960s, a consensus developed in the Air Force on the need for a specialized air superiority fighter. Service leaders were dissatisfied with the progress and prospects of the joint Navy and Air Force TFX (Tactical Fighter Experimental) program, which would eventually produce the F-111. Their concern was partly motivated by the escalation of the air war over Vietnam, where aging but maneuverable MiGs were shockingly effective at shooting down F-4 Phantoms and other large, multimission US aircraft.
Persistent Criticism
Agreement on needs was one thing—getting the Air Force and the Defense Department to rally around an approach was another. Some groups wanted a large, complex multi-engine aircraft. Others pushed a light, single-engine dogfighter. Among the latter were John R. Boyd, a former Air Force colonel and Pentagon consultant, and Pierre M. Sprey, an engineer and OSD systems analyst. These two—later joined by a former Air Force captain, Franklin C. "Chuck" Spinney—were at the center of what became the military reformers group.
Boyd pushed the F-X project (the future F-15) away from a heavy design with variable-sweep wings. The new F-15, as it emerged from the design process, thus was lighter and more agile. But it was not as light and agile as Boyd and his allies wanted. They thought the Air Force would be better off buying more of a smaller and cheaper aircraft design, such as the F-5.
Their criticisms eventually helped lead the way to the lightweight fighter program, which morphed into the F-16. Even the F-16, however, had elements the reformers did not approve of, such as ground-mapping radar and multimission capability.
The criticism was nothing if not persistent. F-15 and F-16 aircraft, which still serve as the backbone of American tactical airpower, suffered early on from defective engines and something approaching all-around bad karma during development. They were "America’s Jinxed Warplanes," according to an April 7, 1980 US News & World Report article.



The reformers continued to pick at the Eagle as the years rolled by. In 1981, Sprey wrote an airpower section in a book issued by the Heritage Foundation which questioned the F-15’s effectiveness.
The F-15 was larger and more visible than its predecessor the F-4, wrote Sprey, making it vulnerable in daylight close-in dogfighting. He claimed the Eagle was too dependent on radar guided missiles, which "are not likely to be more effective than those used in Vietnam."
Since 1960, Sprey wrote in the 1981 piece, too much of the Air Force tactical aviation budget had been devoted to complex night/all-weather systems "of highly questionable capability." Sprey urged the Air Force to emphasize the F-16 over the F-15 because "in visual combat, the F-16 has been demonstrated to be the superior aircraft."
This was the point where the military reformers misfired.
Future air combat would not, as they assumed, take place largely in daytime, close-in engagements. The F-15 would go on to become the dominant air-to-air force in the skies precisely because of its radar missiles and long reach.
In the first Gulf War, the F-15 accounted for 36 of 40 Air Force aerial victories. Of those, 28 involved radar guided missiles. Worldwide, the Eagle has racked up an unprecedented kill ratio of 104-to-zero.
Writing in 2004, David R. Mets of Air University summed it up this way: "The Korea-style dogfight seems to have all but disappeared from the air-to-air battle. The agility of both [the F-15 and F-16] remains highly useful in dodging surface-to-air missiles, but that is not what Boyd and the [military reform] acolytes had in mind."
The F-15 was not the only Air Force system hit in its early years as overly dependent on high technology.
Today, the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System seems beyond criticism, an obvious force multiplier without whose radar Air Force operations might be blind. AWACS can track enemy aircraft and guide friendly forces straight to them, making it an invaluable asset for both offensive and defensive air operations. But during development, AWACS was derided as a boondoggle: unnecessary, unworkable, and vulnerable.
On April 13, 1974, The New Republic ran an article on the ungainly airborne radar system. Titled "AWACS: The Plane That Would Not Die," it called the airborne warning and control mission "a complete phony." It described the aircraft simply as a means to keep money flowing to contractors. The article even took a shot at the airplane’s appearance, describing it as a "mushroom with elephantiasis."
The author appeared to have little understanding of the mission of airborne command and control which the AWACS was designed to fulfill, and less understanding of the technology involved. But the story, and similar criticism in other media, helped fuel opposition to the system in Congress. Serious criticisms of the AWACS, leveled by the General Accounting Office and others, included worry that the slow E-3 airframe would be highly vulnerable to Soviet fighters and thus unable to get close enough to contested airspace to be of any use in a European conflict.



The Pre-eminent Symbol
"It was claimed that electronic countermeasures (ECM) would render the [AWACS] radar useless. The large number of targets in [Europe] would saturate the tracker," said Robert E. Cowdery and William A. Skillman, engineers who helped develop the radar for Westinghouse, in a history of the system published in a professional engineering journal in 1995.
Worried about these allegations, the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1974 requested the Secretary of Defense to certify that AWACS could perform in the cluttered environment of Central Europe. The Pentagon’s Research and Engineering branch set up an ad hoc committee of experts to study the problem and allow lawmakers’ concerns. Members conducted "ground-flooder" ECM tests, among other things, and by the end of 1974 had established to their own satisfaction that the AWACS performed just fine. "As a result, the Secretary of Defense certified to Congress that the performance of AWACS in ECM was adequate to meet the projected threat," wrote Cowdery and Skillman.
Since then, the "mushroom with elephantiasis" has become a symbol—perhaps the pre-eminent symbol—of an Air Force operational presence. It has directed traffic in conflicts from Grenada, to the Persian Gulf, to the Balkans, and recently over Iraq and Afghanistan. AWACS flew more than 7,000 combat hours in the first Gulf War, alone.
NATO has its own AWACS fleet, as do France and Great Britain. Saudi Arabia operates five. Japan also has four, based on a Boeing 767 airframe. After Sept. 11, 2001, seven NATO AWACS deployed to the United States to monitor commercial air traffic. It was "a mission never foreseen by any planner, but one which captures the uncertainty of weapon system planning," wrote Walter J. Boyne.
Mobility aircraft have not been immune to similar sorts of criticism, and more recently the C-17 has survived intense turbulence on its way to airlift pre-eminence.
"The C-17 program encountered political opposition and limited funding, plus technical development and program management difficulties, which affected the program’s cost, production, and delivery schedule," wrote Betty Raab Kennedy, an Air Mobility Command historian, in a 1999 analysis of C-17 acquisition. At its onset in the late 1970s, the C-17 had a difficult time winning support in Congress. Lawmakers felt DOD had not clearly demonstrated the need for additional strategic airlift capacity. Thus, development funding was not approved until 1981.
Then, in 1982, DOD decided its airlift shortfall was so urgent it could not wait for development of a whole new aircraft. It asked for 50 new C-5s to make up part of the airlift gap. Congress approved the money, but asked for an airlift master plan to guide the way forward. This assessment concluded the C-17 was the most cost-effective solution to the airlift problem, but the study was not completed until the end of 1983, adding further delay.



"By the mid-1980s, the C-17 program appeared to be on track, if somewhat behind schedule," wrote Christopher Bolkcom of the Congressional Research Service in a 2007 report. But the C-17 had taken so long to get going that key personnel had drifted away from prime contractor McDonnell Douglas and production difficulties followed. These hiccups delayed the program even further and increased development costs.
In April 1990, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney cut the production program from 210 to 120 aircraft, due to both the collapse of the Soviet Union and domestic budget constraints. Cuts of this sort have an inevitable effect: They increase the aircraft’s unit price, fueling a new round of criticism.
In 1993, Defense Secretary Les Aspin disciplined four senior Air Force officials for their handling of the program. Among other things, they had improperly channeled cash to McDonnell Douglas at a time when the company was having financial problems.
Finally, in December 1993, the C-17 program reached its darkest hour. DOD announced the C-17 program would be killed by 1995 if McDonnell Douglas did not improve performance.
Political Gamesmanship
In fall 1995, as the deadline loomed, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists dubbed the C-17 a "$340 Million Ugly Duckling." The airlifter’s unit cost had skyrocketed, according to the article, while technical glitches such as airflow problems around the cargo doors persisted. Quoting the GAO, the Bulletin piece said the C-17’s specialized and expensive short-landing abilities had little use in any foreseeable conflict.
Convening at the end of 1995, a crucial Defense Acquisition Board decided to proceed with the full 120 C-17 program. The airlifter’s combination of long reach with relatively short takeoff and landing requirements was not duplicated by other alternatives. "The DAB regarded the C-17 as best providing the greatest amount of flexibility in meeting the strategic airlift requirements," wrote Kennedy.
Since then, C-17s have become the backbone of the US air transport fleet, lauded for their versatility and high reliability. Globemaster IIIs have delivered military goods and humanitarian aid all around the world, neatly bridged the gap between the tactical C-130 and the massive C-5, and allowed USAF to fully retire its old C-141s.
In its first operational use, an October 1994 delivery to the Persian Gulf, the aircraft moved a five-ton "rolling command post," five vehicles, and other supplies. In a 1995 deployment of peacekeepers and cargo to Bosnia for Operation Joint Endeavor, the C-17 flew 26 percent of airlift missions while delivering 44 percent of cargo. Today, C-17s are routinely flying the 26-hour round-trips from Germany to Afghanistan, while dropping supplies directly at forward US operating bases.



The C-17 goes wherever the President goes, as it is the airlifter of choice for the armored limousines of the executive branch.
Weapons systems today still receive the same media wire-brush attention accorded past development efforts. The F-22, the F-35, and other programs all must achieve their technological advances under constant scrutiny. Developmental testing, which is designed to identify problems so that they can be corrected, is often regarded as if it were a program’s final grade. A single flop in testing generates headlines and has the potential to send a system to the scrap heap.
Many members of Congress, meanwhile, love a show and must vote to continue system funding every year.
This means service leaders have a doubly demanding task, wrote Boyne in Beyond the Wild Blue: A History of the US Air Force. "They must have a vision of what will be required for the defense of the nation for many years into the future. At the same time, they must be proficient in the political gamesmanship necessary to shepherd the ideas of their predecessors through all the hazards into operational use."
Developing an advanced military aircraft is no easy feat, but the Air Force—and the nation—are better off when systems make it into service with problems identified and corrected. The past 30 years of military operations might have been very different if the military leadership had given up on the F-15, AWACS, or C-17 early on.
________________________________________
Peter Grier, a Washington, D.C., editor for the Christian Science Monitor, is a longtime defense correspondent and a contributing editor to Air Force Magazine. His most recent article, "CyberPatriot Gets Serious," appeared in the July issue.
________________________________________

AIR FORCE Magazine
August 2010
F-35 at Endgame
By Marc V. Schanz
Senior Editor
The big fighter program has been revamped for success. That’s good, because the US is running out of alternatives.
The next year shapes up as a critical period for the F-35 Lightning II. The fighter forces of the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and some allied services hinge on its success. After a rash of problems, the US has imposed serious reforms, and the months just ahead will tell whether the get-well program is working.
For their part, USAF officials, Lockheed Martin, and the Pentagon’s top leadership all believe a recent F-35 program restructuring will smooth the way for the fighter to replace hundreds of F-16, F/A-18, A-10, and AV-8 fighters with a more advanced, stealthy successor.
In February, after much deliberation at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates unveiled the revisions. Then, taking into account various Pentagon reviews, the DOD 2011 budget sought an extra $2.8 billion for the program, but for 122 fewer production aircraft through 2015. More aircraft would be bought later, and the additional money would be used to increase testing and development.
The new F-35 plan adds 13 months to development. It should reduce the oft-criticized concurrency in development and operational testing of the aircraft.



"They won’t have any overlap," Stephen O’Bryan, vice president of F-35 business development for Lockheed Martin, said in June.
Through May, the Joint Strike Fighter was ahead of schedule for flight tests in 2010, said O’Bryan. The flight-test program had 93 test flights complete (versus the 90 planned through May), and a total of 394 planned by the end of the year.
Pentagon officials in June certified to Congress the F-35 is critical to national security, and that there are no viable options to the next generation stealth fighter.
Backers point to a series of recent events as evidence the program has returned to level flight. These include first flight of the Navy’s F-35C variant, the arrival of two Air Force F-35As at Edwards AFB, Calif., and an expansion of flight-testing activities at Edwards and NAS Patuxent River, Md.
Lockheed also points to specific accomplishments in the flight-test program this year.
On May 17, two F-35A test aircraft flew from Lockheed’s Fort Worth, Tex., facility to Edwards—which was the first multiship, long-range flight in the fighter’s development. The arrival of AF-1 and AF-2 marked the expansion of flight-test operations at Edwards, which is building up to a fleet of at least eight test aircraft.
While at Edwards, the AF-1 and AF-2 Air Force test vehicles will complete both ground and flight testing. Their propulsion systems, aerial refueling capabilities, logistics, weapons integration, and flight envelopes will all be put through their paces.
On March 17, a short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) F-35B successfully completed a hover test flight at NAS Patuxent River. The first successful vertical landing for the Marine Corps variant came the next day.
The Navy’s carrier variant, the F-35C, performed its first test flight on June 6 in Fort Worth, completing a 57-minute hop.
Fixed Pricing
As of May, the F-35 program had completed more than 200 test flights with activities at Fort Worth, Edwards, and NAS Patuxent River—where both the Navy and Marine Corps variants are undergoing tests.
According to O’Bryan, the partners and services are feeling more assured about the F-35’s future. A year from now, he anticipates all of the US systems development aircraft will be delivered to the test sites.



The low rate initial production Lot One aircraft will be delivered by June 2011; Air Force pilots will be training at Eglin AFB, Fla.; and the F-35B short takeoff and landing testing will be under way at Eglin as well.
As for the Air Force’s wish to get closer to a 110 aircraft annual buy to replace older fighters, O’Bryan expressed guarded optimism, and said the third low rate production lot of 17 F-35As came in 20 percent lower than previous cost estimates.
O’Bryan said Lockheed Martin anticipates signing the fourth LRIP contract with DOD, encompassing some 32 aircraft, for at least 20 percent less than estimated.
With a transition to fixed pricing, the hope is that by coming in under budget, the Air Force will get greater flexibility with its procurement accounts—and can potentially get greater numbers of F-35s into the force sooner.
The Air Force remains committed to the fighter. The difficulties the F-35 is experiencing at this stage of its development are not unusual for such an effort, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz and Secretary Michael B. Donley said in the service’s Fiscal 2011 posture statement. "The F-35 is our largest and most important program, and we are dedicated to successfully delivering these aircraft," they added.
Lt. Gen. Mark D. Shackelford, the Air Force’s military acquisition deputy, told lawmakers in April the service has put its bet down on the F-35. "We are putting the proper pressure in terms of bringing that program along in as successful a manner as we can ... to get the production ramp rate up to something that will flow those aircraft into the inventory as quickly as we’re able to," he said.
The F-22 Raptor force was capped at 187 airframes, and legacy fighters will receive some upgrades until the F-35 fleet is fully operational, but the long-term tactical-air solution is nothing short of a fifth generation fighter force.
Between 2010 and 2013, 60 operational aircraft are slated for delivery to Eglin, home of the fighter’s training schoolhouse for all services.
Officially, the Marine Corps anticipates initial operational capability with the F-35B in 2012 (although they do not intend to deploy the jet aircraft until 2014), and the Air Force is working toward a 2015 operational date.
In spite of the restructuring, Gates has assured Congress the IOC dates stand pat. In a February hearing at the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, Rear Adm. David L. Philman acknowledged that the Navy is anticipating a slip of its IOC declaration to 2015 and maybe later, but the Marines are firm in holding onto their 2012 date pending the successful completion of F-35B testing.



A Level of Transparency
The Air Force leadership, however, has adjusted expectations slightly.
On Feb. 24, Schwartz told Congress the Air Force would likely not have its first combat-ready F-35A unit available until the end of calendar 2015—a full two years later than the 2013 target date prior to the program restructuring.
Air Combat Command chief Gen. William M. Fraser III said in February at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium that ACC was actively re-examining the target date to field USAF’s initial combat-ready unit of F-35As, in light of restructuring and extension of development by 13 months. "It has got to be about combat capability—and that is crews trained, spares, supportability, all of that together," Fraser said.
Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton B. Carter, meanwhile, estimated that the Navy and Air Force would actually have their aircraft operational in 2016.
Much is riding on the restructured program, said Donley during a Capitol Hill speech in May to the Senate Aerospace Caucus.
The service’s topline budget is not keeping pace with the new missions the Air Force is being asked to take on, he noted, and 63 percent of the service’s spending over the future years defense program is tied up in operations. That leaves just 37 percent for investment—of which a quarter goes to the combat air forces.
While large portions of modernization funding will go toward "joint enablers" such as airlifters, tankers, unmanned aircraft, and intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance platforms, the F-35 alone consumes 60 percent of CAF investment funding over this time.
For his part, Schwartz is convinced the program will survive.



"We’ve had program management issues, we’ve had cost-control issues, we’ve had some manufacturing issues, but what I’m seeing is, at the technical level, pretty promising," Schwartz told Defense News in May.
If the cost curve comes down, he added, "I’m nowhere near to thinking of abandoning this effort."
The F-35 suffered through a steady diet of schedule problems and cost growth over the past year. Critics have seized on missteps to caricature the JSF as the poster child for Pentagon acquisition woes, but much of the cost growth stretches back years.
The F-35 had already reached 38 percent cost growth by 2006, Rebecca Grant, head of the Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies, noted in April 2010. "Is it something we wanted to happen? Certainly not. But the good part of this is that it signals a relatively strong level of transparency about what has caused the cost growth," she said.
What specifically pushed the F-35 over the Nunn-McCurdy threshold was the DOD decision in late 2009 to better fund the program, Grant said.
"The prudent decision has been made to put money in, take jets out, and achieve a program that has less risk," she added.



That said, the past year has certainly not been easy for the F-35 program. Since June 2009, it experienced a Nunn-McCurdy cost-growth breach, its military program director was fired, and its contractor management at Lockheed Martin was reshuffled.
Things looked much better last August, when Pentagon leadership trumpeted the program. Gates traveled to Lockheed’s Fort Worth JSF production line to personally inspect progress.
"The importance of this program can hardly be overstated," Gates said after his visit, noting that it is at the heart of the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps fighter plans—with a total buy of around 2,443 fighters though the 2030s.
After the endorsement, the F-35 limped into 2010 with a faltering flight-test program and multiple reports indicating cost growth troubles. Earlier this year, DOD confirmed to Congress unit costs on the fighter were up to $92.4 million. This was a cradle-to-grave cost, including development, construction, and a lifetime of upgrades, but it was still up from 2001 estimates of $50 million a copy. The cost growth triggered the Nunn-McCurdy breach.
Pentagon leadership continues to dole out tough love for the program. The cost of the program is now projected to go as high as $382 billion.
The largest reason for cost growth remains significantly higher-than-expected contract labor and overhead expenses, DOD and Lockheed officials said. Military construction, as well as the Navy’s cut of 409 aircraft from its plan several years ago, and a stretched development cycle also served to raise costs. The OSD recertification in June called the F-35 "fundamentally sound," but recommended a new risk review and management process. The Pentagon stated Lockheed processes were not compliant with DOD standards for value management—and challenged the company to improve with the recertified JSF effort.
A major criticism in several recent reviews (such as the much-reported Joint Estimate Team review) looked at risk in relation to proven flight testing to demonstrate combat capability. Last year was less than stellar for the F-35’s flight testing, and this forced analysts to assume the worst going forward. The program only flew about 10 percent of its planned test flights in 2009, due to delays in aircraft delivery, according to O’Bryan.
No More Wishful Thinking
In his revamped plan, Gates said progress toward key goals was lacking. This led him to withhold $614 million in performance fees from Lockheed Martin in February, arguing that taxpayers "should not have to bear the entire burden of getting the JSF program on track." The revamp was not a surprise. Air Force and DOD leadership indicated a program scrub was coming, and acted as if the program was in breach of Nunn-McCurdy even before it became official.
Gates said senior OSD officials had burrowed into program details beginning in late 2009—and didn’t like what turned up.
"It was clear that there were more problems than we were aware of when I visited Fort Worth," Gates said in February.
On March 2, Donley told reporters in Washington that the restructuring reflected the "mitigating and corrective action" to be taken if a breach was confirmed, adding such a breach was "likely."



Nine days later, Carter confirmed to the Senate Armed Services Committee the F-35 had busted the Nunn-McCurdy thresholds and needed recertification. Accompanying Carter, Christine H. Fox, DOD’s chief for cost assessments, told the panel that costs for the program had grown more than 50 percent since 2001.
Lockheed officials emphasized the program’s steep cost growth in development was in large part due to materials scarcity, fixing weight and software problems, and parts shortages.
"We’ve been pretty candid about what happened ... at the strategic level," said O’Bryan. The problems uncovered by several reviews of the program were related to test aircraft delivery delays that averaged six months, he added. "We underestimated the amount of change we’d have to make as they rolled down the assembly line," O’Bryan said. In addition to management improvement, he said development of the F-35’s software is 84 percent complete as of the end of May, but—like flight testing—the company is behind on the delivery of the software.
As part of his F-35 scrub, Gates eviscerated the program’s management, announcing a change in the leadership of the program office. Gates in February fired the director, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David R. Heinz, and raised the JSF program manager to a three-star general officer slot. The program is now led by Vice Adm. David J. Venlet, who was brought over to lead the F-35 program from his previous assignment as commander of Naval Air Systems Command.
In March, Lockheed Martin CEO Robert J. Stevens publicly defended his corporate program director, Daniel J. Crowley. Crowley kept his job, and Stevens said he had "absolute confidence" in his role. In early May, Crowley was promoted to chief operating officer of Lockheed Martin’s aeronautics unit, where he would oversee the F-35, F-22, F-16, C-130, and C-5M programs, effective June 7. Succeeding Crowley was Larry A. Lawson, who had led the company’s F-22 effort since December 2004.
The program tumult has resulted in some tension between DOD and Air Force leadership, on one hand, and the F-35 contractor, Lockheed Martin, on the other. The tension was especially high after Gates sacked Heinz.
"This is no longer a time for wishful thinking," said Schwartz in February, when asked at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium what his message was to industry.
"Tell me what you can do. I expect you to deliver what you promise," Schwartz said, adding, "If they don’t, what occurred recently with the F-35 program is only the start."

It's the only VL F-35B due to the way it's wired for testing.

USAF Chief: Optimism Growing on F-35
BY JOHN REED
Published: 4 Aug 2010 14:19

U.S. Air Force chief Gen. Norton Schwartz is considerably "more optimistic" than he was this spring about the future of the F-35 Lightning II program given the significant progress being made on the plane's test program.

U.S. AIR FORCE Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said Aug. 4 that a recent string of testing successes with the F-35A has increased confidence in the program. "I am more confident than I was, to be sure," about the F-35A - the Joint Strike Fighter version his service will fly - due to a recent string of testing successes with the jet, Schwartz said during an Aug. 4 meeting with the editorial staff of Defense News and Air Force Times.

The four-star's confidence in the embattled program has been boosted because the plane is considerably ahead of its flight test schedule for this year. Furthermore, it hasn't had a single structural failure during stress testing and has not experienced the "software reboot" problems that plagued the F-22 Raptor at a similar phase in its development, said Schwartz.

"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, said Schwartz, 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 between 20 to 30 percent below December 2009 Pentagon predictions that the planes 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 process called an acquisition death spiral.

Schwartz did not mention progress on the U.S. Navy's version of the jet, the F-35B or the U.S. Marine Corps' F-35C short takeoff and vertical landing version of the fighter. While the F-25B (sic) is also doing well in flight tests, the C-model jet has been lagging behind in its flight test schedule this year, according to Lockheed officials.