Forum: F-35 Lightning II

I think you're ascribing alot of motives when its impossible to do so. Its not coincidental either. In my years of work, I've very rarely seen a policy decision be made due to only one factor like you're suggesting. This one is no different, particularly when Defense has been mandated to cut 600 billion over the next decade. Cutting concurrency planes will slow the rate at which the military can field the fighter... which is a critical consideration too. It will however decrease costs in the years where DoD is hardest hit by the sequestration cuts.

IF this was purely technical, then they would not have cut back over 120 aircraft. 60~90 or so probably would have been enough, depending on future progress and QLRs. Its going to delay the introduction into operational service by one, if not two years.

I wrote an extensive post going into this here. I know I wrote it before the cuts were announced, but it explains their importance to the budgetary mandate.

I am suggesting that reason for VADM Venlet's recommendation to reprogram the purchase of LRIP jets is because of the instability of the design which he feels will result in significant technical and financial risk. There is no reason to believe that his opinion was influenced by the need to slash the growth of defense spending. I will agree however, that politicians - including the SecDef - might take advantage of the situation and use any short term *savings* to achieve their goals.

@hb_pencil...... Why do I get the feeling your the bean counters bean counter?

OK, they are delaying the expenditure of funds by not purchasing aircraft that will need significant modification in the future. But the fundamental reason for the reduction in funding is technical, and not to reduce the rate of growth of the defense budget. That effect is coincidental. No plan has been expressed to reduce the eventual buy of aircraft, although if costs cannot be contained, that is a possibility.

Look, I don't want to be denigrating, but I think you have a very superficial impression about what being a program manager entails: budget is what you're there to manage as well as delivery time and capabilities. If you're told to cut 20%, then you cut 20%.

And that's particularly true for David Venlet, who even said this fall that no Pentagon weapons project should “feel it’s insulated or it’s above being looked at.” It would be extremely unusual for Venlet NOT to be consulted about what might be possible to cut, especially given the profile of a project like this.

And as I suggested earlier, the way that Venlet undertook these cuts suggests there is a budget motive behind this. The Ahern Concurrency report recommends that "future decisions about the F-35 concurrent production be event driven, based on the achievement of sufficient test data to support increased confidence in design..." It does not suggest cutting ALL Concurrency jets to their minimal level and a significant number of full rate production types. Thats suggests budget driven imperatives, because the department wants clarity in how its budget will look in the next ten years time.

A technical approach would look very different. They probably would have no change in the projected buys, but negotiate purchases year by year based on the program's progress in development. Truth be told I think thats what they have been doing regardless. However Budget priorities now have carved away that option.

As Bismarck once remarked, Policy is like a sausage. ITs a mess of intents and purposes. Absolutely technical challenges created the opportunity for this cut, but how it was undertake indicates that budget considerations also played a major role in how they were undertaken.