Opening Statement of U.S. Senator Jack Reed

Ranking Member, Senate Armed Services Committee

Room SD-G50

Dirksen Senate Office Building

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

 

Hearing to receive testimony on the Joint Strike Fighter Program

in review of the Defense Authorization Request

for Fiscal Year 2017 and the Future Years Defense Program.

(As Prepared for Delivery)

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.   I too want to welcome our witnesses to this hearing.  We are grateful to each of you for your service.

Today, we will seek a better understanding of the progress the Department is making in fielding the Joint Strike Fighter program, what actions the Department has taken to ameliorate problems with the program, and what is the best judgment available of how effective these actions will be in preventing problems with the program, including additional cost overruns and delays.

Overall, the production program has been delivering on expected cost reductions on aircraft lots.   However, we still have to complete the system development and demonstration (SDD) program that is expected to deliver complete war fighting capability to each of the three variant of the F-35.  And we may not have seen all of the potential schedule changes in SDD, since not all of the program’s difficulties are behind us.  Quoting from Dr. Gilmore’s prepared testimony, “Although the Marine Corps has declared Initial Operational Capability (IOC) and the Air Force plans to do so later this calendar year (CY), the F-35 system remains immature and provides limited combat capability, with the officially planned start of Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E) just over one year away.”  Dr. Gilmore also assesses that, “the F-35 program will not be ready for IOT&E until CY18 at the soonest.”  Those assessments are of concern. 

Several years ago, we required the Department to estimate the dates for initial operating capability (IOC) of the three variants of the F-35.   The Marine Corps declared IOC last year in July.   The Air Force is scheduled to declare IOC later this year, and the Navy is scheduled to declare IOC in 2018.

•           The Marine Corps IOC was based on a version of the program’s software called Block 2B. 

•           The Air Force’s declaration of IOC will be based on the Block3I (“3-eye”) software. 

•           The Navy’s declaration of IOC will be based on the Block 3F software version. 

Until recently, in order to support the IOC dates, the Program Office had been working on versions of both Blocks 3I and 3F of the software simultaneously.  The Block 3F software depends on having a stable baseline for the Block 3I software.  With the contractor team working on multiple releases of software, correcting deficiencies and achieving software stability has proved elusive.  Working on the two software packages simultaneously was intended to save time, but that time was lost when the project had to be redone because of mistakes stemming from the concurrency.  Within the past year, the Program Executive Officer halted work on the Block 3F software until the problems with the Block 3i software could be sorted out.  We need to understand what effect this altered approach may have on the overall program schedule. 

Beyond that, we are planning for sizeable upgrades in F-35 capability through spiral development efforts for the Block 4 program.  The Block 4 program will likely be a multi-billion dollar effort.  We want to be sure that, we do not repeat past mistakes.

Beyond the SDD program, these is an even larger issue of the costs to sustain the F-35 once we have bought it.  These estimates were at one point as large as $1 trillion.  We need to understand what the Department is doing to reduce these potential costs.  If we do nothing, we run the risk of allowing increased costs to sustain and support the F-35 to reduce the funds available for investment in the future force. 

This Committee has been a strong supporter of the JSF program from the beginning.  However, we must continue vigilance on cost so that there is a proper balance between F-35 and other important DOD acquisitions. 

Thank you for calling this hearing, Mr. Chairman.