Summary
The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program--a multinational acquisition program for the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and eight cooperative international partners--is the Department of Defense's (DOD) most expensive aircraft acquisition program. DOD currently estimates it will spend $623 billion to develop, procure, and operate and support the JSF fleet. The JSF aircraft, which includes a variant design for each of the services, represents 90 percent of the remaining planned investment for DOD's major tactical aircraft programs. In fiscal year 2004, the JSF program was rebaselined to address technical challenges, cost increases, and schedule overruns. This report--the third mandated by Congress--describes the program's progress in meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals since rebaselining and identifies various challenges the program will likely face in meeting these goals in the future.
The JSF program has delivered and flown the first development aircraft. However, cost and schedule goals established in the fiscal year 2004 rebaselined program have not been met. Total JSF program acquisition costs (through 2027) have increased by $31.6 billion and now DOD will pay 12 percent more per aircraft than expected in 2004. The program has also experienced delays in several key events, including the start of the flight test program, delivery of the first production representative development aircraft, and testing of critical missions systems. Delays in the delivery of initial development aircraft were driven by incomplete engineering drawings, changes in design, manufacturing inefficiencies, and parts shortages. Despite these delays, the program still plans to complete development in 2013, compressing the amount of time available for flight testing and development activities. Also, the program projects it will meet all but one key performance requirement--line of sight communications--that is currently dependent on other capabilities being developed outside the JSF program. Accurately predicting JSF costs and schedule and ensuring sufficient funding will likely be key challenges facing the program in the future. JSF continues to pursue a risky acquisition strategy that concurrently develops and produces aircraft. While some concurrency may be beneficial to efficiently transition from development to production, the degree of overlap is significant on this program. Any changes in design and manufacturing that require modifications to delivered aircraft or to tooling and manufacturing processes would result in increased costs and delays in getting capabilities to the warfighter. Low-rate initial production will begin this year with almost the entire 7-year flight test program remaining to confirm the aircraft design. Confidence that investment decisions will deliver expected capability within cost and schedule goals increases as testing proves the JSF will work as expected. The JSF program also faces funding uncertainties as it will demand unprecedented funding over the next 2 decades--more than $12.6 billion a year on average through 2027.
Recommendations
Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.
Director:
Team:
Phone:
Michael J. Sullivan
Government Accountability Office: Acquisition and Sourcing Management
(937) 258-7915
Recommendations for Executive Action
Recommendation: To improve chances of a successful outcome, the Secretary of Defense should limit annual low-rate initial production quantities to no more than 24 aircraft per year, the current manufacturing capacity, until each variant's basic flying qualities have been demonstrated in flight testing now scheduled in the 2010 time frame.
Agency Affected: Department of Defense
Status: Open
Comments: In providing comments on this report, DOD did not concur with our recommendation stating that the current program acquisition strategy provides an effective balance of technical risk, financial constraints, and operational needs of the services. However, we believe DOD's actions to reduce aircraft in the Fiscal Year 2008 budget are in line with our recommendation. In the Fiscal Year 2008 Budget, DOD reduced the number of production aircraft it plans to buy during the flight test program by about 35 percent as compared to the previous plan. Under that plan DOD was not to increase its buy quantities above 24 aircraft a year until 2011, or after all three aircraft variants have undergone flight testing of their basic flying qualities. While DOD increased its buy of production aircraft to 30 in the Fiscal Year 2010 budget, the program now plans to have tested the basic flying qualities of all three aircraft variants by the end of 2010. We are leaving the recommendation open and plan to monitor it as part of our 2010 review of the program to determine if DOD continues to limit production quantities to no more than 24 aircraft a year until each variant's basic flying qualities have been demonstrated through flight testing. This should take place in 2010.
