From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Description: The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet is one of DOD's most expensive and ambitious programs - it could end up costing over $1 trillion over its lifetime. How will delays with development and testing affect the project and its costs? And what are DOD's future plans for the F-35? Related GAO Work: GAO-17-351: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: DOD Needs to Complete Developmental Testing Before Making Significant New Investments Released: April 2017 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's April 2017. The F35 Joint Strike fighter jet is one of DOD's most expensive and ambitious programs. It's purchasing costs alone are estimated at nearly $400 billion. And, beginning in 2022, DOD expects to spend an average of $14 billion a year on it for a decade. In fact, the F35 fleet could end up costing over $1 trillion to operate and support over its lifetime. A team led by Mike Sullivan, a director in GAO's Acquisition and Sourcing Management team, recently completed an annual review of the F35 program. Sarah Kaczmarek sat down with Mike to talk about what they found. [ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] In this annual review of the F35 program, what did your team find in terms of delays? [ Mike Sullivan: ] The development program will be delayed, everybody agrees to that. And it will cost more money. It was supposed to be completed sometime this spring, but the program office now is projecting a 5-month delay to completing the software development and the flight testing for the program. And the program office is also talking about somewhere around $500 million of additional cost. [ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] So what are the main causes of this delay? Is it the software that you mentioned? [ Mike Sullivan: ] Yes, it's almost all the software. On this program right now, they're working on software that really if you think about the brain of the aircraft, that's really what it is. It's called Mission Systems software and it's probably some -- it has some of the most complex performance capabilities that it has to provide than anything we've ever seen. So they've done this in about four or five blocks. They've worked their way through the first four blocks, they've had delays all the way through, which has caused some of the problems on the program. They're finally on the last block and they're still having trouble getting the software delivered to flight test. And once it's to flight test, they usually find deficiencies in it and they have to rework it, so that's causing more delays. [ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] And tell me again how much DOD says the delays will add in terms of time and also costs? [ Mike Sullivan: ] They're saying about 5 months additional, meaning that they think it'll -- they may be able to wrap it up by October of this year and about a half a billion dollars extra. I think their estimate's about 530 million. [ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] And did your team agree with those findings and estimates? [ Mike Sullivan: ] No, we didn't. We thought that they had used really optimistic assumptions about being able to eliminate test points and find deficiencies in the future. What we did is we looked at their trend data on the test program itself. How much they were able to complete, how much rework they needed during that, how many test points had to be added to make sure they had it. And so we took all of that data and trended it and we came up with a much different schedule estimate. We said it probably will take more like 12 months. And the cost estimate we said will be more like $1.7 billion. [ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] And what's in store for DOD's future plans for the F35 then? Are they going to sort all this out or are they already moving forward? [ Mike Sullivan: ] I think that's up for debate this year and that's why our recommendations are so important. Because we're more or less saying that they should slow it down and complete the development of the baseline aircraft. In other words, that last block of software that I was talking about. Get that done before they move on to future investments. They have a lot of future upgrades they want to do to the F35 and they have ideas about reducing costs. We think that they should get the baseline development program completed and put that to bed and then turn their attention to these other priorities. [ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] So what do you see as the bottom line of this report then? [ Mike Sullivan: ] Simply put, finish what you started back in 2001. You know, the program was very ambitious to begin. We reported early on, on this program, that their technologies weren't mature, and that they had a very immature design. And we saw the program extend by 5, 6, 7 years at this point and almost double in cost in terms of development. And they're almost to the end zone now, and we're saying let's get this done. Let's get the finished product for what you said you were going to do. And then let's worry about future investments after we have that done. We'll have a lot more information for those, if we do it that way. [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO.gov and be sure to tune in to the next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.