From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: F-35 Annual Program Review Description: Jon Ludwigson joins the Watchdog Report to discuss issues with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. Related GAO Work: GAO-20-339, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: Actions Needed to Address Manufacturing and Modernization Risks Released: May 2020 [ Intro Music ] [Jon Ludwigson:] We believe that the program should focus on meeting best practices for manufacturing, and incorporate our recommendations from the past. [Matt Oldham:] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the US Government Accountability Office. I'm Matt Oldham. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the most expensive US weapons system ever, and it's a program at risk of missing testing deadlines and not meeting manufacturing leading practices. With me to talk about an annual GAO review of the F-35 program is Jon Ludwigson, a Contraction and National Security Acquisitions director. Thanks for joining me, Jon. [Jon Ludwigson:] Thank you for your interest in our work. [Matt Oldham:] So, Jon, I thought the F-35 was already in use. How could it run the risk of missing test schedules? [Jon Ludwigson:] Well, you're right. The F-35 is in use in the US fleet and around the world, but while the F-35 has been in development and use for many years, probably due to the profound technical challenges in meeting the difficult requirements of the program, the normal development cycle was compressed to include overlapping development and production. And development refers to the figuring out of technology and integrating the various technologies, and production is the actual building of the aircraft. That overlap is what we call concurrency. In looking at these kinds of programs, we found that high levels of concurrency can make it difficult to meet estimated costs and schedules. So, the program is now attempting to finalize what's called operational testing. And operational testing refers to the process of testing the aircraft and its systems to determine whether they're effective, suitable, survivable, and they can perform the missions that the F-35 is supposed to perform in an operational environment. That means flying it around in airspace, to a great extent, against simulated targets. And we found that, as of February this year, the completion of the testing was going to be delayed another nine months and now is expected to be completed sometime around August 2020. [Matt Oldham:] So, is the Department of Defense also looking at things like reliability or maintainability? [Jon Ludwigson:] The reliability and maintainability that you're referring to, that's really about whether or not the aircraft is generally reliable. Can it fly when it needs to fly, and if it needs to be repaired, can it be repaired quickly? And what we found is that the R&M, the metrics that were established for this program, the reliability and maintainability metrics, they haven't met all of them. [Matt Oldham:] So, what does this mean for the fleet of F-35s the military already has? [Jon Ludwigson:] Well, you know, at the basic level, the F-35s that are in the field are not as reliable as they're supposed to be, which means fewer are available for missions and they cost more to maintain, or maybe even both of those. And this is something we've reported on before. I'll say that the contractor believes that things have gotten better. They think that the newest aircraft, the ones that have come off the production line in the most recent years, are more reliable than the first ones. However, it's going to take us some time with those aircraft in the field to figure out if they're actually more reliable and meet the metrics. But right now, the fleet, on average, does not meet all the metrics. [ Music ] [Matt Oldham:] So, it sounds like DOD is seeing delays in F-35 testing and this could affect DOD's acceptance for the next phase of production for the F-35. So, Jon, could these issues cause delays with the delivery of the remaining aircraft? [Jon Ludwigson:] The past few years we've noted that there have been challenges with getting parts to the production line on time, and we do note in this year's report that the contractor, the airframe contractor delivered more aircraft on time in 2019 than the prior year, so progress has been made there. But the engines remain an area where there have been continuing problems. We note that 90% of the engines were delivered late in 2019. While we've noticed that there were improvements in some areas on that supply chain front, we did note that the production line faces some challenges, in particular, the C model is taking considerably more time in terms of scrap, rework, and repair per individual aircraft, really double the scrap, rework, and repair hours from the A, and actually got worse. [Matt Oldham:] So, how does this program get back on track, then? [Jon Ludwigson:] We believe that the program should focus on meeting best practices for manufacturing and incorporate our recommendations from the past. One thing we haven't talked about is the F-35's modernization program, which we refer to in the report as block four, and the modernization program is aimed at developing and deploying improvements to the F-35 and its systems to address today's threats. Remember, the F-35 was conceived in the late 1990s and is in the field now, as we discussed, and we found that this modernization program is already overrunning its cost estimates and delaying deployment of its capabilities, those individual capabilities, to bring it up to modern capability. And we found that, given the F-35's program history of cost and schedule overruns, we think it's important for the program to get the F-35 modernization effort, that block four effort, under control early to make sure that cost and schedule estimates are reasonable. [Matt Oldham:] So then, last question, Jon, what's the bottom line of this report? [Jon Ludwigson:] GAO looks at a lot of programs and we generally find that there are challenges in some programs, and this is no different. There are challenges here. None of them are insurmountable. The F-35 program has done a remarkable job building an operational aircraft from concepts that were really more science fiction than implementable when it was being conceived in the late 1990s, but looking ahead, we think that the ability of the aircraft to meet its missions and do that at a cost that the country can bear really hinges on making sure that the production processes are focused on building consistent, reliable aircraft and that the modernization build in reasonable and reliable cost estimates. [Matt Oldham:] Jon Ludwigson was talking about the GAO report on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program. Thank you for your time, Jon. [Jon Ludwigson:] Thank you very much for taking interest. [Matt Oldham:] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts. Make sure you leave a rating and review to let others know about the work we're doing. For more from the congressional watchdog, the US Government Accountability Office, visit us at gao.gov.