Lawmaker urges military to plan for bigger shortfall in fighter aircraft
House Democrat says Defense needs a backup plan in the likely event of more delays to the F-35 program.
A key House lawmaker said Thursday that the military should consider developing a "Plan B," in the event of more problems with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.
House Armed Services Air and Land Forces Subcommittee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., said it is "quite possible" that the F-35 program will be subject to more delays, a move that could exacerbate a shortfall in fighter aircraft that is expected to plague the military for the next several years.
"It strikes me as crying out for a Plan B," Smith said during a hearing before his panel focused on National Guard and Reserve equipping needs. "Let's say we don't wind up with the current [plan] of 2,443 F-35s, what are we going to do to make sure that we have the fighter attack aircraft that we need [for] active [forces], as well as Guard and Reserve?"
In recent months, the Defense Department has restructured development and procurement of the F-35, a joint Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps effort that is the largest weapons system program on the Pentagon's books.
The restructuring was prompted by soaring costs that pushed the program to breach the 1982 Nunn-McCurdy cost-control law, triggering a congressional review and forcing the Pentagon to prove it is critical to national security to protect the Lockheed Martin Corp. fighter program from termination.
To address the problems, Defense Secretary Robert Gates added 13 months to the development phase of the program, a move that delayed the start of the aircraft's initial operational use in the Navy by more than a year and in the Air Force by more than two years.
Lawmakers have been particularly concerned about fighter shortfalls in the Air National Guard, raising concerns that officials have no workable plan to deal with the Guard's aging fleet.
They argue that 80 percent of the Air Guard's F-16s, which fly the majority of Air Sovereignty Alert missions to protect U.S. airspace, will retire years before their replacements are ready, depleting units of the aircraft they need to secure domestic airspace.
Smith is preparing to mark up his panel's portion of the massive fiscal 2011 defense authorization bill next month, which includes the F-35 program. But he said after the hearing that he doesn't currently plan to address the issue head-on in the bill.
But, he added, "I wouldn't 100 percent rule it out at this moment."