The Air Force denied Thursday that one of its senior executives had pushed for minimal compliance with a congressional order to test software for the F-22 fighter before putting the aircraft into production.
"The actions attributed to [the executive] are totally and completely wrong," said Maj. Gen. Claude Bolton Jr., executive officer for Air Force fighter and bomber programs. Bolton responded to a Dec.16 CongressDaily story that quoted from an internal government memo obtained by National Journal News Service warning of "malicious compliance" if a plan attributed to Darleen Druyun, principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and management, was deemed sufficient to meet congressional demands in the fiscal 2000 defense spending bill.
Bolton declared Thursday "we are committed" to thoroughly testing the avionics software of the F-22 fighter. He did not specify how comprehensively the software would be tested before initial low-rate production begins.
The pre-production testing was the concern of the authors of the internal government memo. One proposal they warned against would put the so-called Block 3.0 software "in the aircraft, take off, pull up the landing gear, circle back and land," but not thoroughly test the system in the pre-production flight done to satisfy the congressional requirement. Philip Coyle, director of operational test and evaluation, raised the same concerns in a separate memo on Dec. 6. "Currently, the F-22 program is proposing first flight of an EMD [Engineering, Manufacturing and Development plane built as a test model] aircraft with Block 3.0 avionics software not actually tested. This would not be consistent with the Appropriations conference committee language," he wrote.
In a letter to CongressDaily Thursday, Bolton wrote: "At no time has [Druyun] or anyone else in the Air Force advocated a single flight test plan to test Block 3.0 software on the F-22. What we have done, and the only thing we have done to date, is to move the start of the Block 3.0 software testing from April 17, 2001, to Oct. 30, 2000. This is a result of the great progress the F-22 program team has made in previous block testing in ground-based laboratories, on the Boeing 757 Flying Test Bed and on F-22 test aircraft to date." Boltan added, "We are committed to using the same structured, disciplined test approach for the Block 3.0 that has proved so successful in Block 1 and Block 2 software."
The amount of testing the F-22 should be required to undergo before entering initial production and the costs of the fighter loom as two of the biggest issues when Congress renews its debate over the Pentagon's tactical aircraft programs next year. The Pentagon estimates in its latest selected acquisition report that it will cost $62.7 billion for 341 F-22s, or $184 million a plane including research and development outlays. The GAO reported Dec. 7 that the Air Force has not implemented "sufficient cost reductions to ensure that EMD activities can be completed within the cost limitation" established by Congress.
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