The Pentagon's $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter program would be delayed by six months under a proposal discussed by a Senate Armed Services subcommittee Wednesday and sent up to the full committee for a decision, according to participants in secret committee deliberations.
The reason for the delay is to match JSF with its technical progress, which has been lagging. Backers of the plan insist that reducing the funding will not cause a slowup in this biggest of all tactical aircraft programs. The plan is buy 3,000 JSFs for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps at a total cost of about $200 billion.
Boeing Aircraft and Lockheed are vying for the contract. Their lobbyists were frantically calling all over Washington Wednesday when word leaked out that the Senate Subcommittee on Airland Forces was contemplating changing the pace and structure of the program. "A guy at Boeing called me desperate to find out what was going on," said one congressional staff member.
If this new plan to match funding with technical progress becomes law, as now seems likely, the Pentagon's choice of the lead contractor would be delayed at least until late next year rather than March 2001, as now contemplated. Such a delay would be in accord with recent recommendations of the General Accounting Office, Congress' fiscal watchdog. Harnessing the funding to technical progress "would allow adequate time to mature critical technologies before awarding the engineering and manufacturing development contract, " GAO said in March.
Many Air Force and Navy leaders are cool toward the JSF because they fear it will take money away from their most prized fighter planes, the F-22 and F-18 E and F respectively. But the Marine Corps refused to buy the F-18 E and F and put its chips on the JSF as its 21st century fighter bomber. So Marine leaders are desperately hoping the JSF will be built.
The F-22, in contrast to the JSF, has experienced smooth flying through the subcommittee markup sessions. The House Appropriations Committee succeeded last year in denying production funds for the $184 million-a-copy fighter and requiring that the service first test a plane outfitted with all its electronics. The Air Force recently warned Congress that it may need an additional $500 million for this testing, according to congressional sources.
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