Pentagon will ramp up F-35 review

Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter on Wednesday said he will continue to aggressively review and manage the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter after a restructuring of the troubled program aimed at getting its cost and schedule back on track.

Speaking at a conference sponsored by Aviation Week, Carter said plans to prolong and invest more heavily in the F-35's development phase would put it on a path that is more "solid and realistic" and reverse "the schedule erosion" that has plagued the program.

Carter, who spent weeks this fall reviewing the F-35, expressed confidence the Pentagon could bring down costs on the planes, of which the Defense Department plans to buy more than 2,400 to replace older fighters in the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps inventory.

In its five-year budget forecast, the Pentagon is relying on an independent cost estimate that is higher than the program office's own cost projections for the planes, because the independent estimate took into account billions more needed for research and development.

"That is our most realistic estimate of the budget that will actually be required to execute the program," Carter said of the independent estimate. "I'm not fatalistic about that. I hope to do better. Our contractor partners hope that we will do better. We will make adequate allowance for them to do better than that."

For fiscal 2011, the Pentagon is requesting $8.7 billion in procurement funding to buy 43 F-35s, plus $2.3 billion for continued research and development and $535 million for spare parts.

Carter praised prime contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., saying he "can't say enough" about the firm's partnership with the government on the program. This month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced he was withholding $614 million in fees to Lockheed -- a decision, Gates said, Lockheed officials agreed with.

Also Wednesday, Carter signaled he believes the Pentagon has done all it can to assure a fair competition to replace the Air Force's fleet of Eisenhower-era aerial refueling tankers.

"We can't force a competition, but we think we have a fair, open, transparent, right-down-the-middle approach to this," Carter said. "It's an important program to us. It's also a very lucrative business opportunity, and so I'm hopeful that it will be seen that way."

The Air Force is expected to release a request for proposals for the contract by the end of the month in hopes of awarding a contract this summer.

Boeing Co. and a team led by Northrop Grumman Corp. and EADS are expected to vie for the contract, estimated at as much as $40 billion. But Northrop officials have threatened to back out unless the Air Force makes significant changes to the draft request for proposals, which they believe favors the Boeing offering.

Gates told House lawmakers this month the Pentagon would proceed with the competition regardless.

"We have to have new tankers," he said.