Congress is closer to taking action to rein in the much-troubled F-35 program, which has failed to deliver on its promises and faces new problems with the latest generation.
Two top Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) say they are talking about an amendment to the annual defense bill that would reduce the number of aircraft acquired by the Air Force for the next fiscal year.
Although the amendment was recently blocked by GOP lawmakers, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), ranking member of HASC, said it was just an initial setback and that there is growing pressure on Capitol Hill to finally address the F program. -35 .
“Each member with a piece of [the F-35] is starting to feel the pressure for a program that is not only way over budget and on schedule, but has not yet produced the airplane we want,” he said. “The pressure is mounting.”
His amendment aims to address the F-35 program’s latest issues, specifically Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3), a hardware and software upgrade to the fighter jet’s computer system intended for newer models under a modernization effort. of US$ 16.5 billion called Block 4. .
Defense contractor Lockheed Martin has struggled to apply the new update, leading to an undisclosed number of F-35s sitting on the runway. The Defense Department in July 2023 canceled new F-35 orders while Lockheed works through the issues.
Smith’s amendment, also supported by Rep. Jen Kiggans, (R-Va.), is included in the House-approved version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), but not in the defense appropriations bill that funds the NDAA priorities.
The provision, blocked by the House Rules Committee, would reduce the number of aircraft purchased in fiscal 2025 to 58, a number below the 68 requested by the Biden administration. The defense appropriations bill increases the number to 76.
By reducing the number of aircraft, about $850 million could be redirected to Lockheed to fix the software update problems, in effect incentivizing the contractor to invest in the updates.
Smith, who says he has spoken with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) about the change, said its provision is a sensible way to “get the contractors to spend the money” to deliver the planes they promised to the Pentagon.
But the F-35 program addresses a bigger problem that Congress needs to address: keeping the costs of increasingly sophisticated technologies for weapons systems low, Smith added.
“Books will be written about the F-35 program in terms of the challenges and problems surrounding it,” he said. “And it’s really important that we in Congress understand that and try to figure out how to do better in the future.”
Dan Grazier, a senior fellow at the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center who has followed the F-35 controversy, said “attitudes have changed dramatically on Capitol Hill” recently.
“For years, there have been very few people willing to say anything even remotely negative about the F-35,” he said. “Now it’s actually a little difficult to find people who will speak out and fully support the program.”
In addition to the Smith amendment, Congress is openly debating other ways to fix the F-35 program.
At the HASC marking of NDAA in MayLawmakers on both sides of the aisle have expressed grievances with the F-35 program and debated whether to take the drastic step of seizing the intellectual property of Lockheed’s fighter jet.
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) said at the markup that the F-35 was “broken” and it was a “fundamental issue” that Lockheed had control over the program through the original contract.
Taking the F-35’s intellectual property would solve the TR-3’s software problems, he argued.
“It’s a shame because we have a lot of extraordinary software developers in the United States, but we can’t allow them to work on this program because Lockheed refuses to give up intellectual property,” he said.
The amendment was withdrawn due to concerns from the Congressional Budget Office about how to pay for it. Lawmakers have also raised questions about the legality of seizing intellectual property. But during the talks, even Republicans expressed growing concerns about the program.
“The F-35 has moved into a position where, I don’t want to say a dead end, but it’s in a position where we need competition, we need this software, we need to have the ability to put those asset overheads and right now that just doesn’t work. it’s happening,” said Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-Texas).
“I hope Lockheed is listening because we are paying close attention to this,” he added.
In response to an in-depth inquiry into whether it supports Congress’s efforts to resolve the issue, a Lockheed Martin spokesperson said the company looks forward to “continuing to work with the Administration and Congress as the fiscal year budget process continues.” 2025 advances.”
The movement in Congress is surprising, considering that the program has long avoided anything more than complaints in Congress, despite having a history of failures.
The problems always contrasted with the promises made. In its initial phase in 2001, there was glowing coverage of the next-generation fighter jet that the US military promised would carry out a wide variety of combat missions.
But the advanced fighter jet, which replaced the fourth-generation F-16 aircraft, reached full production this year, meaning it is finally at the highest readiness rate after more than 23 years. It was expected to reach full production in 2019.
The F-35 program also soared above its initial cost estimates, triggering a 2010 Nunn-McCurdy breach that forced the Pentagon to conduct a review of whether to continue the program. Then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates chose to restructure the program rather than cancel it.
Today, the F-35 is the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons system. The US operates 630 aircraft and plans to purchase 2,500 by the mid-2040s and continue to operate them until the 2080s.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report This year the total costs to sustain the F-35 fleet until 2088 are more than $2 billion. An individual aircraft will cost more than $6 million annually to operate and maintain.
At the same time, the Navy, Marines, and Air Force each projected a decrease in F-35 flight, which did not have a single model accomplish mission objectivesfrom fiscal years 2019 to 2023. Lockheed also continues to deliver aircraft late.
The GAO also said in the report that about 70 percent of its recommendations were not addressed by the Pentagon, including creating a new sustainment strategy or reevaluating Lockheed’s responsibility for sustainment.
In 2021, the tide began to turn against the program. Then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who served in the final days of the Trump administration, publicly called it “a piece of shit,” while Smith, then-chairman of the HASC, referred to the F-35 program as a ” mouse hole.”
The ongoing problems with the TR-3 to upgrade and modernize the F-35 were at least partially intended to resolve Lockheed’s stubborn problems with the aircraft, but have so far only succeeded in worsening them.
Rep. Donald Norcross (DN.J.), ranking member of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, released a blunt joint statement with Smith after the F-35 amendment they both supported to resolve the software issue was blocked by House appropriators.
Norcross told The Hill that the lawmakers who blocked the amendment represented a minority view and that leadership in the House is aligned in addressing the issue.
“I believe that when we come out of the conference we will have a bill that not only addresses some of the deficiencies in [the] planes, but invest in areas where we can make it relevant, because now it is sitting on the runway, without doing anything,” he stated.
Norcross also sees increasing pressure to tackle the F-35 program.
“On our side, there is no doubt. In fact, many, and I will say bipartisan, [lawmakers]we wanted to go much further than we did”, he added.
The Stimson Center’s Grazier said he supports pausing all purchases until the F-35 program is fixed and cast doubt on Smith’s amendment that “throwing more money” at the problem will solve it.
He acknowledged that such a late pause in the program would be unpopular and unlikely in Congress. But he argued that Lockheed has struggled to manage its program because of a design flaw “built into” the process from the start, which promised the fighter jet could carry out multiple capabilities, including deep strike, air-to-air combat and missions. of attack.
“It was a flawed concept from the start, and then that bad decision was compounded by the notion of including every gadget imaginable in the design,” he said.
“You eventually cross a threshold where your maintainer just can’t keep up with the workload, just because there are so many potential things that could break,” he added, “and all of those things need to be maintained to keep the aircraft at full mission capability. . It’s just a matter of math.”
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