Keeping JSF Healthy is Top Airpower Priority: Analyst

Keeping the F-35 program healthy is the top U.S. airpower priority this year. After taking its medicine with a Nunn-McCurdy unit cost breach in 2010, the program is in strong hands with new managers, Vice Adm. David Venlet at the program office, and Larry Lawson leading the Lockheed Martin team (see p. 55).

F-35 unit costs have gone up. But the real question is whether the F-35 shifts to a robust pace in its test program so it can make a smooth transition to full production.

Testing of the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing variant has been hard, and the departure of the RAF from that variant ended an era. However, the F-35 has made progress in the baseline conventional takeoff and landing variant and the carrier variant. The F-35 is a sorely needed modernization program that will fly the pants off anything out there (except the F-22). It won’t come cheap, but its capabilities will be second to none in the antiaccess environment emerging in areas such as the Western Pacific.

Later this year, we’ll see if the Pentagon funds a real long-range strike program, one that leads to down-select of a team or teams to build bomber prototypes. It’s possible that the Defense Department will opt to keep the new bomber a science project for fiscal reasons. The Air Force, however, has a serious requirement for a long-range platform that will give it firepower in antiaccess, area-denial scenarios. With just a handful of B-2s ready for action at any time, a stealthy, high-altitude bomber can’t come soon enough.

Also looming is a steeplechase course of decisions on airborne ground surveillance. Joint forces count on USAF aircraft to watch broad areas and take detailed pictures of vehicles and people moving around places such as Afghanistan. Trouble is, the Air Force has never had to come up with a full mission area strategy that copes with low-intensity conflict and the needs of contested battlespace. Modernizing this capability means deciding what to do about Joint Stars and Global Hawk Block 40, and the enticing prospect of buying new Navy P-8s and modifying them for USAF airborne ground surveillance.

Of course, long term this all depends on staying in the global business, and that means awarding the KC-X tanker contract and sticking with it.