GAO: Congress should considering withholding F-35 program funds until key deficiencies are addressed

As the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) prepares to shift its F-35 program into full-rate production, a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released on Tuesday recommends that Congress consider withholding funding until “key deficiencies” are addressed.

Slated for full-rate production in October 2019, the F-35 program has been in development for the last 17 years. Plans call for 77 aircraft to produced per year over the next 12 years, with acquisition costs totaling $406 billion over the life of the program.

The GAO review found that the F-35 program had 966 open deficiencies as of January 2018. The program has 855 category 1 deficiencies that could jeopardize safety or security, and 855 category 2 deficiencies that could “impede or constraint successful completion of the mission.” DoD will be unable to resolve at least 25 category 1 deficiencies and 165 category 2 deficiencies on the current full-rate production timeline.

“According to program office officials, in early 2017 the program office determined that not all open deficiencies found in developmental testing could be resolved within the cost and schedule of the development contract,” the GAO report stated. “As a result, the program office and the military services reviewed all open deficiencies and determined that about 30 percent of them needed to be resolved before completing development. According to program officials, some of the remaining deficiencies will be resolved through post-development contracts and not on the baseline development contract.”

The F-35 has procured 213 aircraft and conducted development flight testing over the last 10 years. Those aircraft will require retrofits to address unresolved issues found during testing. Meanwhile, the number of aircraft produced by the program is expected to increase each year through 2024 after full-rate production commences, GAO found.

“The military services will also incur substantial sustainment costs once they acquire the F-35 aircraft,” GAO concluded. “In October 2017, we found that DoD did not have insight into the program’s total sustainment costs, estimated at over $1.1 trillion over a 60-year life cycle.”

GAO recommended that the secretary of defense ensure that critical deficiencies are resolved in the F-35 program before making a decision on beginning full-rate production, and to identify steps needed to ensure the reliability and maintainability of the F-35 program.

Additionally, GAO recommended that Congress “consider providing in future appropriations that no funds shall be available for obligation” for the next block of the F-35 program until DoD provides an independent cost estimate, technology readiness assessments, test and evaluation of master plans, a system engineering plan, a preliminary design review, and an approved acquisition strategy.