Defense News:
DoD Decertifies Lockheed's F-35 Progress Tracker
The Pentagon suspended its certification of Lockheed's system for tracking the progress on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the F-16 Fighting Falcon programs today, underscoring DoD's tough talk about running weapon buys as efficiently as possible.
The department is withdrawing its certification of the company's Earned Value Management System (EVMS) at its Fort Worth, Texas, facility to ensure Lockheed "devotes the needed attention" to revamp its system, which measures progress on the programs, according to a Oct. 5 Pentagon statement. An "internal discussion on what path to now take is ongoing within the department with regard to Lockheed's EVMS," Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin said.
Lockheed officials acknowledged that the Pentagon's full review of the restructured F-35 program could change its schedule and cause a corresponding slip in the recertification of its EVMS, according to an Oct. 4 company statement.
The "technical baseline review of the F-35 program … may affect the content and timing of the new F-35 baseline and thus the EVMS re-audit," reads the company statement. The government will determine the schedule of the re-audit." The company's EVMS combines measurements of scope, schedule and cost in a single system to give an "early warning of performance problems," the Lockheed statement reads........