Also in Ares by Bill Sweetman:
How's All That Validate-y Stuff Working Out For Ya?
Lockheed Martin CEO Robert Stevens expects a "rephasing" of flight testing for the F-35B short take-off, vertical landing variant of the Joint Strike Fighter to emerge from a comprehensive review of the program, due to report in November.
(In this context, "rephasing" carries the same kind of meaning as when your cable company "adjusts" its prices - you know which way the change is going.)
Weeks after explaining that the F-35B tests were being delayed by problems with components "that you would not consider major systems" and that work was in-hand to fix the problems and get flight-testing back on track, Stevens said yesterday in a Morgan Stanley investor call (around the 55 minute mark) that although "the early corrective actions ... are showing some beneficial outcomes, my sense is that it is not going to be enough."
One root cause may be that suppliers, squeezed on schedule and cost, have failed to design and deliver components that can withstand the heat, noise and vibration generated by the F-35B powered lift system.
Stevens said that "the quality of parts in the supply chain" has been an issue. Lockheed Martin, he said, is putting pressure on suppliers in terms of "quality, performance and cost, and some of that pressure is manifesting itself in the F-35B program."
"I'm quite sure we'll see a rephasing" of F-35B testing, Stevens said, explaining that it will be part of a comprehensive technical baseline review that has followed the program's Nunn-McCurdy recertification earlier this year.
Today, the F-35B program is only six months away from the scheduled start of at-sea STOVL tests on the USS Wasp (set for March 2011). However, so far the reported progress with STOVL envelope expansion has been slow.
Of course, this may not be the time to remind the JSF program office of some of its earlier statements:
According to Brig. Gen. C.R. Davis, F-35 program executive officer "early flight test results show we are on a path to largely validate the design and aircraft systems -- we are not entering a period of discovery.
Or even:
The test program, [Maj Gen David Heinz] said, is about “validation, not discovery.” (Air Force Magazine Daily Report, June 4 2009)
Somehow I don't think we're going to hear that line again for a while.