NATIONAL HARBOR Md. – The F-35 joint strike fighter will likely be protected regardless of whether the Pentagon is operating under limits imposed by the Budget Control Act in fiscal 2016, the program’s top official said Monday.
"I have faith in the Department of Defense leadership that when they tell me and the services that if sequestration comes we're going to do everything we can to minimize the impact on the program, because that is what we need to do," Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, the head of the F-35 joint program office, said.
Bogdan told an audience at the Air Force Association's annual Air & Space Conference that the program was "literally unscathed" by the sequestration-related budget reductions of the last two years, thanks to Pentagon and service leadership agreeing to put the program ahead of other priorities.
"We didn't lose a single airplane, we didn't lose a single dollar in the development program, we didn't lose a single dollar in the sustainment," Bogdan said. "The department, to its credit, put its money where its mouth is when it said 'this is our most important acquisition program and we're not going to let it falter because of that.'"
Sources tell Defense News the service is not expecting to see a raise in the FY 2016 budget, meaning hard choices are ahead for potential cuts, but Bogdan expressed confidence his program will continue to be protected.
"Looking forward, we know on the horizon in 2016 there may be future problems with the DoD budget constraints," he continued. "What I will tell you is department senior leadership has told me the same thing they told me two years ago. This program needs to continue on. It's not too big to fail, it's too important to fail."
Top Air Force officials, including Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, have listed it as a top priority in the budget. The Air Force is the largest customer of the F-35, with a planned buy of 1,763 F-35A conventional takeoff-and-landing models.
Keeping the program steadily moving forward is the only way to truly drive costs down, Bogdan said, using an oft-cited figure that 80 cents on every dollar of potential savings for the program now comes from economies of scale.
"In the next three years we double production, and in the next five years we triple production," Bogdan said. "So there is a significant ramp coming to us. Anytime a partner or service loses an airplane to the right, meaning I was going to take delivery of it here and I move it later, it effects everybody. We all sink or swim together."
In the meantime, the program continues to recover from a June 23 engine fire that heavily damaged an F-35A model and eventually led to flight envelope restrictions being placed on the existing F-35 fleet.
Bogdan said a fix to the engine issue that caused the fire should be decided by mid-October and expressed confidence it would not impact the Marine Corps' planned initial operational capability date of July 2015.
