USAF Secretary Certifies F-35As Delivered In FY18 Will Be Fully Capable

PARIS --- The US Secretary of the Air Force last week certified to Congress that “F-35As delivered in fiscal year 2018 will have full combat capability -- to include Block 3F software and weapons carriage,” Inside Defense reported Sept. 12.

It said the Air Force “confirmed in a Sept. 9 statement that Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James had certified the program will meet its current plan to deliver fully combat-ready aircraft in FY-18,” as required by the FY-16 National Defense Authorization Act.

Certification has not yet been publicly announced by the Air Force, and this creates some confusion as to what exactly it has certified. Inside Defense says it concerns aircraft “produced in FY18,” but later says “delivered in FY18,” which are not interchangeable terms.

Nominally, F-35As delivered in FY2018 are part of the 10th Low-Rate Initial Production batch ordered in FY2016, but neither this contract, nor the previous one for the 9th batch, has yet been awarded. Lacking a contract, it is unclear how delivery could take place as planned.

The Air Force’s certification is a direct affront to the Pentagon’s chief weapon tester, J. Michael Gilmore, who in an Aug. 9 memo warned Air Force leaders that “the program is actually not on a path toward success, but instead on a path toward failing to deliver the full Block 3F capabilities for which the Department is paying almost $400 billion by the scheduled end of System Development and Demonstration (SDD) in 2018.”

The Air Force statement claims the opposite: “The Secretary of the Air Force considered program status, planning and program risks and was informed by the F-35 Joint Program Office's plan to complete F-35 development as reviewed by Air Force functional experts, Air Combat Command, and an independent review team," according to Inside Defense.

The Air Force has ignored Gilmore’s latest warning, as it has disregarded others, even though Gilmore is the Pentagon’s own Director of Operational Test & Evaluation, an office specifically set up to ensure that weapons do not go into production unless they meet their performance goals.

Some observers worry that, by the time the F-35s are delivered in FY 2018, Air Force Secretary Deborah James will have left her position – like Gilmore, she is a political appointee – so no-one will be around to face the consequences if the F-35 program fails to deliver.

By then, several hundred more will have been ordered, at a cost of billions of dollars, and there will be little recourse if they fail to perform as advertised.

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