Comparison of Responses to Sen. McCain’s F-35 Questions
McCain was particularly displeased that positive and reassuring testimony that Pentagon officials provided to his committee in November was shortly later shown to have been insincere and inexact. In a Nov. 3, 2016 letter, he said he was “extremely disappointed to learn of yet another delay in the completion of the System Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase of the F-35 Joint Strike Program with an associated cost overrun that may be upwards of $1 billion.”
McCain at the charge
McCain also wrote that “This latest setback appears to call into question some of the recent determinations and actions of Department of Defense senior leaders regarding the development of this critical but troubled program.”
What’s worse, he continued, “other senior Department leaders appear to have foreseen this latest delay and cost overrun.”
In a Jan. 10 statement on the F-35 program, McCain said he was also “disappointed that the Department chose to downplay the cost of this new delay” of six months he discovered subsequently to the hearings.
The statement lambasted the Pentagon’s handling of the program, and was accompanied by a separate letter in which he scolded Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson for not having yet started to “drive down the [F-35’s] cost aggressively,” as she had promised President-elect Donald J. Trump after having met with him on Dec. 23.
LM CEO just had a good conversation with @RealDonaldTrump… she personally committed to drive down the cost of the F-35! http://pic.twitter.com/K2aK7pW07f
— Lockheed Martin (@LockheedMartin) December 23, 2016
“If Lockheed Martin believes it is possible to aggressively drive down the cost of the F-35, it is time for the company to reveal its plans to do so to the Congress and to American taxpayers,” McCain said.
“At best, misleading and, at worst, prevarications”
Also on Jan. 10, McCain released the Pentagon’s Dec. 19 response to his questions on the program status.
This response was signed by Frank Kendall, the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, and among other things confirmed a seven-month delay to the end of the System Development and demonstration phase, and additional cost the Pentagon “hopes” to keep under $500 million.
“I do not accept the most pessimistic recommendations from OSD staff organizations,” Kendall wrote to McCain, “as in my judgement the revised schedule of executable” and that “all of this [extra] cost can be covered from funds within the program.”
But in early December, the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test & Evaluation, J. Michael Gilmore, warned that “Pentagon officials have been preparing a misleading assessment of progress” on the F-35.
“If not changed, the existing responses would at best be considered misleading and, at worst, prevarications,” Gilmore wrote in an internal memo criticizing the draft response, which was seen by Bloomberg News.
Gilmore goes to bat
Obviously, Gilmore still considers Kendall’s response to be unsatisfactory, because he decided to publish his own response, which he included in his final FY2016 DOT&E Annual Report.
It is unprecedented that two senior Pentagon officials make their differences public, especially on a subject as controversial as the F-35. Gilmore’s decision to contradict his boss, the Undersecretary of Defense, so visibly should be seen as a sign of how strongly he feels it necessary to provide Congress with the true facts, since the F-35 enterprise has shown itself capable of “misleading” to the point of “prevarication.”
It is regrettable that Gilmore is leaving his job as the new Administration takes office, as he is one of the few public servants whose professional integrity is matched by the courage to speak out even against his superiors.
It is hard not to feel that, unless the new Director of OT&E is – very improbably – a straight-shooter of Gilmore’s caliber, the F-35 enterprise will no longer have any checks to balance its overly optimistic and misleading assessments.
To allow readers to easily compare the two sets of responses, and thus to form their own opinion as to which one is more credible, we have posted them side-by-side below.
Both original responses, in PDF format, are available here:
-- USD Kendall
-- DOT&E Gilmore (see page 104, right-hand column)
Click here for the PDF version (8 pages) of this article
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