The US military’s bureaucratic watchdog on Monday accused companies building the F-35 fighter of shoddy management that can jeopardize the reliability, performance and price of the aircraft.
The Pentagon inspector general cited 363 problems within the design and manufacture of the costly Joint Strike Fighter, the hi-tech warplane that’s presupposed to function the backbone of the longer term American fleet.
For america and 8 other countries backing the project, the report raises fresh questions on the technology and supreme ticket of the F-35, which has struggled with production delays and price overruns.
The office that oversees the fighter project, the plane’s primary manufacturer Lockheed Martin and five subcontractors didn’t perform rigorous “quality assurance” practices, the report said.
The failures “could adversely affect aircraft performance, reliability, maintainability,and ultimately program cost,” per the inspector general office’s report.
A variety of the shortcomings — including how software is managed — may be able to put safety in danger, it warned.
“Without adequate product evaluation of mission system software, Lockheed Martin cannot ensure aircraft safety requirements are met,” it said.
Designed to switch fighters within the US Air Force, Navy and Marines and supported by a consortium of eight countries, this system is already the most costly in US military history with a worth tag of $395.7 billion.
Recent independent reviews have found this system has managed to rein in costs however the inspector general’s findings suggested flawed production and design work could break the plane’s budget someday.
Officials have acknowledged the unique concept for the F-35 was overly optimistic, because it called for starting production long before thorough flight tests were completed.
The idea, which the Pentagon calls “concurrency,” was in accordance with the flawed assumption that technical hurdles have been worked out in computer modeling.
Monday’s report gave the impression to confirm warnings about “concurrency” and said the Pentagon and Lockheed have often didn’t review the standard of the work from subcontractors.
But the subcontractors, Northrop Grumman, BAE, L-3 Communications, United Technologies Corp and Honeywell, also came in for criticism.
The inspector general’s office faulted Honeywell for a way it oversees the plane’s life support oxygen system.
Honeywell’s training efforts for workers engaged on the system were inadequate and changes were made to govern software without checks by engineering and management departments, in keeping with the report.
The F-35 program office called the inspector general’s report “thorough” and “useful,” but played down the findings.
In a press release, the office said lots of the problems cited had already been identified by managers and that the report didn’t present “new or critical issues that affect the health of this system.”
Out of 343 corrective actions recommended within the report, 269 were accomplished while a remaining 74 were underway, in line with this system office.
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