US to get 500 F-35 jets before testing completes

The Pentagon has indicated that it wants to increase the number of F-35 jets purchased for the US to 92 annually by 2020. This is a significant increase from the 38 orders that were placed last year, Bloomberg reported.
 
The number will jump to 120 per year when foreign sales begin.
 
“These aircraft will require a still-to-be-determined list of modifications” to be fully capable, Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department’s top weapons tester, said in his annual report on major military programs.
 
The Defense Department plans to order a total of 2,443 F-35s for the US military, in addition to hundreds more that are ordered by countries such as the UK, Italy, Australia and Japan.
 
With a projected cost of $391 billion, the F-35 program is the most expensive US weapons program ever and units are being produced although many of the project’s key aspects are still under development, a strategy a top Pentagon official once called “acquisition malpractice.”
 
Gilmore, whose full report will be published on Monday, noted that the delay in combat testing stems from flaws in the software that gives the F-35 jet full fighting capability.
 
Testing of the software will not be completed before at least January 2018, fifteen months behind the October 2016 schedule that was set in 2012, when the program was reorganized, officials said.
 
In his report, Gilmore further noted that the US Air Force was not satisfied with the expensive jet because of “inherited deficiencies” with its software and “new avionics stability problems.”
 
A fuel system deficiency, faulty diagnostic systems, cracks in wing spars, lack of high-fidelity simulators for combat missions, and a pilot escape system that could kill ejecting pilots were among the problems that Gilmore cited for F-35.
 
The aircraft will enter full-rate production only after the Air Force declares its version of the F-35 jet has initial combat capability. The US Navy declared its version’s initial capability in July 2015.
 
The extent of the problems with the fancy fighter jet has been so vast that even US Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James could not hide her disappointment, saying that it is costing way more money than they had “ever imagined possible.”
 
“People believed we could go faster, cheaper, better” but that strategy “has not worked as well as we hoped and that’s probably the understatement of the day,” James added.