Summer is the silly season for defense coverage in the nation’s capital.  With much of official Washington gone, journalists have to work harder to find anything worth reporting.  When they uncover an item that sounds like it might be newsy, they get as much mileage out of it as they can.
One approach is to take the latest glitch (real or imagined) in the Pentagon’s biggest weapon program and use it as a pretext for revisiting past issues — even though most of those issues have long since been resolved.  The F-35 fighter is an easy target because its budget dwarfs funding for other programs, and the plane thus is a lightning rod for every conspiracy theorist’s fears about the machinations of the military-industrial complex.  Few of the reporters on the defense beat realize that all of the legacy fighters sustaining America’s global air power today were subjected to the same sort of withering scrutiny during their own development.
I have an emotional attachment to the F-35 because I have worked with many of the companies that build it, including prime contractor Lockheed Martin, for much of my adult life (the program was awarded to Lockheed on October 26, 2001 — the day I turned 50).  So when I see a widely-read pundit describe the plane as a “laughingstock,” as I did last week, I resent it.  Are there really people out there that believe three presidents, three military services, and eight allies would pour a hundred billion dollars into a fighter that doesn’t work? Apparently there are.
All of these critics will eventually be left behind by history.  The F-35 is shaping up to be the greatest combat aircraft in history.  That isn’t my characterization, it’s what Senator John McCain — no friend of the military-industrial complex – said when the plane began operations at the Marine Corps air station in Yuma, Arizona three years ago.  Here are ten signs that McCain was right.

1. Flight tests are over two-thirds complete with no show-stoppers.  The Air Force, Marine and Navy variants of the F-35 have each completed at least two-thirds of their flight tests — over 8,000 are planned — and no major problems with the design have been identified.  All of the key performance parameters for each of the variants have been satisfied, and the plane is flying every day (there have been over 13,000 operational sorties).  Tests have validated that the airframe is extremely stealthy — nearly undetectable by enemy radar — and that it affords unparalleled situational awareness to pilots.
2. Risks associated with a revolutionary design are being steadily retired.  The F-35 is probably the most complicated military-technology project in history.  It introduces a host of innovations that have never before been integrated into a combat aircraft.  However, developers have successfully resolved every problem that arose with the new technology.  For instance, a deficiency in the data that pilots see displayed on the visor of their high-tech helmets has been eliminated; a tailhook on the Navy variant of the fighter that wasn’t consistently grabbing arresting wires was redesigned and now works 100% of the time; a cracked bulkhead discovered during durability testing of the Marine version was strengthened.
3. The Marines will declare initial operational capability this summer.  The Marine Corps variant of the F-35, which is capable of vertical takeoff and landing, will officially become operational this summer and begin replacing aged Harrier jump-jets.  For the first time ever, the Marines will have a highly survivable, versatile attack aircraft that can land on a dime pretty much anywhere.  The Air Force variant will become operational next year, and the Navy variant in 2018.  So this isn’t just a development program anymore — the F-35 has begun to reach the operational force.
4. Sea trials of the Navy version were the most successful ever. According to Navy officials, “the aircraft demonstrated exceptional performance throughout its initial sea trials.”  All of the planned test points were accomplished expeditiously, and Navy testers took the unprecedented step of conducting night operations in the aircraft’s first at-sea trials.  The tailhook that is crucial to slowing planes when they hit the carrier deck worked 124 times in 124 attempts — in other words, flawlessly — and test pilots described the harrowing experience of final approach as “carefree” thanks to new technology that captures and maintains an optimum glideslope, substantially reducing pilot workload and enhancing safety.
5. Over 145 F-35s have been built and delivered.  After seven successive production lots, key manufacturing processes have been refined in preparation for a steady ramp-up of output.  A total of 88 F-35s are currently under construction at Lockheed Martin’s plant in Fort Worth, and 110 are being produced worldwide.  There has been a 68% reduction in the labor hours required to assemble each plane since the initial production lot, and an 82% reduction in scrap, rework and repair.  The cost of building an F-35 is falling in each successive production lot, and the price-tag for the most common, Air Force, variant looks likely to match that of last-generation fighters by the end of the decade.
6. Estimates of life-cycle costs are falling fast.  The joint program office’s projection of what it will cost to sustain the F-35 during a 55-year service life fell by $58 billion in its most recent estimates.  The official estimate of what it will cost to support all 2,457 U.S. F-35s remains unchanged because the Pentagon’s cost-assessment shop does not adjust its projections between program milestones, but that will change when the next milestone is reached in 2017.  In the meantime, the joint program office — which is not similarly constrained — says the projected cost of operating the plane is falling due to a better understanding of fuel consumption, maintenance needs, labor rates and the like.
7. Numerous allies have joined the F-35 program.  The F-35 program from its inception has been a joint effort by three U.S. military services and eight international partners.  The foreign partners — Australia, Britain, Italy and others – collectively have contributed nearly $5 billion to the plane’s development.  Their participation in the production program is expected to save U.S. taxpayers $36 billion by fostering economies of scale.  And now other countries are signing up, including Israel, Japan and South Korea.  The participation of so many key allies in the F-35 effort will enhance interoperability and minimize fratricide in future coalition air operations.
8. Nearly 200 pilots and 2,000 maintainers have been trained.  Program managers are steadily expanding the joint infrastructure that will support the fielded force of F-35s.  There are a total of nine operating bases where over 145 planes are operating, and the program has surpassed 35,000 flight hours.  Training personnel — I have talked to several — are uniformly positive in praising the aircraft’s handling characteristics, reliability and maintainability.  The stealth features of the F-35 were designed to be more easily maintained than low observables on earlier planes, a key consideration in managing life-cycle costs.
9. There is better understanding of fifth-generation fighters.  The F-35 program has been dogged from its early days by the secrecy surrounding much of what makes it unique.  Experts use the shorthand term “fifth-generation” to describe the unique combination of stealth, sensor fusion, networking and other features that will make it the most formidable tactical aircraft in history, but it has taken time for people to grasp the operational implications (one recent story noted the complaint of a test pilot who said he couldn’t turn his head to see where an adversary was behind him — something pilots wouldn’t do in a fully-equipped F-35).  As more and more pilots actually fly the plane though, the logic of its design and features is becoming obvious.
10. The political system has closed ranks behind the program.  It isn’t just the pilots who have begun to appreciate what an F-35 can accomplish.  Pentagon officials and members of Congress who once were critical of F-35 are now highlighting how the program has overcome developmental challenges to deliver a truly impressive product.  Senior military officers who seemed ambivalent in the past are now supportive, acquisition officials are citing steady programmatic progress, and even Senator McCain has become more positive in his assessment of the effort.  That doesn’t mean the program will encounter no further setbacks, but what it does signal is that the F-35 effort is in better shape today than ever before — which is a good thing, because there is no ”Plane B” waiting in the wings."