WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It’s called the “death spiral,” and America’s newest warplane, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, is in danger of falling into it before the plane has even gone into service.

The term – recently invoked by top brass involved in the F-35 program – refers to a budgeting Catch-22 that plagues the defense industry. To keep the cost per airplane low, you need to build and sell a lot of planes. But in tough economic times, governments cut orders to save money. That pushes up the cost per plane, leading to more cancellations, pushing up the cost, leading to more cancellations. And so on.

WASHINGTON, March 15 (Reuters) – It’s called the “death
spiral,” and America’s newest warplane, the F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter, is in danger of falling into it before the plane has
even gone into service.

The term – recently invoked by top brass involved in the
F-35 program – refers to a budgeting Catch-22 that plagues the
defense industry. To keep the cost per airplane low, you need to
build and sell a lot of planes. But in tough economic times,
governments cut orders to save money. That pushes up the cost
per plane, leading to more cancellations, pushing up the cost,
leading to more cancellations. And so on.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Air Force general who heads the $396 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program said he planned to streamline the Pentagon’s F-35 office as part of a drive to cut the cost of the most expensive U.S. weapons program and increase its efficiency.

Lieutenant General Christopher Bogdan, who took over the helm of the program in December, told reporters after a defense conference that he planned some “housekeeping changes” to streamline the program office and encouraged the companies who build the new warplane to do the same.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top Pentagon officials on Tuesday underscored their support for the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter, saying they would try to protect funding for the most expensive U.S. weapons program despite continued U.S. budget uncertainty and cost over-runs.

The $396 billion program is already seven years behind schedule and 70 percent over initial cost estimates.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon needs to budget $12.6 billion each year through 2037 to finish developing and paying for all the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighters it plans to buy, according to a report released by a congressional watchdog agency on Monday.

This amounts to $2 billion more in projected annual funding needs than the Government Accountability Office (GAO) had included in a draft report obtained and published by Reuters on Saturday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Retrofits of F-35 fighter planes to fix problems found in flight testing will likely top $1.7 billion, a U.S. government watchdog said in the draft of a new report about the Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter program.

Extensive restructuring efforts and progress on technical issues have put the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 program on a more solid footing, but the plane’s long-term affordability remains a big concern, the Government Accountability Office said in the draft, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) – Some students in the U.S.
Air Force’s F-35 fighter pilot school took their first flights
on Wednesday in the new radar-evading jet as a report by the
Pentagon’s chief tester found fault with early versions of the
plane’s radar, pilot helmet and other systems.

The report by Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department’s
director of operational test and evaluation (DOT&E), was sent to
Congress last month, but was first published by the watchdog
group, Project on Government Oversight, on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of Pratt & Whitney’s military engine business said on Wednesday that driving down the cost of the F-35 fighter jet was “burned on our brains,” but said cuts sparked by budget woes could slow the effort.

Bennett Croswell, president of Pratt & Whitney Military Engines, said he met with the Air Force general who heads the Pentagon’s F-35 program in Australia after he accused Pratt and F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) of trying to “squeeze every nickel” out of the government.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A week after his drubbing of the top contractors on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter raised eyebrows at the Pentagon, the U.S. program chief sought to maintain pressure on industry, while citing progress on software development and production costs.

U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Christopher Bogdan told a defense conference that he’d reached his quota for “juicy, controversial, headline-making quotes” for the month after lashing the plane’s manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corp . and enginemaker Pratt & Whitney during an air show in Australia.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Australia’s Austal (ASB.AX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) each won orders to build two more smaller warships for the U.S. Navy, while Lockheed beat out two rivals to remain the chief developer of the Aegis combat system, the Pentagon said Monday.

Lockheed won an order valued at $697 million to build two more of its steel monohull Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) for the Navy using fiscal 2013 funding, the Defense Department said in its daily digest of large weapons contracts. It said work on the two new Lockheed ships would be completed by July 2018.