La longue chute du JSF

La longue chute du JSF

Air Power Australia est un des sites anti-JSF les plus réputés, notamment pour ses capacités techniques et de documentation. L’une des plumes du site, Peter Goon, publie le 9 juillet une “note” (NOTAM) bien utile, qui reprend notamment l’historique des promesses d’“affordability” du programme par rapport à sa situation actuelle. Très intéressante référence pour se rafraîchir la mémoire, où l’on retrouve nombre des facteurs souvent cités par dedefensa.org, et assez peu par Lockheed Martin...

http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-090710-1.html

«In 2002, the JSF started life as a “200 Billion dollar program . . . to develop and field an affordable, highly common family of next-generation strike aircraft for the United States Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and allies”. For those not familiar with the term, a “strike aircraft” is basically a bomber, euphemistically referred to as a “bomb truck”.

»In all, some 2,852 JSF aircraft were planned to be produced for the US Forces, with “Program emphasis is on affordability – reducing the development cost, production cost and cost of ownership of the JSF family of aircraft”.

»The JSF aircraft capabilities were to be fielded and start operations in 2008.

»Touted as the world’s largest defence procurement program of all time and with such fanfare, Air Force Generals and politicians, alike, were encouraged to commit to the program and flocked to “get with the strength”, declaring how they were very confident and extremely comfortable in their belief in the promise that “Affordability is the cornerstone of the JSF Program”.

»Now, some 8 years later, the JSF Program is seven years behind schedule and counting while, at 382.4 Billion Dollars for 409 fewer aircraft, the program’s budgetary estimate has effectively almost than doubled, that is increased by over 97% to be more precise.

»Development costs, the ubiquitous RDT&E costs, for the System Development / Demonstration (SDD/EMD) Phase have gone from a budgeted target of 34.4 Billion Dollars at the start of 2002 to 44.8 Billion by the end of 2003 to the then current estimate of over 50 Billion by the end of 2009. The over 30% increase experienced from 2002 to 2003 should have triggered what is known as an Approved Baseline Program (APB) breach, but no such breaches have been reported to the US Congress, even when the overall increases had reached over 45 % by the end of 2009.

»Since then, sources inside the Pentagon have now revealed that, following the independent costing study completed in May 2010 which showed the JSF Program had incurred a Nunn-McCurdy unit cost breach of over 90% and not the 57% that reports from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) were encouraging people to infer, the RDT&E budget estimates have had to be increased further - by about another 7.2 Billion Dollars over and above the end of 2009 Budgetary Estimate (50.1681 Billion Dollars) that was used in the President’s 2011 Budget Proposal – PB2011.

»However, these sources also say the new budget estimates for the SDD Phase of the JSF Program would have been a lot higher save for some “highly optimistic” management and accounting practices. These have resulted, inter alia, in more development activities and their associated costs being pushed beyond the current SDD Phase. This is in line with the recently coined spin in the December 2009 JSF Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) that the JSF Program is now “focused on developing, and delivering to the warfighter incremental blocks of increasing capability”.»

“Chandernagor”