The Joint Strike Fighter program can thank Eliot Spitzer for keeping the latest Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on JSF off the front pages.

Even though the GAO has, in its long history, uttered critical reports on projects that ended up being successful (the F-4 and the F-16 to name but two) the JSF report makes disturbing reading, particularly combined with other recent comments.

The thrust of the report is that the current cost estimates for the project are not reliable. "Not sufficiently comprehensive, accurate, documented, or credible,"; says the GAO. The estimate leaves out some costs - such as the alternate engine, which the program office wants to cancel - and relies on assumptions that the GAO, and other agencies that advised it, regarded as unreliable and optimistic.

The GAO criticises program managers for cutting back on test assets and flying hours. Two test aircraft were chopped from the program last September under the so-called "mid-course risk reduction" plan - and may we add that there's something Orwellian about cutting back on testing and calling it "risk reduction" - and the number of planned flight tests has been cut from just under 7,000 to 5,147 since October 2005.

GAO's main criticism of these cutbacks, which were designed to save money and build up management reserves - the rainy day fund - in the development program, is that they don't deal with what was causing overruns in the first place.

Echoing program director Gen. Charles Davis, who commented on the same issues at Aviation Week/DTI's DTAR conference in February, the GAO notes that the JSF program is running into trouble on the production front:  "Production line problems have resulted in slips of between 11 and 16 months to first flight dates for each variant. At the time of our review, a fourth schedule was being prepared that would add another 1 to 4 months to schedules."

This is what has been driving delays and it has not been fixed, the GAO says.

Also, the GAO has gone to three other agencies for independent reviews of the JSF development program, with the following results:

The Defense Contract Management Agency and Cost Analysis Improvement Group were relatively skeptical, but it was the Navy that was most critical, "based on historical cost performance and removing what it considered to be artificial and unachievable schedule constraints." Current development costs are estimated at $44.5 billion in then-year dollars, but the Navy predicts as much as a $13 billion increase and a two-year-plus delay.

New estimates from the program office are due next month - the GAO complains that its Congressionally mandated annual review is out of phase with the program office and the DoD's Selected Acquisition Reports.

Another interesting point:  the GAO detects a dispute between the Navy and the Marines, which have yet to decide how the Navy Department's 680 aircraft will be split between short take off, vertical landing (STOVL) F-35Bs and carrier-based F-35Cs. The Marines want 420 F-35Bs, but the big-deck community wants the Marines to man some F-35C squadrons.  The GAO notes that the outcome of this conflict will have a big impact on the unit costs of the B and C versions.

Also, echoing the USAF, the Navy says that it can't afford to buy JSFs at the rate assumed in the production program:  instead of 50 jets a year, the service will take a maximum of 35. Unless the country spends more money on fighters, therefore, the intended production rate can't be met.