Bob Cox of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is usually on the ball, so this story is worth a look. It has deputy defense secretary Gordon England saying that the FY10 budget will boost JSF spending in order to accelerate development and production.

But "accelerating" development sounds odd when the program leaders have not-quite-officially acknowledged a one-year slip in the end of SDD. But at the same time, DoD officials have been warning that without a boost in funding, the F-35 development program will split into two phases. Other reports have the US Navy delaying the initial operational capability (IOC) date of the carrier-based F-35C.

What's going on?

The JSF program has set itself some lofty goals. Even with the new mid-2014 date for the completion of operational testing (OT) the flight-test team has to average 70-plus sorties per month, starting yesterday, to get there. (This is based on the 5100 total sorties mentioned in a GAO report early this year.)

That's as many flights as the program has notched up in the past two years. Clearly, the pace will accelerate as more aircraft join the flight-test program - the plan is to have 19 aircraft in test by the end of 2009 - but what lies ahead from late 2009 onwards is among the fastest-paced developmental test programs in history.

However, despite the new schedule, the Marine and USAF IOC dates have not moved, from mid-2012 and mid-2013 respectively. Both dates are before the completion of OT and the Marine IOC target is before the completion of developmental testing (DT).

Even though the definition of Marine IOC is liberal - one squadron with support equipment, technical publications, trained maintenance personnel and trained aircrew, with ten aircraft, six of them deployable - the schedule is still tight. It calls for the first step in training operational crews (which is the training of the first instructor cadres within the test program) to start in 2010, when the fleet readiness squadron gets its first aircraft.

The schedule also still calls for the last low-rate initial production batch to go on contract in 2012. But a small problem is that it's contrary to Federal law to proceed to full-rate production until OT has been completed. There has been an overlap in the plans for some time, which was to be bridged by defining the first year of full-rate production funding as an economic order quantity (EOQ).

But with OT winding up in 2014, the schedule now formally shows the first multi-year production contract being awarded before that. Either that date, or the law, has to change.  

So where does the Navy fit in? It's been clear for several years that the Navy, unlike the Marines or the USAF, has a Plan B - the service can keep buying Block II Super Hornets until it considers the JSF to be ready. And slipping the F-35C's IOC (now set for 2015) would take a lot of pressure off the test program because carrier testing would no longer have to be completed by mid-2014. 

But at the same time, the cost of SDD would go up further (on top of the not-yet-reported increase due to the one-year schedule delay), and delaying the ramp-up of Navy aircraft would reduce production rates and increase costs.

So it could well be that what England is looking for is to add money to boost USAF and Marine production - or at least make sure that they stay at planned rates, despite the rising SDD bill - to keep the JSF production plans rolling.

Pentagon critics have often charged that there are two phases to any major defense program:  Too soon to know, and too late to stop. The JSF seems to be adding another - "too big to slow down" - to that list.

It seems that the project needs a morale booster. How about a song?