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Commandant huddles with F-35 program managers
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos huddled Wednesday morning with the managers of the F-35 fighter program, according to a senior service official.
“We do this no less than twice a month,” Assistant Commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford said Wednesday.
Amos has taken on a major role in keeping the often-troubled F-35 program from careening out of control, which could place it on the chopping block due to shrinking Pentagon budgets.
Dunford said F-35 program managers cannot add any weight to the Marines’ short-takeoff-and-landing (STOVL) variant without Amos pressing them about taking the same amount of weight off another part of the jet.
The Corps’ F-35 variant was last year placed on two years of probation by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates. New Pentagon chief Leon Panetta has yet to lift that, but Amos has said he is optimistic the probationary period will be lifted early.
A senior Marine Corps official recently told The Hill that the F-35 likely will always be a part of lists of military hardware programs that could be cut. It is the biggest weapons program in Pentagon history.
Sen. John McCain took to the Senate floor this week to call the program a "tragedy." McCain blasted cost overruns and called for prime contractor Lockheed Martin to be held accountable — and made to pay for — additional cost spikes.
But one F-35 proponent says “there's at least one front on which F-35 is excelling.” That's according to Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, also a Lockheed consultant.
“The pace of testing, which was a drag on program progress in previous years, is now running well ahead of the plan," Thompson wrote.
