Australia - The JSF: is it worth the cost?

Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter is hugely expensive and some experts are questioning its efficacy.

IN A small carpeted room deep in the labyrinthine bowels of the Lockheed Martin facility in northern Texas, a Joint Strike Fighter takes off, slipping nimbly through the air to destroy two enemy jets before touching down softly on a nearby airstrip.

Though the fast jet - marketed by the arms giant as the future of air superiority - is yet to actually encounter a foe, it is here, in the simulator rooms at the Fort Worth production facility, that Fairfax is introduced to what will be the future of Australia's air warfare capability.

And the simulator room - run by a fussy ex-US Air Force pilot who makes taking the fifth-generation fighter-bomber through a mission look as easy as walking to the corner shop and back - is only one corner of the massive operation that is the development of the F-35 Lightning II, more commonly known as the JSF.

Out in one of the facility's hangars a Lockheed test pilot, Bill ''Giggs'' Gigliotti, has the jet opened to display the remarkably pared-down cockpit. Where in the past you might see dozens of dials and gauges covered in arcane markings and numbers, today there are only two large rectangular touch screens, in size and shape much like a pair of oversized iPads.

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The absence of many of the controls is also in part because of the new jet's helmet - which, though still bedevilled by glitches and lags, is expected to one day contain many of the displays traditionally kept on the dash or the heads-up display. Amazingly, Lockheed says the helmet will help pilots turn the jet into something akin to Wonder Woman's invisible jet and allow them a 360-degree view uninterrupted by the jet's walls.

''The best jet I've ever flown,'' says Gigliotti, who has spent the past nine years as an experimental test pilot for Lockheed after 21 years flying jets with the US Navy.

Then again, Gigliotti would say that, given his role as one of the ''faces'' of the Joint Strike Fighter program, which is expected to cost the US the staggering sum of more than $1 trillion over its life. Australia, which in 2002 announced a plan to acquire as many as 100 of the jets, also has a huge amount of money at stake, with $16 billion set aside for the aircraft in what would be the largest defence procurement in the country's history, after the submarine replacement.

Given the astronomical cost of the acquisition - which has climbed about 75 per cent since 2001 - it is worrying, then, that many experts have expressed concerns about the project's progress, and even questioned its efficacy amid the new strategic realities facing Australia in the so-called Asia Pacific century - a period expected to be marked by a strategic tussle between the US and China in Australia's backyard.

Even the nations involved in the JSF project are beginning to lose the enthusiasm they initially expressed for the project. Italy recently cut its planned acquisition from 131 jets to 90. Britain has yet to announce a final number but earlier this year cancelled plans to acquire the aircraft carrier variant. Both the Netherlands and Norway seem to be cooling on the JSF after initial enthusiasm and in Canada the F-35 has become a political football amid claims it is too expensive and that the Canadian Department of National Defence misled Parliament about the jet's true cost.

Australia is also hedging its bets. While expressing interest in as many as 100 jets, so far it is only contractually obliged to buy two and, as part of the deep cuts to the defence budget last month, the decision regarding the purchase of a second tranche of a dozen jets has been delayed by two years, to 2018.

This is why all eyes are focused on the Fort Worth production facility at which the new fighter will be produced.

At the beginning of the remarkable 1.6-kilometre-long production line - an obsessive-compulsive's dream where everything from whole F35 wings to the smallest washer is perfectly labelled and stored - unrecognisable parts of the craft's fuselage hang from a variety of monumental cranes and pincers.

From there Fairfax is driven along the line in a three-car golf-cart train and, while at first the only way to recognise what separates the fuselage from the frames is the colour of the JSF parts' undercoat, a pastel green, the jets slowly take shape until at the far end whole jets sit ready to roll into a hangar.

But while the sheer size and capability of the facility are impressive, not all is going to plan. In fact, Lockheed Martin's much publicised production line is currently being run by a skeleton crew of supervisors and line managers. That is because about 4000 Lockheed machinists and associated workers have been on strike since February, following a failed contract renegotiation between the company and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Lockheed maintains that the five-month strike has yet to affect the schedule but the industrial action by the machinists' union - which is demanding higher base salaries and benefits for its workers - could not have come at a worse time.

Between 2001 and last year, costs per unit have doubled and the program is now $117 billion over budget and delayed by six years.

Simply, the Joint Strike Fighter is now expected to cost the US alone almost $400 billion and full-rate production (when all testing is completed) is now not expected until 2019, when it was originally forecast to begin next year.

These problems have been caused in large part by a series of issues with the program's ''concurrency'', a term referring to Lockheed's attempt to produce units while still developing the plane.

The ambitiousness and complexity of the JSF program - it has three variants, a standard version, an aircraft carrier version and one able to take off and land vertically in the manner of a Harrier ''jump jet'' - as well as the hugely sophisticated helmet, has also added to hiccups and delays .

A US government audit report into the JSF program, released last month, also found that a series of significant concerns remained regarding the concurrent production and testing and further cost hikes and delays were a distinct possibility.

''Developing and integrating the more than 24 million lines of software code continues to be of concern,'' the report, by the US Government Accountability Office, stated. ''Development of critical mission systems providing core combat capabilities remains behind schedule and risky. To date, only 4 per cent of the mission systems required for full capability have been verified.''

All of these concerns must by now be giving the procurement specialists who make decisions on Russell Hill, the Australian Defence Force's headquarters in Canberra, something to worry about. There is no back-up plan if the F-35 turns out to be a lemon.

There remains a lobby inside Australia arguing for the other Lockheed fifth-generation fighter, the F-22, but the last Raptor rolled off the line at Lockheed's Marietta, George facility in May. Though the company will continue to upgrade them for several years, no more will be built.

So the F-35 is likely to remain the only hope for continuing Australian air superiority in our region.

That is one point that the Department of Defence says it's convinced of: the Lockheed Martin fifth-generation fast jet would win if pitted against its main regional competitor, China's in-development answer to the JSF, the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group-built Jian 20, known more simply as the J-20.

''[The] F-35's combination of stealth, advanced sensors, networking and data fusion capabilities, when integrated with other defence systems, would enable the RAAF to maintain an air combat superiority,'' a Defence spokeswoman said.

Despite such confidence, however, the truth is that no one can definitely say whether the JSF would be a clear winner against the J-20 before the two jets have completed their development phase, set for both planes for some time in the last few years of this decade.

When Fairfax questioned one person involved in Australia's procurement, the source did say that a one-to-one comparison was perhaps not the most accurate gauge, as the Chinese will eventually be able to out-produce any neighbours, guaranteeing them regional air dominance through sheer numbers.

One of Australia's best-informed JSF watchers, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute analyst Andrew Davies, also still has doubts about the JSF program.

While he accepts that there is no viable alternative, he says the fact the strategic locus has shifted from the Middle East towards the Pacific - a region characterised by the need for long-range craft given the large distances involved - means the JSF is less attractive than it was when considering its use in, say, Iraq, Afghanistan or during a Libyan-style intervention.

That is also a concern given that the F-35 has a significantly shorter range than Australia's previous tactical strike jet, the now-retired F-111.

Australia's F-111 variant, nicknamed ''Pig'', had a combat radius of 2140 kilometres, meaning it could take off from Australia's north and be able to strike targets as far away as southern Indonesia.

According to a 2009 Lockheed brochure, the JSF variant Australia will buy has a combat range of less than half that, at 1080 kilometres, meaning its ability to strike targets in the region without basing itself outside of Australian is severely limited.

In response, Defence said that the F-35 is capable of mid-air refuelling, which extends its range, but the F-111 is similarly capable, meaning the JSF is still a shorter range fighter-bomber than its four-decade-old predecessor.

And while countries such as Israel and South Korea - both of which have expressed an interest in the jet - may need the ''stealthy strike'' capability the JSF provides when dealing with their regional neighbours, it is unlikely Australia will ever need it. (It is worth noting that during their almost 40 years of service Australia's fleet of F-111s was never used in combat.)

Defence maintains that the JSF's many other capabilities will all combine to provide an aircraft that will ensure Australia is not only capable of exerting its middle- power status in the region, but will provide the best defence money can buy for the Australian people.

Of course, Defence would say that. As Andrew Davies said in a 2011 assessment of F-35 program: ''The government [needs] to take a hard-headed look at the situation. And it shouldn't rely on Defence for dispassionate advice - their answer will remain 'F-35', pretty much independent of the question.''

Whether or not the Gillard government, beset on so many sides, is able to muster the independent scrutiny that Davies says is needed before next year's white paper remains to be seen.