Third restructure for F-35 program in 3 years

Although we will find out more tomorrow, there is news out there that the F-35 program will go through its third restructure in three years. 

This could see the loss of another 120 jets from the immediate production time line. This is supposed to save $15B of US taxpayer cash from FY 2013~2017. 

Given all the defects in the jet, building more was probably a bridge to far. Language in the House and Senate Armed Services Committees over the last several months seemed to indicate this was coming.

Of interest, Milestone B is still pulled since the programs second Nunn-McCurdy failure in 2010 and there has been no real DAB to recertify this mess to resemble a DOD defense program.

A DOD quick-look report from November 2011 showed significant technical problems still to be solved. For many of those problems, they will not see a fix as early as 2016.

An August 2011 LM brief showed that the current leadership of the DOD F-35 program have little confidence in how engineers were being lead and managed all these years. There will be a global engineer reorg finished sometime in 2012.

Some of the news sources have the usual boilerplate quotes about the US still committed to 2400 some F-35s. I guess at this rate, that fantasy program of record will complete sometime in 2070. Until then, Congress still hands out the cash as it sees fit.