Low rate initial production batch 3 (aka"LRIP-3") work should have been completed by December of 2011. Yet, deliveries of the 17 LRIP-3 jets have only recently started.
Real pilot training is delayed again until "sometime" in 2013; years late. Here is what then F-35 JSF DOD project boss General Davis told Eglin AFB in 2008:
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(click images to enlarge)
Today; less than 4 years later. Over-optimism doesn't even apply with that margin of error.
Currently, General Davis is on to better office furnishings.
Carrier quals for the C model are delayed yet again. Recent delays for that were to push it to the summer of 2013. Now? "Early 2014".
LM tells its investors everything could be nicer but the nasty old government is causing more problems (not the incompetent program management, no sir).
Better investor communications are needed given the difference in what F-35 program management officials think (or fantasize) to what is really going on.
Skytalk has an update about a recent LM profit call and the F-35 as told to investors.
Lockheed officials told Wall Street analysts Tuesday that they now expect to make about $500 million less profit on the F-35 program over the next five years because the Pentagon brass have tightened the standards for what they consider acceptable progress.
Bruce Tanner, Lockheed's chief financial officer, said the company was "disappointed" with the government's grading standards for making award fees, essentially bonuses, when certain goals were met in the development program and with the award fees that would be available to win. The award fees are pure profit, a reward on top of the thin cost-plus development contract margins.
Read the whole thing for the bigger picture.
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