EXCLUSIVE — F-35 BOSS TELLS INDUSTRY ‘DON’T BET ON ME LEAVING:’ The hard-charging director of the Pentagon’s F-35 program has no plans to leave the job he’s held for nearly two years, explaining that the program’s governing documents were being revised to eliminate the two-year limit on his tenure. “What I like to tell industry and what I like to tell my people is, don’t bet on me leaving,” Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan told Morning D. “Don’t wait me out.”
Bogdan, who’s taken a tougher approach with contractors Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney and is credited with putting the F-35 on a more sustainable path, said the program’s new charter had been signed by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and was awaiting the approval of Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work. The new charter, he said, would allow the head of the F-35 program to serve at the pleasure of the defense secretary “for as long as he deems fit” — a departure from the current charter, which limits the term of the F-35 program director to two years.
“When Secretary Hagel and Deputy Secretary Work and Mr. Kendall and Mr. Stackley get tired of me, I’ll be done,” Bogdan said in an interview at the Air Force Association’s annual Air and Space Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, referring to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Pentagon acquisition boss Frank Kendall and Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley. “If they don’t get tired of me,” he added, “I’m going to be here a while.”
The two-year term limit was cast aside as a result of discussions that began two years ago with him and his predecessor, retired Vice Adm. David Venlet, and senior Pentagon leaders. “We decided that to give this program a fighting chance — it wasn’t just me personally; it’s whoever’s in this job — needs to have the time to make changes that need to be made and see them through,” Bogdan said. “The senior leadership agreed with that.”
The program is beyond saving. First mistake is not realizing that. Now, you own the program.
One could act like Hitler and Stalin, or... Jack Welch... and, it won't matter. You are Casey Jones, on a freight train to hell.
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-Time's Battleland - 5 Part series on F-35 procurement - 2013
-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Bill Sweetman, Aviation Week and the F-35
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)
-A look at the F-35 program's astro-turfing
-F-35 and F-16 cost per flying hour
-Is this aircraft worth over $51B of USMC tac-air funding?
-Combat radius and altitude, A model
-F-35A, noise abatement and airfields and the USAF
-Deceptive marketing practice: F-35 blocks
-The concurrency fraud
-The dung beetle's "it's known" lie
-F-35's air-to-air ability limited
-F-35 Blocks--2006 and today
-The F-35B design is leaking fuel
-F-35 deliveries
-ADF's wacky F-35 assumptions
-Gauging performance, the 2008 F-35, Davis dream brief
-Aboriginal brought out as a prop
-Super Kendall's F-35 problem
-LM sales force in pre-Internet era
-History of F-35 engine problems
-Compare
-JSF hopes and dreams...early days of the Ponzi Scheme
-The Prognostics
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