If February was a bad news month for the Joint Strike Fighter, with the program boss fired, a 13-month delay in test and a two-year slip in Air Force initial operational capability, look out for March. A Government Accountability Office report is rolling down the tracks, along with a Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) which, as we told you in Defense Technology International a month ago, is almost certainly going to record a critical Nunn-McCurdy breach…
The core of the problem could be what Lockheed Martin says it is:  simply delays in building aircraft. Bob Cox of the Fort Worth Star Telegram has a detailed story based on Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) reports.

They portray a manufacturing disaster, with tasks running months behind schedule and suppliers unable to meet deadlines because they were not given final designs in time. To get airplanes in the air, parts were removed from airframes further back on the production line – which in turn have to be repaired in the same time-consuming out-of-sequence manner. And the delays are already rippling into low rate initial production, with the first two deliveries slipped into the last quarter.

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