From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Reliability and Modernization Description: GAO looks at DOD's limited progress in improving F-35 Joint Strike Fighter reliability and maintainability, as well as plans for F-35 modernization. Related GAO Work: GAO-19-341: F-35 Joint Srike Fighter: Action Needed to Improve Reliability and Prepare for Modernization Efforts Released: April 2019 [ Background Music ] [ Mike Sullivan: ] The big issue now is affordability and reliability. And so they have to be very vigilant right now on all of that. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm Jacques Arsenault. The Department of Defense plans to purchase more than 2,400 F-35 joint strike fighter aircraft over the next 26 years. DOD's F-35 acquisition program has made little progress over the past year to improve aircraft reliability and time spent grounded due to maintenance. I am with Mike Sullivan, a director in our Contracting and National Security Acquisitions team. And he led a GAO report looking at the reliability of F-35 and modernization efforts. Thanks for joining me, Mike. [ Mike Sullivan: ] My pleasure. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] Is DOD receiving the product that they paid for? [ Mike Sullivan: ] They think they are. And when you look at the product, you can break it into two different things. There's the capability of the aircraft, which in this case, the F-35's really unique features are the brain in the F-35, if you will, is like nothing else in any other aircraft. It's very, very complex. It's fused avionics essentially. And then the stealthiness of the aircraft, the ability to cloak itself, gives it much more survivable rates when it's in contested areas. Reliability-wise, that's something that they still have to work on. They believe that they can make it as reliable as they want to. There are eight measurements right now that they have for reliability. They're on track to meet four of those. The other four they're kind of behind. But they're working very hard. Right now they're pretty diligently working to get those solved too. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] And zooming out a little bit. The F-35, DOD's really expecting that to do a lot of things that are not done by any single plane or in some cases not by any planes that were previously in existence. Can you talk a little bit about why the F-35 is important to national security? [ Mike Sullivan: ] The F-35, originally it was conceived to actually be a replacement for an air-to-ground mission which the F-16 has. So it has all those capabilities to do that. In addition, it's going to allow them to retire the A-10 which as was an air-to-ground capability as well. And, in addition to that, it's going to be able do a lot more. It's a fifth-generation aircraft. These others were of an older generation, they're legacy aircraft. So with its stealthiness and its ability to communicate a lot better, it's much more highly capable to go in and be lethal and survive in highly contested areas. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] So it's really going to have that wide range of capabilities. [ Mike Sullivan: ] Yeah. And I might add that there's three variants, which is also important. So it's going to be an aircraft that can fly off aircraft carriers. It will be able to do short takeoffs and vertical landings. And it will be able to be a conventional takeoff aircraft like the Air Force's F-16’s. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] So overall, how much money is the program costing? [ Mike Sullivan: ] I can break those numbers down into, if you think about what it took to develop and design the aircraft, is one portion. And that was multiple billions of dollars. And then to procure the 2,400 aircraft, that's what we call the acquisition cost. And that's over $400 billion. I think right now the estimate is $406 billion. If you add to that what it's going to take to operate and maintain the aircraft, what we call sustainment, over a 60-year lifecycle. So it's a 60-year lifecycle. But the investment is going to be over a trillion dollars. Right now I think if you added those numbers up, it would come to $1.5 trillion. [ Background Music ] [ Jacques Arsenault: ] So it sounds like for that investment, the F-35 is designed to strengthen the nation's defense capabilities. And DOD is planning on buying a lot more of these planes. What can DOD do to make sure that these concerns aren't going to linger for the next 26 years? [ Mike Sullivan: ] Well, I think the first thing is this reliability issue. And last year we recommended, made some recommendations about how they look at reliability and how they plan for it, and probably, most importantly, how they fund it. And they concurred with our recommendations. And, in fact, have been working, I think, pretty hard to come up with a really efficient plan for reliability and to find the funds. This was, really it gets down to affordability. And if they can't increase the reliability on the aircraft right now and be able to retrofit what they have. The more important metric, which is aircraft, overall aircraft availability, is going to suffer. And that sustainment cost, that I said is over a trillion dollars, will grow. So the big issue now is affordability and reliability. And so they have to be very vigilant right now on all of that. I would also add, they're modernizing already too. So the other thing they have to do is continue, what we're looking at right now is they have a modernization program that we would like to see a very efficient business case for. And that's what we're pressing them right now to do is to come up with a good cost estimate for what it's going to take to modernize. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] And, finally, what would you say is the bottom line of this report? [ Mike Sullivan: ] I think the bottom line of the report is that they finished what they started this year. They got through development of the baseline aircraft. And that's good. That was an 18-year pretty hard slog for them, and a lot of obstacles along the way. But they're done. So that's good for them. We give them credit for doing that. Moving forward, it's more or less what I said before. They have to stay on the reliability and maintainability trail. And continue to improve that. And as they modernize, they have to make sure they don't make the same mistakes they made when they started the program. And have a good solid business case before they begin that modernization. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] Mike Sullivan is a director in our Contracting and National Security Acquisitions team. And he's been talking about his report on DOD's F-35 joint strike fighter aircraft. Thank you for your time, Mike. [ Mike Sullivan: ] Thank you. [ Background Music ] [ Jacques Arsenault: ] Thanks for listening to the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] For more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at gao.gov.