Navy acknowledges schedule for F-35 fighter is slipping

Widespread schedule delays on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program have forced Navy officials to push back the date the aircraft carrier-based version of the planes will be ready for operational use from December 2014 to January 2016, Chief of Naval Operations Gary Roughead said Thursday.

As late as last week, Roughead had hoped to maintain the 2014 date for the milestone dubbed initial operational capability, or IOC, despite plans within the Air Force to delay its portion of the program by more than two years.

But on Thursday, the four-star admiral said he had reviewed a Pentagon acquisition document detailing changes to the program, including the addition of 13 months to the F-35's development phase. Roughead said he concluded that a 13-month delay for the Navy aircraft's IOC was unavoidable.

Still, Roughead said he hopes the joint program office overseeing the F-35 effort will be able to turn the program around quickly and the Navy can recover some of the time that was lost.

The Navy has long been scheduled to receive the planes last, after the Air Force and Marine Corps get their versions.

"I'm hopeful that because we're third in line, maybe it's not a full 13 months," Roughead said after a hearing before the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

Roughead asserted that the delay should not affect the Navy's plans to deploy the F-35s, which were not scheduled to head to sea on a carrier until late 2016.

"I'm going to watch it like a hawk. I'm going to pay very, very close attention to it," Roughead said. "But we're setting up to still be able to deploy onboard the [USS] Carl Vinson in December of [20]16."

For fiscal 2011, the Pentagon is requesting $8.7 billion in procurement funding to buy 43 F-35s, plus $2.3 billion for continued research and development and $535 million for spare parts.

All told, the three services will buy more than 2,400 F-35s to replace aging F-16s, F-18s, AV-8s and A-10s, making the F-35 the largest program on the Pentagon's books.

Air Force Secretary Michael Donley announced last week that his service had moved its IOC date from fiscal 2013 to late 2015. But the service has pushed the milestone into 2016, Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday.

An Air Force spokesman said Air Combat Command made the decision to move the IOC into 2016 based on continued analysis of the restructured program.

For its part, the Marine Corps, the first service to receive the fighters, plans to stick to its 2012 date for operational use, Commandant James Conway told the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Thursday. The service has not modernized its fighter fleet in more than a decade.

"We are very excited about the arrival of the Joint Strike Fighter," Conway said. "We're hanging onto that 2012 IOC for our aircraft," he later added.