By BEN FREEMAN Ph.D
The Project On Government Oversight is making public for the first time a memo from the Pentagon testing czar questioning the testing program for the Joint Strike Fighter, the military's most expensive weapons program.
As first reported by AOL Defense, the memo expresses the grievances of Michael Gilmore, Director of Operational Test and Evaluation at the Pentagon, regarding the Test and Evaluation Master Plan for the Joint Strike Fighter (F-35) program.
Amongst other issues, Gilmore is concerned about unduly rushing tests and limited funding for testing of the aircraft program.
“The plans for and content of testing must be determined by the data that need to be obtained to support a comprehensive and rigorous operational evaluation—not by budget targets set by the program office,” writes Gilmore.
POGO applauds efforts like this to ensure proper testing of military weapons. Cutting corners in F-35 testing is penny-wise and pound-foolish—the Pentagon may save a few million dollars now, but taxpayers will have to pay billions later. With a price-tag of $1.5 trillion, the F-35 is already the most expensive weapons program in history. The Pentagon should do everything it can to make sure these costs don’t continue to increase.
You can see the full memo below.
Ben Freeman is an investigator for the Project On Government Oversight.
Follow @BenFreemanDC
The fact of the matter is, they are testing too much on JSF, and not testing enough. They test to see if the paint is blue enough, and don't do functional tests required to validate that the software does its job properly before flying it. The FAA's DO-178b software standards are nothing but a smoke screen of regulations that allow contractors to jack up the cost of software changes without increasing the reliability or safety of the software at all. If it actually did make the software better, the governemnt would have quantified how much better software is that meets their standards. As it is, these standards are simply another way to defraud the US taxpayer.
Posted by: Dfens | Aug 30, 2012 at 11:08 AM