The development phase of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet must be extended by at least one year to 2015 because the jet flew only about 10% of its planned test flights, according to the Pentagon’s chief weapon tester.

The jet was supposed to be flight tested 168 times in fiscal 2009 but flew only 16 times, said Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s director of weapons testing. The F-35 program requires 5,000 flights to prove flight worthiness, including the performance of its electronics and software, according to a Bloomberg article.

On January 15, Gilmore sent Congress his assessment of the F-35 program in the annual report of testing of major weapons systems. The program entered fiscal 2009 at “significant risk” of not meeting its goals, and that risk will increase through 2012 because flight-testing hasn’t kept pace “due to the failure to deliver test aircraft,” Gilmore wrote in the report, according to Bloomberg.

This backlog is a key reason Defense Secretary Robert Gates delayed the program and cut 122 jets from the planned order in fiscal years 2011-2015. The funds saved from cutting the original order—more than $2.8 billion—are to be shifted to continue the military’s next-generation jet fighter, according to a 2011 budget document.

“Even assuming all the success that management plans” for the remaining test flights, Lockheed will need a “minimum schedule addition” of one year to complete development, Gilmore wrote. The jet completed 14 of the 20 planned test flights in fiscal 2008, according to Bloomberg.

Lockheed F-35 program manager Dan Crowley told Bloomberg that 2009 was a challenging year. “No, we didn’t complete all the sorties we planned, but the sorties we did have were significant,” said Crowley, noting that they found only minor problems. These flights “are allowing us to prove the technologies we have developed for the F-35 work as designed.”

Ashton Carter, the Pentagon’s weapons buyer, will decide how long the test flight schedule might be extended, according to Bloomberg.

(Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, Courtesy: Lockheed Martin)

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