Orlando, February 18, 2010—Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz in January said he didn’t think the F-35 program would suffer a Nunn-McCurdy breach. (Defense Secretary Bob Gates said more recently he wasn’t certain either.) That law says a program must be restructured if cost or schedule falls seriously out of hand. Now, though, Schwartz said an F-35 Nunn-McCurdy breach is “a possibility; maybe even likely.” What changed in the last few weeks? “I now know more than I did then,” Schwartz asserted.
One of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems’ prototype Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones crashed shortly after takeoff April 6, and the company has paused its test flights while it investigates the incident.