Gates Shakes Up Leadership for F-35

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Monday that he was replacing the general in charge of the Pentagon’s largest weapons program — the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — and withholding $614 million in award fees from the contractor, Lockheed Martin. The surprise announcement came from a Pentagon chief who has sought to impose accountability across the department’s senior leadership and who himself had promoted plans for the new plane last year in persuading Congress to kill the more expensive F-22 fighter jet. But a special Pentagon review team has since warned of possibly billions of dollars in cost overruns on the plane, and Gates announced that he was restructuring the program and requiring the company to cover some of the extra costs. Gates disclosed the reshuffling on the F-35 program as he released the Pentagon’s proposed $708.3 billion spending package for the fiscal year 2011.
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Posted by Editor at February 2, 2010 03:01 AM