POST
PRODUCTION
SCRIPT
4 Corners
INTERNATIONAL EDITION
2013
Reach for the Sky
41 mins 41 secs
©2009
ABC Ultimo Centre
700 Harris Street Ultimo
NSW 2007 Australia
GPO Box 9994
Sydney
NSW 2001 Australia
Phone: 61 2 8333 4383
Fax: 61 2 8333 4859
| Publicity: | It's been billed as the smartest jet fighter on the planet, designed to strike enemies in the air and on the ground without being detected by radar. But after a decade of intensive development, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is over budget, a long way behind schedule and described by one expert as "big, fat and draggy". |
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| The JSF project could cost Australian taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. Is this plane a super fighter or a massive waste of money? |
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| Four Corners reporter Andrew Fowler travels to the United States in search of answers. He goes to Lockheed Martin's top secret factory in Texas. He also secured the first television interview with the Pentagon's new head man on the project, whose candid assessment of the JSF would chill many in the Defence Department: |
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| "Well let's make no mistake about it. This program still has risks, technical risks, it has cost issues, it has problems we'll have to fix in the future." |
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| The question is how and why did Australia lock itself into a project that both experts and senior US politicians say is dangerously flawed? Four Corners asks three crucial questions. Why was the plane chosen without an open and competitive tender? Why did the then head of the RAAF give the plane and the project his stamp of approval when it was barely off the drawing board? And will the aircraft's capabilities have to be downgraded before it gets into service? |
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| Reflecting on the decision not to open the purchase of a new fighter jet to competition, one insider told the program: |
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| "Now we were proposing that we buy something being developed for the US Air Force if you like, on a whim." |
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| F-35 Joint Strike Fighters taxiing and taking off. | Music | 00:14 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: High over the coast of Florida the United States Air Force is putting an extraordinary aircraft through its paces. | 00:34 |
| Strike Fighter exercises | Music | 00:41 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: The concept of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is nothing short of breathtaking -- a plane that's designed to strike first with an armoury of missiles and bombs, and most importantly, never be seen -- a deadly combination of stealth and firepower. | 01:04 |
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| Music | 01:24 |
| Aerials of landscape from the F-35 | ANDREW FOWLER: Its sensors give the pilot all-round vision of enemy activity on the ground and in the air, both day and night, sharing that picture with every other F-35 in the sky. | 01:32 |
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| COLONEL ART TOMASSETTI, VICE COMMANDER, 33RD FIGHTER WING: Airplane One can send targeting information to Airplane Four's weapons and that weapon can go off and hit something. | 01:45 |
| Tomassetti. Super: | You think of those F-35s as sort of a hunting pack of animals, a wolf pack, whatever you want to call that. | 01:51 |
| F-35 in sky | There aren't other airplanes that are doing it like F-35 does. | 01:58 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: And it's even got a weapon that's a closely guarded secret. | 02:03 |
| Bogdan. Super: | LT. GENERAL CHRIS BOGDAN, EXECUTIVE OFFICER, F-35 JOINT PROGRAM OFFICE: Those are the crown jewels of the program and that's what makes the F-35 special. ANDREW FOWLER: So asserting that to the public, it's really saying 'trust us'? LT. GENERAL CHRIS BOGDAN: Well, it ultimately comes down to trust on all of this, doesn't it? | 02:08 |
| F-35 taxiing | ANDREW FOWLER: But there's little trust for the world's most expensive and controversial military program from a host of critics around the globe. | 02:22 |
| Sprey. Super: | PIERRE SPREY, FORMER PENTAGON ANALYST: So we have an airplane that can't turn to escape fighters, can't turn to escape missiles, sluggish in acceleration because it's so big and fat and draggy and doesn't have enough motor for the weight. My prediction is the airplane will become such an embarrassment that it will be cancelled before 500 airplanes are built. | 02:32 |
| F-35 in sky | ANDREW FOWLER: And with Australia one of the biggest potential customers for the Joint Strike Fighter, it's drawing plenty of flak here as well. | 02:51 |
| Goon. Super: | PETER GOON, CO-FOUNDER, AIR POWER AUSTRALIA: They've produced an aircraft that is not going to do the job. | 03:00 |
| F-35 in sky | Clearly it's not competitive even with aircraft that are in our region today, let alone those that are coming down the pipe. | 03:06 |
| Strike fighter on runway | ANDREW FOWLER: On the Gulf of Mexico at Florida's Eglin Air Force base, the next generation of pilots is being taught to fly the Joint Strike Fighter. | 03:18 |
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| Music | 03:25 |
| Strike Fighter landed and into hangar | ANDREW FOWLER: The US Air Force has plans for more than a thousand F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to take over its front line combat duties, replacing its ageing F-16 strike aircraft. | 03:34 |
| Kloos opens cockpit | It's been said that all pilots love new planes, and Lieutenant Colonel Lee Kloos is no different, singing the F-35's praises even before he left the cockpit. | 03:49 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER (speaking up to the cockpit): So what's it like to fly? How do you describe it? LT. COLONEL LEE KLOOS, COMMANDER, 58TH FIGHTER SQUADRON: A thrill a minute. | 04:20 |
| Kloos climbs out of plane and greets Fowler | ANDREW FOWLER: Down on the ground, Colonel Kloos is only too pleased to talk about the F-35. ANDREW FOWLER: Thanks for the flying. LT COLONEL LEE KLOOS: Yeah sure. ANDREW FOWLER: How do you describe it? | 04:13 |
| Kloos. Super: | How is it to fly? LT. COLONEL LEE KLOOS: I think the feeling that many of us will describe is powerful -- particularly again, coming from an F-16, you get this race car kind of feel. You know, you're strapped in an F-16, it feels like this little rocket. But you feel this thing, you feel much bigger -- the size of it, but the thrust that comes out of this engine and the acceleration you get from it, the rumble, is just ah... it's quite a different feel. | 04:23 |
| Fowler and Kloos in hangar wit Strike Fighter | ANDREW FOWLER: But it's also top secret. Some parts of this aircraft can't be filmed, as the defence department PR who chaperoned us around the base was quick to point out. | 04:49 |
| PR Woman's hand comes up in front of the camera | US DEFENCE DEPARTMENT PR: Uh uh, we got this thing again... CAMERAMAN: Oh sorry. Yep, okay. LT. COLONEL LEE KLOOS: We can probably just stay away from the back end and probably get an angle that way. | 05:03 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: Okay. | 05:11 |
| Kloos and Fowler by plane | LT. COLONEL LEE KLOOS: (to Andrew Fowler on the runway) The nice thing about it is every aircraft... ANDREW FOWLER: The F-35 has other things to hide and they've got nothing to do with national security. | 05:14 |
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| Colonel Kloos gives a hint of what some see as serious design flaws in the aircraft as he compares the F-35 with the F-16, one of the planes it's due to replace. | 05:22 |
| Kloos | LT. COLONEL LEE KLOOS: Right now it's very stable. I... again, we're somewhat limited so it's almost... ANDREW FOWLER: Yeah. LT COLONEL LEE KLOOS: ...it's not ah fair to directly compare but it's very smooth. It's what you'd expect. There are no surprises when we do it. ANDREW FOWLER: Because there are a few things to sort out, right, | 05:34 |
| Kloos and Fowler by plane | along the way? LT. COLONEL LEE KLOOS: Oh absolutely, and I think that | 05:47 |
| Kloos | as the envelope increases and operational test is up and running, those are things that they'll sort out. | 05:49 |
| Strike Fighter on runway | ANDREW FOWLER: That's pilot speak for an undeniable truth: Even though pilots are being trained to fly it, after nearly two decades in development the F-35 is a multibillion dollar, high tech war machine that's not ready for war. | 05:54 |
| Strike Fighter over ocean | You'd never know it out here, but the plane is riddled with bugs. It's not flying supersonic, its computers are operating at nowhere near full capacity, and it's restricted on how tightly it can turn because of g-force pressures. | 06:14 |
| Sprey. Super: | PIERRE SPREY: We haven't even scratched the surface of the failures because we've done all the easy flight testing so far. The hard flight testing, you know, that's all in front of us, that hasn't been done yet. | 06:32 |
| Sprey with Fowler. Sprey holds frames photograph | ANDREW FOWLER: Pierre Sprey was part of the Pentagon's so-called "fighter mafia" who challenged orthodox aircraft design to produce the F-16. PIERRE SPREY: If the secretary of the Air Force | 06:42 |
| Photograph | had known we were sitting in his office, he'd have thrown our ass out! (laughter) | 06:54 |
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| We were Public Enemy Number One in the Air Force for having inflicted this little cheap airplane on them. | 07:00 |
| F-16s flying in formation | Music | 07:08 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: Despite those misgivings, the F-16 went on to be the backbone of the US Air Force for 30 years. | 07:11 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: How would the F-35 go up against the plane it's supposed to replace, the F-16? | 07:19 |
| Sprey | PIERRE SPREY: (laughs) It's an almost ludicrous comparison, and it's sad. I'm terrifically saddened that an airplane that we started working on in 1968 is so much better than an airplane that we won't have in service until 2018 or 2020. The F-16 would shred the F-35 on any mission you care to mention. | 07:25 |
| Fowler with Norman in hangar with F-35 | ALAN NORMAN, F-35 CHIEF TEST PILOT, LOCKHEED MARTIN: So this is the A model version of the F-35. We have the... ANDREW FOWLER: It's not a view shared by Lockheed Martin's chief test pilot for the F-35. He's flown more than 3,000 hours in the F16 and knows both planes well. | 07:52 |
| Norman. Super: | ALAN NORMAN: It's an incredibly nimble airplane and incredibly responsive -- almost tight, if you will, to my commands to the airplane. So from that perspective, it's a very, very good handling airplane. | 08:07 |
| Washington. General views | ANDREW FOWLER: How the plane performs is one thing, but how much it costs is certainly a big problem. | 08:19 |
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| In Washington, frustration in the Congress has become palpable as the price of the program has skyrocketed. | 08:29 |
| Excerpts from Congress debate. Super: 2010 | GEORGE LEMIEUX, FORMER REPUBLICAN SENATOR: So we started this program in 1995 and we're going to get a plane delivered in 2012. It occurs to me that we went to the moon faster than developing this plane. | 08:37 |
| Super: December 2011 | JOHN MCCAIN, US SENATOR: In a nutshell, the Joint Strike Fighter program has been both a scandal and a tragedy... | 08:48 |
| Wheeler in office at computer | ANDREW FOWLER: Winslow Wheeler is a veteran military analyst who's charted the soaring cost of the JSF. | 08:53 |
| Wheeler. Super: | WINSLOW WHEELER, DIRECTOR, STRAUS MILITARY REFORM PROJECT: Anybody paying attention to this airplane knew it was going to be a disaster from the very beginning. From the early 1990s we started seeing public warnings, in the mid 1990s. This airplane has high cost and low performance in its DNA. It was designed into the airplane. It's going to die a slow agonising death in this country. | 09:02 |
| Capitol Building across river | ANDREW FOWLER: There's a growing feeling in Washington | 09:27 |
| Fowler to camera. Super: | that the future of the Joint Strike Fighter is as gloomy as the weather. With the axe about to fall on US defence spending, the world's most expensive military contract has become a big target. | 09:31 |
| Strike Fighter Program costs GFX | ANDREW FOWLER: According to US government figures, over the past decade the estimated cost of developing the Joint Strike Fighter rocketed from US$34.4 billion to US$55.2 billion -- a jump of more than 60 per cent. And the cost of the JSF program as a whole jumped from US$233 billion to US$395.7 billion -- a whopping 70 per cent rise. | 09:45 |
| Tracking shot from vehicle -- Potomac River | On the banks of Washington's Potomac River is the headquarters of the Pentagon's Joint Strike Fighter project team. Right now, because of the F-35's technical problems it's more than five years | 10:16 |
| Fowler walking down corridor with Bogdan and into office | late and way over budget. Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan is in charge. | 10:30 |
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| We're the first television crew to be granted such open access to the inner workings of the Joint Strike Fighter team. And it's the first television interview Lieutenant General Bogdan has given since he took over the job last year. He doesn't hold back about what's wrong. | 10:42 |
| Bogdan. Super: | LT. GENERAL CHRIS BOGDAN: Well let's make no mistake about it -- this program still has risks, technical risks, it has cost issues, it has problems that we have to, in the future, fix. | 11:03 |
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| The good news there is that each and every lot of airplanes has cost less than the previous lot, and I expect, and will demand, that the future lots will continue on that trend to cost less and less. | 11:15 |
| Fowler and Bogdan enter war room | “We are coming into the Joint Strike Fighter war room...” ANDREW FOWLER: General Bogdan has a reputation as a Mr Fix-it. He's made difficult US defence programs work in the past. | 11:31 |
| F-35 on runway | This one has come with added complexity. | 11:42 |
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| The F-35 isn't a simple aircraft built for a single task - it's a three in one fighter. | 11:47 |
| F-35 performing various tasks | For the Marines it needs to vertically take off and land, | 11:54 |
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| the Air Force requires a conventional plane, | 12:03 |
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| and the Navy, a version that can operate from an aircraft carrier. General Bogdan admits with such a high degree of complexity there were always bound to be problems. | 12:10 |
| Bogdan | LT. GENERAL CHRIS BOGDAN: Nothing is easy in the acquisition world and the airplanes we're building today are incredibly sophisticated. | 12:28 |
| Bogdan describes plane with a model | “The back end of the airplane, the exhaust nozzle, tilts downward...” ANDREW FOWLER: But just as big a problem which has dogged the program has an ugly name. It's called concurrency and it means the aircraft is flown and in production well before being properly tested. | 12:36 |
| Bogdan. Super: | LT. GENERAL CHRIS BOGDAN: Concurrency has created a complexity in this program that we have to deal with today. And while I would not dare to go back and criticise the decisions that were made in the past, what I probably would've thought about was how much development work and how much testing was really done to solidify the design of the airplane before we started producing airplanes. | 12:56 |
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| A large amount of concurrency - i.e. beginning in production long before your design is stable and long before you've found problems in test, creates downstream issues where now you have to go back and retrofit airplanes and make sure that the production line has those fixes in them. And that drives complexity and cost. ANDREW FOWLER: And has that-- | 13:27 |
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| Well, that has happened to you. | 13:47 |
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| CHRIS BOGDAN: Oh without a... ANDREW FOWLER: Concurrency has caused a problem? CHRIS BOGDAN: Without a doubt. | 13:49 |
| Sprey. Super: | PIERRE SPREY: All airplanes built under this rubric of concurrency wind up way short of their goals. What people say to themselves, Air Force people who are, you know, looking to buy them or to fly them, say 'Well, even if it falls somewhat short, it'll be so much better than anything else. We still want it'. | 13:53 |
| Lockheed Martin factory footage. F-35 components being assembled inside a factory | Music | 14:12 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: Lockheed Martin recognise that this technically ambitious aircraft would only be profitable if enough were sold to keep the price down. Its sales machine went into overdrive. | 14:17 |
| Lockheed Martin promotional video of F-35. Super: | Music | 14:31 |
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| VOICEOVER: The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is a highly diversified, fifth generation tactical aircraft designed to excel in the air interdiction environment... | 14:39 |
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| Music | 14:49 |
| Exterior. Lockheed Martin | ANDREW FOWLER: By early 2000 Lockheed Martin had guaranteed commitments from the US and British governments. There was growing interest from Norway, Italy, Denmark, Turkey, the Netherlands and Canada. But Lockheed Martin need to sell more planes, many more. Australia was a prime target. | 14:53 |
| White | HUGH WHITE, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENCE 1995-2000: The air combat capability is the single most important capability for the defence of Australia and the reason for that is very straightforward... ANDREW FOWLER: In Australia Hugh White, then Deputy Secretary of Defence, had just written the White Paper which mapped out Australia's future air defences. | 15:14 |
| Super: | HUGH WHITE: Well, we what knew was that the aircraft we had were going to run out of life. The problem is that replacing those aircraft required us to make a choice from a very limited range of options. There are not many frontline combat aircraft on the market. And we didn't at that stage have to decide what aircraft to buy but we did have to decide what kind of range of aircraft we needed to consider. | 15:29 |
| F-111s | ANDREW FOWLER: Tasked with finding a replacement for the fabled F-1111 fighter bomber, Australian Defence officials began assessing aircraft on offer from manufacturers around the world. | 15:52 |
| White | HUGH WHITE: The Joint Strike Fighter was still a... it was a developed project but it was still a gleam in the eye as far as actual delivered capability was concerned and we were much less clear about how much it was going to cost and so on. The key decision we made in the 2000 White Paper process was to leave open the option of going for the Joint Strike Fighter as a fifth generation combat aircraft. | 16:07 |
| Fowler with anonymous defence official | ANDREW FOWLER: But Four Corners can reveal that rather than just leaving the option open, the RAAF's top brass had already made up their minds. A former Defence official closely involved in the oversight of the replacement program agreed to talk to us on condition that we protect his identity. He says the decision to join the JSF program was taken without the aircraft ever being fully tested | 16:28 |
| File footage. Angus Houston | and that the then head of the RAAF, Air Marshal Angus Houston, was seemingly swayed by the enthusiasm of his US counterpart. | 16:56 |
| Defence Official | ANONYMOUS DEFENCE OFFICIAL: He told several people at the time that the Chief of the US Air Force had said this was the right aeroplane for Australia and so Angus thought that was the correct answer, that this was the right aircraft for us. ANDREW FOWLER: What do you think of that thinking? ANONYMOUS DEFENCE OFFICIAL: Well it was an interesting approach. Um, it certainly, ah... speeded up the decision making process. As I said, normally we would have gone through a competitive tendering process and worked out what the aeroplane could do, what its cost and its schedule was. Now we were proposing that we buy something being developed for the US Air Force, if you like, on a whim. | 17:05 |
| Houston statement GFX | ANDREW FOWLER: In a statement to Four Corners, Angus Houston said: "The System Design and Development phase was non-binding and the Australian Government could opt out if it so wished". | 17:40 |
| Washington from Australian diplomatic vehicle | Armed with this recommendation from the head of the RAAF, on June the 11th 2002, then Prime Minister John Howard arrived in Washington on an official visit. | 17:53 |
| Excerpt from video of John Howard's 2002 visit to Washington | US GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL: We're delighted and honoured to have a delegation from Australia headed by the distinguished Prime Minister John Howard... | 18:05 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: But John Howard also had a far less public meeting to attend. | 18:12 |
| Willard Hotel | Just around the corner from the White House, at the Willard Hotel, he sat down with representatives of Lockheed Martin. At this secret meeting, John Howard signed up Australia to the JSF program. | 18:17 |
| Rafale fighter shots | In the meantime, other aircraft companies were preparing to go head to head for a lucrative Australian contract. The huge French aircraft manufacturer Dassault pitched its front line fighter, the Rafale. | 18:35 |
| Paris. Fremont in car | In Paris, Dassault's representative Daniel Fremont prepared for the upheaval of moving to Australia for a five year campaign to sell the French plane. | 18:51 |
| Fremont. Super: | DANIEL FREMONT, DASSAULT AVIATION: Australia had declared that they wanted a lot of aircraft, and that we were talking about 100 aircraft.. | 19:02 |
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| So it's very likely that Australia will be the biggest, or one of the biggest customers. And I think this is why that was really a very important competition for everybody. | 19:11 |
| Canberra/Driving | Music | 19:25 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: On June the 27th, 2002, just 16 days after Howard's secret meeting in Washington, Fremont arrived in Canberra, unaware of the meeting between John Howard and Lockheed. The Dassault representative had barely driven in from the airport when he received a call. | 19:28 |
| File footage. Robert Hill at press conference | The then Defence Minister Senator Robert Hill was giving a press conference. | 19:46 |
| Super: | SENATOR ROBERT HILL, DEFENCE MINISTER (speaking at press conference, Canberra, 27 June 2002): What we're announcing today is that we've decided to, as a government, to participate in the system development and demonstration phase of the Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter, and ultimately this will be the largest military procurement in Australia's history. | 19:50 |
| Fremont. Super: | DANIEL FREMONT: I was so shocked that I could not believe it. It's just as simple as that. | 20:10 |
| Exterior. Lockheed Martin | ANDREW FOWLER: The Howard Government had decided to completely abandon the decades-long practice of a considered tendering process and put its money on a paper plane. | 20:16 |
| Super: | HUGH WHITE: I think Howard himself was pretty keen on this. I think Howard was keen on it as a demonstration of Australia's support for the United States | 20:31 |
| Carvalho | ANDREW FOWLER: For Lockheed Martin it was a major win. | 20:38 |
| Fowler with Carvalho | (to Orlando Carvalho) That must've surprised you, even with all your experience | 20:42 |
| Super: | in plane making and plane selling that that was an extraordinary win? ORLANDO CARVALHO, GENERAL MANAGER F-35 PROGRAM, LOCKHEED MARTIN: Andrew, our view was that the Australian Government made a very wise decision. | 20:46 |
| Goon. Super: | PETER GOON: The really scary part about the Lockheed Martin marketing strategy was that they were able to get people in the departments and ministries of defence around the western world, they actually got those people to do their marketing for them. | 20:57 |
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| And by having people in the departments and ministries of defence doing the marketing was an easy way of getting a decision early, and that's what they achieved. | 21:10 |
| File Footage. Senator Hill at Lockheed Martin factory | ANDREW FOWLER: Within weeks the then Defence Minister Senator Robert Hill visited the Lockheed plant in Texas. | 21:21 |
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| The closest he got to understanding what the F-35 might be able to do was to sit in the cockpit of a plastic mock up. | 21:30 |
| Hill in cockpit | SENATOR ROBERT HILL (in the cockpit of the mock-up F-35): You'd better watch out... ANDREW FOWLER: It was good advice -- advice Hill could have taken himself. But it seems no one was being cautious, least of all the Australian Government. | 21:38 |
| Canadian F-35 event | Yet Canberra wasn't alone in the way it made its decision to choose the F-35. PETER MACKAY, DEFENCE MINISTER, CANADA: The government of Canada is committing | 21:52 |
| Super: | today to acquire 65 Joint Strike Fighter F-35 Lightning II aircraft to meet the security challenges of the 21st Century. This... (Applause)… Yes. Our investment is valued at approx $9 billion. | 22:06 |
| Mackay climbs into the cockpit of the plane | ALAN WILLIAMS, FMR ASSISTANT DEPUTY DEFENCE MINISTER, CANADA: I remember quite vividly that Friday afternoon on July 16th when the government made the announcement | 22:29 |
| Williams. Super: | that it was going to buy this jet without any competition. And the word leaked beforehand, but I was actually just shocked. | 22:42 |
| Fowler walk with Williams in Florida | ANDREW FOWLER: Alan Williams lives in Canada, but he's spending the winter here in Florida. | 22:49 |
| Williams and Fowler walk on pier | ALAN WILLIAMS: You know, when you live in a democracy you have to ensure that the democracy functions. ANDREW FOWLER: He was the most senior civilian officer in Canadian Defence Procurement when the government was deciding which combat aircraft to buy to replace its ageing fleet. | 22:58 |
| Williams | ALAN WILLIAMS: At the beginning they quoted a figure of about nine billion to buy these jets and seven billion to maintain or operate, so a total of sixteen. Now, anybody involved in the business knows going in that the cost to operate and sustain is usually two to three times the cost to buy. So right away anybody in the business knows that made no sense whatsoever. | 23:17 |
| File footage. Mackay at Lockheed | ANDREW FOWLER: Williams decided to speak out publicly because he was angry that the JSF had been chosen without any detailed comparison with other aircraft. | 23:39 |
| Williams | ALAN WILLIAMS: I couldn't believe that the government was going to spend money on an aircraft that was in the embryonic stages of development and its costs were unknown. I was even more surprised to hear them go on spinning the information 'Best jet at the best price'... 'We're going to get great industrial benefits', 'We need it for interoperability' -- all these reasons that I knew factually were not true. | 23:52 |
| News footage. Super: | MICHAEL FERGUSON, AUDITOR GENERAL, CANADA: National Defence did not exercise the diligence that would be expected in managing a 25 billion dollar commitment. | 24:15 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: Amid a growing political storm over its JSF deal, last year Canada's Auditor General concluded that the true cost of buying 65 Joint Strike Fighters was actually $25 billion, not the $16 billion figure cited by the government. | 24:23 |
| Williams. Super: | ALAN WILLIAMS: Governments shouldn't make, you know, these kind of nonsensical decisions without hard facts when they're going to be spending your and my hard earned money. | 24:43 |
| Strike Fighter in sky | ANDREW FOWLER: It's still not clear how much each aircraft will cost if Australia goes ahead and orders 100 Joint Strike Fighters. | 24:52 |
| File Footage. Senator Hill conference, 2002 | Back in 2002, Defence Minister Robert Hill gave his own estimate. | 25:04 |
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Super: 2002 | REPORTER: What are these things going to cost taxpayers? The Australian taxpayer is going to pay how much for these things? ROBERT HILL: Per aircraft? REPORTER: Yes. ROBERT HILL: Well, that's not known at the moment but it is believed to be in the vicinity of about 40 million - 40 million US per aircraft. | 25:10 |
| Plane cost GFX | ANDREW FOWLER: That's $54 million in today's figures, allowing for inflation. According to the Australian Auditor General, the price of the planes has doubled. They are now estimated to cost $130 million each. | 25:27 |
| Super: | HUGH WHITE: There're lots of uncertainties built into the price. But having said that, you know -- take a stab. These things are going to cost us 150 million bucks each and they're going to cost us another 200 million bucks each to operate through their lives. So that means | 25:45 |
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| A fleet of a hundred, that'll cost you 15 billion bucks to buy and 20 billion bucks to operate -- 35 billion bucks is an awful lot of money. | 25:59 |
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| One of the really significant mistakes the Government has made in the way its managed the Joint Strike Fighter question, really going back a decade when the decision was made, has been their reluctance to talk about how much the aircraft is going to cost. | 26:08 |
| Fort Worth. General views/Cowboys/Bikers | Music | 26:24 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: At Fort Worth in Texas, where the planes are being built, there's still a hint of the Wild West -- and the cowboys who went with it. | 26:36 |
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| Music | 26:45 |
| Lockheed Martin plant | ANDREW FOWLER: Just up the road at Lockheed Martin's plant, they have the flags out for those who have faith in the company. Last year Lockheed Martin appointed a new general manager of the F-35 program, | 26:54 |
| Carvalho. Super: | Orlando Carvalho. ORLANDO CARVALHO: Our key objective, Andrew, is to perform. Our key objective is to deliver this airplane, this F-35 airplane, with the full capability... | 27:06 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: Just a week before this interview, a US Defence Department review of the aircraft found further flaws, | 27:20 |
| F-35 in sky | including the fact that the F-35 -- which Lockheed Martin has named the Lightning II - is restricted from flying too close to electrical storms. | 27:28 |
| Carvalho | ORLANDO CARVALHO, GENERAL MANAGER F-35 PROGRAM, LOCKHEED MARTIN: So Andrew, lightning protection is a good example of the type of normal discovery that you're going to find as you execute a development and test program. | 27:39 |
| Bogdan | ANDREW FOWLER (to Chris Bogdan): Now, you call the plane the F-35 Lightning II. The report says the plane can't fly within 25 miles of a lightning storm because of the possibility it might ignite the oxygen in the fuel tanks. LT. GENERAL CHRIS BOGDAN: True statement. But let's put the context on that scenario. | 27:49 |
| Bogdan. Super: | I have airplanes in the field that we know should not be flying around lightning. Will this problem occur in the future? No, because we have the known fixes for it and we will fix it. But today, you're absolutely right, the airplane cannot fly in lightning. In the future will it be able to? Absolutely. | 28:12 |
| Strike Fighters in sky | ANDREW FOWLER: The Pentagon has been forced to lower the bar for the aircraft's performance, including a slower acceleration and turning rate, so that it can meet its specifications. | 28:33 |
| Fowler walks with Goon around plane | Former RAAF flight test engineer Peter Goon says such problems are symptomatic of a whole host of potentially serious defects in the F-35. | 28:47 |
| Goon. Super: | PETER GOON: The aircraft is not coming to within a bull's roar of its specification. It's also riddled with what we call 'single points of failure' where if something fails, there's a high probability you lose the aircraft. | 28:59 |
| Fowler in simulator | MAN: This is out electrical optimal targeting system... ANDREW FOWLER: The heart of the Joint Strike Fighter is its hi-tech computerised cockpit. There's not a dial or knob anywhere to be seen. MAN: (indicating the computerised dashboard): I've already set up a target for air to air and air to surface... ANDREW FOWLER: They've all been replaced by iPhone-style touch screens -- a digital aircraft for a new generation of flyers. | 29:12 |
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| MAN: There you go - excellent. So we're going to go ahead and drop a bomb on the edge of the hangar… Press that red bomb switch right there, our pickle switch. | 29:36 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: Behind these video displays lies millions of lines of computer software code. It's here that the latest US Defence Department report points to ongoing problems. | 29:47 |
| Bogdan. Super: | LT. GENERAL CHRIS BOGDAN: This is a very software-intensive airplane. There's over 10,000 lines of software code just on the airplane itself and there's another 10 million lines of code for all the off-board systems, the maintenance systems and the mission planning systems that go with it. So it is unprecedented to have an airplane with that much software, and software is a very, very tricky thing. | 29:59 |
| Sprey. Super: | PIERRE SPREY: Because of the enormous complexity, every aspect of that airplane is basically a failure waiting to happen and super hard to fix. The computer system is a nightmare and they're so behind schedule. They're more behind schedule on software than on anything else. | 30:23 |
| Dallas. | ANDREW FOWLER: In nearby Dallas, Lockheed Martin is facing legal claims that the JSF's vital computer systems were fundamentally flawed right from the start. SAM BOYD, ATTORNEY: The biggest problem I think from all I've looked at through these years | 30:39 |
| Boyd in office | is getting the truth to percolate to the top. | 30:58 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: Sam Boyd is a former special forces Green Beret. Now he's involved in a legal battle over serious allegations of software failure on the F-35. He's got Lockheed Martin in his sights. | 31:02 |
| Boyd. Super: | SAM BOYD: I'm not a software expert but I'm expert enough to understand that if the system is not communicating, like in this instance, you have a crash, a software crash, that's really bad when it's an airplane that depends on active digital communications in the software system -- it crashes. | 31:18 |
| Fowler with Davis | ANDREW FOWLER: The case involves Sylvester Davis, a computer software manager recruited by Lockheed Martin to work on the F-35 in the early stages of development. | 31:38 |
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| SYLVESTER DAVIS, FORMER SOFTWARE ENGINEER, LOCKHEED MARTIN: The best way I would describe that is if you have an automobile, if your tail light doesn't work, then there is some potential safety impact to that not working. If your brakes don't work at all, | 31:49 |
| Super: | then that's what we would call Safety Evidence Assurance Level 1 because there is a safety impact to that failure. All the software being developed in the flight control application environment is the highest level of safety criticality, which is called Safety Evidence Assurance Level 1. ANDREW FOWLER: And is that the area that you found problems in? SYLVESTER DAVIS: Yes sir, that is correct. | 32:01 |
| Cockpit touch screen | ANDREW FOWLER: Davis says that during lab testing in November 2004, the flight control software crashed completely -- a failure which would have had a catastrophic impact during an actual flight. | 32:23 |
| Davis | ANDREW FOWLER: So what effect would that have for the pilot flying the plane? SYLVESTER DAVIS: Since this is the flight control software which you're talking about, if the system goes down, there is no control of the aircraft. So you might as well be a rock in space. You can't do anything. | 32:38 |
| Shot of Special Recognition Award for Employee Engagement from Lockheed Martin | ANDREW FOWLER: Davis says that when he reported the issue he received an award for his diligence, but there was a catch. SYLVESTER DAVIS: They give me this award, the award was $10,000. | 32:54 |
| Davis. Super: | As they're giving me this award, it was said to me in that meeting 'We would like you to accept an immediate transfer to this other department'. ANDREW FOWLER: What did you think of that? SYLVESTER DAVIS: I viewed that as a way to move me out of the way, because I was a problem. | 33:05 |
| Davis and Fowler look at documents | ANDREW FOWLER: In the end, Davis left Lockheed Martin, concerned that the computer problem was never properly fixed. Now he wants compensation from the company for what happened to him. | 33:25 |
| Fowler with Carvalho | ANDREW FOWLER: One of your computer managers has a current court case with you, with Lockheed Martin. His name is Sylvester Davis... ORLANDO CARVALHO: Yeah, Andrew, um I'm not gonna- I'm not gonna comment on uh... on that item. | 33:36 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: But you are aware of the case. | 33:50 |
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| ORLANDO CARVALHO: Yes, but I'm not going to comment on the item. | 33:52 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: Why not? | 33:55 |
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| ORLANDO CARVALHO: It's not appropriate. | 33:56 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: We're discussing computer software programming. He's someone who's saying that you got it wrong in the beginning and that's why you're having problems now. I think it's a relevant question to ask you. | 33:59 |
| Carvalho. Super: | ORLANDO CARVALHO: Andrew, if you want to ask me, are we having problems in the software development, that I can answer. And the answer is that our software development is proceeding along our expectations, along what we had planned to do. | 34:09 |
| Fowler with Mills in front of projection | ANDREW FOWLER: Others argue that if it ever goes into battle, the Joint Strike Fighter will face even bigger problems than computer software. | 34:22 |
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| WING COMMANDER CHRIS MILLS (RET'D), REPSIM (speaking in front of a projection screen): If you watch the screen any time you see a flash, it's a missile going off. You'll see a star. | 34:30 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: Retired Wing Commander Chris Mills is a former air warfare strategist in the Australian Defence Department. | 34:36 |
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| Using computer simulations, he demonstrates how the F-35 would fare in combat against its likely foes, Russian built Sukhois, also known as Flankers. | 34:43 |
| Air battle simulations |
| 34:55 |
| Mills at projection scenario | WING COMMANDER CHRIS MILLS (RET'D): This is an example of the endgame. The JSFs are out of ammunition, they're out of fuel, they're heading for home. They've got no choice but to present their rear ends to the Flankers. | 35:01 |
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| The Flankers can see them on infra-red, they can see them on radar, they've got fuel, they've got weapons -- so they just run them down and kill them. | 35:14 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: Now he's war-gaming the plane for his own company as a private consultant. But he says the outcome is the same. WING COMMANDER CHRIS MILLS (RET'D: Here we see another JSF has just died... ANDREW FOWLER: In this scenario | 35:22 |
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| involving an air battle against the Chinese version of the Sukhois, only one of the 24 JSFs survive. | 35:35 |
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| WING COMMANDER CHRIS MILLS (RET'D): Okay, what have we got here? | 35:43 |
| Mills shows chart of losses and expenditures for the simulated battle | This is the loss for the USA -- both of AWAC Sentries, all of the tankers, and 23 of the 24 JSFs. So this is particularly bad day at the office. They don't usually lose quite that many. | 35:45 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: Mills has repeated the war game exercise several times. Each time it's a similar story. | 35:59 |
| Mills. Super: | WING COMMANDER CHRIS MILLS (RET'D): Two hundred and forty Joint Strike Fighters went out over those ten missions and 35 came home -- so that's not quite annihilation, but it's a very savage defeat. | 36:06 |
| Air Vice Marshal Kym Osley before the Parliamentary Defence Committee | ANDREW FOWLER: But both the US and Australian air forces argue that without access to the F-35's secrets, Mills does not have the full picture. | 36:18 |
| Super: | AIR VICE-MARSHAL KYM OSLEY, RAAF: I think that the Airpower Australia and REPSIM analysis is basically flawed through incorrect assumptions and a lack of knowledge of the classified F-35 performance information. | 36:28 |
| Sprey. Super: | PIERRE SPREY: It's a lame excuse for a very bad airplane. And by the way, if you were building a good airplane and you had super secret stuff that really worked, you could put it on a good airplane. Why would you want to put it on a bad airplane? And you've got a terrible airplane here. | 36:38 |
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| LT. GENERAL CHRIS BOGDAN: I tell you, it is a formidable airplane. I have no doubt if you went | 36:52 |
| Bogdan. Super: | head to head with this airplane with any other airplane in the world with the capabilities that I know it has, it will do very, very well. | 36:58 |
| F-35 | ANDREW FOWLER: You can argue endlessly about the capability of the aircraft but the fact is, it is very late and Australia has already spent billions of dollars to plug the gap. | 37:06 |
| Super Hornets | In 2007 the Government spent more than $6 billion buying 24 Super Hornets. Now it's considering buying another 24. | 37:21 |
| Defence Minister Smith at press conference | Defence Minister Stephen Smith declined to be interviewed for this program but at a media conference late last year he hinted that Australia was close to abandoning the idea of a fleet consisting solely of JSFs. | 37:36 |
| Super: December 2012 | STEPHEN SMITH, DEFENCE MINISTER: I think it's now become clear to all that the Super Hornets are potentially much more than simply a transition fleet. If you then have a combination or a mix of fleets, then one implication is potentially the acquisition of a smaller number of Joint Strike Fighters because... ANDREW FOWLER: A mixed fleet is exactly what was recommended to the RAAF hierarchy a decade ago, an idea it resisted. | 37:50 |
| Anonymous Defence Official. Shot of hands | ANONYMOUS DEFENCE OFFICIAL: We'd get the Super Hornets early on and then the JSFs later when the aircraft actually was suitable and in its service. ANDREW FOWLER: And what was the response to that? ANONYMOUS DEFENCE OFFICIAL: Oh Angus was, uh... was not pleased about that idea at all. His comment or something was, uh... 'The Government would not like that'. So he was very keen... ANDREW FOWLER: What do you think he meant by that? ANONYMOUS DEFENCE OFFICIAL: Well he's very keen to have a single aircraft type only, and he had a belief perhaps that the aeroplane type was lower cost to operate, but he was just enamoured of the idea of having the Joint Strike Fighter only. He did not wish to have a mixed fleet again. | 38:17 |
| Houston statement GFX | ANDREW FOWLER: In a statement to Four Corners, Angus Houston did not specifically address this claim. But he did state: "I am still convinced that the JSF is the right air combat aircraft to meet Australia's future security needs". | 38:53 |
| F-35 takes off | It's not just Australia pulling back from its original plans. Canada is now reconsidering whether to buy the F-35 at all. So is the Netherlands. Cash-strapped Italy has cut back its order. | 39:12 |
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| In response, Lockheed Martin is pushing its plane harder than ever, stressing its "interoperability" with coalition partners. | 39:28 |
| Goon. Super: | PETER GOON: Lockheed Martin's marketing strategy is basically designed to enable Lockheed Martin to rape, plunder and pillage taxpayers around the western world for the next 40 to 50 years. The way the aircraft's designed requires people to go back to Lockheed Martin, go back to the contractors if they want to do any changes. | 39:37 |
| Bogdan and Fowler in war room | LT. GENERAL CHRIS BOGDAN: I'd like to point your attention to our production wall... ANDREW FOWLER: General Bogdan is in a bind. It's a high risk strategy. He promises there will be no more delays and the price will come down. But he doesn't rule out that some of the aircraft's capability may have to be sacrificed -- and that will affect sales. | 39:54 |
| Bogdan | LT. GENERAL CHRIS BOGDAN: If you promise that you're getting a Ferrari and you deliver a Chevy -- no offence to the Chevy company -- you're not going to sell as many. It's as simple as that. ANDREW FOWLER: And if you don't sell as many, then the price goes up. LT. GENERAL CHRIS BOGDAN: Sure. It's a, it's a death spiral. It's a very interesting economic model, in that if you have problems on the airplane it costs you more; if it costs you more, you won't sell more airplanes; if you don't sell more airplanes the cost goes up, so you can't buy as many airplanes – and it's sort of a circular, perpetual kind of thing. It's kind of a death spiral. I don't think that's the case on this program. | 40:17 |
| Carvalho | ANDREW FOWLER: It's said by General Bogdan that... he describes it as the orders going down, the price going up, it being a "death spiral". | 40:55 |
| Carvalho. Super: | ORLANDO CARVALHO: Yeah, I think we would agree with that. If that-- if those circumstances were to happen, if all of a sudden the demand for the airplane were to drop off and the price were to go up, then it become -- it would be very difficult to be affordable. | 41:04 |
| Eglin USAF footage of the F-35 | Music | 41:16 |
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| ANDREW FOWLER: More than 10 years after the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter appeared as a paper plane, and billions of dollars of development money later, the aircraft is still not fit to fight a war. It's bad enough that so much money has been wasted. | 41:21 |
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| What is just as bad for countries like Australia is that the plane that the western allies placed so much faith in has so far failed to deliver, and there are serious questions about whether it ever will. | 41:38 |
| Credits: | Reporter: Andrew Fowler Producer: Clay Hitchens Research: Mary Fallon Camera: Ron Foley Sound: Richard McDermott Tim Parratt Editor: Michael Nettleship Assistant editor: James Braye Archive editor: Michelle Baddiley Additional footage: CBC Lockheed Martin Supervising producer: Mark Bannerman Executive Producer: Sue Spencer | 41:56 |