Pentagon: F-35 program 'lacks maturity'

WASHINGTON -- Lockheed Martin Corp.'s new F-35 fighter jet has completed more than a third of its planned flight tests, but it still faces problems with the helmet needed to fly the plane and with software development and weapons integration, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester reported.

The 18-page report, sent to Congress on Friday, included a detailed account of those and other issues, which it said underscored the "lack of maturity" of the $396-billion weapons program, the Pentagon's most expensive ever.

The program exceeded the number of flight tests and specific system tests planned for 2012 but lagged in some areas with unresolved problems and newly discovered issues, the report said. It highlighted continued growing pains of the ambitious Lockheed program, which began in 2001 and has been restructured three times to slow down production and allow more progress on the development program.

Lockheed said the F-35 program continued to show progress on flight test, software development and other aspects of the reworked plan, and was demonstrating exceptional stability -- more than any other legacy aircraft development program.

Lockheed is building three different models of the F-35 for the U.S. military and for eight countries that helped pay for its development: Britain, Canada, Italy, Turkey, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Australia. -- Reuters