Defense Secretary Robert Gates has directed Pentagon planners to shift more than $2.8 billion originally earmarked to buy F-35 strike fighters through 2015 back into the aircraft’s development to keep the multibillion-dollar project from derailing. So reported Bloomberg news wire service Wednesday (via the Forth Worth Star-Telegram), citing an internal Pentagon budget document that Gates, who has made the F-35’s success a top priority, signed Dec. 23. This move, expected to be included in the Pentagon’s Fiscal 2011 budget request that will go to Congress in February, would reduce the number of F-35s purchased over that period by 122 airframes, or roughly one quarter, according to Bloomberg. This includes a 10-aircraft cut in Fiscal 2011. Meanwhile Reuters news service reported Wednesday that Lockheed Martin officials say the program is not in trouble and that such changes would merely shift aircraft purchases to later years.
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.