US Senate Already Questioning Nominee's Pessimistic Predictions For F-35 Costs

The White House has announced that Ashton Carter (pictured), who currently serves as the US Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, has been nominated by President Obama to be the next Deputy Defense Secretary. If confirmed, Carter would replace William Lynn, who's expected to leave the post later this year after more than two years on the job.

Carter is a former chair of the International and Global Affairs faculty at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, served the Bush Administration as a member of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's International Security Advisory Board, and was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy under President Clinton from 1993-1996.

In its announcement, the White House noted, "During that time, he directed military planning during the 1994 crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons program and was instrumental in removing all nuclear weapons from the territories of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus."

Carter holds a bachelor's degree from Yale University and a doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

But before confirmation hearings have even begun, Carter is already being questioned on crucial F-35 program cost estimates by a bipartisan group of six senators. AOL Defense reports that in the Pentagon's April 15 Selected Acquisition Report for the F-35 program, which is supposed to provide information on which the Senate can make sound decisions, Carter projects maintenance costs for the plane which could total over a trillion dollars over 50 years, far above what the contractor, Lockheed Martin, projects.

The senators, who include five members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and one Democrat, wrote a joint letter to the Pentagon which stopped short of calling for a revised estimate, but questioned whether the data is based on legacy aircraft programs, or on actual F-35 projections, which predict a need for fewer maintenance personnel.

Projections which are too conservative could make the F-35 look like a bad value. Two of the senators who signed the letter, John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, represent Texas, where the F-35 is assembled.

FMI: www.jsf.mil