Pentagon restricted known info about F-35 in controversial ‘controlled’ tester report

WASHINGTON: The section of the controversial “controlled” version of the Pentagon’s independent weapons testers’ annual report that deals with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter contains little information that would be a surprise to close watchers of the program, despite claims by the Pentagon that it needed to protect sensitive information from public disclosure.

This year, the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation (DOT&E) took the unprecedented step to release two versions of its annual report: a public version and a new version with “controlled unclassified information,” which would be restricted to Defense Department personnel and congressional staff.

A close reading of the CUI version of the report, which Breaking Defense obtained courtesy of the Project on Government Oversight, revealed no bombshells with regard to the Lockheed Martin-made F-35, the most expensive single weapons program in US history. 

Rather, the “controlled” information pertaining to the F-35 is all material that had been featured in previous versions of the report, such as data pertaining to aircraft availability, or information that had already been made public, such as a description of the jet’s ongoing engine shortage, which has been detailed in congressional hearings. Even some basic data about the aircraft that is available to anyone who does a Google search on the F-35, like the weapons it can currently carry, was marked CUI.

In other words: Meet the controlled version of the DOT&E report. It’s basically the same as the old DOT&E report released to the public in prior years.

In December, acting DOT&E head Raymond O’Toole said that the Pentagon had opted to publish two different versions of the report to avoid the widespread release of information “that shouldn’t wind up in our adversary’s hands.”

But the Project on Government Oversight’s Dan Grazier said this claim was “disingenuous at best.”

“Operational testing, when done properly, will find design flaws — like poor engine reliability and the fact that the F-35A’s gun doesn’t work properly — so they can be fixed before an enemy can take advantage of them,” said Grazier in his analysis of the CUI version of the report, which he provided to Breaking Defense.

While Grazier acknowledged that certain information pertaining to the F-35 should be classified, such as details about F-35’s radar cross section, specifics on cybersecurity vulnerabilities or data that could allow an enemy to exploit deficiencies, none of the details excised from the public version of the report meet that criteria.

“Instead, it is the kind of information that, although embarrassing to the Pentagon and its contractors, the public should know in order to pressure F-35 stakeholders to take the steps necessary to correct the problems,” he said. “It’s the information all public DOT&E reports have provided until now.”

In the public version of the DOT&E report, the sections on 22 different weapons programs contained notes to inform the reader where controlled information had been redacted. However, the actual impact was wider than that, with Breaking Defense finding that 58 weapons programs analyzed in the controlled version of the DOT&E report included information or recommendations marked CUI, including the F-35.

Last month, several members of Congress wrote letters to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressing concern that the public version of the DOT&E report was watered down and contained little information of value to journalists or other outside organizations that help provide oversight.

One letter from four Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform — including Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney and Rep Stephen Lynch, who chairs the national security subcommittee — called on Austin to review the controlled version of the DOT&E report and release additional information.

What’s Different In The ‘Controlled’ Version?

The biggest difference between the public and controlled versions of the F-35 report is that the CUI version contains broad details about negative performance.

For instance, information about the number of deficiencies — a feature of previous DOT&E reports — is marked as controlled. This paragraph contains no information about nature of the deficiencies that could be used by adversaries to get a leg up on the F-35. It also cut references to cybersecurity vulnerabilities, a perennial problem for the software-heavy F-35 that has been mentioned in previous reports.

Other CUI passages note problems with the F-35’s software development process, called Continuous Capability Development or Delivery, or C2D2. For example, DOT&E states that the program has not dedicated enough funding to regression tests of new code, and that sometimes new software introduces deficiencies that then need to be corrected. (Previous DOT&E reports have raised similar concerns.)

Most of the information about the readiness of the US F-35 fleet has been cut from the public version of the report, including data about aircraft availability and reliability that had been released in previous reports. The public report also removes context on the key drivers that keep F-35s from being flight ready, such as an ongoing F135 engine shortage and the lack of spare parts available at a given time. Both of those problems have been widely discussed in congressional hearings, public briefings and statements by industry officials.

Perhaps most baffling, the department marks basic facts about the F-35 as controlled, such as the fighter’s current weapons suite and the unclassified weapons that will be integrated with the aircraft in the future — all of which have been publicly disclosed.

Additionally, a description that notes that the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy have declared all versions of the jet ready for initial operations has been cut — perhaps because that section states that the jet is designed to survive and operate until around 2025, or about 10 years after the F-35B was declared operational.