New(?) report of delays for the F-35

Capitol Hill is buzzing about this report today from Congressional Quarterly:

The Pentagon’s Joint Estimating Team, established to independently oversee the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, determined that the plane won’t be able to move out of the development phase and into full production until 2016, rather than in 2014 as the program office has said.

But we’re not so sure this is really all that new.

We’ve heard about the Joint Estimating Team’s critical assessments before, in this GAO report from May. That report notes a two-year gap in completion dates cited by the Joint Estimating Team and the JSF program office. [see pdf page 12 of 51]

And if you read the CQ piece closely, the CQ reporter doesn’t actually have a hard copy of any new report.

Nevertheless, they’re all talking about it over on the Hill. One Congressional staffer tells the Scoop Deck this afternoon:

“We’ve been asking a lot of questions in the last few hours. At this point, we haven’t gotten any answers or info from DoD. …If we get anything hard, I’ll definitely share it.”