Douglas Birch stories from The Center for Public Integrity

Washington fury over military sexual assaults hits the Pentagon

2013-05-08T10:35:37-04:00

A storm of outrage over sexual assaults within the U.S. military struck the Pentagon with intense fury on May 7, with public expressions of regret by top military leaders about a rising number of reported assaults and blunt, quick condemnation from members of Congress and President Obama.

The tempest was stirred primarily by the Defense Department’s disclosure that 26,000 military personnel said in a recent confidential survey that they had been the victims of unwanted sexual contact in 2012, a term used to describe incidents ranging from sexually-related touching to rape.

That represents an alarming average of more than 70 episodes a day, and a 36 percent increase since 2010, when the last survey was performed. The victims amount to 6.1 percent of all active-duty women and 1.2 percent of the men in the 2.2 million member American military.

The president, when asked about the report during a press conference with the visiting South Korean president, seized the topic forcefully. “If it’s happening inside our military, then whoever carries it out is betraying the uniform that they’re wearing,” he said. “And they may consider themselves patriots, but when you engage in this kind of behavior that’s not patriotic — it’s a crime. And we have to do everything we can to root this out.”

His voice rising, Obama said: “I have no tolerance for this ... I expect consequences. So I don’t want just more speeches or awareness programs or training but, ultimately, folks look the other way. If we find out somebody is engaging in this stuff, they've got to be held accountable -- prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Period. It's not acceptable.”

Anger was already widespread on Capitol Hill because an Air Force lieutenant colonel who directed the Air Force’s sexual assault prevention branch was himself arrested on Sunday on charges of sexually assaulting a woman in a Virginia parking lot. That arrest followed a congressional inquiry into repeated sexual assaults of female recruits by Air Force instructors at a base in Texas, and a growing controversy over the ability of military commanders to vitiate punishments for military personnel in their units who are accused of sexual misconduct.

“This is a cultural issue, it is a leadership issue, it’s a command issue,” said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at a press conference where the report was released. He vowed to hold accountable leaders “at every level in the chain of command” for the “climate” within their units, and said “ultimately eliminating sexual harassment and sexual assault should be our goal.”

One of the report’s most troubling disclosures was that many service personnel remain afraid of reprisals for reporting sexual assaults despite recent efforts by the Pentagon officials to encourage such reports — suggesting a widespread belief that the military’s culture generally tolerates, rather than punishes, such conduct.

Of the large number who reported such assaults in the survey, for example, only 3,374 made their allegations formally, a 6 percent increase from 2011. Forty-seven percent of the women who experienced unwanted sexual contact indicated fear of retaliation or reprisal was their reason for not formally reporting the episodes, and 43 percent said they had heard about negative repercussions for others who had gone ahead.

Those fears, moreover, proved to be well-founded. Of the women who did file complaints, 31 percent indicated they experienced “social retaliation” while 26 percent said they experienced "a combination of professional retaliation, social retaliation, administrative action, and/or punishments," the report said.

Partly as a result, “it’s a vastly unreported crime,” Army Maj. Gen. Gary Patton, director of the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, acknowledged to reporters. Nonetheless, both he and Hagel said they saw a bit of encouraging news in the increase in reported cases in the last year. “We have more victims coming forward for medical care and more cases [referred to the military justice system],” Patton said.

“It is clear the department still has much more work to do," said Hagel, who Obama said he had instructed “to go at this thing hard.” Hagel added, "This crime is damaging this institution ... There are thousands of victims in the department, male and female, whose lives and careers have been upended, and that is unacceptable."

The assault reports were considerably higher when service personnel were asked if they had been assaulted at any point in their career, not just in 2010. In that context, 23 percent of women and 4 percent of men reported being assaulted. Active duty assignments were the most threatening, with considerably fewer episodes among women in the National Guard and reserves.

Despite the size of the problem, the report found that only 880 of the 3,288 military and civilian suspects identified in sexual assault complaints last year had been disciplined for that misconduct, with more than half of those being charged in a court-martial. Some cases were dismissed because the suspects were missing, dead, or were foreign civilians or members of foreign militaries. But in other cases, investigators did not bring the cases to a conclusion, commanders decided that evidence was lacking or the allegations were false, or punishments were meted out for nonsexual misbehavior.

The Pentagon’s report acknowledged that military authorities weren’t always prepared to handle sexual assault cases. In several cases reported by the Navy, for example, there were delays in administering rape kit tests and in one case the test was administered by a health care provider who wasn’t trained or certified in the procedure.

Hagel ordered a series of steps and reviews to increase the accountability of officers for what happens under their commands. He gave commanders until July 1 to inspect workspaces to make sure they are free of degrading materials, and he said the four military service chiefs have until Nov. 1 to recommend ways to assess officers and hold them accountable for their command climates.

Gen. Patton said that the assessments — which would include how well sexual assault prevention and victim care principles are incorporated into officers’ commands — could become part of the evaluation process for promotions.

The Defense Department also plans to hold meetings with sexual assault victims to talk about their experiences in reporting the crimes committed against them. And it has already created an expedited system of transfers for victims of sexual assault so they can escape their tormentors. Commanders have 72 hours to approve or turn down the request, and approved 216 of 218 of these requests last year, the report said.

Speaking about the arrest on sexual assault charges May 5 of Air Force Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, the service’s sexual assault prevention branch chief, Hagel said “we’re all outraged and disgusted by these very troubling allegations.” Air Force officials said they relieved Krusinski of his position as soon as they learned of the arrest; efforts to reach him for comment were not successful.

On Capitol Hill, House and Senate committees seized on the arrest as a sign of systemic problems. “While under our legal system everyone is innocent until proven guilty, this arrest speaks volumes about the status and effectiveness of DOD’s efforts to address the plague of sexual assaults in the military,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., said at the opening of a hearing involving the Air Force’s leadership.

Gen. Mark Welsh, the service's chief of staff, told Levin’s panel that he and Air Force Secretary Michael Donley were "appalled" and that the Air Force has requested jurisdiction over Krusinki's case from the Arlington County police.

At the hearing, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., raised her voice at Donley, saying that the case suggested a “failing in training and understanding of what sexual assault is” within the Air Force. "This is not good enough," said Gillibrand, who has been advocating removal of sexual assault cases from the chain of command to encourage more victims to report their crimes with less fear of retribution. "I am highly concerned that so few victims feel they could ever receive justice that they won't report,” she said.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), questioned why Krusinski was chosen to lead the Air Force sexual assault prevention unit, wondering what sort of background check was conducted. “It is hard for me to believe that someone would be accused of that behavior by a complete stranger and not have anything in their file that would indicate a problem in that regard,” she told Welsh. “Have you looked at his file to determine that his file was absolutely pristine?

Welsh said he examined Krusinski's record, spoke to his supervisor, and found nothing that disqualified him for his postition.

McCaskill, perhaps speaking for all her colleagues, told Welsh, “I will be watching very carefully who is selected to replace Lt. Col. Krusinski because I think it is one of those time when you’ll be able to send a message, and I think it’s important we do it.” She already is holding up the nomination of Air Force Lt. Gen. Susan Helms to be vice commander of the U.S. Space Command while awaiting more information about Helms' decision to overturn a jury conviction in a sexual assault case.

As a result of congressional furor over a similar case, Hagel urged Congress last month to eliminate a commander's power to overturn a court martial, except for certain minor offenses, and require a written explanation for any adjustments in sentences. He reiterated at his news conference Tuesday that he wants Congress to act on his recommendations.

Pentagon spends billions on duplicative camouflage outfits, GAO says

2013-04-12T10:54:04-04:00

The baggy camouflage uniforms currently worn by American troops in Pentagon corridors and in Middle East combat zones may not look flashy, but they aren’t cheap.

After having just two basic uniforms in the 1990’s, members of the military services in recent years have started sporting seven outfits, all with different patterns and colors. The design costs alone have been $12.5 million.

The profusion of styles reflects the robust and enduring tradition of the four military services to go their own way, a circumstance that can cause blurry eyes from the mashup of disparate green, grey, and brown tones when soldiers from different units deploy to the same locale.

But it’s not just a fashion faux pas, according to a new, 199-page report by the Government Accountability Office that examined programs and purchasing at 26 federal agencies to look for needless overlap and duplication.

The fragmentation boosts the costs — the Pentagon’s tab in fiscal 2011 for its camo couture was $300 million — and also produces garb that in some cases lacks a rigorous connection to research about how to remain hidden, according to the report.

The problem is about to get worse: The Army is considering replacing its battle uniform for the third time in 11 years, with three separate new uniforms of its own — including helmets and body armor — printed with “desert,” “woodland,” and “intermediate” camouflage patterns. The GAO estimates this new line of fashions could cost the government $4 billion to purchase over five years.

Of the four services that developed new uniforms in the 1990s — the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines — only the Marines appear to have done a proper job, according to the GAO.

They used a “knowledge-based approach that includes meaningful data” when developing the clothing in 2000, and as a result, the report said, the leathernecks wound up with an effective camouflage uniform that they’re still using. (The government has even patented some elements of the Marine Corps’ combat apparrel, although the GAO said the other services could still copy it.)

The Army, in contrast, took three years and spent $3.2 million to develop a uniform introduced in 2005 that did not reflect the conclusions of testing.

The Army itself decided in 2009 that its Combat Uniform “offered less effective concealment than the patterns chosen by the Marine Corps and some foreign military services, such as Syria and China,” auditors said. Complaints from troops in Afghanistan about the Army Combat Uniform led Congress in 2009 to direct the military to launch a crash program to develop a new camouflage uniform that blended better with that country’s mountainous deserts.

The Air Force spent $3.1 million designing an Airman Battle Uniform, but then deemed it unfit to use on the battlefield due to heat buildup, trouser fit and other issues. The Air Force chief of staff chose a tiger-stripe camouflage design — which the Marines had ruled out — without testing it first, according to the GAO. Air Force test officials subsequently rated the ABU as marginal or unsatisfactory for concealment 58 percent of the time in 11 tests, auditors said.

The Air Force ultimately decided to use the new Army combat uniform in Afghanistan, but the GAO report said the two services have not been able to agree on a joint combat uniform for future use. The service secretaries, moreover, failed to meet a 2011 congressional deadline for development of common criteria for uniform design.

Mark Wright, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the Defense Department expects to complete work in the next few months on that criteria, however, "to ensure all service members get the same high level of protection."

He said groups called the Joint Clothing and Textiles Governance Board and the Cross-Service Warfighter Equipment Board will pursue "active partnerships" among the services for the joint development and use of uniforms.

Obama proposes shifting funds from nuclear nonproliferation to nuclear weapons

United States — 2013-04-11T13:05:54-04:00

The Obama administration will propose a deep cut in funding for nuclear nonproliferation programs at the Energy Department largely so it can boost the department’s spending to modernize its stockpile of nuclear weapons, according to government officials familiar with the proposed 2014 federal budget to be unveiled Wednesday, April 10.

The half-billion-dollar shift in spending priorities reflects an administration decision that nuclear explosives work the Energy Department performs for the military should be both accelerated and expanded. But Democrats on Capitol Hill and independent arms control groups predicted the decision will provoke controversy and a substantial budget fight this year.

Under the 2014 proposal, the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons activities funding — which includes modernization efforts for bomber-based and missile-based warheads — would be increased roughly 7 percent, or around $500 million, above the current level of $7.227 billion for these activities.

The department’s nonproliferation programs, aimed at diminishing the security threat posed by fissile materials in other countries that can be used for nuclear weapons, would be cut by roughly 20 percent, or $460 million, below the current level of $2.45 billion, the officials said.

The new weapons-related spending would expand efforts to upgrade the W76, W88, W78, and B-61 warheads, and help fund construction of a new facility in Tennessee for processing uranium, a nuclear explosive used in these and other warheads. These programs have experienced billions of dollars in cost overruns in recent years, forcing the administration to look elsewhere in the DOE budget to find the money it needs to keep them alive.

Much of the reduction in nonproliferation spending — around $183 million — would come from a controversial plant designed to transform excess plutonium from the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal into fuel for reactors that generate electricity, known as the Mixed-Oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication plant in Savannah River, S.C. That plant was initially budgeted at $1.8 billion, but the pricetag has ballooned to at least $7.5 billion, provoking widespread criticism and allegations of mismanagement.

The plant is about 60 percent completed, but one senior administration official called it “managerially and programmatically, a nightmare,” with continuously rising costs.

Under the Obama administration’s proposal for fiscal year 2014, spending for the MOX plant would be around $330 million, or 47 percent of the budget it was supposed to get next year. Its construction would be greatly slowed, while the Defense Department and the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration study alternative ways to safeguard tons of the excess plutonium.

Secretary of Energy nominee Ernest Moniz, speaking at a Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, ducked multiple questions from Sen. Tim Scott (R.-S.C.) about whether he supports completing the MOX plant. “I will certainly look into this with high priority” if confirmed, he told Scott.

Under the Obama proposal, the budget for other DOE work related to nuclear nonproliferation would also be curtailed by about $277 million. That would include a 16 percent cut in spending on efforts to halt the use of fissile material in civilian nuclear reactors and collect or secure weapons-usable fissile materials in other countries; an 8 percent cut in spending on policy to control the spread of nuclear weapons-related technologies; and a 36 percent cut in efforts to monitor potential illicit commerce in fissile materials.

Only one category of Energy Department nonproliferation work would be increased — research and development, mostly to finance work on a new nuclear detonation sensor to be placed about Air Force satellites.

The priority shift “is going to be a disaster,” said a Democratic congressional aide, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on the budget before its official release. “These cuts are going to be huge,” and will be particularly problematic amid budget boosts for weapons programs that many lawmakers believe “have been mismanaged for the last five to six years.”

Joan Rohlfing, president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit arms control group founded by Ted Turner and former Sen. Sam Nunn, said “the U.S. programs for securing, reducing and eliminating weapons usable nuclear materials are a critical part of our strategy for combating nuclear terrorism and preventing the proliferation of these deadly dangerous materials…A decision to significantly cut these programs, including our near-term ability to dispose of excess plutonium, would be a setback to our ability to reach critical security goals.”

As recently as December 3, President Obama described the government’s nuclear nonproliferation efforts — including some directed by the Defense Department — as “one of our most important national security programs.” Speaking at the National Defense University, Obama said the effort was “nowhere near done. Not by a long shot.” He also proudly said the government has been “increasing funding, and sustaining it ... because our national security depends on it.”

But several officials and other sources familiar with the administration’s budget deliberations this year said the DOE nuclear weapons-related cost overruns and the new austerity climate gripping Washington – including the demand under so-called “sequestration” legislation for $54 billion in national security spending cuts each year until 2021 –had upended the administration’s plans to spend more on nonproliferation.

Specifically, officials said, the Energy Department determined in consultation with the Pentagon that it would likely need $10 billion in new funds to fulfill all of its promises to the military for the production of modernized warheads, over the next decade alone.

The Energy Department needs at least $3 billion to $5 billion more to upgrade the B61 nuclear bomb — meant for deployment aboard strategic and tactical aircraft — than it initially expected, and several billions of dollars more to cover cost overruns in construction of the uranium processing facility. (Work on the facility and its equipment was well along when DOE abruptly realized it would not be large enough to accommodate needed machinery, forcing a costly redesign and lengthy delays.)

The department also needs more funds than anticipated for improvements to the W76 warhead, which is carried by Trident submarine-based missiles.

To cover the $10 billion total cost overrun, the Energy Department and its National Nuclear Security Administration agreed to transfer roughly $3 billion into weapons work from management accounts and other internal savings. It then asked the Pentagon to provide the additional $7 billion.

But then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, after hearing from aides that these overruns were due in part to poor management and inaccurate cost accounting at DOE, initially said the department would not provide any new funds to DOE, on top of the $4.5 billion it previously promised to cover earlier overruns, according to two government officials privy to the deliberations.

In the end, the Pentagon was cajoled into contributing $3 billion more. But that still left a $4 billion gap between DOE’s nuclear weapons-related promises to the military and its ability to complete that work, forcing a scramble during the department’s budget deliberations to cut from other programs, officials said.

One, who asked not to be named, said the DOE shortfall had set off “months of wrangling” about the issue, not only within the department but at the highest levels of the administration. At the end of it, a $250 million DOE “nuclear counterterrorism incident response” program previously considered a weapons activity was shifted to the nonproliferation budget account, a change that has the effect of making the bottom line for that account look better than it otherwise would have.

Moniz, in his confirmation hearing, tread carefully around the topic of what the department should be spending on nonproliferation. “If confirmed, I intend to make sure that [DOE laboratories and intelligence experts] … continue to sustain the nation’s nuclear security,” he said, without delving into budgetary issues or specific programs.

Asked for comment, NNSA spokesman Robert Middaugh said he could not respond until the budget has been formally released. A Pentagon spokeswoman, Jennifer D. Elzea, declined to address the issue in detail but confirmed that “over the past year DOD and DOE carried out a joint study regarding DOD's nuclear weapons requirements and funding options for those requirements. The study determined that the modernization program was underfunded, and steps have been taken to ensure adequate funding for essential modernization needs moving forward."

Tom Collina, research director for the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based nonprofit group, said “in a way,” it seems inconsistent for the administration to promote arms control while cutting the DOE’s nonproliferation budget. But he said officials may have calculated that they cannot win congressional support for further cuts in nuclear arsenals with Russia without spending billions more to refurbish America’s remaining stockpile of nuclear weapons, under a bargain Obama struck during his first term.

The Center for Public Integrity has previously reported administration officials had agreed that the number of nuclear warheads the U.S. military deploys could be cut by at least a third, below a limit of 1550 established in a treaty with Russia in 2010. The officials have also decided to discuss a potential agreement for such reductions with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The high cost of rattling North Korea’s cage

South Korea — 2013-03-29T13:52:08-04:00

The U.S. delivered a very expensive message this week in dispatching a couple of its $3 billion, B-2 stealth bombers from Missouri to drop dummy bombs during training exercises in South Korea.

As David Axe explains in the story below, by some estimates the planes cost $135,000 per hour to fly — nearly double that of any other military aircraft. And their hefty price tag in today’s dollars makes them too expensive to put at serious risk in all but the direst circumstances.

So how much did it cost to drive home the Obama administration’s not-so-subtle point at a time when Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel says the Pentagon faces a $41 billion shortfall because of the sequester?

The planes, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, fly at “high-subsonic” speeds, about that of a civilian airliner. If both flew the roughly 6,500 miles from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to Seoul, South Korea, the trip could have taken as little as about 10 hours. That would make the price somewhere in the neighborhood of $5.4 million.

That’s a rough guess, but the military isn’t saying. When pressed by reporters Thursday, neither Hagel nor Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey could provide a figure.

Meanwhile, $6 billion in U.S. hardware was zooming over the South Korean countryside.

The flights came after North Korea’s recent nuclear and missile tests led to U.N. sanctions, which provoked a barrage of threats against the United States. The increasingly bellicose pronouncements have set nerves on edge in the U.S., Japan and neighboring South Korea.

“I think their very provocative actions and belligerent tone, it has ratcheted up the danger, and we have to understand that reality,” Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel told reporters Thursday.

Not only are the sleek black B-2s prized by the Pentagon, they are also among the most narrowly specialized and expensive warplanes to operate in the U.S. military.

Dempsey noted that the two flights were paid for out of money set aside for yearly B-52 and B-2 “Blue Lightning” exercises in northeast Asia.

“We budget for a certain number of them annually,” he said.

“For the past eight years, Air Force B-2s and B-52s have quietly created a persistent umbrella of power projection and deterrence in the Pacific,” said an article on “Blue Lightning” in the December 2011 edition of Air Force Magazine.

“Bombers rotate to Guam and range across US Pacific Command’s area of responsibility on exercises that train crews and show the full reach of American airpower.”

Hagel said the flights and military drills were not intended to provoke North Korea, but reassure allies South Korea and Japan.

“You know, those exercises are mostly to reassure our allies that they can count on us to be prepared and to help them deter conflict,” he said.

DOE inspector general recommends consolidating national labs

2013-03-27T12:07:31-04:00

Department of Energy Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman has told Congress that the agency should launch a program patterned on the military’s BRAC base closure program to streamline, downsize or shut some of the Energy agency's 16 national laboratories.

The agency’s chief internal watchdog is pushing to overhaul some of its nuclear and energy research labs and programs, saying that it is “highly questionable” whether a business-as-usual approach can continue in a time of budget cuts.

In an appearance before the House Science Committee’s subcommittee on oversight March 14, Friedman also called on the DOE to focus its sponsored research programs on those that could yield maximum short-term benefits. And he said the agency should concentrate its $6 billion annual environmental cleanup program on a few high-risk, high-priority sites rather than spread the effort out over dozens of sites in multiple states.

“The operative question going forward from our perspective may well be, what can the department afford in this environment?” Friedman asked the oversight committee.

Friedman did not make any specific recommendations on closures.

The veteran Energy agency auditor first proposed the reforms two years ago but pressed for them again in testimony before the House subcommittee this month as it considered the impact of federal spending cuts, known as the “sequester” will have on federal science and technology spending.

So far, he said, there is no sign of support for his proposals within Congress or the Energy department, which auditors say has struggled to manage its tens of thousands of contract workers and a host of multi-billion dollar construction projects.

“Our recommendation has not been adopted, and I must say that there are a number of members of Congress who have said it was dead on arrival,” Friedman told the House Science subcommittee, in response to a question on consolidation of national laboratories.

“We’ve made the recommendation because we thought it was the right thing to do and the time has come for a re-evaluation, but it has not (been) received with a great deal of acceptance.”

Then, referring to the recent election of a new Pope, Friedman added: “No white smoke, you might say.”

The proposal drew little comment from the Oversight subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., who directed much of his criticism toward allegations of mismanagement in the agency’s clean energy programs — including a $150 million loan to a Holland, Mich. company that was supposed to produce batteries for electric vehicles, but wound up with a 650,000-square-foot plant and no buyer for its product.

DOE spokesman Robert Middaugh said the agency had no comment on Friedman’s reorganization plan.

In pushing for reform, Friedman stepped beyond the traditional role of inspectors general, who typically focus on the performance of specific programs rather than recommending policy.

He spent 16 years with the DOE’s Inspector General’s office before becoming inspector general himself in 1998. He said the Energy department’s management of its nuclear and energy research programs has changed little since the Manhattan Project of the 1940s, when several labs now run by the agency worked together to produce the first atomic bomb.

Friedman’s most politically sensitive proposal may be that DOE set up a panel like the Department of Defense’s non-partisan, independent Base Closure and Realignment Commission — called BRAC — to study the DOE’s network of national laboratories.

The 16 labs include, among others, the nation’s nuclear weapons centers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia. For political leaders, national laboratories are treasured sources of high-skill, highly-paid jobs.

About $3.5 billion of the DOE's roughly $10 billion annual budget for its national laboratories goes to administrative overhead, Friedman said. "In our view, the proportion of scarce science resources diverted to administrative, overhead, and indirect costs for each laboratory may be unsustainable in the current budget environment," he said.

Friedman said that the DOE could save money by eliminating some administrative offices at the agency’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the nation’s nuclear weapons, naval reactor and nonproliferation programs.

The Energy agency overall spends nearly 90 percent of its nearly $30 billion annual budget on contracts — making it the largest civilian contracting agency in the federal government.

Michael Lubell, a physicist at the City University of New York and spokesman for the American Physical Society, said that the DOE might find ways to save money by consolidating some administrative jobs at national laboratories with similar research programs or those located close to one another.

But simply closing a lab could mean the loss of irreplaceable human capital and infrastructure, he said. In particular, he said, asking highly trained, experienced scientists to relocate would most likely lead to their exodus.

“The fact of the matter is you can move people from one base to another if they’re in the military,” he says. “Scientists are not that way."

Pentagon criticizes F-35 contractors but hands over the dough

2013-03-11T09:26:42-04:00

Update, March 7, 11:09pm: Early returns are in from the first major flight tests of the new F-35 jet fighter, and they are not pretty. The radar malfunctioned, the fancy helmet visor didn’t work properly, and the radio and navigation systems were hard to operate. It was difficult to get the test planes ready for flight and keep them aloft — with just four hours of flying time between critical failures, on average.

And did we mention that it was, well, hard for the pilots to see out of the cockpit?

These shortcomings are listed in a 48-page, Feb. 15 Pentagon report obtained by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group in Washington, and published online this week. Signed by J. Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s chief testing officer, the report amounted to a detailed and damning “I told you so” by his office.

Gilmore had warned last July, in an earlier report leaked to outsiders, that the F-35 was not close to being ready for its “operational” flight tests. He said the plane’s many shortcomings at such an early stage of its development — it is just a third of the way along, he said — posed excessive risks for the pilots, and he expressed skepticism that the Air Force would learn much of anything useful.

The Air Force decided to start testing anyway, and sent four test pilots aloft in a total of 148 flights between September and November on nine different planes, all from a base on the Florida panhandle. The effort fell far short of a normal flight test series, Gilmore’s report noted, with the planes limited to “very basic aircraft handling, such as simple turns, climbs, and ascents,” and barred from flying at night, near lightning, or in clouds, close formation or with simulated engine stalls.

Even with these unusual constraints, the results were disappointing, according to Gilmore’s account. The radar system on one type of plane — which flew a total of six flights -— failed to operate at all on two of those, dropped targets on another, and functioned too slowly on a fourth. Pilots complained that the helmet visor’s critical data display was blurry, slow, not bright enough, or incomplete, all problems the Air Force is trying to fix. They said the special flight suit they wore was uncomfortably hot, even in moderate winter temperatures.

But most importantly, they said the lines of sight from the cockpit were poor — a fairly elemental design issue. The ejection seat headrest and something called the “canopy bow” often got in the way, as well as a shield meant to reduce glare. None have “the potential to be readily redesigned,” Gilmore said. Three of the four pilots expressed worry that a poor view would hamper the plane’s performance in combat.

“Unlike legacy aircraft such as the F-15, F-16, and F/A-18, enhanced cockpit visibility was not designed into the F-35,” Gilmore wrote, evidently because of the need to create a bulky pilot ejection system that works with three different variants of the fighter, meant for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines. “There is,” he added, “no simple relief to limitations of the F-35 cockpit visibility.”

The plane’s critical components also seemed to fail at a high rate, according to the report, with two-thirds of the aircraft unavailable more than half the time, due to maintenance. Two of the $120 million aircraft appeared to be lemons, with unavailability rates exceeding 70 percent. Overall, the mean flight time between unscheduled maintenance was 42 minutes. The plane’s principal contractor, Lockheed Martin, got worse and worse at supplying needed parts for the aircraft in Florida, according to the report. “The demands of training for combat will be difficult to meet if dependent upon an aircraft-rich, parts-poor operating environment,” the report warned.

The Air Force and Lockheed have responded publicly that the training effort was appropriate, and that the problems cited by Gilmore were known and are being worked on.

With a clock ticking down to zero hour on the budget sequester, the big contractors building the Pentagon’s over-budget, under-performing, and designed-on-the-fly F-35 Joint Strike Fighter weren’t finding much warmth in either the northern or southern hemisphere.

But they managed to get a check from the Pentagon anyway.

The funds arrived a few days after a rhetorical shot heard halfway around the world, fired by Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, the newly-installed chief of the Pentagon’s F-35 advanced warplane program.

He complained to reporters in Australia that the plane’s builders were trying to “squeeze every nickel” out of their deal with the U.S. government rather than worry about the long-term health of the trillion-dollar fighter-bomber program, the priciest weapons project in U.S. history.

The outspoken general, a former test pilot, added: “I want them to start behaving like they want to be around for 40 years. I want them to take on some of the risk of this program, I want them to invest in cost reductions, I want them to do the things that will build a better relationship. I’m not getting all that love yet.”

Hours later, in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Sen. John McCain read a news report of Bodgan’s remarks aloud to Alan Estevez, President Obama’s nominee for the post of principal deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.

As Time’s Mark Thompson pointed out in his blog Friday, McCain doggedly demanded to know why in the face of what he called “massive failures, massive cost overruns,” Lockheed had managed to earn a 7 percent profit since the program began in 2001.

Estevez demurred. “I can’t address the past.”

McCain sounded dumbfounded.

“You can’t address the past?”

“I can’t address, you know, what happened from 2001 till where I am today.”

McCain bore in on him. “You can’t — you can’t address that at all?”

Estevez replied that Bogdan was working closely with the plane’s lead contractors — Lockheed and Pratt & Whitney — “to work through the problems.”

“So since 2001 — and we’re in 2013 — we are beginning to sort through the problem. Is that — is that — is that what I can tell my constituents, Mr. Secretary?”

McCain, who once called the F-35 both a scandal and a tragedy, told Estevez he was frustrated. “This committee has been tracking this program for many years,” he said. “We’ve had promise after promise. We’ve had commitment after commitment. And yet the only thing that has remained constant is that Lockheed has earned a 7 percent profit since the program began…”

Hours before sequestration was scheduled to kick in Friday, the Pentagon nonetheless announced it had awarded Lockheed Martin a contract for $334 million to buy parts for the latest batch of F-35s. The money will be used to build 29 of the jets.

In a statement Thursday responding to Bogdan’s comments Lockheed Martin said “we strive daily to drive costs out of the program.” The statement said Lockheed has worked with Bogdan and the Air Force to cut costs by, among other things, reducing the price per aircraft by 50 percent since the purchase of the first plane and lowering labor costs for the most recent batch of warplanes by 14 percent.

Australia has plans to buy 100 F-35s to serve as the backbone of its air defenses, and Bogdan was there to try to keep the deal on track. Selling the plane to foreign countries is critical to lowering its cost from the current $120 million to $90 million by the end of the year, Pentagon officials have said.

Pierre Sprey, a systems analyfighter aircraft, was skeptical of Bogdan’s promise to lower costs. “His contention that the price will come down is simply false,” he told the Center for Public Integrity. “It’s going to overrun a lot more.”

Sprey, a prominent critic of the F-35 program, was one of the “whiz kids” Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara brought to the Pentagon in 1966. He was a key figure in the development of the F-16, F/A-18 Horney and A-10 “Warthog” ground support aircraft

Sprey predicted that the F-35’s nagging performance problems would persist as the test program becomes more rigorous.” All the toughest testing is still ahead,” he said. “They’ve put off all that tough stuff for obvious reasons because it’s having trouble with all the easy stuff.”

Bogdan’s visit to Australia followed the recent airing of a highly critical documentary by the government-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation called “Reach for the Sky.”

The documentary detailed the plane’s escalating cost, development delays and myriad problems, including the troublesome software that operates its computerized controls. Because of fears the fuel tank could explode if hit by lightning, the film notes, pilots are not allowed to fly the plane within 25 miles of a thunderstorm.

“That’s true,” Bogdan admits. “But let’s put the context on — on that scenario. I have airplanes in the field that we know should not be flying around lightning. Will this problem occur in the future? No, because we have the known fixes for it and we will fix it. But today, you’re absolutely right, the airplane cannot fly in lightning. Um, in the future will it be able to? Absolutely.”

Orlando Carvalho, general manager of the F-35 program at Lockheed Martin, told the filmmakers that “lightning protection is good example of the type of normal discovery that you’re going to find as you execute a test and development program.”

As he has many times previously, Bogdan told the broadcaster that many of the plane’s troubles are due to the decision to build and test it before it was fully designed.

“A large amount of concurrency — i.e. beginning in production long before your design is stable and long before you’ve found problems in test — creates downstream issues where now you have to go back and retrofit airplanes and make sure that the production line has those fixes in them,” he says. “And that drives complexity and cost.”

The latest snafu occurred on Feb. 21, when a crack slightly longer than a half-inch was found in the turbine blade of a test F-35 based at Edwards Air Force Base in California, forcing a grounding of the entire fleet while other planes were examined. By late yesterday, no other cracks were found and the suspension was lifted.

Kyra Hawn of the Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Program Office said that the crack occurred in one of the first of the 17 test jets delivered that was used for the “rigorous testing of the (aircraft’s) operational envelope” — flown at high speeds and subjected to steep dives and sharp turns. It was also one of the planes with the highest number of flight hours, she said.

According to a joint statement from the Joint Program Office and Pratt & Whitney, an examination showed the blade cracked due to exposure to “high levels of heat and other operational stressors on this specific engine” and that no engine redesign is required.

Defense officials call Air Force F-22 probe sloppy and inadequate

2013-02-12T09:36:58-05:00

When Air Force Capt. Jeff Haney’s F-22 fighter crashed in Nov. 2010, while he was gasping for oxygen in the cockpit, the Air Force surprisingly blamed it on him – not the plane.

In a controversial Accident Investigation Board report released a year after the accident, Air Force officials cited three “human factors” as causing the crash: Haney’s “channelized attention” to restoring air flow to his oxygen mask; his failure to keep an eye on his instruments and surroundings; and his “unrecognized spatial disorientation” while plummeting to earth.

The Air Force’s critics, as well as Haney’s family, immediately alleged that the service had sacrificed the reputation of one of its pilots to hide a defect in the $412 million advanced fighter jets so it could preserve political and financial support for them. The Air Force denied it. But now the critics suddenly have some new ammunition.

In a report released Feb. 6, the Department of Defense’s Deputy Inspector General Randolph R. Stone accused the Air Force of conducting a sloppy, inadequate probe of Haney’s deadly crash in the wintry Alaska wilderness.

Stone wrote that the Air Force’s conclusions were “not supported by the facts” presented and didn’t exhaust all investigative leads. He said the three human factors cited by the board were “separate, distinct and conflicting,” and concluded that the Air Force did not explain how they all could have worked together to cause the crash.

The report’s errors and omissions called into question the Air Force board’s conclusions, Stone and his colleagues said. The Air Force, in its response, conceded its account of the accident “could have been more clearly written,” but insisted that findings were supported by clear and convincing evidence and that the board had exhausted all available investigative leads.

The auditors said they weren’t buying it, however, partly because they found the board had failed to analyze how factors such as hypoxia, loss of consciousness due to high g-forces and sudden incapacitation may have affected the pilot. Neither did the board adequately explain how it decided Haney’s mask was in the full-up position as the plane sank – a conclusion that ruled out several other areas of investigation, including the possibility that Haney had removed his mask because the oxygen flow was too weak.

The accident occurred on a flight out of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near Anchorage. The Air Force board said that Haney failed to pull out of a dive, causing him to slam into the ground near a stream in the Talkeetna Mountains. Haney’s widow, Anna Haney, alleged to the contrary that the plane was “dangerous and defective” in a lawsuit against the plane’s builders, Lockheed Martin, Boeing Co., Honeywell and Pratt & Whitney. She reached a confidential settlement with the contractors last year, according to the Air Force Times.

The crash focused new concerns on the oxygen systems originally installed in the Air Force’s state-of-the-art F-22’s, which have been criticized by some as models of costly, goldplated weapons systems that are hard to maintain and ill-suited to fulfill present-day needs.

The Obama administration decided to stop buying the planes in 2009, but at the time of the accident, the plane’s advocates were trying to keep open the option of restarting its assembly line. “The Air Force has always circled the wagons around that airplane,” said Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the nonprofit watchdog group, Project on Government Oversight.

Two pilots appeared on the CBS television network’s “60 Minutes” program last year saying they had suffered hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation, during flights and as a result they had taken out extra life insurance.

A Nov. 2012 report by the Congressional Research Service report states that the Air Force has records of at least 25 incidents where F-22 pilots reported hypoxia-like symptoms in flight, possibly due to oxygen deprivation. Hypoxia can cause nausea, headaches, fatigue or blackouts.

As the Center for Public Integrity has previously reported, the aircraft’s problems with its oxygen system are not the only ones it has faced. Since the first F-22 rolled off the assembly line in 2003, it has suffered at least six accidents costing over $1 million each while experiencing mechanical breakdowns that could require another decade of redesign and repairs.

On its first overseas deployment, for example, a squad of F-22’s lost all their computer systems in flight and had to be led back to base by mid-air tankers, a retired Air Force general said. The fleet was grounded in 2010 because of rusted ejection-seat parts. The planes were grounded again in 2011 following complaints about the oxygen system and Haney’s fatal crash.

For its part, the Air Force has promised to give the Inspector General’s office a more detailed analysis of the “non-causal” factors, such as hypoxia, and details of how it reached its conclusions regarding the emergency oxygen activation system and blood oxygen levels. The inspector general’s office asked that the work be done by the end of this month.

Secret US detention program had many foreign collaborators

United States — 2013-02-05T16:21:09-05:00

At least 54 countries aided the CIA in its sweeping post-9/11 program of secret detentions, renditions and interrogations of more than 136 terror suspects, according to a human rights group report released Tuesday that amounts to the most comprehensive look at the shadowy program to date.

In addition to demonstrating the sheer size of the secret program, the report details the failure of most of the countries involved to hold anyone accountable.

Ranking U.S. officials “bear responsibility for authorizing” violating the rights of those caught up in the CIA’s effort post-9/11 campaign, the Open Society Justice Initiative report says. But the group says the foreign governments who worked with the U.S. are also culpable, because they played a bigger role than previously realized.

Without their help the effort could never have been carried out, said the report, which draws on a host of public sources – including investigations by human rights groups -- and previous studies.

It describes extremely rough treatment of detainees, including beatings, sleep-deprivation, water-boardings and the jailing of suspects in coffin-like cells. Moroccan authorities promised to treat British resident Binyam Mohamed humanely after CIA officers delivered him to them for interrogation. But the report says his questioners sliced his genitals, poured hot liquid on his penis, broke his bones and threatened him with rape, electrocution and death.

The author of the Open Society report, Amrit Singh, is a former staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, where she helped pursue a lawsuit against the Defense Department that resulted in the disclosure of thousands of documents about the abuse of prisoners held by the U.S. abroad.

The report comes a day after the leak of a Department of Justice white paper to NBC News detailing the legal basis for the Obama administration’s use of lethal force against terror suspects, including U.S. citizens. The unsigned and undated memo said an informed, high level official could order the death of a ranking terrorist who posed “an imminent threat of violent attack” against the U.S., if it wasn’t possible to capture him.

While the white paper didn’t name any individual, the policy it explains was followed in the case of Anwar al-Aulaqi, an American and a high-level al-Qaida official killed by a U.S. missile in Yemen in 2011. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., hailed the publication of the document in a statement Tuesday, saying now Americans can “review and judge the legality of these operations.”

Former Bush administration officials and others who have defended the rendition and interrogation efforts have said they were a necessary and effective part of the effort to track down terrorists targeting the United States, including the leadership of al Qaida. Critics say that they were illegal and that the harsh interrogations were ineffective in advancing the U.S. war against Islamist militants.

Most of the countries identified in the report as participants in the detention and interrogation program are staunch U.S. allies, among them Canada, Germany, Britain, Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania and Thailand all hosted CIA “black sites,” or secret prisons, it states.

But the report notes that some regimes with at least a history of hostility to the United States, including Syria, Iran and Libya, were also enlisted . At least eight militants were handed over to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, the report says. One detainee spent 10 months in a tiny grave-sized cell, beaten with cables and threatened with electrocution.

Most of the countries involved have never effectively investigated their actions, the report says. Only Italian officials been convicted for their involvement and only Canada has issued an apology to former detainees.

Polish prosecutors are investigating its alleged CIA prison near the town of Szczytno in north eastern Poland, and the European Court of Human Rights has ordered the declassification of some documents about the prison supplied by the Polish government. The country’s deputy foreign minister warned that release of the documents would limit Poland’s ability to cooperate with the investigation.

After President Obama took office he denounced torture but authorized the short-term detention of terror suspects and declined to convene a commission to investigate previous abuses. The Senate Select Committee on intelligence in December approved a comprehensive report on the program, but the report remains classified.

U.S. courts have declined to hear lawsuits brought by detainees, saying that the cases raise major foreign policy and national security issues. The government has released the names of just 16 of the post 9/11 detainees and has refused to confirm the locations of all of the secret CIA prisons abroad.

The black sites and rendition programs didn’t just foster human rights abuses, the report says, they distorted the U.S. response to the threat of terror. Libyan national Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 and later flown to Egypt. While under torture there, he fabricated reports of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons training of Al Qaida – reports on which the U.S. relied in making its case for war against Iraq in 2003.

Egypt is believed to have received the greatest number of prisoners from the U.S. rendition program and cooperated closely with Washington. Al-Libi was only one of a number of suspects detained, interrogated, tortured and abused by Egyptian authorities. Some were executed, the report states. U.S. interrogators would often give questions for detainees in the morning and receive responses that evening.

German intelligence officials helped interrogate at least one of the detainees, Mohammad Haydar Zammar. A German national, he was captured in Morocco in December of 2001 and taken to Syria’s notorious Far’ Falestin prison. According to the report, citing European Parliament and other official accounts, German intelligence officers were allowed to question Zammar after charges were dropped against several Syrians in Germany.

In March 2002 Iran handed over 15 suspects to the government of Afghanistan, which transferred ten of them to U.S. custody. The report said the transfer was part of an arms-length trade of prisoners between Washington and Tehran, an example of the short-lived post-9/11 collaboration between the two nations. The report said one of them, Amin al-Yafia, believed captured in Iran in 2002, “may have been held” in CIA custody at some later date. His current location is unknown.

Documents captured in Tripoli in 2011, after Gaddafi’s fall, suggest that the U.S. sent Libya at least 11 terror suspects after 9/11 despite the regime’s reputation for torturing suspects, the report states. All were held secretly and some abused, it says, despite assurances their rights would be respected. One of the detainees, Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq, claimed he was tortured by two CIA officers in Bangkok before his rendition to Libya. He became the new security chief in Tripoli following the death of the Libyan strongman.

The release of “Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition,” drew wide attention Feb. 4 and 5, with articles published in the New York Times, The Guardian, Wired, NBCNews.com and other media. Open Society Foundations is one of the Center for Public Integrity’s major institutional funders.

More waste found in Afghanistan as US heads for the exit

Afghanistan — 2013-01-31T15:00:33-05:00

When U.S. defense department auditors arrived at the large new Imam Sahib Border Police Company headquarters in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province last fall, they discovered just a dozen men, only half of them in uniform, and two-thirds of the compound’s green masonry buildings unoccupied and apparently empty.

The facility, completed two months earlier at a cost to the United States of $7.3 million, was designed to provide a base for 175 border police to help provide security along Afghanistan’s rugged frontier with Tajikistan, an infiltration route for militants and perhaps the most important transit corridor for Afghan heroin headed to Russia.

But according to the latest report by John F. Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, inspectors found a nearly deserted compound. All but three of the 12 buildings were locked, and no one had keys. The inspectors wrote that they were forced to judge construction quality by peering through the windows.

The findings echoed those in a July 2012 inspection of four other Afghan Border Police facilities in Nangarhar Province, bordering Pakistan, where many buildings were empty or used for something other than what they were designed for – one structure housing a well doubled as a chicken coop. “It is difficult to consider a project as wanted and needed if its intended recipients are not using it or are using it for an unplanned purpose,” the report notes.

As the U.S. approaches the December 2014 deadline for withdrawing most of its 71,000 troops, Washington is trying to beef up Afghanistan’s security forces with training, equipment and bases like Imam Sahib. The U.S. has spent almost $90 billion on Afghanistan reconstruction, more than on rebuilding any other nation.

But Sopko, in a recent speech at the Stimson Center, said too much of the U.S. effort has been marked by poor planning, poor quality assurance, poor security, and corruption. In his report, he wrote that the United States and NATO allies should work harder to focus their remaining reconstruction efforts on projects that the Afghans need and want, and also have the money, training and political will to maintain.

In addition to the deserted border control post, for example, SIGAR auditors discovered that the sprawling $17.7 million Kunduz police headquarters, a collection of 37 separate buildings located in the heart of the busy provincial capital, included poor welding, unstable soils, and collapsing buildings.

SIGAR also noted that the headquarters wasn’t prepared to handle the 625 or so police officials expected to work and, in some cases, live there. The compound, the report said, has a single diesel generator to provide power, and the base is not connected to the local electrical grid. Neither were there plans to train Afghans to maintain the equipment. The SIGAR report said that because of these and the project’s other problems, the U.S. investment in the compound “may be at risk.”

The special inspector general has also warned that the shrinking American military presence is already making it more difficult to visit remote reconstruction projects for audits and inspections, complicating efforts to fight waste and abuse in the sprawling U.S. aid program. And he said the problem could get worse.

SIGAR said it asked the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to check the location of 227 USAID-funded roads, schools, clinics, hospitals and public buildings on a list that included their geographic coordinates. But the agency, which analyzes spy satellite data, was unable to find about twenty percent those structures. The U.S. Agency for International Development and other agencies rely on the list to track development efforts.

The United States and some of its allies have pledged to shore up the Afghan government with $4.1 billion a year in aid after 2014. Secretary of Defense-nominee Chuck Hagel remarked during his Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 31, however, that he has been astounded by the billions of dollars in aid funds already lost to waste, fraud, abuse and corruption in the region. He promised to produce a new study for Congress about how the Pentagon’s efforts have gone awry, explaining that “we owe it to the people of this country who pay the bills.”

"Where is the accountability?" Hagel asked, adding that this is an issue that the Pentagon needs to take a closer look at. He added that much of the blame stemmed from overloading military personnel with too much nation-building responsibility during wars, promising that this would be "sorted through" if he is confirmed.

President Obama, at a joint appearance with Aghan president Hamid Karzai at the White House on Jan. 11 that previewed the American withdrawal, said, “Have we achieved everything that some might have imagined us achieving in the best of scenarios? Probably not. You know, this is a human enterprise, and, you know, you fall short of the ideal. Did we achieve our central goal? And have we been able, I think, to shape a strong relationship with a responsible Afghan government that is willing to cooperate with us to make sure that it is not a launching pad for future attacks against the United States? We have achieved that goal. We're in the process of achieving that goal.”

But Sopko is still concerned specifically about what will happen to U.S.-built projects after NATO troops withdraw if the Kabul government doesn’t try to maintain what the U.S. and others have built.

A 2011 SIGAR report found that $44.6 million in asphalt roads in Laghman Province were “at risk” because there was no program to maintain them, for example. The report said there are “real concerns that Afghanistan will simply lack the fiscal, operational, and technical capacity to provide for security and other basic government functions, much less to maintain and operate the hundreds of programs and projectsthat the United States and other donors have established there.”

A close call for the world’s most advanced warplane?

2013-01-24T09:38:54-05:00

A test pilot preparing for takeoff in what is billed as the world’s most advanced military aircraft made an unsettling discovery last week: A cockpit signal warned him of a fuel problem and closer inspection revealed a hose that carries jet fuel had come loose in the engine compartment.

The result was a scramble to investigate the incident and the grounding over the weekend of twenty-five F-35 Joint Strike Fighter being tested at air bases in Florida and Arizona, as well as Lockheed Martin’s production factory in Fort Worth, Texas. The decoupled hose was only the latest of many glitches in the costliest weapons program in U.S. history.

Just days earlier, the Pentagon’s Operational Test and Evaluation office's annual report to Congress had identified the “fueldraulic” lines at the heart of the incident as a potential fire hazard.

The report said that a 2008 decision to remove certain fire protective systems from the plane to save weight, including those associated with the fueldraulic lines, resulted in “a 25 percent increase in aircraft vulnerability.” It warned that removal of these systems meant the F-35 did not meet a requirement that it be less vulnerable to damage from fires than older, similar military aircraft.

The risks associated with the fueldraulic lines were just one of a number of problems the OT&E report detailed in the Marine, Air Force and Navy versions of the plane, all currently undergoing testing. They include ongoing problems with the plane’s millions of lines of computer code, a particular vulnerability to lightning, and continuing defects in its sophisticated helmet, with its see-through data and symbol displays.

According to the test report, the F-35’s mission is to be ready to attack targets day or night “in all weather, and in highly defended areas of joint operations.” But because of concerns about the fuel tank’s vulnerability to lightning, the report said, current flight operations by the aircraft are not permitted within 25 miles of lightning-producing storms.

The plane’s use of “fueldraulic” line, installed only in the Marine Corps’ version of the F-35 aircraft, is just one of its many technically-challenging features. Its aim is to save weight by using some of its fuel as the hydraulic fluid that helps swivel the plane’s jet exhaust system during short take-offs and vertical landings. Weight is a major factor affecting the speed and agility of the 6 ½-ton airplane.

The report revealed that a prototype system for protecting pilots from chemical or biological weapons – things they could conceivably encounter in places like Syria – was developed but judged “too complex for field use.”

Following the incident at Eglin Air Force base in Florida, the Marine Corps launched a review of what caused the hose to decouple, which officials said could be finished quickly. The two other variants of the F-35, one designed for the Air Force and the other the Navy, were not affected by the glitch because they don’t have fueldraulic lines. Both are designed only for horizontal, not vertical takeoffs and landings.

“There were no injuries to the pilot or ground crew,” said Commander Kyra Hawn of the F-35 program office in an e-mailed statement. “The jet was then safely towed to a maintenance hangar and secured.” Pratt & Whitney spokesman Matthew C. Bates said a team of Pratt & Whitney and Rolls Royce engineers were working with Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Program Office to fix the problem as quickly as possible.

But the latest problems come after nearly seventeen years of development and seven years of production, while testing remains incomplete. The aircraft is years behind schedule and more than half a billion dollars over budget.

Pierre Sprey, a critic of the F-35 who played a major role in the design of the F-16 fighter and A-10 ground attack jets, said the detached line could have posed a fire hazard in flight. “They’re damn lucky,” he said.

As the Center reported in June the F-35’s helmet, a critical piece of technology for the futuristic aircraft, has long been a headache for developers. The plane is more or less designed around the helmet, which is supposed to let the pilot look through data projected the visor while maneuvering.

Jitter caused by aircraft vibrations is still making the helmet see-through display hard to read, the latest report affirmed. Night vision isn’t as good as required by the specifications.

The report also disclosed that flight testing has uncovered a problem with what is called “green glow,” where light from the cockpit displays “leak” into the helmet display, making it harder to see through the visor in low-light conditions.

Sprey said he was particularly troubled by the report’s mention of scorching in the the trailing edge of the plane’s horizontal tail fins by the jet’s engines. “It’s not hard to figure out whether the engine exhaust is going to touch and burn the tail,” he said.

The report also disclosed that some of the planes have suffered cracks, experienced excess vibrations at high speeds, and have recurring problems with their complex software.

In response to rising costs and other problems, the Department of Defense put the F-35B, the version used by the Marine Corps, on “probation” in early 2011.

A year later, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta lifted that probation, pending resolution of outstanding issues with the builders, saying the aircraft was performing with “the kind of performance and maturity” of the other two versions -- the Air Force plane designed for conventional landings and a Navy version adapted to landing on aircraft carriers.

“I want you to know that as secretary of defense, my department is committed to the development of the F-35,” Panetta told military personnel at Patuxent Naval Air Station in Maryland in January 2012.

The F-35 is known as the Joint Strike Fighter, because it was originally conceived as a cost-saving new fighter that could be shared by the Air Force, Navy and Marines. But during the plane’s lengthy and complex development, the three designs have diverged.

Many experts have questioned the Pentagon’s decision to design, test and build the complex aircraft at the same time, rather design it first and test it later. Officials argued that this dual track approach could save time and money, and that most major design problems could caught by advanced computer modeling and simulation.

But Maj. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, now the F-35’s executive program manager, last fall called the decision to begin to manufacture the plane while it was still being designed “the greatest of all sins in the Joint Strike Fighter Program.”