WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday he was replacing the general in charge of the Pentagon’s largest weapons program — the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — and withholding $614 million in award fees from the contractor, Lockheed Martin.
The surprise announcement came from a Pentagon chief who has sought to impose accountability across the department’s senior leadership and who himself had promoted plans for the new plane last year in persuading Congress to kill the more expensive F-22 fighter jet. But a special Pentagon review team since warned of possibly billions of dollars in cost overruns on the plane, and Gates announced that he was restructuring the program and requiring the company to cover some of the extra costs.
Gates disclosed the reshuffling on the F-35 program as he released the Pentagon’s proposed $708.3 billion spending package for fiscal 2011. All told, the administration said Monday it wanted to increase the Pentagon’s regular spending by 3.4 percent, to $548.9 billion in fiscal 2011 from $530.8 billion this year. It also asked Congress to approve $159.3 billion for next year to cover the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The White House said it was also seeking an additional $33 billion now to pay for the 30,000 extra troops being sent to Afghanistan. That would bring the total war spending for this year to $162.6 billion.
