Democratic California Rep. Jackie Speier

At best, when the services declare 'initial operating capability' this summer, we will be launching an unstable plane that cannot perform many of its core missions for years, at worst, it'll hurt people or we'll ground it in the hangar and spend billions on a retrofit.

Democratic California Rep. Jackie Speier

We rushed to buy an aircraft with a huge amount of testing concurrency, then hid future costs by deferring testing, upgrades and retrofits, the result was a program we had to cancel after producing 555 fewer planes than the Air Force initially wanted.

Democratic California Rep. Jackie Speier

The magnitude of these deferrals is staggering, the price of adding all the testing, retrofits and capabilities the program office has deferred will be higher than the entire cost of the F-22 program.

Democratic California Rep. Jackie Speier