Will government furloughs effect F-35 testing?

According to Reuters, the answer may be "yes":

Flight testing of Lockheed Martin Corp's new F-35 fighter jet will fall short of planned totals for the year due to budget cuts that will keep the Pentagon's civilian workers off their jobs for 11 days, a top U.S. Navy official told Reuters on Monday.

"It's going to fall short because we're going to lose a day a week, roughly," Sean Stackley, assistant Navy secretary for research, development and acquisition, said in an interview.

Of course this isn't good news for the program which needs every day possible to push on with testing to meet the recently set IOC dates.  Testing has been going well, but there's still a lot of it to do.  A 20% cut in time for testing would certainly upset the fighter's testing time table.

According to an update to the Reuters story, DOD is trying to find a way to mitigate the effect of these sequestration furloughs on the program.

Graff