Air Force Times reports that the F-35 joint strike fighter’s mission capable rate figures are well below the military’s target, according to DoD’s former acquisition chief Ellen Lord. The F-35’s mission capable rate is currently 69%, short of the “military’s longstanding 80 percent goal, said Ellen Lord.” She added that, when looking at fully mission capable aircraft that are able to perform all of the F-35’s assigned missions, “we’re currently at 36 percent fully mission capable, and we are striving to be at 50 percent for the fleet.” She attributed the low rate to ongoing issues with the F135 engine’s power module and the F-35’s canopy.
Full Story (Air Force Times)
Tag: F-35
DoD Delays Approval for Full-Rate F-35 Production
Bloomberg reports that DoD has postponed the approval for the full-rate production of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 due to a delay in combat simulation testing. The testing had been moved from 2017 to December of this year before it was “postponed again because of difficulties finishing technical preparations.” Jessica Maxwell, spokesperson for Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord, said in a statement that the testing and the decision to approve full-rate production has been moved to 2021. Maxwell said that production of F-35s will continue at its current, low-rate phase.
Full Story (Bloomberg)
Unprecedented Global Partnerships, Collaboration Fuels F-35 Program
Panelists: Moderator Graham Warwick, managing editor, Aviation Week and Space Technology; Eric Branyan, vice president, F-35 Supply Chain Management, Lockheed Martin; Declan Holland, vice president of U.S. business, BAE Systems Inc.; Frank Carus, vice president and F-35 program manager, Northrop Grumman Corp.; Thomas Johns, director, F135 Weapon System Integration, Military Engines, Pratt & Whitney; John Mazur, director of foreign military sales, Joint Strike Fighter Joint Program Office; J.D. McFarlan, vice president, F-35 Test and Verification, Lockheed Martin
by Lawrence Garrett, AIAA Web Editor
AIAA AVIATION Forum, Atlanta, June 26, 2018 – The successful development of the F-35 has required unprecedented worldwide partnerships and extraordinary collaboration between private industry and government, said a panel of industry experts June 26 during the “Reflection on the Partnerships Within the F-35 Enterprise” session at the 2018 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Atlanta.
“I can honestly tell you that in the over 30 years that I’ve been in the business … certainly the [Joint Strike Fighter] F-35 program is unlike any other program I have worked on,” said Frank Carus, vice president and JSF F-35 program manager at Northrop Grumman.
Carus noted that the different intricacies of the program were incredibly challenging but that one of the unique characteristics was the “best athlete” approach management adopted.
As Carus described it, the program utilized the person who brought the best value to a position. He said that in certain positions, Lockheed Martin employees worked for Northrop Grumman managers, Northrop Grumman staff worked for BAE Systems staff, and Northrop Grumman and BAE people worked for Lockheed Martin.
“I’d never seen or been part of an organization like that,” Carus said. “It was unique.”
Thomas Johnson, director of F135 Weapon System Integration for Military Engines at Pratt & Whitney, said that “working together” was a critical ingredient for program success and that the concept applies to companies and organizations as well as people.
“The trick in a big program like this is getting all three functioning,” he said, adding that there were also a number of other complexities, including variations in product, development organization, customer and location.
J.D. McFarlan, vice president for test and evaluation at Lockheed Martin, said the F-35 test and evaluation program was over 20 years in the making.
“The F-35 program is vast and could not be done without a worldwide partnership,” he said, calling the F-35’s undertaking “an international program” from “start to finish.”
Eric Branyan, vice president of F-35 Supply Chain Management at Lockheed Martin, said some international cooperation resulted in improvements on overall time, cost and quality.
“The partnerships are not just there to build the program,” Branyan said. “The partnerships are there really to make the airplane a better part because of the sum of all those pieces together.”
Declan Holland, vice president of U.S. business with BAE, cited BAE’s expertise in short takeoff and vertical landing aircraft, systems engineering, subcontract management, structural testing and advanced manufacturing.
Holland said the U.K.’s experience in advanced manufacturing, acquired through past work on the Typhoon, has been implemented into the F-35 program.
John Mazur, director of foreign military sales for the JSF Joint Program Office, said the F-35 program is constantly evolving and will keep accelerating.
“This program is nothing today like it was 20 years ago or 15 years ago,” Mazur said. “The landscape for the international part is constantly evolving, and so every day, we have a new set of problems that comes scooting across our desks that we have to reach out and try to find some workable solution.”
Panel moderator Graham Warwick, technology managing editor for Aviation Week and Space Technology, recalled that prior aeronautical programs also experienced setbacks.
“They all had tremendous problems either in development or in early service introduction,” he said. “No program of that scale ever goes smoothly, and the F-35 is no exception.”
But, Warwick said, “like the F-16, the F-15, and the F-22, the chances are, the indications are, that we will have a truly capable machine at the end of this.”
Video
Life in the F-35 ‘Fish Bowl’
Panelists: Moderator Juan J. Alonso, professor, Stanford University; Jeff Babione, vice president and general manager, Advanced Development Programs, Lockheed Martin
by Ben Iannotta, Aerospace America editor-in-chief
Lockheed Martin’s Jeff Babione challenged the audience of the “Evolution of the F-35” session June 26 at the 2018 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Atlanta to utter the first words that came to mind when they thought of the F-35.
After some minor prodding, a voice in the crowd said “cost overrun.” Another said “schedule.” And a third voice, which was difficult to hear, seemed to say “not as good as the F-16.”
Issuing this challenge was Babione’s way of encouraging people to reconsider their perceptions of the F-35 program as Lockheed Martin seeks to reboot opinions about the multibillion joint and international initiative that has indeed been marked by schedule delays and cost overruns. Since the program’s last re-baselining, Babione said, the company has been rolling out the F-35 aircraft nearly as planned in terms of cost and schedule.
“It was tough, but we got there,” he said.
Babione knows the F-35 program as well as anyone. Before moving earlier this year to head Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs, or Skunk Works, he was the general manager in charge of the F-35 for more than two years. For almost three years before that, he was the deputy in charge of day-to-day program management. His speech and a Q&A session moderated by Juan J. Alonso of Stanford University opened a series of “special programming” sessions at the forum planned for June 26 and June 27 to discuss the F-35 program and its history.
Babione ticked off a list of milestones for the audience. Among them, he noted that the system development and demonstration phase, involving numerous test flights, was completed earlier this year, not long after the planned 2017 date under the re-baselining. He said the program is running “just several percentage points higher on cost.” He said initial operational test and evaluation flights are scheduled to begin in August under the program’s strategy of conducting tests concurrently with low-rate initial production.
Pointing to a cost chart, Babione said that today, an A model of the F-35 — the version that will eventually replace the U.S. Air Force’s F-16s and A-10s — costs $94 million. He said the company envisions the cost declining to $80 million per plane by 2020.
Babione said Lockheed Martin has been open about the hurdles it has faced over the years and that there are no shortage of challenges ahead. He displayed a slide showing a goldfish in a bowl surrounded by the corporate logos of CNN, Facebook, Fox News, YouTube and Twitter.
“Do I look at all like that goldfish? Because that’s how it feels to be on the F-35 program,” he said, joking about searching G-O-D on Google and realizing that the F-35 received more hits.
None of that was meant to be a complaint, Babione suggested: Oversight of a multibillion program is certainly “reasonable,” he said, adding that transparency is the “hallmark” of the program.
“You can’t claim we’re hiding anything,” he said.