Forum: General F-16 forum

Is F-16 System Program Office manned by LM people, or by USAF people? Who writes the technical orders?

I've heard that LM F-16 engineers are located on both Hill and Fort Worth. How do they share tasks?

F-16.net Sponsor

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/contact_us/index.html

Suggested reading: http://www.hill.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-100409-048.pdf and http://www.hill.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=5596.

Short and simplifed version (I use to work there). F-16 SPO is at Wright Patterson AFB as part of Air Force Material Command. They are in charge of the aircraft, which means buying them, modifying them, and testing them. They issue the contracts to LM to build them, design new features. They manage the contracts to many of the vendors (like the motors) whereas sometimes LM picks the vendors and issues subcontracts (lighting for example). As new blocks are introduced, the older blocks get transferred to Hill AFB (where the Depot is located) for sustainment management.

There are Engineers at both WP AFB and Hill AFB who do some engineering, but today's business model is to contract most of that work back to industry, in this case LM, and the role of the Govt engineers is to oversee those contracts and ensure the USAF gets what it needs and paid for.

Thanks, all of you.

Let me add something to the "who writes the Tech Orders?" question. It depends on the block when your talking aircraft software. Anything up through Blk 25/30/32 for aircraft software is handled at Ogden, and anything Blk 40/50 aircraft software is handled at LM Aero altho that is also moving to Ogden. Everything else T.O. wise comes out of LM Aero in Ft Worth. Also if is something made by an outside vendor then they write what we call "source data" and then pass it to the contractor to be put in a T.O. format.

ViperDude

Hi Roscoe, during what period of the F-16 history were you based at the SPO.
Thanks
F16VIPER

I was there Jan 1996-July1999. I started in the test shop, then became a program manager where I managed the special projects vault and the USAF production buys. Towards the end I took over the avionics branch.

What became of Chester "Al" Simpson? He was at the SPO same bat time, same bat station.

It's been a while...I don't recall him.