F-35 program updates

[doge]

Great job by Dragon029!

1. ALIS 3.0 reduced false alarms in the fleet by "up to" 70%

To me this looks like a good number. I remember that ALIS's false alarms have been very criticized so far.

8. CPFH in CY18 for an F-35A was $44K/hr

At the same time last year, I remember that the subcommittee's hearing was told that A's CPFH was $50K.
Looks to me that it has now(or last year?) been reduced to $44K.(-$6K reduction)
And I remember that early 2019 this year, by to each media, it was written that A's CPFH is $35K.
Therefore, it looks like between $44K~35K. It can be expect.

[doge]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZBMWzCA_Gg

I found from that YouTube comment.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/borin ... t-2019-20/

Boring is the new black: Defence budget 2019–20
3 Apr 2019|Marcus Hellyer
On sustainment, last year ASPI argued (page 43) that one of the big risks was the cost of the F-35A. The JSF program was aiming for a sustainment cost similar to that for legacy aircraft such as the classic Hornet. But if the cost of sustaining the JSF turned out to be more like the costs for the Super Hornet and Growler electronic attack aircraft, the sustainment budget would be under pressure. The 2019–20 budget sheds some light on things: for the first time, the F-35A puts in an appearance in the top 30 sustainment products table. At $41,800 per flying hour in 2019–20, it’s between the classic Hornets at $22,200 and the Super Hornets/Growlers at $79,000 (that’s derived by dividing the sustainment costs (pages 122–123) by annual flying hours (page 65)). It’s early days, so hopefully that will come down as the sustainment system matures.

$41,800---F-35A(RAAF)
$22,200---Legacy Hornet(RAAF)
$79,000--- Super Hornet/Growler(RAAF)
(!?)
I was surprised at the CPFH of Super Hornet(or EA-18G). (I had thought impression the super hornet was low-priced ...)

[Dragon029]

I wouldn't read too deeply into it; the RAAF had 1 of 12 Growlers go up in flames at Red Flag last year, and so I wouldn't be surprised if the follow-up has caused a spike in sustainment costs and/or drop in flight hours.

[doge]

I wouldn't read too deeply into it; the RAAF had 1 of 12 Growlers go up in flames at Red Flag last year, and so I wouldn't be surprised if the follow-up has caused a spike in sustainment costs and/or drop in flight hours.

It might be...There may be a potential impact of the accident seem likely. (Because EA-18G is a very valuable asset.)



and,,,
New good news from Vice Adm.Mat Winter has arrived!
https://insidedefense.com/daily-news/f- ... s-end-year

F-35 on track to achieve 80 percent mission-capable rates by end of year
By Mallory Shelbourne April 4, 2019 at 3:54 PM
The Joint Strike Fighter is on track to meet its 80 percent mission-capable rate requirement by the end of 2019, according to the F-35 program executive officer. After testifying in front of the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee today, Vice Adm. Mat Winter told reporters the program is slated to achieve the benchmark because of modifications made to older aircraft and the ability to obtain spare parts. "So we're putting the repairing demand signal into our...

He sees 80% as achievable...!!

[Dragon029]

F-35 on track to achieve 80 percent mission-capable rates by end of year
By Mallory Shelbourne

April 4, 2019 at 3:54 PM

The Joint Strike Fighter is on track to meet its 80 percent mission-capable rate requirement by the end of 2019, according to the F-35 program executive officer.

After testifying in front of the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee today, Vice Adm. Mat Winter told reporters the program is slated to achieve the benchmark because of modifications made to older aircraft and the ability to obtain spare parts.

"So we're putting the repairing demand signal into our U.S. services' artisans . . . in our Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps depots,” Winter said.

"And we're letting our industry partners focus on generating brand-new parts for [the] production line and to the flight line," he continued.

Winter told the panel of lawmakers the Air Force's F-35A is currently at 61 percent mission-capable, while the Marine Corps' F-35B variant is at 64 percent. The F-35C, the Navy's carrier variant that reached initial operational capability in February, is at 84 percent.

Achieving the 80 percent mission-capable goal would put the F-35 program in compliance with a memo issued last year by former Defense Secretary James Mattis. The directive called for the F-35, the Navy's F/A-18 and the Air Force's F-16 and F-22 to reach the 80 percent target by the conclusion of fiscal year 2019.

"We've identified the root causes and the levers needed to ensure the availability and the mission-capable rates for the F-35. We looked across our entire fleet and have taken a full system look," Winter said.

The average mission-capability rates for the F-35 range from 65 to 85 percent when the aircraft is deployed with a "float spares package," according to Winter.

"We need to make sure that we have increased spare parts on the flight line. We need to make sure we can repair parts or accelerate in the depot stand-ups in the United States," Winter told the subcommittee.

"And we've pushed flight-line maintenance authorities to our warfighters on the flight line, where they had to send back parts or send back to get the maintenance completed, they can now do that -- maintain those actions on the flight line," he added.

[doge]

Very grateful to the Full text!

The F-35C, the Navy's carrier variant that reached initial operational capability in February, is at 84 percent.

84%!? In the Internet I, I've watched many voices concerned about the Rate% of the C model...
but, This %Rate revealed this time looks very very high to me. 84%!! It looks like a very good %Rate.

[spazsinbad]

[FICK for F-35 JPO] Milley, Hyten to Lead Joint Chiefs of Staff; Marine Lt. Gen. Smith to Command MCCDC
09 Apr 2019 Megan Eckstein

"...the president nominated Air Force Maj. Gen. Eric Fick to serve as the next director of the Joint Strike Fighter Program, where Fick currently serves as the deputy director. Fick commissioned into the Air Force in 1990 and has served as program executive officer for fighters and bombers; program executive officer for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) and special operations forces; commander of the Advanced Combat Systems Group at the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office; and operations officer and commander of the 46th Test Squadron. He will replace Vice Adm. Mat Winter."

Source: https://news.usni.org/2019/04/09/milley ... more-42922

[weasel1962]

April 2019 fast facts per link below. Managed to reconcile the full 499 orders for lots 1-11 reflected in the updates

https://www.f35.com/assets/uploads/docu ... s_4_19.pdf

[spazsinbad]

Lockheed Martin Inks Long-Term Contracts with More F-35 Suppliers
17 Apr 2019 LM PR

"Lockheed Martin has transitioned additional F-35 suppliers to longer term Performance Based Logistics contracts and Master Repair Agreements to enhance supply availability and reduce sustainment costs....

...Previously under annual contracts, the new multi-year PBLs allow each company to make longer term investments and actions to reduce costs and improve efficiencies. In addition to PBL contracts, Lockheed Martin has established 12 Master Repair Agreements (MRAs) with key suppliers to enhance repair capacity and speed.

The PBLs cover several contracts with BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman and Collins Elbit Vision Systems (CEVS); and the MRAs cover contracts with 12 separate suppliers including Honeywell, GE and Eaton.

The initial multi-year contracts are already delivering benefits. A 2017 PBL contract awarded to BAE Systems for the Electronic Warfare subsystem is helping deliver a 25 percent improvement in the system’s availability throughout global operations.

Enhancing Readiness, Reducing Costs
As the F-35 fleet expands, the F-35 Joint Program Office-led Hybrid Product Support Integration (HPSI) team is implementing the Global Support Solution (GSS) to enhance readiness and reduce costs.

The F-35’s reliability and readiness continues to improve and newer production aircraft are averaging greater than 60 percent mission capable rates with some operational squadrons consistently near 70 percent. Additionally, Lockheed Martin has reduced its portion of operating costs per aircraft by 15 percent since 2015.

The F-35 enterprise’s goal is to deliver 80 percent mission capable rates in the near term, and achieve a $25,000 Cost per Flight Hour (CPFH) by 2025, which is comparable to the cost to sustain legacy aircraft, while providing a generational leap in capability.

As more aircraft enter service, the enterprise is optimizing resources across the fleet and leveraging data across hundreds of thousands of flight hours to achieve these goals. The program is conducting supply chain competitions, building supply chain capacity, synchronizing spare buys, improving parts reliability and maintainability, implementing advanced analytics tools, enhancing the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), accelerating modifications of earlier aircraft, and supporting the stand-up of government-led regional warehouses and repair depots."

Source: https://www.f35.com/news/detail/lockhee ... -suppliers

[spazsinbad]

MORE from INSIDE the DE Fence via JSF.mil PDF attached below edited just to make a two pager one page PDF for youse.

F‐35 PEO: $75M Unit Cost By Lot 14 ‘Within The Art Of The Possible’
9 April 2019 Courtney Albon, Inside Defense

"The unit cost of the F‐35A could do as low as $75 million in Lot 14 of low‐rate initial production if the program can improve supply chain and production line performance, the head of the program recently told Inside Defense.

The joint program office has been working with the prime contractor Lockheed Martin and engine-maker Pratt & Whitney to reduce the cost of the F‐35A to $80 million by 2020. Program official have said they think the jet’s price tag could fall even lower, and in an April 5 interview, Program Executive Officer Vice Adm. Mat Winter offered more specifics, telling Inside Defense that an F‐35A in the mid‐to‐high $70 million range is “absolutely within the art of possible.”

“We’d like to be in the $75 [million] to $77 million range for Lot 14,” Winter said. “I would say in the high 70s is achievable for Lot 14.” Winter offered a caveat to that possibility, though, nothing that the program won’t meet its target if supply chain performance production line efficiencies don’t improve.

Suppliers are still not meeting their scheduled deliveries in the volume and price point the program needs – largely because they’re spread too thin building production parts, completing spare parts packages and fixing components in the fleet, Winter said. One way the program is looking to address this is by moving the repair work to the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps depots so that supplier can focus on building the parts.

The program office is also working with the Lockheed and Pratt to fine production‐line efficiencies and reduce the time it takes to build the airframe and engine. Winter noted that he wants to see more automation on both companies’ production lines, saying “the amount of automation that is not present is staggering.”

“They need to truly invest in their people and their capital…to increase the production flow and rate,” Winter said. “The faster you go, the less it cots. The faster you go, the less time you have to make mistakes.” [Que?]

Lockheed Martin spokesman Mike Friedman told Inside Defense in an April 9 email that today’s F‐35 production line features “more advanced manufacturing than any fighter jet production line in the world.” “As we continue to ramp up production, we are evaluating, investing and integrating additional automation to further improve efficiencies and reduce costs,” he added.

Lockheed has reduced the amount of touch labor on its production line by about 75 percent in recent years, Friedman noted. The company expects to increase production by 40 percent in 2019 with the delivery of 131 aircraft."

Source: http://www.jsf.mil/news/releases/PEO_Ap ... erview.pdf

[spazsinbad]

Lockheed Martin Says New F-35 Supplier Contracts Will Reduce Aircraft Costs
18 Apr 2019 Ben Werner

"F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter lead-contractor Lockheed Martin reconfigured a host of its contracts with its suppliers to lower the aircraft price tag, improve readiness and control ongoing maintenance costs. Lockheed Martin moved a raft of suppliers into performance-based logistics contracts or master repair agreements, with the idea being these longer-term commitments allow subcontractors to invest in their production processes, making their operations more efficient, resulting in lower costs for Lockheed Martin....

...Currently, Lockheed Martin states the newer production F-35 aircraft average a better than 60 percent mission capable rate and some operational squadrons report mission capable rates of near 70 percent. The goal is mission capable rates of 80 percent and by 2025 a $25,000 cost per-flight-hour, according to Lockheed Martin.

The Pentagon has for years sought to control the program’s costs as lawmakers on Capitol Hill have frequently balked at the F-35’s high sticker price and initial availability problems. The program had an “albatross of negativity,” Vice Adm. Mat Winter, the director of Joint Strike Fighter program office, said during an episode of the Proceedings podcast….

"The following is the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter Production Status from Vice Adm. Mat Winter, the director of Joint Strike Fighter program office.

As of April 2019, 386 F-35 air systems have been delivered, with about 20 percent going to international partners and customers. Ultimately, international partners and customers are expected to receive 780 F-35 aircraft. [do the math]

The U.S. military will eventually receive 2,456 divvied up among the service branches as follows:
• 1,763 F-35C fighters to the Air Force
• 353 F-35B fighters to the Marine Corps
• 67 F-35C fighters to the Marine Corps
• 273 F-35C fighters to the Navy"

PODCAST: Proceedings Podcast Episode 73 - PEO-JSF Director talks F-35 [EXCELLENT 58 mins]
https://soundcloud.com/naval-institute/ ... talks-f-35

Source: https://news.usni.org/2019/04/18/lockhe ... raft-costs

[spazsinbad]

Government watchdog finds more problems with F-35’s spare parts pipeline [Complibloodycated Best Read @ Source]
25 Apr 2019 Valerie Insinna

"WASHINGTON — Only about half of the F-35s worldwide were ready to fly during an eight-month period in 2018, with the wait for spare parts keeping jets on the ground nearly 30 percent of the time, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office. Over the past several years, the Defense Department has sought to improve mission capable rates by making improvements to the way it and F-35 contractor Lockheed Martin order, stockpile and repair spare parts. However, GAO’s findings imply that the situation may have gotten worse.

The GAO’s report, released April 25, investigated how spare parts shortages impacted F-35 availability and mission capable rates in 2018, with most data gathered between a May and November sustainment contract period.... [DETAILS]

...lack of improvement may make it more difficult for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps to hit an 80 percent mission capable rate by the end of fiscal year 2019, as mandated by then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis last fall. The military services stopped providing mission capable rates for aircraft last year, citing operational sensitivities. However, the data put forth by the GAO indicates that progress stagnated in the lead up to Mattis’ order.

From May to November 2018, mission capable rates — which measure how many planes possessed by a squadron can perform at least one of its missions — hovered around 50 percent for all versions of the F-35.

But when GAO assessed how many planes were fully mission capable — meaning that they were ready to fulfill all of their mission sets — all variants were far from meeting the 60 percent target. Only 2 percent of F-35C carrier takeoff and landing versions hit the fully mission capable mark, with the F-35Bs slightly better at 16 percent and the F-35A at 34 percent.

The GAO is skeptical that the services will be able to hit the 80 percent mission capable rate goal this year, and it is even more critical of the Defense Department’s plans to fund spares in future years....

…No silver bullet for parts shortage issues
Like all complicated problems, there is no single solution for the F-35 spare parts shortage, which is driven by a number of factors.... ...The F-35’s much-maligned Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) was designed to be able to track parts and automate the process of generating and expediting work orders, however, GAO notes that the system still requires manual workarounds from users in order to accomplish tasks....

...“DOD has identified specific parts shortages that are causing the greatest aircraft capability degradation, and it is developing short-term and long-term mitigation strategies to increase the quantity and reliability of these parts,” the report said. One such component is a coating used on the F-35’s canopy to help it maintain its stealth characteristics, which has been found to peel off at an unexpected rate, creating a heightened demand for canopies.

“To address these challenges, the program is looking for additional manufacturing sources for the canopy and is considering design changes,” the GAO stated. But — somewhat paradoxically — the F-35 has been flying for a long enough time that there is significant parts differences between the first jets that rolled off the production line to the most recently manufactured planes. The GAO found “at least 39 different part combinations across the fleet” on top of variations in software.

“According to the program office, DOD spent more than $15 billion to purchase F-35 aircraft from the earliest lots of production, specifically lots 2 through 5 … but it faces challenges in providing enough spare parts for these aircraft,” the report stated. One problem — the cannibalization of F-35 aircraft for parts — is partially user-inflicted….

...During an interview this February, Lt. Col. Toby Walker, deputy commander of the 33rd Maintenance Group, told Defense News that F-35 maintainers at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., had stopped pulling parts off a cannibalized F-35 and had seen some improvements to mission capable rates as a result. “We’re not continually moving parts from one aircraft to another. We’re relying on the program to provide our parts,” he said. “It was a very strategic plan to do that to increase aircraft availability by not sitting an aircraft down.”...

…[LM:] “These actions are beginning to deliver results and we’re forecasting additional improvement. Newer production aircraft are averaging greater than 60 percent mission capable rates, with some operational squadrons consistently at 70 percent,” the company said. “From a cost perspective, Lockheed Martin has reduced its portion of cost per aircraft per year by 15 percent since 2015. Our goal is to further reduce costs to $25,000 cost per flight hour by 2025, which is comparable to legacy aircraft while providing a generational leap in capability.”"

Source: https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/04 ... -pipeline/

[spazsinbad]

Another article about GAO report here:
http://www.airforcemag.com/Features/Pag ... eline.aspx

GAO REPORT page: https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-19-321

F-35 Aircraft Sustainment: DOD Needs to Address Substantial Supply Chain Challenges
GAO-19-321: Published: Apr 25, 2019. Publicly Released: Apr 25, 2019.

FULL REPORT PDF 81 pages: https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/698693.pdf (7.6Mb)

HIGHLIGHTS: https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/698692.pdf (117Kb)

"...Supporting Recent F-35 Shipboard Deployments
The F-35 program was not able to fill the Marine Corps’ afloat spares packages (packages of spare parts designed for aircraft stationed on ships) for the first F-35 deployments aboard the U.S.S. Essex and U.S.S. Wasp in 2018 in time to support those deployments. As a result, the F-35 program pulled spare parts from inventories at Marine Corps Stations Yuma, Arizona, and Iwakuni, Japan. Marine Corps officials stated that these actions reduced F-35 readiness in Iwakuni…"

[loke]

Looking at the projected CPFH for F-35 compared to the SH, it seems a mystery to me that the USN keep buying SH...? Why not SLEP existing birds and accelerate F-35C instead of buying more SH?

[SpudmanWP]

Why not SLEP existing birds and accelerate F-35C instead of buying more SH?

Ask the SecDef.. oh Wait.. nevermind......