Forum: General F-35 Forum

"Navy Vice Adm. David Venlet, the Pentagon official charged with finally getting the F-35 program on track and meeting expectations, gave a positive progress report Thursday at a finance conference in Arlington, Va.

Venlet, who came to the program after running the Navy's aviation and testing operations, has been openly critical -- in a polite, political way -- of the program management prior to his arrival. Venlet has beefed up the engineering capabilities of the Joint Program Office to get a better handle on the technical challenges.

Venlet said a lot of the technical problems, which he and other government officials have acknowledged still persist a decade into the program, are being addressed."

"Ah, fundamentals and reality. Relatively rare concepts in defense acquisition, where fantasy, wishful thinking historically abound."

Read more here: http://blogs.star-telegram.com/sky_talk ... rylink=cpy

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Interesting footnote from above article:

"...Venlet also said foreign interest in acqusition of the F-35 continues despite delays and rising costs, Formal proposals are being prepared for South Korea and Singapore has expressed interest.

Other countries have also reached out to the JSF program, according to Venlet.
"There are others out there," he said. "I'm not doing any marketing -- they're coming to us. What I think they need is to watch us perform more."

maus92 wrote:

"Navy Vice Adm. David Venlet, the Pentagon official charged with finally getting the F-35 program on track and meeting expectations, gave a positive progress report Thursday at a finance conference in Arlington, Va.

Venlet, who came to the program after running the Navy's aviation and testing operations, has been openly critical -- in a polite, political way -- of the program management prior to his arrival. Venlet has beefed up the engineering capabilities of the Joint Program Office to get a better handle on the technical challenges.

Venlet said a lot of the technical problems, which he and other government officials have acknowledged still persist a decade into the program, are being addressed."

"Ah, fundamentals and reality. Relatively rare concepts in defense acquisition, where fantasy, wishful thinking historically abound."

Read more here: http://blogs.star-telegram.com/sky_talk ... rylink=cpy

Bob Cox actually said the last you quoted -- not Venlet.

Would be interesting to get an assessment of what Venlet himself thinks they've discovered and fixed since he arrived -- that had not already been discovered and had fixes put in motion.

I note the program has recently established a VP post for software development. F-35 is all about software. Unmanned programs don't launch until they have a VP software. I could have told you that software would be a bottleneck back in the day, circa 1996. The 'why' F-35 didn't have VP-level software oversight and accountability is a mystery to me.

velocityvector wrote:

I note the program has recently established a VP post for software development. F-35 is all about software. Unmanned programs don't launch until they have a VP software. I could have told you that software would be a bottleneck back in the day, circa 1996. The 'why' F-35 didn't have VP-level software oversight and accountability is a mystery to me.

Not about VP level oversight -- all about process. AIUI, new guy came from space systems where threshold for sw anomalies is 'zero.'

Zero is the appropriate fielded error acceptance for mission critical wares. We need somebody on high to have their shares and future held at risk. Glad to see this movement.

quicksilver wrote:

maus92 wrote:

"Navy Vice Adm. David Venlet, the Pentagon official charged with finally getting the F-35 program on track and meeting expectations, gave a positive progress report Thursday at a finance conference in Arlington, Va.

Venlet, who came to the program after running the Navy's aviation and testing operations, has been openly critical -- in a polite, political way -- of the program management prior to his arrival. Venlet has beefed up the engineering capabilities of the Joint Program Office to get a better handle on the technical challenges.

Venlet said a lot of the technical problems, which he and other government officials have acknowledged still persist a decade into the program, are being addressed."

"Ah, fundamentals and reality. Relatively rare concepts in defense acquisition, where fantasy, wishful thinking historically abound."

Read more here: http://blogs.star-telegram.com/sky_talk ... rylink=cpy

Bob Cox actually said the last you quoted -- not Venlet.

Would be interesting to get an assessment of what Venlet himself thinks they've discovered and fixed since he arrived -- that had not already been discovered and had fixes put in motion.

The quoted material comes from the article. The source is referenced. Easy enough to figure out.

"Comes from the article" is not necessarily out of Venlet's mouth. Read the source doc again -- it is not from Venlet. Easy enough to figure out -- even for you.

quicksilver wrote:

"Comes from the article" is not necessarily out of Venlet's mouth. Read the source doc again -- it is not from Venlet. Easy enough to figure out -- even for you.

It's not even in quotation marks in the linked article.

quicksilver wrote:

"Comes from the article" is not necessarily out of Venlet's mouth. Read the source doc again -- it is not from Venlet. Easy enough to figure out -- even for you.

and

popcorn wrote:

It's not even in quotation marks in the linked article.

Here's the source doc for the lazy:

http://defense.aol.com/2012/03/08/f-35- ... lth-senso/

Within it, Otto Kreisher quotes Venlet:

""If we stick with the fundamentals, stay with reality, I'm very positive about this program," Venlet said."

Which Bob Cox includes in his post:

http://blogs.star-telegram.com/sky_talk ... rylink=cpy

that contains:

""If we stick with the fundamentals, stay with reality, I'm very positive about this program," Venlet said."

After which Bob Cox writes:

"Ah, fundamentals and reality. Relatively rare concepts in defense acquisition, where fantasy, wishful thinking historically abound."

Which I included in quotes in my post to indicate that I did not write it.

Which should be easy enough to figure out, but apparently not.

F-35 boss: We’ll fix the jet — just let us do it

"F-35 Lightning II program boss Vice Adm. David Venlet is bullish about the prospects for his super-jet, but he argues that he needs time and space to get all the kinks worked out.

Venlet told a defense conference last week that he can fix all those things you’ve heard about that are wrong with the different flavors of the F-35 — and some you may not have heard about — but he must be permitted to get on with it. More delays, restructuring or other changes would just gum up the works. His remarks were quoted in a note circulated Monday by the sponsors of the conference, Credit Suisse and defense consultant Jim McAleese.

Venlet said the F-35 flight test program is running as fast as it can, and of course it’s going to find problems — that’s the point. “These are normal teething problems that you always fight in fighter aircraft development,” he said, per Credit Suisse’s note. “This simply requires good old-fashioned systems engineering, to fix problems as we find them.”"

The post goes on to provide some detail on the status of various fixes to known problems.

"Of course, there’s a lot that can go wrong between now and the future. Even Venlet acknowledged “We’re not where I want us to be yet” on many key points in the program, and he and other officials also conceded that even if everything goes well, a lot of this is out of their hands. The F-35 has powerful enemies and you could make a case that it’s the victim of a perception gap — borderline or non-defense mainstream audiences only hear about it when it has more problems, which reinforces the perception that it’s just a boondoggle. But perceptions are significant, especially when there are hundreds of billions of dollars at stake.

“DoD is clearly concerned that another major performance gaffe could cause Congress to truncate the F-35 program in favor of ‘alternatives,’” the Credit Suisse analysts wrote."

Read more: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2012/03/12/f-35- ... z1ov2u1ig2
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Forum: General F-35 Forum

Venlet "politely critical" of past program mgmt