F-35 - Voldsomme drifts- og støttekostnader kan føre til dramatisk reduksjon i USAF`s kjøp - AW&ST

F-35 Sustainment Challenges Mount As Global Fleet Grows Lara Seligman When F-35 pilot Maj. Matt Strongin broke the plastic clip that connects his mask to his helmet, he was told that due to a backlog it would take two weeks to ship a replacement clip from Texas. In the meantime, Strongin, chief F-35 instructor at the 56th Training Sqdn. at Luke AFB, Arizona, was facing the prospect of two weeks on the ground. Because one of the pilots was on sick leave for two months, the unit had a helmet to spare. Strongin reasoned that he could just take the clip from the absent pilot’s helmet and screw it onto his own until the new part came in. But no, that would be against policy, he was told by higher ups. Only 51% of F-35s can fly on any given day Establishment of repair capabilities at military depots is six years behind schedule ALIS has excessive rate of false positives F-35 fleet set to triple by 2021 Strongin did not let the issue drop. He sent his request up the chain to the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO), which issued an “exception” to the policy and updated the software of the Autonomic Logistics and Information System (ALIS) to reflect the change. He was able to fly the next day. This specific problem was resolved quickly, but that is not often the case. Across the F-35 enterprise, operators are struggling with severe maintenance challenges of which the most critical are a spare parts shortage, insufficient repair capacity and excessive glitches in the ALIS logistics system that tracks the health of the fleet. Meanwhile at the production level, suppliers and skilled workers are making mistakes that slow down the manufacturing process before a complete aircraft even comes off the line. The sustainment challenges are emerging at a pivotal time for the program, with F-35 pilot training ramping up, international deliveries accelerating, and the Navy on track to achieve initial operational capability of its F-35Cs in 2019. As the global F-35 fleet is poised to triple by 2021, government and industry officials are facing mounting pressure to solve these challenges—and fast.  Reports emerged recently that the U.S. Air Force—the F-35’s single largest customer—would be forced to cut as many as 590 F-35s from the overall buy, or one-third of the force, if sustainment costs do not come down. The government-industry team must find a way to reduce operations and sustainment (O&S) costs or F-35 customers will have to make “tough decisions,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said ominously during a recent event in Washington. The Air Force is working with the JPO to reduce overall O&S costs by 38% over the next 10 years, or about $3.8 billion a year, Wilson says. And in the field, the Air Force aims to get the cost to sustain the F-35 down to that of sustaining a legacy F-16, according to Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein.

The F-35 enterprise faces significant sustainment challenges as the fleet is set to triple by 2021. Staff Sgt. Deana Heitzman/U.S. Air Force

“If you can afford to buy something but you have to keep it in the parking lot because you can’t afford to own and operate it, then it doesn’t do you much good,” says F-35 JPO Program Executive Officer Vice Adm. Mat Winter. Spare parts shortage The main F-35A training hubs, Luke and Eglin AFB, Florida, arguably are facing the most immediate challenge as the Air Force grapples with a critical pilot shortfall. At Eglin’s 33rd Fighter Wing, maintainers are constantly battling for spare parts. The backlog is so severe that it is threatening to delay graduating pilots, says U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida (R-Fla.). “We’ve gotten report after report that the parts are not available to ensure we have capable aircraft to meet the training syllabus,” Gaetz said during a March 7 hearing of the House Armed Services tactical air and land subcommittee. “While we’ve not been late in graduating any pilots yet, I’ve been told that we are rapidly approaching the inability to accomplish the mission.”  But it is not just the training bases that are impacted by the spare parts problem. Overall from January through Aug. 7, 2017, F-35s were unable to fly because they were awaiting parts on average about 22% of the time—more than double the Pentagon’s goal of 10%, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Overall, the average availability rate for the fleet is 51%, although the reliability of the newer aircraft is drastically higher than the old jets (70-75% versus 40-50%).  For the U.S. Marine Corps, the operational F-35 squadron based at Iwakuni, Japan, also has a big supply problem, according to Lt. Gen. Steven Rudder, deputy commandant for aviation. The availability rate in Marine Attack Sqdn. 121 is in the mid-50% range, he told lawmakers March 7. On the other hand, on “a good day” the F-35 availability at MCAS Yuma, Arizona, is 90%, he says. Compounding the spare parts shortage, the GAO found, the F-35 enterprise does not have enough capacity to repair components “in a timely manner,” because the establishment of repair capabilities at the military depots is six years behind schedule. Initially planned to be completed by 2016, some capabilities have now been delayed until 2022, according to the watchdog agency. This creates a domino effect on parts availability, Lt. Gen. Jerry Harris, Jr., the Air Force deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements, told the subcommittee.

F-35s were unable to fly because they were awaiting parts about 22% of the time from January through Aug. 7, 2017,  according to the GAO. Credit: Michael McCool

“We are late standing up our depots to actually turn and fix those parts, so we’ve been going back to the original equipment manufacturers to get new parts most of the time rather than fix them,” Harris said. “So those parts themselves are stacking up.” The JPO hopes to fix the problem by accelerating the organic government depot repair capacity, primarily to fix subsystems such as tires, wheels and avionics, so the supply chain can focus on spare parts and new production parts, says Winter. This capability will be established in fiscal 2018, he says. The JPO also spent $1.4 billion in fiscal 2017 to increase spare part purchases, build up repair capacity and improve the speed of repairs, according to spokesman Joe DellaVedova. ALIS glitches ALIS, the maintenance hub of the F-35 enterprise, was designed to ease the burden on maintainers by increasing automation. But today the system, which is based on a 1995 architecture, actually is adding to their workload. ALIS has an excessive rate of “false positives,” where the system mistakenly tells the maintainers a certain part is broken. Even more troubling, each service continues to rely heavily on contractor-provided information technology experts, rather than service personnel, to manipulate ALIS’s intricate software and complex databases, according to the subcommittee chairman, U.S. Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio). In the field, maintainers must rely on inefficient workarounds and manual tracking processes when ALIS is not performing as it should, officials say. In some of the Air Force’s maintenance units, for example, airmen are assigned to tackle ALIS glitches as their primary job, says Harris, which was certainly not in the original plan. “This has a significant impact to our already stretched maintenance workforce, negatively affecting flight-line operations and workforce development,” Harris said in his written testimony. “I remain concerned about the future of ALIS and the impact it has on our growing fleet.” The 1990s architecture is driving “just unacceptable” usability and interface concerns for the warfighter, Winter acknowledges.  The newest version of ALIS, ALIS 3.0, planned for fielding in April, will be a significant improvement on the current system, Winter says. The services are working with the JPO to make ALIS more user-friendly and to improve cybersecurity.  “We are on track to assess the re-architecture plan to address all of those usability issues, stabilize the software and then work with our U.S. warfighters to assure that ALIS will be scalable and flexible for the long future,” Winter says. Quality escape issues Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin’s production line at Fort Worth, is having its own problems. The rate of mistakes made by suppliers or skilled workers during the manufacturing process is too high, Winter says. “There are times when a part comes and it doesn’t fit right, or a skilled worker dings a part and there is a scrape . . . that slows things down,” Winter says, calling such events “scrap, repair rework” (SRR) incidences. “We want to reduce the SRR incidence so we can more agiley, more effectively, move aircraft down the production line.” He emphasizes that these defects are identified and corrected before the government accepts an aircraft. Such incidences have been reduced by 45% since tracking began during low-rate initial production (LRIP) Lot 6, but the program office is not satisfied, Winter says. These quality-escape issues sometimes slip past production into the field. The Pentagon halted deliveries of the F-35 for 30 days in fall 2017 after it discovered corrosion around fasteners during routine maintenance at Hill AFB, Utah. And in 2016, faulty insulation in the fuel pipes caused a slowdown in deliveries. Drawing on senior Defense Department quality experts, the JPO has assembled a quality review team to evaluate F-35 enterprise practices and improve quality management processes due to “recent quality escapes,” Winter says, although he did not specify which events prompted the move. Lockheed is now averaging about 12% time required for SRR and is on track to reach 9% by LRIP Lot 14, which is on par with industry standards, according to company spokesman Mike Friedman. “The issue I have with SRR is we weren’t tracking it to the level of understanding I needed, and when we did I found it had an effect on the flow of aircraft,” Winter says. “The good news is Lockheed Martin is committed to reducing SRRs. . . . it is just not coming down as fast as I’d like it to come down.” “Lockheed Martin is investing in several initiatives to lower the industry component of F-35 sustainment costs, and we continue to partner with the Joint Program Office to reduce overall operations and sustainment costs, Friedman says. “We expect to see a similar cost-reduction trend as we’ve seen with production as the sustainment program matures and the operational fleet grows.   “Through economies of scale, systems improvements and cost-reduction projects, we expect to significantly enhance readiness and lower costs.”