Military Superiority: JSF support takes shape | ADM Jul 2010
Last year’s announcement that the ADF would be among the first to order the F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter has triggered a ramp-up in the activities and infrastructure required to support the F-35A in Australian service.
Gregor Ferguson | Sydney
Last year’s announcement that the ADF would order 14 F-35A Lightning IIs has initiated a gradual build-up of the training and sustainment environment required to support these aircraft in service.
The 14 aircraft are being acquired as part of initial annual Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) lots, with the first two coming from LRIP6 for delivery in 2014.
The final four of these initial aircraft will be delivered to Australia in 2017 to conduct Australian-specific Initial Operational Test.
The remaining aircraft will be acquired as part of the Full Rate Production (FRP) program.
This represents a subtle but important shift from the original delivery schedule which would have seen a faster acquisition rate with four aircraft delivered in 2013, followed by a quick ramp-up to deliveries of 15 aircraft a year.
This more graduated ramp-up means Australia will acquire fewer aircraft during the LRIP phase, where annual orders instead of multi-year procurements means they are likely to be more expensive.
As Defence points out, shifting the program to the right in this way is also made possible by the introduction of the F/A-18F Super Hornet ‘bridging fighter’ which provides some flexibility in RAAF force planning which didn’t exist three years ago.
According to Defence sources, the first 10 Australian aircraft will be delivered to the JSF Integrated Training Centre (ITC) at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
Once there, the first cadres of Australian pilots, instructors and maintainers will undergo training before relocating back to Australia to stand up the first RAAF F-35A squadron at Williamtown in 2018.
The first batches of Australian pilots will arrive at Eglin in 2013 to begin their conversion and then instructor training.
Australia already has two maintainers at Edwards AFB supporting F-35A development flight-testing, so the RAAF’s corporate knowledge about the aircraft is growing steadily.
The other four aircraft ordered in this initial batch will be delivered to Australia in 2017 for Australian-specific Operational Test & Evaluation (OT&E) and will require Defence and Lockheed Martin to stand up the initial sustainment and training pipelines which will support the F-35A in this country.
By the time these four aircraft are actually delivered the US Marines will have been using the F-35B operationally for five years Initial Operational Capability (IOC) planned for 2012 with Block 2 aircraft), while the USAF and USN should have been using the F-35A and F-35C respectively for a year (IOC currently planned for 2016).
For Australia’s purposes the F-35A should therefore be a relatively mature aircraft.
The RAAF doesn’t plan to duplicate the OT&E carried out in the US or re-validate the qualification and clearance flying that has already been done by the US operators.
However, there will need to be some end to end testing of the aircraft and weapon system, both to demonstrate the capability and to explore and develop the multiple interfaces between the F-35A itself and its training and sustainment system.
The latter is embodied in the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), managed by Lockheed Martin, which will be the single global network controlling the logistics support for all F-35 operators.
The Australian ‘node’ of the ALIS, along with the simulators and training materials for both aircrew and ground crew, needs to be in place in 2016 to support the start of OT&E over here.
The ALIS is already in operation, supporting the flight test fleet at Ft Worth, Edwards AFB and the US Navy’s Patuxent River flight test centre.
And it is being extended to Eglin AFB where three early production F-35Cs are planned to be delivered late this year to allow the first cadre of US Marine pilots and maintainers to commence training.
In fact, the first qualified US maintainers graduated from the ITC at Eglin in June 2010.
From Australia’s point of view the key questions on simulators, spares and logistics infrastructure relate to how quickly the capacity needs to be built up to meet the increasing training and operational demand.
This question is being answered through the annual Partner Procurement Requests (PPR), starting with LRIP lot 6, which is under way at present.
In the unlovely language of US program management, Defence needs to ‘definitise’ its requirements for LRIP 6 two years before delivery.
Two years before that, however, all partners requirements need to be brought together in a Consolidated Procurement Request (CPR), allowing long-lead contracts being placed the following year.
Hence, ADM was told, the need for Defence to go to government late last year with a business case for acquiring the first 14 aircraft: this allowed time to get the first PPR (covering the first two aircraft) under way and ‘definitised’ in time for delivery in 2014.
Defence’s current plans include enough of the training and support infrastructure to sustain the initial OT&E activity, and to enable a smooth ramp-up as the F-35A fleet in Australia grows.
There will be two concurrent streams of training activity for the RAAF, at least initially: until about 2018 (the exact date remains to be fixed) the service will contribute aircraft, instructors and maintainers to the ITC at Eglin on a pro-rata basis, alongside the US and other partner nations.
This arrangement mirrors the former Tri-national Tornado Training Establishment (TTTE) in the UK in many respects where the three Tornado Interdictor/Strike (IDS) variant partner countries, Germany, Italy and the UK, contributed aircraft, maintainers and instructors to a shared conversion and tactical training centre at RAF Cottesmore.
With both Italy and the UK now major partners in the JSF program, their experience is likely to shape the development of the ITC at Eglin.
At the same time, training will get under way in Australia so that when the final batch of Australian graduates from Eglin arrive back at Williamtown there is a seamless transition to a locally based training pipeline delivering the same skill and proficiency levels.
By 2018 the Australian-based training pipeline needs to be working at full capacity.
The ALIS will be stood up in Australia to support the four OT&E aircraft to be delivered in 2017.
This will grow as production deliveries hit their stride through 2017-18.
The majority of the training and logistics infrastructure required for the main body of 58 aircraft to be delivered from then onwards, including flight and maintenance simulators and spares, will be ordered concurrently with the aircraft themselves through the PPR/CPR process, ADM was told.
This infrastructure will eventually need to be expanded to support the final batch of 28 F-35As which are scheduled for delivery in 2022 and 2023 to replace the Super Hornets that are progressively arriving in RAAF Base Amberley.
The PPR for these aircraft is expected to be part of the second Multi-Year buy, which sets a timetable for RAAF and Federal cabinet decision-making on whether or not they are required (or might be replaced by another aircraft type such as an unmanned combat air vehicle), and the withdrawal schedule for the Super Hornet “bridging fighter”.
This has already been extended by at least a couple of years: originally scheduled to retire in 2020, ADM understands the Super Hornets will now remain in service through 2023.
The Super Hornets were to have a 10-year life, but now have a 13-year life at a minimum.
Unknown unknowns
The key unknown at present is the exact detail of how the ALIS will be implemented and will function in Australia.
Lockheed Martin will have global responsibility for sustainment of the F-35 fleet and will exercise this through a mix of direct presence and local partners.
The exact scope of the F-35A support to be delivered in Australia is still being settled, along with the metrics of how the support will be delivered, managed and costed.
One of the factors shaping the F-35A sustainment environment in Australia will be the RAAF’s experience with the Super Hornet.
As well as being a software-driven aircraft with a formidable sensor suite, the Super Hornet embodies a range of Low-Observable (LO) technologies and treatments.
The RAAF has faced challenges in understanding fully the capabilities of the Super Hornet, and then exploiting these to maximum effect in an Australian operational context; maintaining and repairing the LO elements of the aircraft; and managing an ITARs-compliant training, maintenance and operating environment for the Super Hornet, with the additional security demands this imposes.
All of these factors will help inform the decisions still to be made on how the F-35A will be sustained in Australia, and how the associated infrastructure will be configured.
Some of these decisions may not be too far away.
Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems Australia have signed an agreement for the latter to act as the preferred platform sustainment provider in Australia on Lockheed Martin’s behalf.
From BAE Systems’s point of view this is an important development because it is a mechanism for continuity between its current work on “classic” Hornet support at RAAF Base Williamtown and Tindal and the introduction of the F-35A, which will also be initially Williamtown- and Tindal-based, before replacing the Super Hornets in RAAF Amberley.
Early establishment of industry arrangements is particularly important from Defence’s point of view because it provides the trigger for establishing essential sustainment machinery in Australia.
Although Australia will be one of the earliest international partners to introduce the F-35A, it will still trail the US Marines, USAF and USN.
And thanks to its presence in the JSF Joint Program Office in Washington, its small team of maintainers at Edwards AFB, and its sustainment representative in Fort Worth it will enjoy significant insight into the sustainment regime for the US’s aircraft and a benchmark against which to measure in-country sustainment proposals and performance.
The burden of satisfying Defence’s sustainment requirements falls ultimately on Lockheed Martin as part of its JSF Autonomic Logistics Global Sustainment (ALGS) system.
The ‘Team Australia’ approach to Australian industry’s involvement in the JSF program - aimed to maximise Australian industry involvement in the program - means that Defence has had plenty of opportunity to guide and shape that in-country sustainment and training presence.
While Defence hadn’t commented at the time of writing on the Lockheed Martin/BAE Systems Australia agreement, it’s unlikely that it could have got so far without addressing and to the extent possible at this early stage satisfying the RAAF’s emerging requirements.
While Lockheed Martin has ultimate responsibility for overall JSF Air System support, engine support will be provided under Performance-Based contracts with Pratt & Whitney in the case of the F135 and Rolls-Royce/GE in the case of the F136.
The detail of how engine support will be provided and by whom, and how the chain of responsibility reaches back to Lockheed Martin, is still to be settled.
Australia has an interesting choice to make: the F136 won’t be ready until after it has ordered the first two (or possibly six) aircraft.
Thereafter, the RAAF will have a choice – at least, in theory.
In reality, it may need to make its engine choice earlier than this in order to allow support and training infrastructure to be established in-country.
It’s unlikely that any F-35 operator other than the US will want a mixed engine fleet for the two engine types are different enough that they would require expensive duplicate sustainment infrastructure.
While Pratt & Whitney’s F135 is the lead engine on the JSF program, there’s nothing preventing the RAAF from selecting the F136 (once it has demonstrated its performance and reliability in the flight test program) for the bulk of its fleet, and retrofitting it to its early F-35As.
The two engines are designed to be form, fit and function replacements for each other so, as long as the investment required to operate a small fleet of F135-engined aircraft isn’t too onerous, there should be no technical difficulties in changing from one engine type to the other.
A suitable engine support regime overseen by Lockheed Martin might make this possible at an acceptable cost.
Finally, it’s probably not too early to speculate on how the F-35A training system and the RAAF’s new basic and advanced flying training system, to be implemented under Project Air 5428, will affect each other.
To be frank, given the investment in training needs analysis by Lockheed Martin and the JSF partner nations, and the resulting investment in training devices and syllabus, it’s unlikely Air 5428 will have any significant effect on F-35A conversion and tactical training.
The same may not be true in reverse, however.
By the time Air 5428 becomes operational, in about 2018, Australia will have had five years’ experience of training F-35A pilots and will understand quite clearly the thresholds required in terms of pilot skill and aptitude.
This is likely to have a very direct effect on the advanced flying training syllabus developed under Air 5428, and especially the nature of the transition from 2 Flying Training School at Pearce to the Lead-In Fighter (LIF) syllabus at Pearce and Williamtown.
So it’s likely the F-35A training system will have a fundamental shaping effect on upstream pilot training.
We should know how successful that shaping process has been in about 2019, when the first graduates of the new training system prepare to convert onto the F-35A.
F-35A ground test article completes fatigue testing early
The F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) ground test aircraft has successfully completed full-scale static testing, with zero structural failures, five months ahead of schedule and in just 295 days - less than half the time of legacy programs, according to Lockheed Martin.
The static fatigue test was conducted on airframe AG-1 at BAE Systems’ Structural & Dynamic Test Laboratory in Brough, England.
During testing, the strength and stability of the aircraft structure were verified to 150 percent of design limits or 13.5 G with 174 critical load conditions applied to the airframe to evaluate its structural integrity.
The tests began in August 2009 and were completed faster than the record-setting pace previously established by the F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing static test program.
First F-35 with mission systems arrives at Pax River
The first mission systems-equipped F-35 Lightning II test aircraft has joined the test fleet at US Naval Air Station Patuxent River.
The F-35B, serial BF-4, is the fourth F-35 to begin testing at Patuxent River.
The F-35B variant will be employed by the US Marine Corps, the UK Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, and the Italian Air Force and Navy, but its mission systems and sensors are common to the F-35A and –C CTOL and aircraft Carrier Variants.
“Now, in addition to validating the aerodynamic capabilities and flying qualities of these jets, we will have the opportunity to confirm the performance of what we expect to be a transcendent avionics capability - the most capable ever in a fighter,” said Tom Burbage, Lockheed Martin executive vice president and general manager of F-35 Program Integration.
The second mission system equipped Lightning II, F-35A serial AF-3, is due to start flight testing at Edwards AFB this month.
A fifth F-35B is expected to join the fleet later this year at Patuxent River, along with the first F-35C carrier variant which made its maiden flight in June.
This aircraft also incorporated the first production-configured Pratt & Whitney F135 engine.
The F-35C is optimized for carrier suitability, with a larger wing and control surfaces for safe, precise handling and low approach speeds to the carrier, excellent over-the-nose visibility and additional structural strength for at-sea operations.
The aircraft’s stealth materials are designed to withstand harsh carrier conditions with minimal maintenance.