Getting the NACC

In 2002, much of this process was cut short when the Howard government signed on as a partner nation in the development and demonstration phase of the F-35 JSF program alongside the US, UK and seven other nations.

In 2006 the commonwealth further committed to the JSF by joining the production phase of the project. As a partner nation, Australia has deep insight into the success or otherwise of the aircraft’s development and test program, as well as giving Australian industry better opportunities to bid for design and manufacturing work during the development and production phase of the program.

A 2008 Air Combat Capability Review by the then new Labor government confirmed the JSF as the most suitable replacement for the F-111 and F/A-18, and a requirement for about 100 JSFs was laid out in the 2009 Defence White Paper and follow-on 10 year Defence Capability Plan. On November 24 last year, the government approved funding of $3.2bn for the first 14 F-35As for the RAAF to be acquired from 2014.

Nacc Footprint

The NACC office is expanding its footprint as the project matures, with personnel based in the US and various sites in Australia.

“We’ve got people involved in a couple of roles in Washington,” AVM Harvey explained. “In the embassy we have two people who assist with industry, and their main job is to be on the ground to largely assist the SMEs (small to medium enterprises) in Australia who don’t have representatives with some of the marketing activities and ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) issues. We’ve also got two DSTO (Defence Science & Technology Organisation) people there – one of them looks at mission systems and the other at vehicle systems largely. And then we have two air force people – one of whom is a logistician who is working on the JSF supply chain for sustainment, and the other is a maintainer who engages with the US on that.

“Inside the JPO (JSF Project Office) itself we have a national deputy who is my direct representative into the JPO, and he has a deputy who is a pilot,” AVM Harvey continued. “As well as that we have six cooperative project personnel who work 100 per cent for the JSF project. One of them is heading up airworthiness for all nine countries which is good, and we have people there to help negotiate on initial LRIP (Low Rate Initial Production) contracts, working on the logistics information system, and a couple of DSTO people working on structural fatigue and those sorts of things.”

Back in Canberra, the NACC office comprises about 40 people, including DMO personnel working on the acquisition and sustainment part of the project. “We also have operational requirements people from CDG (Capability Development Group),” AVM Harvey added. “There are pilots, we have a Warrant Officer looking after maintainability, and we have another pilot looking at the operational test program, plus we also have DSTO people here too.”

The Air 6000 project to acquire the aircraft and its support infrastructure hasn’t substantially changed structurally despite the small initial order. The November approval is for an initial stage of the combined Phase 2A/2B, with the next 60 or so aircraft slotting in to an additional stage of that Phase, and the remaining 25 aircraft into the follow-on Phase 2C.

“The plan is to come back in 2012 for the rest of the aircraft and associated systems,” AVM Harvey explained. “The November decision is really a first step in the approval as opposed to changing the structure of the project. We expect the aircraft to flow along as previously approved, but we’ll come back in 2012 when we have more confidence in the exact price of the aircraft itself. In the meantime we’ll go out and do all the facilities design work and environmental studies, so by 2012 we’ll have that nailed down very tightly.”

At its peak, NACC expects to have a staff of about 110 not including operational test personnel. “We’ll never get more than 20 in the US, and in our office here we’ll go up to about 90 which is relatively small for such a large project, but it’s one of the benefits of being a small partner in a global project.

“We’re a three per cent player,” he added, referring to the 100 aircraft Australia plans to procure from an estimated 3000 build run. “Things like future airworthiness which we plan to do through the JPO, we’ll provide three per cent manning to do that, but get 100 per cent of the benefit. And we’ll only pay about half a per cent of the development of the aircraft.”

Operational Requirements

The JSF was designed to meet the objectives laid out in the Operational Requirements Document, or ORD, as specified by the original partners, the US services and the UK, in the late 1990s. Subsequent partners have jumped on board the project after studying the ORD and determining that the aircraft also meets their needs.

As part of the aircraft’s development and through life capability, software loads will be delivered in a series of Blocks which will each provide an increase in capability over the previous block. “Block 3 is the one that meets the ORD specification of the JSF program, that’s the end of the SDD (System Design & Development) phase,” AVM Harvey told us. “If you look at Block 3 at the end of the development phase, we’ve done an assessment of that which led towards the project approval, but also we are providing input into that on an ongoing basis.

Now we’re already starting to look at what’s in Block 4 in terms of what to do for future upgrades for the aircraft. We’ll do our operations research work within the JPO to define what’s in that release. But even though we’re a fairly small player, if we do good research work and put it in there, we can convince them to say, ‘well, we think we should do this rather than that’, so you get to shape the future as well.”

Block upgrades are expected to be released every two years or so, and will cost in the realm of US$1 billion each to develop. As a three per cent stakeholder in the program, Australia will be expected to fund three per cent, or roughly US$30m, of each Block upgrade that it subscribes to. Although it is an option for a partner or FMS operator to not participate in a Block upgrade, that country risks being left behind by the aircraft’s development as further Blocks are released. “A country can drop out of the system at any time, but because you’ve got a global sustainment system, it would be very hard to support it yourself,” AVM Harvey explained. “So if you choose not to do an upgrade, you’d become a bit of an orphan operator, and if you want to get back into it at a later time, you’d have to pay to catch up anyway. The good thing is with such a large fleet, for us it’d be far cheaper to pay the three per cent cost of getting to Block 6 than standing alone at Block 5 for example and then trying to cover orphan operator costs. That’s the efficiencies of being part of such a large program.”

Block 3 will be the version the RAAF will declare Initial Operational Capability (IOC) with in about 2018 after it completes OT, but that software load is not currently slated to come with a maritime strike (MarStrike) weapon which is a key requirement for the RAAF. In the interim, fast jet MarStrike options for the ADF include allocating the task solely to the 24 Super Hornets which will be armed with AGM-154C-1 JSOW C1 precision glide bombs; risking a capability gap until a naval strike missile becomes available on JSF; or the possibility of Australia paying to bring forward a naval strike capability earlier.

“At the moment we’re looking at whether it’s Block 4 or Block 5 the maritime strike missile will come in,” said AVM Harvey. “But maritime strike is a whole spectrum of capabilities. The CTOL (F-35A) aircraft itself at Block 3 will be capable of conducting maritime strike – it’s got the systems and the sensors and the modes to be able to do it, but the only weapon it will have at that time for a moving ship is a laser guided bomb. But the US Navy CV (F-35C) variant will have the JSOW C1 at Block 3; all the mission systems will be done, but in the core JSF program the JSOW won’t yet have the clearances done off the CTOL.

“The logic of the 14 aircraft was, we needed 10 aircraft in the US for training from 2014, and the other four in Australia for OT.”

“Now if we wanted to, we could choose to do the JSOW clearances off the CTOL ourselves. The weapons bay is the same and the mission systems are the same; the only difference is the wing (and the aerodynamic effects on the weapon at release). The SDB II (125kg Small Diameter Bomb) will come along on Block 4 which has a seeker head and will be quite a good maritime strike capability, and for the longer term we’re also looking at the JSM (Kongsberg’s Joint Strike Missile) from Norway and have already done some work with them on integration.” Norway has largely taken the lead on the JSM because of their own maritime strike requirements, but also because it’s an air launched derivative of an existing surface launched weapon and promises long term benefits for their local industry.

“The Blocks are more or less frozen now, but things may still move around a little,” AVM Harvey explained. “The ORD can only be changed at the very highest level in the US and UK because they own that document, but there might be some minor tweaks as we go through. For example the USAF gave up the WCMD (Wind Corrected Munition Dispenser) for the SDB I because they felt the SDB was much better. You can carry eight of them plus two AMRAAMs without giving away big chunks of capability, so it’s only swapping capability where necessary.”

But while the Block upgrades will largely be software based, there will be the need to change out hardware through the life of the aircraft. “We’ll keep going through software a majority of the time, but eventually we’ll get to a point where we need to change out a core processor or something,” AVM Harvey added. “That’s been facilitated as well by using open systems architecture and those sorts of things. The software is all C++ (a common software language) so it’ll be around forever. Our DSTO guys use standard commercial processors and the middle ware layer is commercial software, and above that they’re using commercial as much as they can.

“The hardware tech refreshes will be independent of Block upgrades. Usually it will just be cards, and the hardware side is fairly straightforward, but sometimes you have to go back and look at all the mission software as well. We’ve already been through the first refresh and that went pretty smoothly. The hardware testing is done in a multi-layered approach, first at the individual card level, then they’ll do it at the processor level, then at the MSIL (Mission Systems Integration Laboratory), then at the CATBird (737 flying testbed), and then at the aircraft itself.”

Why 14 Aircraft?

The decision to go with 14 aircraft in the initial buy was driven by three main factors – the cost and schedule uncertainties surrounding the program at present; the expected remaining service life of the RAAF’s F/A-18A/B Hornets; and the number of aircraft needed to train the initial cadre of pilots and conduct OT.

“The logic of the 14 aircraft was, we needed 10 aircraft in the US for training from 2014, and the other four in Australia for OT,” explained AVM Harvey. “That pretty much aligns with where you step into the planned multi-year buy (MYP) – up until then you’re in single year low rate buys, then after that you’re into the multi year buy which is about 1000 aircraft. There’s no advantage to go with more aircraft, and no disadvantage to get less.

“We expect our first aircraft will be from LRIP 6, and the aim is for all 14 to come from LRIPs 6, 7 and 8, but a few of them may bubble over into the first MYP depending on the cash flow and the US’s demand.

“We really needed the decision for the 14 aircraft sorted when we did so we could start planning the life of the classic Hornets. Having 14 F-35s is enough to have the confidence to start planning the withdrawal of the classics – if we’d only taken a couple we really wouldn’t know what to do with the classics, so that was a big part of the process.

“The number was also driven in part by the need for training aircraft and OT – if you look at 14 it’s almost a squadron of aircraft as well, although we’re not planning on using these aircraft in an operational outcome as a functional unit initially. However in an extreme case you could use them as a squadron which gives us enough confidence to start standing down the classics.”

With plans to only retain the Super Hornets for little more than a decade, these aircraft will likely be run pretty hard during their brief service lives with the RAAF and, because they’re all dual seaters and assuming the F-35 comes in on time, may allow the early retirement of some of the tiring F/A-18Bs used for ab initio and currency training.

The then-year A$3.2 billion dollar amount announced in November covers the 14 aircraft along with a contingency and a conservative exchange rate. It also includes what the RAAF will need to do for OT in Australia and initial training in the US, all the facilities design work at Williamtown and other bases, the IT integration work, running the project office, the costs of the work DSTO will do, and some industry support activities.

Moving Forward

In order for the NACC team to be confident enough to recommend to government that Australia orders additional F-35s in 2012, the project will need to achieve some critical milestones in the interim, especially in light of the slow ramp-up in flight test. “On the JSF project side, we expect a lot more flight test to be done by then,” AVM Harvey explained. “By about mid this year all of the test aircraft should be done and out there and hopefully flying, so we should see a very quick ramp-up in terms of that. The big project anchor will be seeing the US Marine Corps achieve IOC in 2012, and if there’s any slip to it we’ll know well before then. We’ll also have another three years of costs known, and will be very close to a firm price. We’ll also see the later blocks of software flying by then. On our side, we’ll have done the environmental studies, we’ll have done all the detailed design for the facilities, we’re funded now for the core part of the IT integration and any additional to that we will have done.”

In terms of the facilities required for the JSF, the RAAF has already embarked down that road by designing the new facilities for the Super Hornets at Amberley with the even more advanced F-35 in mind. “We’ll learn those lessons from Amberley and roll them into Williamtown as well,” said AVM Harvey. “We’ll probably eventually replace the Super Hornets with JSF, and the facilities at Amberley have already taken that into account. We’ve also had quite a few site surveys and integration studies out here already with Lockheed Martin and various other players scoping out what needs to be done, and these will be rolled into the facilities design as well.”

In the case at Williamtown, the majority of the JSF facilities will be new. Interestingly, AVM Harvey revealed that NACC in conjunction with Air Combat Group (ACG) and Air Force Headquarters is working through issues such as whether to combine squadrons, or whether to combine the Systems Project Office (SPO) into ACG’s Force Element Group (FEG) headquarters, as well as other structure options.

While there is no firm date set for the retirement of the Super Hornets, the plan for the Bridging Air Combat Capability was for the aircraft to be retained for a decade from FOC at the end of 2012, taking them out to late 2022 at this stage. “It will be a business case where we look at what it costs to run the Super and JSF as opposed to just JSFs, whether there will be a requirement for a mid life upgrade of the Supers, what the threat environment will look like at the time, and whether we go down the (conversion of up to 12 Supers to) EA-18G path or not, so you can do that business case to see when the appropriate time to change over is. The key thing is you don’t have to make a decision on that now – the ultimate aim is to get to a single aircraft fleet of fifth generation fighters because of the capability, but also because of the operating costs of a single fleet.”

In the interim period between 2014 and 2021, the RAAF will be operating three fast jet types; classic Hornets, Super Hornets and the F-35s, although the F-35s will remain in the US until 2018 and will come under a pooled fleet support base.

In the shorter term, the NACC office will submit the RAAF’s first PPR later this year, a process whereby each partner goes to the JPO and lays out how many aircraft and what support and training equipment they’ll need starting from LRIP 6. Through the JPO, the PPR will evolve into what’s called a Consolidated Procurement Request (CPR) comprising the PPRs of all nine partner countries, which in turn will be rolled into the requirements of the US services for the cost negotiation process with Lockheed Martin.

“After that we’ll then go on contract in early 2011 for the long lead items like the big chunks of titanium and those sorts of things which have to be ordered early, and then what they call ‘definitise’ the contract which will happen a year or so after that.”

The remaining 86 or so aircraft are planned to be delivered at a rate of about 15 aircraft a year over a five year period from calendar years 2017 to 2021 as part of the first five year MYP batch. “We basically need that decision in 2012, so you’re in to 2013 to start engagement, and it’s about a four year lead time to put in the PPR until you start getting aircraft,” AVM Harvey explained. “Working back from wanting the classic Hornets out of service by 2021, we will obviously need to achieve JSF Full Operational Capability (FOC) by then. In order to achieve FOC, we’ll need to achieve IOC in 2018, so we’ll need to get our first aircraft in about 2014 so we can train people and conduct OT.

And to get those first aircraft in 2014, we need to start formal engagement to buy them this year, so that’s the logic that drove our timing.
“We’ll need 16 aircraft to form the first squadron. The aircraft will be in place, the support equipment, weapons, the training environment will be ready to support the aircraft, the people will be trained, and we will have completed OT to support that before we declare IOC. We think in the longer term a squadron will average about 17 aircraft – 12 on line, four for short term maintenance, and one in longer term maintenance. But in the early days we can probably achieve that with 16 aircraft, and those aircraft should be ready to be deployed on operations as soon as they arrive if required.”

Operational Test

Even though the F-35 will be comprehensively tested by lead operators such as the US Marine Corps and USAF, the RAAF will conduct an OT program of its own to ensure the aircraft fits seamlessly into the ADF’s future order of battle.

“The development test is done by Lockheed Martin to prove the aircraft meets the specs of the ORD,” said AVM Harvey. “Beyond that, the USAF and US Navy will conduct OT on Block 2 from 2011 because they want to get IOC for USMC from 2012. We’ll be part of that but to what extent we’re in discussions now – we’re looking at maybe contributing a tanker towards OT or something like that, and we’ll get as much involvement as we can because the more that’s done there, the less that needs to be done here.

“When we do the testing in Australia it won’t be so much the aircraft as such, it’s more testing the integration of the JSF into the Australian environment, both the ground systems and the air systems. The day we fly the JSFs out to Australia in 2017 they could be fully loaded up with weapons and ready to go, but what we’ve got to confirm is are all the ground systems in place ready to support the JSF and talk to it, can it talk to other air platforms, and making sure all weapons work. In fact, we’re soon sending two of our own people over to Edwards AFB to be part of the development test program – a ground technician and a Flight Test Engineer – and we want to flow that sort of thing through to OT as well.”

The RAAF’s first 10 training aircraft will either go to Eglin AFB in Florida or Luke AFB in Arizona where they’ll be part of a much larger pool of JSFs from the US and other partner nations all training up their first instructor pilots. “We’re looking at the actual pooling arrangement at the moment.” AVM Harvey explained. “We’ve got to look at the aircraft and the pilots and the maintainers, do we just mix them into a big group, so we’re still working through all that.”

The RAAF is yet to decide which squadron will receive the first F-35s, especially with a possible force restructure to be conducted as part of the aircraft’s introduction. “The aircraft part is easy – the squadron numbers is the hard part,” AVM Harvey said. “The CAF (Chief of Air Force) will make that choice along with ACG, but there’s a whole range of considerations there in terms of which aircraft are the appropriate ones to go first, and who has what role and can pick up first – we’ll just provide advice. OT in Aust will be conducted by ACG, but we’ll make sure everything is in place to hand it off to air force for OT.”

Controversy

The JSF program has been rocked of late by a series of unflattering independent reports by a Pentagon Joint Estimating Team (JET), the US Navy’s NAVAIR office, and the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), all pointing to potential cost, technical and schedule blowouts in the project. While these processes remain outside of the control of Australia and the other partner nations, AVM Harvey remains philosophical about the program’s future.

“The JET report was conducted by the US as one of many inputs into their annual review of the project,” he explained. “Every year the big projects have to go to the US Congress and explain what they expect the costs and schedules are going to be for the year. The JET team said ‘ok, here’s what the risks we see are in terms of cost and schedule – if you don’t do anything about these now, this is what the potential cost impact and potential schedule impact is.’

“Ashton Carter (US defense acquisitions head) takes that into account along with other reviews, because he needs to decide how to fund the project. If someone said ‘how will we know if the JET was right?’, chances are the JET will never be right because they identified things we needed to do something about up front, and as soon as you change something, all the outcomes will have changed. It’s circuitous, but the JET says what could happen if these risks are realised, Ashton Carter then takes that into account along with Lockheed Martin’s view, the JPO’s view, the engine program’s view, and all that is factored together.”

Another debate raging in the US at the moment is whether to fund the ongoing development of the second or alternate engine for the JSF program, the Rolls-Royce/GE F136.

“Our formal position has always been that we can see benefits in having two engines, but we don’t want to see the funding of that second engine delay or reduce the capability of the core program if the money had to come from the core program,” explained AVM Harvey.

“There are quite a few balancing acts there – people say the competition between the two engines will drive costs down, but the costs have to be driven down far enough to cover a few billion dollars of development in the first place. By producing half as many engines on one side, you don’t get as far down the learning curve and you’ve got two support systems, but the US has an obvious strategic concern over whether to only have one fighter engine manufacturer in the country as opposed to two.

“Fortunately our timing will allow us to make an engine decision. It’s the classic dilemma – the F135 will be more mature but older tech, the F136 will be newer tech but less mature at the time. We probably don’t need to make a decision on our engine until about 2012 – it’s about a two year lead time.

“A lot depends on the US, assuming they retain the two engines, on how might they divide it up. The US Navy for example might go all one engine, or the Marines all one type, or they might go east coast fleet one engine, west coast the other, or ship by ship, or wing by wing, or base by base, so they’re things they need to work out.”

The US Navy has also expressed concerns over the potential cost of ownership of the F-35, with a recent report claiming it will be 50 per cent more expensive than the current F/A-18 classic fleet per flight hour to operate, whereas the goal for the F-35 was to be cheaper to operate than the aircraft it replaces.

“In broad terms, if you look at the aircraft cost, you will probably pay half as much again for the total system price,” AVM Harvey said. “Then if you look at the total system price, throughout the life of the project you will probably pay one and a half to two times that much again for the through life cost, but that might depend on whether that’s a 20 year life or a 30 year life, what’s the rate of flying, what’s the crew ratio and other metrics like that. In terms of operating cost per hour, we think it will be a bit more than the current costs of the F/A-18s, but that’s largely because there are more capable systems. It’s also affected by the fact we’re in a Performance Based Logistics (PBL) environment so you basically pay by the hour to operate, and then as part of that global pool rather than just a relatively small fleet.”

Another Capability Gap?

With 24 Super Hornets coming to cover a capability gap between the retirement of the F-111Cs later this year and the introduction of the JSF from 2018, we wondered what the chances were of another gap opening up and a further bridging buy being considered should the F-35 be further delayed as has been suggested by elements within the US DoD.

“I think we’re offset enough now,” AVM Harvey said. “We’re four to five years behind the USAF now so we’ve got quite a lot of schedule buffer already. And if there’s any delay in test, there’s no plan to radically change the production schedule of the aircraft too much.

“It’s largely the testing of the integration of all those components in the software sense – will it all work as published? The key part of the flight test of JSF is, have we got to that point in flight test where it’s about validation not discovery, as the modelling and simulation is so good. Everything we’ve seen so far is about validation – they pick up the odd teething issue with fuel pumps and valves and things like that, but they’re pretty minor. The structural testing went three times as fast as any other program with no unusual outcomes and matched prediction almost exactly.

“Some of the new manufacturing techniques they’ve used in completing the wing, some of the small components have had teething issues (leading to delays in getting test aircraft to the flightline), but you’ll see the extra hours are burning down quite quickly in getting them out there.”

“In broad terms, if you look at the aircraft cost, you will probably pay half as much again for the total system price.”

Conversely, Australia may even be in a position to ramp up its JSF effort a little faster than the current plan should the development program come good and the aircraft mature on schedule, especially if, as many suspect, the classic Hornet fleet becomes more difficult to manage towards the middle of next decade.

“Conceivably, if for some reason we wanted to get out of the classics earlier we could increase the ramp up rate beyond that,” AVM Harvey said. “The main driver of that is, at peak we’re acquiring about 15 aircraft a year which is a big chunk of the DCP (Defence Capability Plan), so it’s just a matter of the funding availability really. Potentially that could save us some money, but it’s also driven by the training system, and how quickly you can train people because you need more people in the training system and that takes them away from standing up the operational squadrons, so at some point you start working against yourself.

“We’ve been reasonably conservative in that, because we’ve given quite a long time to train up the people, a fairly lengthy time to do the OT, a very robust plan to stand the people up in the operational squadrons and making sure we have the training capacity to do that, but you could accelerate that a bit if you needed to.”