A new realism

This was topped off in January by the announcement by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates that up to two years would be added to the program’s development schedule, dozens of aircraft planned for early build lots would be shifted downstream, and several billion dollars and additional resources would be added to the aircraft’s development.

Australian Aviation spoke to the Program Executive Officer of the JSF Program Office (JPO) Vice Admiral (VADM) David Venlet, and to the project director of the RAAF’s New Air Combat Capability (NACC) Air Vice- Marshal (AVM) Kym Osley, in late February about the issues confronting the program and the direction forward.

Cool Demeanor

Vice Admiral David Venlet entered the ante-room ahead of his media minders at the Aerospace Symposium in Melbourne, just before the Avalon Airshow, with a cool and calm demeanour, and introduced himself to the waiting media.

There was no sign he was on guard or that he had any reservations about facing what some in the industry have described as the most knowledgeable and inquisitive defence trade media in the world.

This was only the second time he had ever taken media questions since assuming the helm of the JSF program nine months ago – the first after a speech to the US Aeronautical Association in mid February – and the first time he had given a dedicated media conference.

Alongside him was AVM Kym Osley, a former F-111 navigator who assumed the lead on Australia’s project from now AIRMSHL John Harvey late last year, after a tour as Head of Australian Defence Staff in Washington DC.

VADM Venlet previously served as the Commander Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), and before that had tours as Program Executive Officer Tactical Air Programs; Commander Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division, (China Lake and Point Mugu); and as NAVAIR Assistant Commander for Test and Evaluation.

He began his career as an F-14 radar intercept officer (RIO) by trade, and made the unusual move to the front seat of an F-14 before becoming a graduate of the US Navy test Pilot School and completing a tour as an A-4 adversary pilot.

He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross while serving with VF-41 for actions against Libya in August 1981.

AVM Osley was the director of three strike reconnaissance projects within Air Force in the early 1990s, has held the positions of Commanding Officer 1SQN, Officer Commanding 82WG, was Air Force advisor to the UK, Director GeneralCapability and Plans in Capability Development Group, had a tour as Director of the Combined Air Operations Centre in the Middle East, and was Commander Air Combat Group (ACG) prior to his Washington posting.

VADM Venlet came to the position of program executive officer for the JPO in April last year in the midst of a tumultuous period for the $300 billion+ project. His predecessor, USMC Maj Gen David Heinz had just been relieved of command – ostensibly because Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wanted to upgrade the position to that of a three-star officer (but more likely because Heinz had publicly stated positions which were poles apart to those of Gates) – and shortly after various US government agencies predicted dramatic cost overruns, and after schedule delays forced the program to undergo a ‘Nunn-McCurdy’ review in which it had to justify its existence to Congress. Perhaps because of GEN Heinz’s public statements and occasionally effusive enthusiasm for the JSF program, ADM Venlet has taken a more subtle line.

Baseline Review

Since his appointment, ADM Venlet has conducted a rigorous program baseline review in which the entire build, development and initial test schedules for the three versions of the JSF were re-assessed and, as the process name suggests, re-baselined.

The conclusion of the review was announced in early January by Secretary Gates. In it, the development of the troubled F-35B STOVL variant has been de-coupled from that of the more smoothly proceeding F-35A CTOL and F-35C CV versions. This means, rather than conduct concurrent development of all three models and have one potentially hold up the other two, each will now undergo their own development programs separate from the other two.

The review also sees the three US services continuing to review their respective IOC dates, with the USAF’s planned IOC date for the F-35A currently from mid-late 2016; the USN’s from early 2016 with F-35C; and the USMC from 2012 with F-35B due to aerodynamic problems with the F-35B’s auxiliary inlet doors and other development issues.

Other changes prompted by the review saw US$4. 6 billion added to the system development and demonstration (SDD) process, and dozens of planned aircraft shifted from early low rate initial production (LRIP) lots to later build runs, meaning there are now no fewer than 11 LRIP lots planned.

“It’s been about nine months I’ve been on the program, and we have gone through a deep, bottom-up assessment of the program,” VADM Venlet told us. “My main question coming into the program was ‘tell us what you think it will take and how much will it cost to finish development. ’ We’ve given that answer and we’ve briefed the leadership – Secretary Gates has delivered a 2012 budget to our Congress with some adjustments based on that, and now I believe 2011 is a year that awaits us to cross into a land of building performance. What we have now is a plan to go forward, and the [US Defense] Department has chosen to resource that plan. ” AVM Osley added, “What’s been proposed in the 2012 budget is exactly what will retire a lot of risk that had been built in over time. What had occurred in probably the two years leading up to this periodis that, in order to try to keep costs down, a lot of pruning of test flights and a lot of risk reduction activities had been taken out of the program.

“What is the crux of the issue was, at the end of 2009 an independent analysis by the US DoD’s JET [Joint Estimating Team] identified there were major issues,” explained AVM Osley. “We then went through the early 2010 situation where Secretary Gates lost confidence in the program essentially, and had a review done which then resulted in an addition of about $2. 6 billion to the SDD phase, and also extended it by 19 months. That was a very quick fix in a way to say, ‘look, this program needs more money to retire risk and also needs more time. ’ “Also at the end of 2009 the US passed a law requiring all US DoD programs to have an independent review of their costs. So at the same time as they added the money and they added on the extra time, an independent unit within the Department of Defense, CAPE or Cost Analysis and Performance Evaluation, came in and they applied a conservative estimate.

That triggered a critical ‘Nunn- McCurdy’ breach – reached once a program’s estimated cost is more than 50 per cent above the initial estimates – for JSF 50 per cent over the 2002 baseline estimate. But it’s important to note that those CAPE estimates are not actual costs; they are predicted costs.

“It’s also important to note that the Nunn-McCurdy process was a US Congress driven requirement and has concluded,” stressed AVM Osley. “The Nunn-McCurdy ended and the program successfully recertified – they reconfirmed that it was an essential program and that it was structured appropriately, and by structured appropriately they said it was broadly in the range of where they thought the program should be with the level of risk. ”

De-coupling

The de-coupling of the ‘flight sciences’ testing for the three variants means much of the risk associated with the most complicated of the three, the F-35B short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) for the US Marine Corps, has been separated from the other two versions – the F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) version for the USAF and the RAAF, and the F-35C carrier variant (CV), both of which have performed well in flight testing to date.

“In our review last year, we took our flight test program and we de-coupled the three variants,” explained VADM Venlet. “I spoke of the complexity of the program with concurrency in it, which is testing, building and supporting all three at the same time with international involvement. In the flight sciences part of test where you expand the envelope,you do your loads and your flutter and weapons separation testing; we have de-coupled the three variants so they can proceed at their own pace – no one slows down any of the others.

So for each service chief, he’s getting that flight science part of the development on its best possible pace.

“What is not de-coupled is the mission systems testing,” he added. ‘So the radar and the other sensors, datalinks, the network part, are common across all three variants – that will proceed at its own pace for our assessment review. We currently see the end of flight science testing for the F-35A and the F-35C in what we call our Block 3 mission systems capability lining up in about the first quarter of 2016. For the STOVL, that flight sciences part of the test continues out into the last quarter of 2016. ” The de-coupling of the three variants has also seen the F-35B STOVL placed on ‘probation’, during which time aerodynamic issues with its auxiliary inlet doors and reliability issues must be successfully addressed, or that variant risks cancellation.

“They are going to delay aspects of the STOVL by up to two years,” said AVM Osley.

“And they are going to delay some aspects of the CTOL and the CV by up to a year, and add about 1500 or so test missionsto the test program. They’re also going to really focus and apply money to certain areas that are high risk like the helmet mounted display (HMD), the software, and other areas – and also going to put in a second software development line. The introduction of some of the software is going to be delayed.

And with every delay – you cost out the man hours, and it comes to a dollar figure. ” But while VADM Venlet wouldn’t be drawn on it, Defence and industry insiders have suggested there may be potential for the development of the F-35A, the one most relevant to Australia, to continue to stay ahead of the planned rate, which may allow it to enter its planned Operational Test & Evaluation (OT&E) phase earlier than currently planned.

In addition to the development de-coupling and to assist in the flight sciences work, the first two production aircraft, AF-06 and AF-07 which first flew in late February and early March respectively, have been diverted from being delivered to the Integrated Test Center (ITC) at Eglin AFB, and instead have been instrumented and will soon join the test fleet at Edwards AFB for flight envelope expansion testing.

“So I don’t get in the realm of speculation, I’ll stick to my fundamental value of realism,” VADM Venlet answered cautiously.

“We’ve built margin in the plan – the A model CTOL has been performing very well, and if we don’t use up all that margin management reserve, what you propose may come to pass. But I’m reluctant to be a forecaster and then come up short of the goal. I believe I’ve forecast a realistic goal and we’d like to hit that. The assessment under the technical baseline review looked at the software and mission systems area, and so our understanding and assessment of the work to go has very high confidence. ” AVM Osley was a little more forthcoming.

“The big unknown here is exactly what IOC the USAF needs,” he offered. “They haven’t bought any more F-16 or F-15 legacy fighters for a long time, so that’s a fair indication that they need an IOC relatively early.

They could potentially do an IOT&E program adequate to meet IOC in as little as six months if they put their mind to it. We’re saying it’ll probably take them a year to do, but that’s based on just one squadron at normal pace, encountering a few problems. ”

IOC

But as AVM Osley suggests, the RAAF’s ability to proceed to IOC is linked directly to the USAF achieving its IOC first.

“From an Australian perspective, we obviously realise that the USAF’s IOC of the F-35A is likely to slide to the right to some extent, we understand that,” he explained. “We’re not anticipating that slide will, in broad terms, be any more than a year, and we are now looking at approximately 18 months between where the USAF would be in a position to declare IOC, and our own IOC.

“Obviously it’s up to the Chief of Staff of the USAF to declare when he wants to go to IOC, but even looking at the bounds around it, we’re comfortable that there remains a buffer. Now that gap is not spare time, the period is when we do our own OT&E for unique Australian aspects and address airworthiness requirements.

Obviously we’re not keen to see any further slide, but at this point in time we think we have an adequate enough gap there. ” In between the USAF achieving IOC and the RAAF achieving IOC, some of these unique Australian aspects will include verifying many of the environmental impact studies conducted prior to the arrival of the aircraft, validation of the F-35’s ability to inter-operate with other ADF assets, the use of Australian test and bombing ranges, and the exercising of the new dedicated facilities which will be built for the F-35.

“So what that means in dates is that our IOC will be at the end of 2018. The end of 2018 is the date we’ve been planning on declaring IOC, it’s what we went to government with at the end of 2009 and what was agreed. And that is what we’re basing our planned phase out of the ‘classic’ F/A-18A/B on.

From between the end of 2018, assuming that we actually go ahead with the procurement of additional tranches of aircraft, we would then be looking at FOC (full operational capability) in the 2020/21 timeframe. ”.

“The big unknown here is exactly what IOC the USAF needs. They haven’t bought any more F-16 or F-15 legacy fighters for a long time. ”

capabilities, and call that ‘Block 3 Initial’. We can then use that for training, and then we can go to ‘Block 3 Final’ in a reasonable timeframe to meet IOC.

“Vice Admiral Venlet has promised we will have Block 3 Final in time to meet our IOC,” AVM Osley added. “A lot of the air-to-air capability is in Block 3 Initial, and a basic airto- surface capability too. Some of the things that are not in there are the more sophisticated data sharing between multiple aircraft which will come with the Block 3 Final. ”

Industry Headaches

Certainly the delays to the JSF program, combined with the shifting of production numbers downstream, has added risk to industry suppliers, in particular for those small to medium enterprises (SMEs) who may have invested heavily in establishing new machining or fabricating capabilities and have bid for and won work on the program, only to have the numbers drop and be delayed.

“We have the current plans from the US and they’re still planning on 2443 aircraft for the US and about 3100 aircraft which includes all the non- US partner orders as well, so the money will still be applied to the program, but further down track,” said AVM Osley.

“Of course, that really causes heartaches for defence industry in general and obviously for Australian industry, because Australian industry has been told that there are going to be certain production numbers, they’ve bid on these or they’ve set up their initial processes and funding and loans based on what they thought would be the point where they break-even and get a return on investment.

“But now those numbers have slid to the right so the companies are looking for new business to fill the niche while still being ready to take on JSF work. So they’re all grappling with that – some are taking on other business, some are doing non-defence work. It’s not a good situation because the amount of delay has obviously come up at relatively short notice, but at this point in time the Australian industry is doing a reasonable a job of managing that.

“But my problem of course is, we’re a customer, and so my job is to drive down costs – I want the cheapest JSF for Australia and the government demands that of me,” AVM Osley added.

“So I put the weight on the JPO, the JPO puts the weight on Lockheed Martin, Lockheed Martin puts the weight on their suppliers out there.

And so what occurs is, while I’m trying to assist Australian industry to come up with a good outcome, at the same time I’m making it demanding for Australian industry by putting all the weights on all the way down the chain. ” But VADM Venlet expressed confidence in his new schedule, saying it now has some “realism” in it. “I do believe that the ground rules and the assumptions and the resilience of the test program has a realism in it going forward, and we’ve got a high confidence of execution in absorbing that learning that should finish when it’s predicted to in 2016,” he said. “I have to say ‘watch us’ – I’d love to talk to you next year and we’ll judge from here. While our past record over recent years isn’t necessarily what would give you confidence in that completion of 2016, the only thing I have to offer you and AVM Osley is a plan with realism in it. This is a program dependant on global industry, and very much Australian industry is involved already, and I think there’s a bright future for the number of aircraft we expect to build. ”

“It’s not a good situation because the amount of delay has obviously come up at relatively short notice. ”

AVM Osley also raised the prospect of the RAAF taking an early ‘Block 3 Initial’ software load in order to commence Australian OT&E work, with the ‘Block 3 Final’ load expected to follow before IOC is achieved. “What the US has indicated is that they may take Block 2, add in more capability that has some critical