Hits and misses

The JSF Program Office (JPO) says two weeks have been allocated to the F-35B sea trials, but the vessel has been made available for up to six weeks in case of unforeseen “anomalies”. As we went to press, it looked like the two weeks would be sufficient.

Interestingly, the F-35B is the variant that has been under the biggest cloud after former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared in January that it was “on probation” for a period of two years and was under threat of cancellation if it didn’t meet a number of key milestones within the probation period. But since its flight test program was “decoupled” from that of the better performing F-35A and F-35C variants, the F-35B’s previous lack of reliability which saw it fall behind the other two models has been turned around, and it is meeting or exceeding all of its flight test schedule and test points this year.

Lockheed Martin says the F-35 flight test fleet remained eight per cent ahead of planned flights for the year to date by the end of August, despite the aircraft’s recent grounding due to the failure of an Integrated Power Pack (IPP) on test aircraft AF-4.
To September 20, the six F-35As, five F-35Bs and two F-35Cs currently based at Edwards AFB and Pax River have completed 642 test flights for the year to date, including 124 test flights since Lockheed Martin’s last progress report issued on July 26.

“Overall, the F-35 system development and demonstration (SDD) flight test remains on or ahead of plan for 2011, despite 15 days of testing lost due to fleet stand-down after a ground mishap involving the Integrated Power Package (IPP),” Lockheed Martin said in a September 20 statement. “Flight testing was also interrupted at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, because of an August 23 earthquake and severe weather associated with Hurricane Irene. During this period of down time, the flight test teams at all locations continued working through planned modifications and maintenance.”

Recently flight test and production milestones also included F-35B BF-1 performing a 40ft hover in calm winds and two vertical landings for the 150th vertical landing to date on August 31; the deliveries of AF-10 and AF-11 to Eglin AFB, joining AF-8 and AF-9 assigned to the 33d Fighter Wing; completion of static testing, with completion of testing on F-35C ground article CG-1 at Fort Worth on August 29; completion of jet blast deflector testing by F-35C CF-2 at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst between June 25 and August 13 and; AF-7′s final conventional take off and landing maturity flight on August 31.

At Lockheed Martin’s mile-long factory in Fort Worth, the 65th F-35 has been inducted onto the production line, and more than 35 have been delivered to flight test or the factory flight line for final pre-flight preparation. The aircraft are being rolled out at a rate of about two per month now, and the company expects this will ramp up to four per month by July 2012.

The F-35 Integrated Test Center (ITC) at Eglin AFB is yet to fly any training missions on the four aircraft it has received to date, instead focussing on building up its fleet and its workforce. Training missions are due to commence in October or November, and the ITC will take delivery of a further four aircraft this year, including its first F-35Bs.

Problems with the F-35’s revolutionary helmet mounted display system (HMD) continue to dog the problem, with issues such as latency in night operations remaining unresolved. As a backup to the Israeli designed HMS, BAE Systems has been awarded a contract to provide an alternate and somewhat less sophisticated helmet to the program so that training can ramp up uninterrupted. While Lockheed Martin officials remain confident the originally specified HMD issues will be resolved, BAE’s Night Vision Goggle Helmet Mounted Display (NVG HMD) will be integrated onto the aircraft as an interim measure.

Long lead production has also commenced on the first two Australian aircraft. These aircraft are due to come from the sixth low rate production batch (LRIP 6) which will be negotiated in 2012 and delivered in 2014, although funding for that batch is unlikely to run to schedule as the LRIP 5 negotiations are yet to be concluded. The problem for both the Pentagon and for Lockheed Martin is that Congress keeps taking aircraft out of the LRIP batches and shifting them to the right, meaning the manufacturing process can’t build up its economies of scale. So, while the customer is expecting to see the price of each aircraft drop from one LRIP batch to the next, the production rate isn’t increasing sufficiently to enable this to occur.

As part of budget cutting measures in the US, the Senate Appropriations Committee for Defense (SAC-D) last month suggested removing aircraft from forward LRIP builds and capping them at about 40 aircraft each until concurrency issues are resolved. Currently, all aircraft built up to and including LRIP 5 will require some kind of modification or retrofit to their structures and systems following discovery during flight test, while LRIP 6 jets are supposed to be the first built with the final design.

Despite the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) and the House Appropriations Committee for Defense (HAC-D) all marking full funding to the program, the SAC-D is concerned about the cost of retrofitting the first 130 or so jets – reported by some to be between US$600 million and $1.1 billion – and has proposed the funding cap. Lockheed Martin and JPO officials say it is “early days” and they are “working with SAC-D members and staff” to understand their concerns.

Meanwhile, the major LRIP 6 long lead items in production are the large single piece composite air intake ducts that feed air to the engine. Some US$600m has been allocated to this work for the 38 aircraft expected to be built under LRIP 6. Once Lockheed Martin’s LRIP 6 proposal has been accepted and the contract signed, Australia will effectively be invoiced for its two aircraft. Similarly, LRIP 7 will be negotiated in 2013 and those aircraft, including four for Australia, will be delivered in 2015.

While not confirmed, it looks like the remaining eight of the first batch of 14 Australian F-35As will be included in LRIP 8 which will be signed in 2014 for delivery in 2016. These aircraft will be delivered to an ITC – most likely at Luke AFB in Arizona – where RAAF instructor pilots and maintainers will begin their conversion to the jet in preparation for the establishment our own ITC back at Williamtown and the arrival home of the first 14 jets in 2017.

But before any major amounts are released for Australian JSFs, Defence Minister Stephen Smith will need to be satisfied that the aircraft will meet the revised delivery timetable and that no further Super Hornets will be required. Speaking to reporters at late Septembers AUSMIN talks in San Francisco, Smith reiterated his statements made a few weeks earlier in Washington that he will not risk another capability gap opening up.

The RAAF’s classic Hornet fleet is becoming increasingly costly to manage and at some stage it will no longer be deemed economically or operationally viable to keep these jets in service. Therefore, if there are any further threats to or shifts in the JSF’s delivery timetable beyond the current one, Smith – who is said to be a fan of the Super Hornet – will likely opt for an additional batch of F/A-18Fs. Further, the cost of any additional Super Hornets would probably mean those aircraft and the first batch of 24 F/A-18Fs would be retained as a permanent element of the RAAF’s future air combat force instead of a bridging capability, thus reducing the RAAF’s requirement for about 100 JSFs down to as few as 50.