Come on down

“I was able to get $600 million approximately off those planes,” President Trump asserted on January 30. Barely six weeks earlier, on December 12 (and before his inauguration as President) Trump famously tweeted that the “F-35 program and cost is out of control”.

Whether the new president can claim credit for getting F-35 costs back under control is debatable, as each time an LRIP production batch has been negotiated the aircraft’s unit price has come down.

“It appears that President Trump is claiming credit for something that was going to happen anyway,” the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Andrew Davies and James Mugg wrote in a February 1 blog post.

“Mind you, a six-seven per cent cost reduction is still impressive, regardless of how it happened. And it’s consistent with a program that’s starting to hit its stride.”

That F-35 production is hitting its stride is evidenced by the fact no fewer than 200 F-35s are in operational service with eight nations, including Australia’s first two aircraft, AU-1 and AU-2 (A35-002), which have been based at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona since late 2014 as part of the International Pilot Training Center there.

In all the F-35 program has flown over 75,000 flight hours with more than 350 pilots and 3,700 maintainers trained.

But further ramp ups in production and much bigger falls in unit cost until the aircraft completes the System Design and Development (SDD) phase and its final block 3F software load is released. And that is still not without its issues, as the latest annual report into the program by the Pentagon’s Directorate of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E).

“Continued schedule delays in completing Block 3F mission systems development and flight testing, which DOT&E estimates will likely complete in July 2018,” the DOT&E report’s executive summary on the F-35 reads.

“The latest DOT&E report contained no surprises; all of the issues are well-known to the JPO, the US services, our international partners, and our industry team,” Lt Gen Chris Bogdan, F-35 Program Executive Officer wrote in response on January 17.

“The F-35 flight test program, as well as the F-35 fleet users, made significant progress in maturing and proving the capability of the aircraft during 2016.”

That confidence in the F-35’s progress is shared Chief of Air Force Air Marshal Leo Davies.

“Dr Gilmore’s report identified things that are still not right with [the jet] and he’s right, there are still things that we need to fix, and things that we’ll see that we don’t know about yet,” CAF told Australian Aviation in a recent interview.

“But I keep reminding anyone who bothers to ask, all of the things that F35 has had go wrong have been fixed. I am not aware of a single issue about the aeroplane that has not been fixed, once it was identified.”

All of the things that F-35 has had go wrong have been fixed.

Separately, a review into the F-35 program has been ordered by new Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who has commissioned a report into ways the F-35’s costs can be reduced further.

According to US defence analyst Loren Thompson, writing for Forbes on January 30 on the Mattis-commissioned review, “a 10 per cent reduction in the price-tag is probably feasible without any regulatory adjustments at all if the three military services using the plane would buy it at a more economical rate.”

But Thompson writes other savings are possible in program management.

“Lockheed contributes to my think tank and is a consulting client, so I’ve been listening to company engineers grouse for years about how excessive testing and regulatory requirements have driven up the cost of each plane. The company’s internal estimate is that at least 20 per cent of program costs are driven by redundancy, oversight and the like.”

Further, Secretary Mattis has asked for a separate analysis as to whether an updated F/A-18 Super Hornet could be a cheaper replacement for the US Navy’s planned F-35C buy.

This follows then President-elect Trump’s Tweet on December 23 that: “Based on the tremendous cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!”

Whether that comes to anything is unclear, as most analysts agree that no amount of upgrades can make the Super Hornet comparable to the F-35 in stealth and sensor fusion.

“Even with upgrades to reduce its radar signature, there is no way a fourth-generation fighter like Super Hornet can be made as survivable and versatile as an F-35,” Thompson wrote.

Arguably the new US president’s high profile interest in the F-35 program is for domestic public consumption of his political base, and in the meantime production is continuing, with six centre fuselage sections for the RAAF’s eight LRIP-10 jets currently in production at Northrop Grumman’s F-35 Integrated Assembly Line (IAL) at Palmdale, California.

These aircraft are scheduled for delivery in 2018, four years the first two Australian jets (AU-1 and AU-2) were handed over in 2014.

“We’ve currently delivered two aircraft to the Australian air force, we have six aircraft that are [currently] in our assembly process, [and] we’ll actually deliver seven this year,” Corey Carruth, the F-35 IAL’s director of manufacturing, told Australian media during a tour of the Palmdale facility on January 20.

“One of the next units we’ll deliver off our assembly line is AU-3, the third Australian unit, we’ll deliver it to Lockheed Martin in March.”

Following the delivery of the centre fuselage of AU-3 in late March, AU-4 and 5 will follow shortly after in April, Carruth said.

To date Northrop Grumman has delivered over 287 F-35 centre fuselages from its Palmdale IAL, which uses the same building that it assembled the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber in. Today the IAL is delivering a centre fuselage to Lockheed Martin every three days with a production flow time of 164 days.

“We’ll actually be increasing this year to a day-and-a-half production interval, meaning we’ll deliver an airplane every day and a half and start a new airplane every day and a half,” Carruth said. “We’ll get down to about 110 days total flow.”

Of the 90 jets to be delivered under LRIP-10 44 are F-35As for the US Air Force and nine are F-35Bs for the US Marine Corps and two are F-35Cs for the US Navy. Australia is the biggest international buyer in LRIP-10 but in all 35 are for international partner and FMS customers, including six jets each for Israel, Norway and South Korea (all F-35As), four F-35As for Japan, three F-35Bs for the UK and two F-35As for Turkey.

Of the RAAF’s eight jets being built under LRIP-10, two will ferry to Australia in late 2018 for Australian operational test and evaluation, while the other six will be based at Luke for pilot training before being ferrying to Australia in 2020.

The RAAF currently has four qualified F-35 pilots, and the first group of about 25 technicians has departed for the US to undertake maintenance training, and although not formally qualified as an F-35 maintainer, an Australian engineer has been in place at Luke Air Force to monitor the operation of the first two Australian jets.

“The folk at Luke, the pilots and now the maintainers, who arrived in January, have been essential for us to understand the aircraft, and how we’re gong to fly it at Williamtown and, eventually, Tindal,” CAF said.

“What’s been probably as significant for us has been ownership of Super Hornet. That step to 4.5 from classic Hornet has really begun to show all of Defence that this is a different beast. It’s not another one of them. The F-35 is another step beyond. I still maintain that that step from classic to F-35 would have been even tougher, if we hadn’t had Super Hornet.”

Among those managing that step are 30 or so Australians embedded with the F-35 Joint Project Office (JPO), and about 150 people working to transition the capability into Australia, mostly located in Canberra but with a growing number at RAAF Base Williamtown in New South Wales.

In other Australian F-35 news, AU-1 and AU-2 have been upgraded with the final iteration of the aircraft’s Block 3i interim software release.
“The two Australian F-35A have been loaded with the final release of Block 3i (3iP6) during September 2016,” a Defence spokesperson told Australian Aviation via emailed statement on January 4.

“Among other capabilities, the 3iP6 software enabled the aircraft to conduct its first weapons release.”

That first weapons release was conducted in December when F-35A A35-002 released a 500lb GBU-12 laser-guided bomb from its starboard side internal weapons bay over the Barry M Goldwater range in southwest Arizona.

AU-1 and AU-2 were built under LRIP 6 with an earlier Block 3i software load which restricted them to an interim training and warfighting capability.

“The next block of software is Block 3F, and is the final release of software under the System Development and Demonstration phase, which is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2017,” the Defence spokesperson said.

RAAF IOC with the F-35A is planned for December 2020.