Last month, the Pentagon Inspector General (IG) released an audit of the program for the Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 fighter–a review that found the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) lacked accurate information on F-35 parts.
“Our test determined that 41 (19 percent) of the 217 part numbers we reviewed had at least one existence or completeness error,” the audit said. “In addition, officials from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)/Chief Financial Officer did not determine how the DoD should financially report JSF [Joint Strike Fighter] inventory, and the DoD did not report any values in the FY 2022 financial statements.”
“Furthermore, an inaccurate and incomplete asset universe could have a negative operational impact on the program and may lead to uninformed logistical and budgetary decisions, as
well as potential material misstatements on the financial statements,” the audit said.
On Aug. 10, the F-35 JPO, in an email statement in response to the new Pentagon IG audit, said that “maintaining accountability for parts and data is essential to ensure prudent management of F-35 financial and operational resources.”
“The JPO, OSD and our industry partners are working closely to aggregate data and drive automation across processes,” the JPO said. “The F-35 JPO is also revamping its inventory assessment procedures to maintain a complete and accurate inventory assessment.”
Last year, DoD projected a four-year delay–from fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2027–in the full and accurate accounting of F-35 parts in an Accountable Property System of Record (APSR) (Defense Daily, Nov. 16, 2022).
In fiscal 2020, the F-35 JPO designated the Defense Property Accountability System (DPAS) as the official APSR, but DPAS “does not have reliable JSF asset property records for financial reporting,” according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report in May last year.
DPAS is inadequate for the real-time inventory of property for the F-35 at 671 government and contractor sites, GAO said, adding that DPAS “currently does not have reliable JSF asset property records for financial reporting.”
The new DoD IG audit said that Lockheed Martin’s System Analysis Program (SAP) and Maximo reports and an RTX [RTX] Pratt & Whitney SAP report on F135 engine parts are to feed DPAS. In addition, the F-35 JPO uses a Support Equipment Management System for inventory management, and Lockheed Martin and the F-35 JPO manage spare parts inventory through the Autonomic Logistics Information System, which the F-35 JPO has wanted to replace with the cloud-based Operational Data Integrated Network (ODIN).
“Although F-35 JSF Program officials identified sources necessary to populate JSF inventory into DPAS, they did not validate the accuracy or completeness of the data from these sources,” the new Pentagon IG audit said. “The F-35 JSF program officials stated that the result of the Total System Performance Responsibility effort involved less ownership of traditional programmatic aspects, such as the data rights.”
“Specifically, F-35 JSF program officials acknowledged that data from the Lightning II Support Equipment Management System and Lockheed Martin’s Maximo report for JSF assets were inaccurate and incomplete and not available in a timely manner,” according to the audit. “In addition, F-35 JSF program officials did not use inventory data from Pratt & Whitney’s SAP system. As a result, F-35 JSF program officials were unable to provide an accurate or complete population of JSF inventory in a timely manner in response to our request in July 2022.”
The 1990s Total System Performance Responsibility philosophy took heed of the fewer numbers of federal acquisition workers and the increasing complexity of weapons systems to permit companies to be responsible for weapons sustainment.