Although the F-35 program office has made strides to keep the program on cost and schedule, the aircraft’s complicated software and logistics system presents a significant hurdle to fielding the aircraft, government officials said during an April 14 House Armed Service Committee’s tactical air and land forces subcommittee hearing.
The biggest risk to the program continues to be developing and integrating its software, said Sean Stackley, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition.
The program is nearing the completion of flight testing its Block 2B software necessary for Marine Corps’ initial operational capability on July 1, although there are workarounds needed to use it and a number of deficiencies that will be corrected later, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, F-35 program executive officer. Block 3I will be ready in time for the Air Force IOC in 2016. The joint strike fighter, its software and associated logistics system are all manufactured by Lockheed Martin [LMT].
Development of the F-35’s final block of software, 3F, is already underway, but its release could be delayed as much as six months due to delays in flight testing Block 2B, Bogdan said. That delay is unlikely to impact the Navy’s IOC in 2018 because of slack built into the schedule.
One of the challenges impeding block 3F software development is a capability called “multi platform fusion,” which brings together information from various aircraft, satellites and other systems and delivers a picture of the battlespace to the F-35 pilot, he said.
Yet another issue is the aircraft’s Autonomic Logistics Information System, or ALIS, which must be ready to support Marine Corps’ IOC, Bogdan said.
Subcommittee Chairman Michael Turner, (R-Ohio), watched maintainers use ALIS during a recent tour of Eglin AFB, Fla. The system was cumbersome to use, with a slow data-entering process, he said. Turner was told that the system had an 80 percent rate of false positives, meaning that there is no actual problem 80 percent of the time ALIS displays something wrong with an aircraft.
Stackley said the issue of positives was “very real,” although he didn’t know whether the problem was actually so widespread.
Rep. Tammy Duckworth, (D-Ill.) questioned whether the time taken to clear out those false negatives could be driving up maintenance costs.
While a fifth generation fighter capability is critical for ensuring the U.S. military’s continued air dominance, “that does not mean this program should be rubber stamped,” Turner said in his opening statement.
The Pentagon plans to increase development and procurement funding for the F-35 from around $8 billion in fiscal year 2015 to around $13 billion in 2019, in a total investment of more than $55 billion over that five year period, according to the Government Accountability Office. In its fiscal year 2016 budget, the Department of the Navy requested funding for four Navy F-35Cs and nine F-35Bs, the Marine Corps short takeoff and vertical landing variant. The Air Force requested money for 44 F-35A aircraft. All three services plan to increase their buys over the next five years.
With 40 percent of developmental flight test remaining, it’s likely that the program will run into discoveries during testing and may need to work in additional design changes, said Michael Sullivan, the GAO’s director for acquisition and sourcing management issues.
“This concurrency between testing and buying more aircraft and doing flight testing is risky,” he said during the hearing.
The F-35 program has risks, challenges and difficulties, but program office is confident it can overcome those issues, Bogdan said. “We’re making slow but steady progress on all fronts, but each day the program is improving,” he said.