Last year was an important year for the international Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program as it continued to reduce risk and meet both internal and external challenges.
Although flight testing of all three variants of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fell slightly short of target, production is ramping up incrementally. At a ceremony in Fort Worth on December 13, the company inaugurated the 100th production aircraft (and the 41st F-35A for the US Air Force), but more significantly it had another 90 aircraft on the production line, including the first two for Australia.
It was also an important year for Australia’s New Air Combat Capability (NACC) project, with the induction of the two aircraft ordered so far into the production line. On the same day that the 100th aircraft was inaugurated the first Australia aircraft (AU-1, the 120th production F-35) was lifted out of the Electronic Mate and Assembly System (EMAS) and moved to the final assembly line, where it achieved the Weight On Wheels (WOW) milestone.
Looking forward through 2014 however there are important decisions to be taken by the Australian government with regards to the number of aircraft in further tranches and the buy profile.
Beyond acquisition, the NACC program office is now spending more of its time on infrastructure and sustainment and, budget surprises notwithstanding, these are now replacing platform technical issues as the most risk to Initial Operating Capability (IOC) in 2020.
Sustainment focus
Just before his retirement at the end of last year NACC Program Manager Air Vice Marshal Kym Osley described his shift in focus.
“The thing I am focussed on is the Australian piece,” AVM Osley told ADM. “I’m sure we’ll end up with a good aeroplane and there’s a very good chance that we’ll end up with good software in that aeroplane, but the real challenge for me is building all the facilities I need and integrating that aeroplane into our logistics system in Australia.
“It’s establishing an Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) and connecting that system to the US and to other partner nations around the world,” he said.
“It is also about establishing a training capability in Australia and a reprogramming capability for the software, in the US but with Australians manning it, and all of these individual activities are major projects in their own right. It is a very complex endeavour to integrate the F-35 into the ADF in the broad, and that probably is the greatest challenge that faces me at this time.”
Speaking to journalists after the 100th aircraft inauguration ceremony, Air Commodore Cath Roberts, Director General NACC provided further detail.
“This is a really complex program and we have a set path that we need to travel,” AIRCDRE Roberts said. “There’s a lot more to a program than buying aircraft, we have to get all the facilities built at Williamtown, there’s a weapons program to progress, we have to put the sustainment piece in place and we have to get Australian industry up and running to do that sustainment. There are a lot of pieces that have to come together, we’ve got a reasonable plan at the moment but at the end of the day I need a capability, not just aircraft,” she said.
“The infrastructure plan is going to go to the Public Works Committee later this year, it’s a $1.6 billion program in its’ own right. That’s a big chunk of opportunity for Australian industry, in addition to the fact that every aircraft produced has an Australian part on it now.
Attention has also turned to the purchase of the second tranche of 12 aircraft already committed to and the buy profile of the next 58 aircraft, all of which are required if the ‘Classic’ Hornet is to be retired by the end of 2022.
“Regarding the planned timeline, we’re putting our plans together and we’ll submit those to government in the first half of the year to obtain the next approval. At the moment we’re approved for 14 aircraft at, in 2009 dollars, around $3.2 billion for aircraft and support equipment, under Stage One,” AVM Osley explained.
“We’ll be going back to seek the next Government approval – and it may be one approval or we may be going back for a series of approvals, a phased approval approach. We will need to discuss that with the government in due course.”
For more on the JSF buy profile, see PXX’s From the Source interview with Chief of Air Force Air Marshal Geoff Brown.
While the new Defence Minister has promised no further cuts to the defence budget and a return of spending to two percent of GDP over time, the NACC acquisition, infrastructure and sustainment costs will form a major slice of spending over the next five years and the next budget will be critical to the NACC schedule.
Regional Support Centre and benefits to industry
AIRCDRE Cath Roberts said that current F-35 production contracts are worth around $329 million to Australian industry and predicts that there is at least an extra $1.5 billion of opportunity, not including the sustainment phase.
“There has been a lot of debate about how you calculate the numbers, but it’s certainly over $1.5 billion worth of extra opportunity that we expect to have in Australia, and probably quite significantly more,” she said.
Steve O’Bryan, Vice President F-35 Business Development and Customer Engagement for Lockheed Martin says the estimates, taken over the 30 year production life of the aircraft are actually $6 billion.
“We see contract value as high as over $6 billion dollars. Opportunities split between Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney are actually in excess of $11 billion, (but) we see the win-rate over the life of the program exceeding $6 billion,” he detailed.
AIRCDRE Roberts said she saw the number of aircraft acquired by Australia linked with industry opportunity.
“It’s something Government is really keen on, we want to make sure we get an industry in Australia that is sustainable. We already have a large number of opportunities in production, but we want to make sure we can continue to produce parts for the fleet – for the thousands of aircraft that are going to be produced. That’s a big boost for Australian industry, so that’s something we will keep a focus on. One of the reasons we became a partner in this program is the fact that you do get opportunities for Australian industry,” she said.
“With sustainment we really want to try and get ourselves in the position where Australian industry can offer regional opportunities as well as performing local sustainment. It’s a matter of us actually having the infrastructure to be able to carry out that regional sustainment and there’s still a lot of work to do there. It is a massive program in its’ own right.”
One of the opportunities under consideration is the establishment of a regional maintenance facility, which could carry out work on deployed US Air Force and US Marine Corps aircraft, as well as those of regional partners. With the increased USMC presence in the Northern Territory, which will likely see F-35B aircraft deployed to Darwin and Tindal for significant periods, this is an attractive proposition.
“We’ve already defined what our sovereign requirements are and we’ve already said that we’re going to have a deeper maintenance facility in Australia. We’ve have also said that we’re going to have a level of operational and deeper maintenance as well as some supply chain management functions and probably a Low Observability rework capability in Australia too,” AIRCDRE Roberts said.
“We’ve defined that those will be established but what we would like to do is get a bigger regional capability and perhaps be there to support the US forces operating in our region as well as other F-35 customers who are operating the Asia-Pacific. We haven’t really looked at where a regional facility would be placed, but from my perspective it would make sense that you placed it where you already have a level of infrastructure and support.”
Further opportunities for industry have been identified by Lockheed Martin in new technologies such as electron beam direct manufacturing of titanium components, which will trialled in Turkey and in Australia by Ferra Engineering in Brisbane in 2014.
The first component to be manufactured under the process is the canopy bow, which isn’t a flight critical item and can therefore be manufactured without having to undergo durability testing.
The Australian Government also has a NACC Industry Support Program (NACC ISP), where seed money can be infused into industry to assist with the development of new technologies. It is a grants program intended to foster industry capabilities that directly support the JSF program and funded by DMO and administered by AusIndustry.
The most recent recipient is Quickstep, who received a $1 million grant to finance qualification of the Quickstep Process for the manufacture of F-35 vertical tail spars.
“The F-35 program has created an industrial base within Australia by creating things like the work that Quickstep can do, the training, the technical transfer, to make it competitive in the things that will be long-term competitive for Australia,” said Steve O’Bryan.
