Should Canada withdraw from the nine-nation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, the additional cost to Australia of its JSF purchases will be about $USD1 million per airframe, according to Air Vice Marshal Chris Deeble.
Julian Kerr | Sydney
AVM Deeble, Program Manager JSF Division within Defence’s Capability and Sustainment Group (CASG), told ADM that common costs would be divided up among the eight remaining partners via a common share ratio.
“A decision by Canada to cancel its planned acquisition of 65 aircraft would roughly equate to an increase of about one per cent in aircraft cost for everyone else, or about US$1 million per airframe,” he noted.
“While I don’t want to denigrate the fact that US$1 million can buy a lot of things from a government perspective, it’s true to say my budget can cater for movements of that order of magnitude so the program still remains affordable in the context of my approved budget.”
However, as of early December 2015 his Canadian counterpart had confirmed he had yet to receive any guidance from the newly-elected government of Justin Trudeau on its pre-election pledge to withdraw from the JSF program because of its cost, and the Canadians remained a partner in the program.
Developments subsequent to ADM’s conversation with AVM Deeble suggest that the JSF would not necessarily be excluded from any new competition to replace Canada’s 73-strong fleet of ageing CF-18 fighters.
The total approved Australian JSF budget is currently $17.7 billion, a figure adjusted for December 2015 exchange rates from the original figure of $15.4 billion.
Based on current projections, the average unit cost of an Australian F-35A is estimated to be US$90 million, AVM Deeble said. Australia has committed to purchasing 72 of the F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) variants, equating (in Australian currency) to a total acquisition cost of $8.6 billion.
The $9.1 billion balance of the current program budget encompasses F-35 support including information systems, training and simulation, ordnance unique to the JSF, contingency funding, and $1.5 billion for new facilities at RAAF Bases Williamtown, Tindal and other supporting bases.
"It’s inevitable that we’ll have to confront things as we move forward, but I personally don’t see any showstoppers."
Slow and steady
Overall program progress was described by AVM Deeble as slow and steady.
“This is a complex program and it’s inevitable that we’ll have to confront things as we move forward, but I personally don’t see any showstoppers.
“There’s some 45,000 flight hours accrued across the present worldwide fleet of 150 aircraft, so we’re starting to see the maturing of the overall capability. In particular the F-35A CTOL variant that we’re getting is maturing faster than the F-35C carrier variant and I think we’ll see issues with the F-35B Short Takeoff Vertical Landing (STOVL) variant because it’s a very, very complex aircraft.”
With the RAAF’s first two F-35s now having flown a total of 400 hours as part of the international training pool at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona and delivery in 2018 of the next eight Australian aircraft of which two will come to Australia, increasing attention is being focused on support and operations.
“Sometimes the really vital support systems like ALIS (autonomic logistics information system) get left a little behind, so we’re all now really trying to get to grips with what the global sustainment system needs to look like, how we’re going to support these aircraft globally and in service and do that cost-effectively,” said AVM Deeble.
“ALIS has no paper alternative; it’s a software-driven system that is critical for tracking parts globally, for tracking training qualifications of aircrew and maintenance personnel, it’s critical for managing technical airworthiness, the configuration of the aircraft, the supply chain, it’s trying to do what historically has been undertaken by multiple pieces of software working in a more federated context.
“So it’s a complex system in its own right and unfortunately it hasn’t been managed in that way in the past, and we’re finally honing in on the issues it has.”
The ALIS interface with the aircraft is provided by a ruggedised laptop which is part of a ‘Ship and Squadron Kit’ that includes servers and mission planning equipment sufficient to support a squadron’s daily operations.
Data will be sent from the servers to national Central Point of Entry (CPE) servers, in Australia’s case at RAAF Williamtown, that will centralise and act as the repository for sovereign data.
From each CPE a core data set will be shared with the Global Sustainment Kit at a Lockheed Martin facility in Fort Worth which houses Autonomic Logistics Operating Unit servers and is intended to provide data to manage and support a global fleet of around 3,100 aircraft.
While AVM Deeble confirmed some robust discussions amongst the nine partners – “you could probably regard the US Air Force, US Navy and US Marine Corps as separate entities, making it 11” – these primarily centred on ALIS functionality rather than differences on the transfer of sovereign data.
“When parts are pulled off the aircraft and put back into ALIS they’re not owned by us, they’re owned by the US government as part of the global spares pool. It’s nothing like we do business today and operating the system requires changes in both business processes and culture.”
Some supply problems could emerge from the planned acceleration in annual production over the next three to four years from 50 to at least 170 and possibly 200 aircraft.
Credit: USAF
“Often it’ll be the same supply chain that you’ll be relying on for both production components and a significant ramp up of inservice support, so there may need to be occasional tradeoffs,” AVM Deeble noted to ADM. “But if you look at Europe in the past year or so, there’s been something like a 10 per cent reduction in the value of the Euro against the dollar, and that conceivably might mean some European partners moving their numbers around.”
Simulation for training
How best to conduct test and evaluation and how best to excite the aircraft to provide true high-end pilot training value was another issue still being worked through by JSF customer nations, including the US.
It was clear, however, that simulation would play a much larger role with 5th generation and beyond platforms since it was becoming increasingly difficult to provide the denseness and richness of a high-end threat environment without revealing platform capabilities.
Generating the assets to test the Block 3F full warfighting capability software associated with the planned declaration in 2020 of Initial Operational Capability (IOC) for the RAAF’s 3 Squadron was complex but on track, AVM Deeble said.
While F-111s used to fly two miles from each other, the RAAF’s JSF fighting methodology would probably start with a three-ship formation flying tens of miles apart but operating in concert, exchanging and fusing data from each other over a much larger area of airspace.
“But the real power of this aircraft will be once you start utilising a four ship formation and integrating it as envisaged in Plan Jericho with other capabilities like Wedgetail, Poseidon, Triton, Growler, Super Hornet and the Air Warfare Destroyer.”
Interoperability across key JSF-equipped allies such as the US and UK was also fundamental to Plan Jericho, and would be advanced conceptually by joint simulation and experimentation.
This article first appeared in the ADM February 2016 issue.