F-35

WASHINGTON: The F-35 fighter jet’s exorbitant life-cycle costs means the Air Force cannot afford to buy as many aircraft as it needs to fight and win a war today, which makes the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program all the more important, says outgoing Air Force acquisition czar Will Roper.

“I think the F-35 program is a long way from being at a sustainment point that we need. I think it’s a long way from being an affordable fighter that we can buy in bulk,” he told reporters today.

“That’s the reason why Next-Generation Air Dominance is so important to the Air Force,” he said. “It doesn’t just represent a next-generation fighter with bells and whistles that we will need in warfighting. It doesn’t just represent a completely different acquisition paradigm. It also represents a chance to design an airplane that is more sustainable than the F-35 if, in fact, the F-35 cannot get its cost-per-flying-hour down.”

Roper would not be drawn on whether the Air Force was considering downsizing it plan to build a total inventory of 1,763 F-35s — with the Air Force requesting 48 aircraft in 2021, and planning to ask for the same annual buy for the foreseeable future, according to a study last month by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But what I can say is we’re not at the sustainment price point we need to be for a very large fleet. So, the next few years are critical for the F 35 program,” he added.

He seemed to suggest that, all things considered, perhaps the answer is to turn to NGAD to more rapidly build a wartime-fit fighter fleet.

“I very much hope for the future of the program, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t prepare for the worst. And so you can see that the movements that we have made in the TacAir portfolio have set the Air Force up to have options, so that our eggs are not in one proverbial basket,” he said.

Roper explained that Air Force fighters have to be ready to establish air dominance on day one of a war (along with satellites to secure establish communications.) “If they don’t win the day, then there will be no time for the rest of the services to join.” This is why the quantity of F-35s available matters, he said, as well as the quality of its capabilities.

“As to the quality, I think everyone feels pleased as the F-35 goes through testing, but it’s very much focused on Block Four as the next step that has to be taken. Quantity goes directly to whether the cost-per-flying-hour can come down,” he said. “And right now the F-35 has a good ‘sticker price,’ but its cost of ownership is not where it needs to be, making the quantities that the Air Force may need to purchase in question.”

Prime contractor Lockheed Martin’s ongoing Block 4 update includes both hardware and software to enable the aircraft with faster computers, more missiles, a panoramic cockpit display, longer ranges, as well as the capability to team with drones. But the Government Accountability Office found a $1.5 billion increase in the F-35’s Block 4 upgrade costs for 2019  — now up to $12.1 billion. On top of that, the update has experienced numerous delays. Indeed, GAO begged to differ on the quality issue: “The F-35 aircraft in the field have not met standards for reliability and maintainability, indicating that the program is not delivering aircraft at the level of quality expected,” the report said.

“Work on Block 4 upgrades continues and will bring more capability to the warfighter through an agile development process based on incremental software upgrades, providing continuous improvements and further widening the gap over legacy platforms,” a Lockheed Martin spokesperson said in an email.

That question about affordability, in turn, “is why,” Roper said, “other tactical aviation options are appealing to have in the mix, so that the Air Force has options number one; and number two, there’s competition, there’s pressure, on industry to improve, which would not be there if there was only one show in town.”

Lockheed Martin “understands the importance of F-35 affordability, both with regard to production and sustainment, and is focused on offering this unmatched capability at a cost similar to that of legacy aircraft,” the spokesperson said. “We are currently delivering F-35s at or below the cost of less capable fourth generation aircraft, while also lowering the sustainment costs by 40% over the past five years.”

Roper said fixing the F-35’s myriad issues requires the Air Force, its software development teams, the Joint Program Office, and Lockheed Martin all “to run the same direction and at the same pace to make a difference.” He reiterated that the service’s top software hub, Kessel Run, is “fully dedicated to helping on the sustainment of the system.” Kessel Run is working a replacement for Lockheed Martin’s long-troubled Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) used to track parts and schedule maintenance, called ODIN (for Operational Integrated Data Network.) 

“I’ve made a lot of the Air Force available, above and beyond the normal call of duty, to the program,” he said.

Long-time aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia said that, while “the 1,763 USAF F-35A number has always been one of the stranger fictions in defense procurement” because the Air Force simply can’t afford that many no matter what, it’s way too early to count on NGAD as a replacement.

“Basically, they can afford about 50 a year, given competing priorities, and assuming 20-25 years at that rate, the likely total is around 1,000-1,200,” he said in an email. “There are big variables, particularly regarding the next combat aircraft to enter procurement. Flying NGAD prototypes may or may not tell us something about that. We’ll need to learn more about how long it will take to missionize and get ready for production and service. But the idea that F-35 procurement could ramp down to divert cash for a Digital Century Series sounds very flawed to me.”

NGAD and Digital Engineering

Lockheed Martin Skunk Works concept art of a sixth-generation fighter

Lockheed Martin Skunk Works concept art of a sixth-generation fighter

How important is this? When I asked Roper what program he’d most like to see succeed in the next year, he chose NGAD and the Digital Century Series model he’s championed as an acquisition strategy.

“Specifically, what I would like to see get over the goal line would be taking digital engineering to its most fulsome representation in Next-Generation Air Dominance, because it matters for so much more than building a next-generation tactical airplane,” he said. All of our programs are watching NGAD to see how far they can push the digital envelope, and not just Air Force, [also] Space Force. I’ve got every PEO in Space Force, including our Chief of Space Operations Gen. [Jay] Raymond, briefed into all the digital work we’re doing, and now our space programs are following suit trying to replicate digital practices for satellites.

“I view it as a tide that can raise all boats, or, for the Air Force, a wind that can raise all planes, or, for the Space Force, a rocket that can raise all orbital eccentricities — I don’t know what the right analogy is, but it’s that big of a deal,” he said.

“Digital engineering is one of the biggest things that I’ve seen in eight years,” he stressed. “It’s the last thing I owe the Air Force; it’s the reason why I’m still here working around the clock with a newborn: to get out the last guidance on digital engineering before I’m not able to talk to the Air Force for a very long time. So, if I’m writing well, which is very difficult to do when you’re not getting sleep, I should be able to push that guidance out to them next week. And then hope that these first programs do a top-shelf job of implementing it.”

ABMS

The roll out of the first products from the service’s high-priority Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) program is another accomplishment Roper hopes to pull off before he steps down Jan. 19.

“With the release one acquisition strategy being signed — I should do that as one of the last things I do in this position before the inauguration — that’ll be a normal program, with a normal baseline, and a normal test schedule, a normal everything,” he said. “It’s a fairly boring acquisition, but we had to do things differently to build the raw ingredients for that first release.”

“ReleaseONE,” the initial ABMS package, will comprise “16 or 17” separate ‘products’ — such as cloudONE and platformONE — that have been tested out through the ABMS program’s series of ‘on-ramp’ experiments — all in all making up the equivalent of “a miniature version of the Internet applied to military systems,” Roper said.

“You’ve got cloud, which we all know our devices are connected to, and big analytics there; we’ll have transport layers through space and other means, which we all use in the Internet of Things. We’ll have the equivalent of cell towers that are actually routing data between different waveforms in different devices; and then the devices themselves are those that are doing the business in the Air Force, right up front against the adversary.”

In particular, he elaborated, the Air Mobility Fleet — specifically tanker aircraft — “will be playing the role of a flying cell tower translating between all the different waveforms and pushing data to tactical aircraft that are inside the denied comms or denied [positioning, navigation and timing] envelope.” They also will carry software capable of data processing, and creating “courses of action development at the edge.” (While Roper didn’t mention which tanker aircraft would be kitted out with the new ABMS capabilities, including gatewayONE, colleague Valerie Insinna reported on Tuesday that the front-runner is Boeing’s new KC-46. (The tanker was designed for signals intelligence sensors.)

Will Roper, second left

Roper noted that when he began the ABMS program, none of the foundational elements for creating a military Internet of Things even existed. “Two years ago we had none of the fundamental building blocks for an Internet in the military, we had to build them project by project,” he said. ‘I didn’t have any Internet-type stuff. That’s really important. I hope you’ll be able to convey that to readers.”

He said that he is hopeful the roll out of the first ABMS program of record will go some ways toward convincing a highly skeptical Congress that ABMS is the right thing at the right time and is being pursued in the right way. The acquisition strategy is “standard,” he said, “there’s nothing new in it that’s not done in other programs. I think that’s going to help a lot.”

As Breaking D readers know, the 2021 spending bill slashed the Air Force’s ABMS request in half: to $159 million from the requested $302 million. The congressional report (Section D of the omnibus spending package) explains the move by citing, among other defects, “poor justification materials.”

Legacy and Future

In response to my question about his legacy, Roper said that if he could see one of his efforts carried forward by the Air Force it would be “innovation culture.” That culture — which he has pushed via myriad vectors such as the new software factories, aggressive use of alternative acquisition methods, building a pool of new commercial providers by courting startups — “has been so difficult to build within the Air Force,” he said. “It is like water through a very dense sponge: it’s easy to get the top wet and the bottom wet, but getting it all the way through the middle takes tons of work and energy on the part of leadership. … It can be killed so very quickly with the wrong influences, especially from leadership. That’s what I would truly wish,” he said.

Roper wouldn’t comment on whether he might be tapped — and willing to accept — a new position within the Biden Pentagon, or any other future job. However, he didn’t sound like a man ready to rest on his laurels; indeed, he seemed to be making a case for why the new administration might just want to keep him around.

“Right now I don’t know. I’ve made it through one administration transition — I served much longer in the Obama administration than I have in this one,” he said. “And I’m not a political person. I don’t get involved in politics — and I certainly have personal views on them, very strong ones — but the reason I come to work every day is to bring the technical knowledge that I have and the ability to hopefully lead change and innovation in government, as well as a focus on China. …. China is going to be here for the long term, past any single administration.

“They have a plan to knock us off the top, and that is why I came into defense. That is why I work so hard at this. And no matter what I do in future, that is what I want to be a part of some way of helping tip the scales back towards the US’s favor, whether that is inside of government or not.”