ALIS Working Better, But F-35 Full-Rate Date Still Unclear

WASHINGTON: The F-35 Joint Program Office is still evaluating when the fighter will formally clear its 20-year development phase after a new expert study of testing requirements, says JPO Director Lt. Gen. Eric Fick.

However, officially passing through ‘milestone C’ into full-rate production may not matter that much, Fick told the annual McAleese defense conference today. It will do little to change either how fast planes are already being built or how deeply involved the JPO and acquisition leaders at DoD and the services will remain in managing the sprawling, $400 billion procurement effort.

“We are effectively at full rate production today,” he said. “Milestone C used to kind of be a departure from the close management of OSD and the services [but] I don’t see us getting away from that. So, really, for me, I don’t sense that the lack of that milestone is doing anything other than providing a launching point for criticism of the program. So for that reason perhaps alone, I would love to get past [it].”

The ability to properly test the F-35 fleet via DoD’s Joint Simulation Environment (JSE) has been the key roadblock to the program moving to full-rate production, Fick said. The Director of Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) must certify that the fighters can pass 64 different test ‘missions’ using the JSE before certifying that the program can pass move to full-rate production.

“Having stood up last year, and in previous years and committed to timelines and gotten burned by them,” he said, the JPO asked outside experts (including from Carnegie Melon and John Hopkins universities): “Are we asking this team to do something that’s it’s not even possible to do?”

After being briefed yesterday on the expert study’s summary findings, he said the answer appears to be no: “We’re not asking for something that’s impossible.”

However, the findings also made it clear that the JPO doesn’t yet have the insight needed to validate that the aircraft can exchange data and work seamlessly with the JSE. “It’s the validation verification piece that I’m struggling with a little bit,” he said, adding that he needs more certainty “before I commit.”

Hill Action?

Speaking of criticism, House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chair Adam Smith, again blasted the program today as a poster child for failed DoD acquisition, especially related to software-heavy modern weapon systems.

“The F-35 is not the only problem. And I do understand how important the platform is,” Smith told the McAleese conference. “But the amount of money over budget it is, the amount of time it has taken, the sustainment costs, the problems with the engine — it is indicative of 20 years of too many mistakes. Too many mistakes on programs that wound up being too expensive and didn’t deliver the capability that they said they were going to deliver.”

Smith and other key HASC Democrats have suggested that Congress might slow or cut planned production in the 2022 budgeting process until DoD gets a better handle on the program’s many woes — especially the aircraft’s astronomical operating costs.

However, they are already facing pushback from the program’s many supporters in Congress. Members of the House F-35 caucus penned an April 28 letter to Smith and Rep. Betty McCollum, who chairs the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, urging DoD to increase production.

DoD asked for 79 planes in its 2021 budget request, including 48 for the Air Force — but Congress added 17 (a formula that has been repeated over a number of years now) to bring the total to 96. The Biden administration is sticking to its predecessor’s plan to ask for $11 billion in 2022 to buy 75 planes; 48 for the Air Force, reports colleague Tony Capaccio today.

Rep. Anthony Brown, one of the 132 signatories from the caucus, yesterday acknowledged the programs numerous challenges from JSE integration to sustainment costs to the long-troubled maintenance software, but still urged continued support.

“I would acknowledge that it is the most expensive procurement, and likely the most expensive sustainment program in the history of the department, there’s no doubt about it,” Brown admitted. He also expressed concern that the full-rate production delay actually could cost DoD the technology advantage the aircraft now represents.

But, Brown argued, the F-35’s battlefield performance is proving its value as a much-needed fifth-generation fighter for a future fight against China.

“What I would say to my colleagues is, we’ve made a big investment. It’s a capability that we dramatically need, certainly as we’re pivoting to the Indo-Pacific,” he said. “We are making progress. There is frustration around the pace of progress, but we are going to get there.”

Transition To ODIN

As Brown mentioned, Lockheed Martin’s ALIS, the troubled proprietary maintenance and planning software, continues to contribute to high costs and dismal readiness rates. But Fick said the pain is easing.

However, he declined to commit to any new deadline for transitioning from ALIS to the new government-designed and owned system known as ODIN, (Operational Integrated Data Network) — explaining the JPO has decided to take some time to “recalibrate our plan.”

While Air Force coders and former head of acquisition Will Roper were enthusiastic about ODIN being created at the speed of Silicon Valley, it turns out they were too ambitious. Fick said the JPO’s outside advisors on software development told the JPO that coders simply couldn’t work fast enough to build ODIN as quickly as hoped.

At the same time, fixes to ALIS have yielded better results than expected, he explained.

Further, initial hardware designed to run ALIS upgrades and support future ODIN software “is actually solving some of our issues and some of our crises, and we’ll be able to roll out a more detailed plan, I’m going to guess, within the next six to nine months.”