With the Air Force in the midst of major adjustments to its future military satellite communications (MILSATCOM) capabilities, the program manager for the F-35 Lightening II Joint Strike Fighter said recently the entry of the fighter into the U.S. fleet will make new demands on and help to shape the Pentagon’s MILSATCOM architecture.
“I honestly believe that F-35 will be one of the tremendous influences” on the future MILSATCOM architecture, said Marine Maj. Gen. David Heinz. Lockheed Martin [LMT] is the prime contractor for JSF.
“But we do need to look beyond the air domain, to the surface and the maritime, to increase that connectivity,” he said during a May 6 interview with sister publication Defense Daily.
“Part of that challenge is that there are a lot of companies that believe they can do it, but each one has a different proprietary solution that may not talk to the entire class of aircraft or ground stations or maritime assets…so we need to figure out a more open architecture,” he added. “And I think the first company that comes forward with that non-proprietary solution may, in fact, win this particular discussion.”
Earlier that day, Gen. Robert Kehler, chief of Air Force Space Command, said much about the future MILSATCOM architecture remains unknown and will depend on funding levels.
“We’ve got to get smarter in how we build architectures and how we invest,” Kehler said at a Space Foundation breakfast in Washington. “And as a practical matter, we’re going to have to see how the budget comes in to see how much we can do.”
President Obama has proposed a Fiscal Year 2010 budget that would terminate the Air Force’s $26 million Transformational Satellite (TSAT) communications system in favor of the purchase two more Lockheed Martin Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellites. The move is widely seen as an effort to move away from large, expensive satellites with top- of-the-line features to smaller, more readily replaceable constellations.
“We look at the numbers of requirements we have out there, and in the future we will need to do some number of large platforms that are complex, very high end kind of things– the country is going to demand those kinds of capabilities,” Kehler explained. “But I think there’s also a way that we can look at other parts of that spectrum of need and say that there can be smaller things launched more frequently.”
Kehler said that the Air Force currently has “a lot of strategic ingredients but no strategic recipe” for a future MILSATCOM vision.
But one of the main ingredients will be F-35 demands on those data links, Heinz told sister publication Defense Daily.
Heinz also said the program is on track to complete flight testing more quickly than most systems of its kind.
“There are a few nuances that we still go through in terms of iterating the design versus almost simultaneous production, and how does that fit in with flight test,” he said. “But what I believe we will discover here in flight test is that the level of tools, and the level of sophistication relative to software development, the laboratory facilities and the flying test beds may be arriving us at a point where we have less discovery in flight test and it becomes more about validating the models in simulation than it does trying to find what’s wrong with what you actually did.”
As a result, “what you’ll see is us being able to step through flight tests faster than we had before… I believe that we are showing that the design methodology has gotten to a point now where we catch up with the flight test so that there is not as much surprise,” he said. “I do not discount we will find something, but I think that something will be small applications of flight control computers or things that we can modify in terms of interfaces,” rather than structural problems requiring re-design of parts of the airplane.
The Government Accountability Office has warned of potential cost growth during the testing phase, but Heinz said he is confident that most of the wrinkles have been ironed out of the program at this point. He said the design of the aircraft is 99.6 percent complete, and some 74 percent of the software has been written.
“Having that stable software early in the program and then improving it in the labs–not suffering any stability problems once you get into flight test–are key indicators for me,” he added.
Heinz noted that, out of the 97 flight tests the program has executed to date, “seventy-five percent of them have come back full mission capable.
“I know mature programs today that have been flying for 25 years that don’t achieve the 75 percent full mission capable rate,” he said. “That gives me confidence that we will be able to step through a flight test program more efficiently than other programs.”
Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a plan to accelerate purchase of F-35 test jets of all three variants–the Air Force’s Conventional Take-Off/Landing (CTOL), the Marine Corps’ Short Take-Off/Vertical Landing (STOVL) and the Navy’s Carrier Variant (CV). The president’s budget supports that effort by increasing funding from a previously proposed $6.8 billion to $11.2 billion for FY ’10.
Heinz said the decision to accelerate the program is a vote of confidence from the administration that will bolster many nations’ decisions to buy into the program. Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Turkey and the United Kingdom have contributed $4.4 billion of the just over $40 billion in total development costs. Participation deals with Israel and Singapore are also pending.
“Considering the economic state and the pressures that all our nations are under, and the fact that several programs were outright canceled, any message that says we’re increasing production…is promising,” Heinz said. “Certainly it has been interpreted that way by our partners. They were looking for a signal from the U.S. government on” whether Washington would support the program, “and I think that signal was firmly sent by Secretary Gates.”
Asked what the major issues affecting tactical aircraft in the Pentagon’s upcoming review of major weapon systems will be, Heinz said the aging U.S. fleet will be a primary concern.
“I think for [the Quadrennial Defense Review] it’s all going to be about recapitalization,” he said. “We have a number of aircraft that are wearing out even faster than has been predicted.”
He also said that the question of “is there too much tacair?” will be central to this year’s review.
“I understand all the zealots that would love to have this many airplanes and not a single more, but you’re betting an awful lot” on any such decision, he said.
Heinz confirmed that the F-35 is expected to be made nuclear capable at some point but that it will come in a future bloc upgrade to the aircraft.
“I have a requirement for a dual capable airplane, but I will not certify that capability in my current bloc plan,” he said. “Although I have built the architecture for the airplane to be capable, I still need to be provided funding and direction to go ahead and complete the testing to show the certification of that capability.”