F-35 Program and Lockheed Martin Starting Transition to Cloud-Based Logistics Program

The F-35 Joint Program Office and Lockheed Martin [LMT] have begun a transition to the the Operational Data Integrated Network (ODIN) cloud-based logistics program from the nearly 20 year-old Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS).

“We’ve been able to port the existing ALIS software onto the new ODIN hardware structure,” Greg Ulmer, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 general manager, told the Air Force Association’s virtual Air, Space, and Cyber conference this week. “Think about an 80 percent reduction in terms of components, size, weight, space. We’ve gone through initial flight test at [Naval Air Station] Patuxent River, and we’re headed to an operational assessment at [Marine Corps Air Station] Yuma [Ariz.] in the coming months.”

While ALIS has 891 pounds of hardware, ODIN will have just 50 pounds of hardware.

Ulmer said that the F-35 program is seeking an initial operational capability for ODIN in the fall of next year, followed by full operational capability a year later.

“Some progress has already been made, and we have more to do relative to a transition to ODIN,” he said.

Since April, Lockheed Martin and the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) have been negotiating a possible repayment by Lockheed Martin of $183 million to $303 million of awarded F-35 funds to the federal government for defects in ALIS (Defense Daily, July 22).

In June last year, the DoD Inspector General reported that the Pentagon received non‑Ready-For-Issue (RFI) spare parts for the F-35 and “spent up to $303 million in DoD labor costs since 2015, and it will continue to pay up to $55 million annually for non‑RFI spare parts until the non‑RFI spare parts issue is resolved.”

At a July 22 hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Ulmer testified in response to a question from Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) that the proposal to reduce the Lockheed Martin repayment to $183 million from $303 million came from the federal government.

At times, F-35 bases have not received spare parts with electronic equipment logs (EELs) that help gauge part health, or F-35 bases have received faulty EELs.

Since 2014, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has called on DoD to establish a performance management process for the F-35’s ALIS, but to no avail.

While House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) wants Lockheed Martin to repay DCMA for each defective electronic log identified, Ulmer said that the defective logs are “not all associated with Lockheed Martin performance” and that the logbook does not only track parts, but contains  technical data, graphical data, and International Traffic in Arms Regulation data–all of which can lead to corruption of an electronic equipment log.

Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord told lawmakers that a possible resolution other than a Lockheed Martin repayment to the U.S. Treasury may lie in the ongoing DoD negotiations with Lockheed Martin on the F-35 sustainment contract. Those negotiations could result in a lower sustainment contract for Lockheed Martin.

The intellectual property and data components of ODIN will, unlike ALIS, be government-owned, not contractor-owned.

DoD wants to spend $547 million for ODIN in the next five years–funds previously planned for a now defunct effort to restructure ALIS.