Final operational test and planning for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has been pushed back to mid-2018, about a year later than expected, because of ongoing developmental delays with the aircraft’s final software iteration.
The Pentagon had targeted mid-2017 for operational test and evaluation of the aircraft, “but it’s clear we are not going to make that,” Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s chief weapon buyer, said May 24.
Kendall, Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley and F-35 Joint Program Office head Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan spoke to reporters by phone from Phoenix, Ariz., Tuesday evening following the annual meeting of international partners and major industrial participants, operators and leadership from the three services that will fly the F-35.
The original target date for the start of initial operational testing and evaluation (IOT&E) was late summer, early fall of 2017, Bogdan said. But issues with development and de-bugging of the aircraft’s final 3F software configuration have made it difficult to assemble the 23 production-representative F-35s needed to begin to evaluation.
“We anticipate they will have enough airplanes to start IOT&E in earnest probably in the January-February of 2018 timeframe,” Bogdan said. “That is really a function of trying to get those older airplanes fully [modified] to a complete 3f hardware and software capability so they can do IOT&E with production representative airplanes.”
Air Force IOC
Delays in operational testing have not derailed Air Force plans to declare initial operational capability (IOC) later this year, Kendall said. There is “pretty good confidence” the Air Force would meet its target for IOC sometime between August and December this year.
The Air Force intends to declare IOC with 12 F-35As that will have the Block 3i hardware and software configuration. That is the same version of the jet’s software suite with which the Marine Corps declared its F-35B operational last year but with improved software stability and pilot interface display software.
ALIS development is driving the timeframe in which the Air Force can declare IOC, Bogdan said. The basic capabilities needed to deploy the F-35A in combat will be delivered at the declaration of IOC, Bogdan said.
The ALIS element that will deploy latest is the integration of engine maintenance and information into the system, he said. The Air Force will have the decision to declare IOC without the ALIS engine diagnostic capability. That is the final of five capability upgrades that the second generation ALIS will have compared with the system in place now, Bogdan said.
“As it stands right now, that is probably not going to happen until the October-November timeframe,” he said.
Joint Program Office
Kendall took the opportunity to condemn efforts by the Senate Armed Services Committee to disband the F-35 Joint Program Office once the aircraft reaches full-rate production. The committee’s markup of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) included language to that effect and the elimination of Kendall’s own job, both pushes by SASC Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) to decentralize control of major acquisition programs.
“That language was a surprise to us,” Kendall said. “Frankly, we don’t understand the rationale behind it. We don’t know how an enterprise of the magnitude, scale, scope and participation of the F-35 could possibly be managed without a centralized entity.”
“There is no question in any of our minds that we need an organization like the JPO,” Kendall said. “We view it as an essential organization and that is the consensus among all the U.S. services involved, as well as among all our partners.”
He warned that shuttering the JPO and axing the Deputy Secretary for AT&L office would have consequences for the F-35 program because central oversight is considered necessary. The need to coordinate industry partners, the three service participants and international partner militaries and industry demand a centralized management structure, Kendall said.
“There is very strong support from all the partners and the services for continuing the Joint Program Office,” Kendall said. “In fact, we don’t see any way that the program can be managed without some kind of organization like the Joint Program Office. But that organization is going to be evolving and changing, and has been, as the activities conducted on the F-35 change.”
Focus will soon shift from development and testing to production and sustainment and to management of follow-on fleet-wide capability upgrades called Block 4. Congress also has called for separating the Block 4 program out from the larger F-35 umbrella and managing it as a standalone program.
Kendall said he would dutifully adhere to a congressional mandate to manage F-35 Block 4 follow-on upgrades as a separate major defense acquisition program (MDAP), but dividing the two could hamper execution of both.
“I don’t think it is necessary and I think it would add some overhead to the program that isn’t going to help execution or oversight,” Kendall said. “We are going to manage the follow-on modernization pretty intensely. There will be close scrutiny of that program…It’s large enough to be an MDAP (major defense acquisition program), but given the intensity of the management and focus on it, I just don’t think that the added bureaucracy associated with an MDAP is going to be worthwhile. Nevertheless, if we are told to do it, we will.”