June 3, 2020 | International, Aerospace
Steve Trimble May 27, 2020
This was supposed to be a relatively easy year for Lockheed Martin's F-35 production. As 2020 began, the stealth fighter program's three-year growth spurt had subsided after annual deliveries more than doubled between 2017 and 2019. Lockheed planned to deliver 141 F-35s in 2020, only seven more than in 2019.
But the F-35 supply chain is not immune from the global disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. After signaling during a first quarter earnings call in April that a production slowdown was likely, Lockheed confirmed the impact on May 19. The company issued a new forecast of 117-124 F-35 deliveries this year. If Lockheed is unable to recover in the second half, the slowdown would mark the first year-over-year decrease in F-35 deliveries since the program began.
“However, we will accelerate production when we return to pre-COVID-19 conditions and could see this number decrease,” the company says.
The company's new financial guidance reflects the lower F-35 delivery total, with net sales for the year falling to a range of $62.25-64 billion from $62.75-64.25 billion. Other large F-35 suppliers include Northrop Grumman (center fuselage, radar), Raytheon Technologies (engine, distributed aper-ture system) and BAE Systems (aft fuselage, electronic warfare suite).
It was not immediately clear which customers and variants would be affected by the potential shortfall of 18-24 F-35 deliveries in 2020.
The Defense Department is closely watching the F-35, its single-largest production system. So far, senior acquisition officials expect the overall impact of the novel coronavirus on weapon system production to be manageable. But the Pentagon leadership considers the military aircraft industry an exception. Although demand and domestic U.S. military spending remain intact, the military aviation supply chain's links to the collapsing commercial aircraft market is causing delays.
“I think [military] aviation has had a more acute sensitivity to supplier disruptions, largely driven by the massive upheaval in the commercial aviation market,” said James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition. “Many of the aerospace companies were blended between military and commercial, and with commercial just falling through the floor, their abilities to stay open and keep their workforce has been a little bit more challenged.”
Another sector Geurts is watching is the market for command, control, communications and computers and intelligence (C4I). “We're trying to track all of it,” he says. “But the most immediate impact we've seen has been on aviation.”
Lockheed's F-35 assembly line in Fort Worth was hit hard by the COVID outbreak in mid-April. One employee, Claude Daniels, died after reporting COVID-19-related symptoms to a supervisor. Another F-35 employee, who survived, broadcast a Facebook Live video from his hospital bed, pleading with his unionized co-workers to sanitize their workspaces even if it is not in their job description.
The company's management has said that the F-35 assembly line adopted new protocols in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which included regularly sanitizing equipment and quarantining employees exposed by co-workers or others to the virus.
The COVID-19 response is not the only pressure on the F-35's production system. Lockheed exceeded the overall delivery target by three aircraft in 2019, but slower production of the less mature F-35C airframe nearly caused the company to miss the annual goal. To compensate, Lockheed moved up deliveries of four F-35As originally scheduled for 2020 to the end of 2019, allowing the company to beat the delivery target by three aircraft instead of missing it by one.
Before the impact of the virus, the F-35's global supply chain was already strained by the three-year production ramp-up from 2017 to 2019. Late part deliveries jumped to 10,000 in 2019 from 2,000 in 2017, according to a May report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Monthly parts shortages, meanwhile, leaped to 8,000 in July 2019 from 875 a year before, the GAO says. The shortages represent a fraction of the 300,000 parts in each F-35, but the trend offered a glimpse of the pressure on the supply chain to meet demand during the ramp-up.
November 16, 2023 | International, Aerospace
Boeing Co said on Thursday it will partner with the U.S. government in a project aimed at addressing challenges faced by Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member countries in developing and scaling use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
October 21, 2020 | International, Land, C4ISR
Andrew Chuter LONDON — British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has announced a new science and technology strategy aimed at competing with potential adversaries. “We are in a very real race with our adversaries for technological advantage. What we do today will lay the groundwork for decades to come. Proliferation of new technologies demands our science and technology is threat-driven and better aligned to our needs in the future,” Wallace said Oct. 19 during a visit to the British Army's Salisbury Plain training ground in the west of England ahead of a war-fighting experiment there. The latest strategy launch comes weeks after the MoD rolled out a new integrated operational concept to shape how Britain adapts its future military effort to the changing security threat posed by the likes of China and Russia. With the rollout of a defense and security review fast approaching, the MoD has been revealing busy some of the key supporting strategies that will likely underpin what is being touted as Britain's most fundamental military shakeup in generations. Both the science and technology strategy and the integrated operational concept are key elements of an integrated defense and security review planned to link defense, security, foreign policy and international development aid. The review, expected by the end of November, is meant to signal big cuts to conventional capabilities as the Conservative government invests in high-tech areas like space, cyberspace, artificial intelligence and undersea capabilities. The initial response from industry appears positive. “I welcome this MoD innovation initiative and hope that it translates into more conversations and activity with industry,” said Steve Beeching, the managing director of the U.K. arm of American communications company Viasat, which has a growing defense presence in Britain. "We want to work collaboratively in supporting the rapid implementation of future mission capabilities to empower our defense and security forces in the constantly evolving adversarial environment.” Future military development would focus on five emerging technology areas that have posed the most significant enduring capability challenge, according to the new S&T strategy document. Technology areas listed are: Pervasive, full-spectrum, multidomain intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Multidomain command and control, communications, and computers. Improvement of the U.K.'s ability to compete against adversaries below the threshold of conventional conflict while addressing vulnerabilities, especially in the information environment. Develop systems to target adversaries in new ways across all domains. Generate affordable, survivable capabilities that can rapidly address evolving threats and can operate within a denied electromagnetic environment. “They have been recognized as the key drivers for science and technology and research and development within the MoD," the document read. "The Department will continue to have an enduring requirement to maintain investment in science and technology capabilities and programs beyond these.” The country noted it isn't dismissing other equipment areas; it has also pledged to invest in the areas of cyberspace; chemical, biological and radiological technology; novel weapons; and system of systems integration. The document does not mention how Britain will afford the strategy, but it does talk about new approaches to funding. The MoD said it plans to invest in new, riskier activities in hopes of developing technologies by using demonstrators, experimentation and better exploitation processes. It also hopes to make rapid progress on the strategy by the end of the first year. The progress includes creating a strategy implementation plan, giving clear policy positions on the critical capabilities that the government must sustain, providing direction to academia and industry on priority areas, and revitalizing the government's technology incubation program. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/10/19/britain-unveils-strategy-to-gain-a-technological-advantage-over-adversaries/
July 19, 2021 | International, C4ISR
Washington DC (SPX) Jul 14, 2021 - DARPA has selected four industry and university research teams for the Invisible Headlights program, which seeks to determine if it's possible for autonomous vehicles to navigate in complete darknes