May 14, 2020 | International, Aerospace

Some F-35 suppliers are having trouble delivering parts on schedule, and Turkey’s departure could make that worse

WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is on the verge of full-rate production, with a decision slated for early 2021. But a congressional watchdog group is concerned that as the company ramps up F-35 production, its suppliers are falling behind.

And those supply chain problems could get even worse as Turkish defense manufacturers are pushed out of the program, the Government Accountability Office said in a May 12 report.

According to the GAO, the number of F-35 parts delivered late skyrocketed from less than 2,000 in August 2017 to upward of 10,000 in July 2019.

The number of parts shortages per month also climbed from 875 in July 2018 to more than 8,000 in July 2019. More than 60 percent of that sum was concentrated among 20 suppliers, it said.

“To mitigate late deliveries and parts shortages — and deliver more aircraft on time — the airframe contractor has utilized methods such as reconfiguring the assembly line and moving planned work between different stations along the assembly line,” the GAO said.

“According to the program office, such steps can cause production to be less efficient, which, in turn, can increase the number of labor hours necessary to build each aircraft,” which then drives up cost, the GAO added.

Those problems could be compounded by Turkey's expulsion from the F-35 program, which was announced last year after the country moved forward with buying the Russian S-400 air defense system. Although Turkey financially contributed to the development of the F-35 as a partner in the program, the U.S. Defense Department has maintained that Turkey cannot buy or operate the F-35 until it gives up the S-400.

The Pentagon has also taken action to begin stripping Turkish industry from the aircraft's supply chain, a process that involves finding new companies to make 1,005 parts, some of which are sole-sourced by Turkish companies.

Ellen Lord, the Pentagon's undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, had hoped to stop contracting with Turkish suppliers by March 2020, but in January she said that some contracts would extend through the year, according to Defense One.

While the Defense Department has found new suppliers to manufacture the parts currently made in Turkey, it is uncertain whether the price of those components will be more expensive. Furthermore, as of December 2019, the new production rates for 15 components were lagging behind that of the legacy Turkish producers.

“According to program officials, some of these new parts suppliers will not be producing at the rate required until next year, as roughly 10 percent are new to the F-35 program,” the GAO said.

“Airframe contractor representatives stated it would take over a year to stand up these new suppliers, with lead times dependent on several factors, such as part complexity, quantity, and the supplier's production maturity. In addition, these new suppliers are required to go through qualification and testing to ensure the design integrity for their parts.”

The F-35 Joint Program Office disagreed with the GAO's recommendation to provide certain information to Congress ahead of the full-rate production decision, including an evaluation of production risks and a readiness assessment of the suppliers that are replacing Turkish companies.

In its statement, the JPO said it is already providing an acceptable number of updates on the program's readiness for full-rate production.

Hard times for the F-35's engine supplier

Not all F-35 production trends reported by the GAO were bad for the aircraft. Since 2016, Lockheed has made progress in delivering a greater proportion of F-35s on schedule, with 117 of 134 F-35s delivered on time in 2019.

However, one of the biggest subsystems of the F-35 — the F135 engine produced by Pratt & Whitney — drifted in the opposite direction, with a whopping 91 percent of engines delivered behind schedule.

At one point in 2019, Pratt & Whitney stopped deliveries of the F135 for an unspecified period due to test failures, which also contributed to the reduction of on-time deliveries.

According to the Defense Contracts Management Agency, “there have been 18 engine test failures in 2019, which is eight more than in 2018, each requiring disassembly and rework,” the GAO wrote. “To address this issue, the engine contractor has developed new tooling for the assembly line and has established a team to identify characteristics leading to the test failures. Plans are also in place for additional training for employees.”

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/05/12/some-f-35-suppliers-are-having-trouble-delivering-parts-on-schedule-and-turkeys-departure-could-make-that-worse/

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July 22, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

How new prototyping dollars will help Army network modernization
Andrew Eversden ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. — The U.S. Army is moving forward on a number of projects to bolster its tactical network, thanks to a new pool of money dedicated to prototyping and maturing emerging technology. Additions to the Army's tactical network will come every two years as part of modernization efforts called capability sets. Previously, prototypes of emerging technology would fall into the “valley of death,” where technology projects that didn't have enough funding to transition into programs of record would die, said Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher, director of the Army's Network Cross-Functional Team. The CFT received nearly $30 million to support prototyping efforts for science and technology efforts as well as industry work in fiscal 2020, according to Justine Ruggio, communications director for the CFT. According to a May news release from Army Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical, the Army network modernization team has identified eight “promising,” Army-led science and technology efforts as well as six industry-led prototyping projects. The Army is particularly interested in low-Earth orbit satellite constellations to improve bandwidth and reduce latency for Capability Set '23 and Capability Set '25, said Michael Breckenridge, acting associate director for the Office of Science and Technology. His office falls under the purview of the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command C5ISR (Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Cyber, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) Center. The S&T team is researching how the service can move and secure traffic through these constellations. “While those are very much in their infancy as far as the commercial LEO constellations coming together, we're already working with those vendors to try and get satellite time to be able to do experimentation to understand the capability and how do we shape, then, future investments in that space,” Breckenridge said. The Network CFT is also excited about the survivability and mobility of the Army's command posts, said Donald Coulter, senior S&T adviser for the CFT. It's also focused on spectrum obfuscation capabilities as well as an identity management project that explores new ways of verifying users' identities (for example, through wearables) to ensure the security of Army systems if equipment falls into enemy hands, he added. The S&T community and the CFT are also working on a secure communications link between manned and unmanned fighting vehicles, something that may be used for other parts of the network, Breckenridge said. For example, the C5ISR Center is also experimenting with that link for distributed command post nodes and between command post links, he noted. Previously, a lack of funds made it difficult to create an “entire road map to field” prototypes, he added, and teamwork between the network team and S&T community suffered. But with the newly allocated funds, the S&T community and the Network CFT are able to work more closely. The dollars have been “the key to have the groups from across all those different communities come together focusing on what specifically we need to take viable concepts and promising concepts from idea to demonstration to real ... tangible and robust thing[s] that we can acquire and field,” said Coulter. With the prototyping dollars now in place, the CFT is expected to have an easier time developing technologies for the service's network modernization plan, driven by capability sets. Capability Set '21, which completed critical design review in April, is focused on addressing immediate gaps in the Army's network with currently available technologies. The Army has begun buying those new network tools, which focus on smaller, lighter, faster communication systems for soldiers, and will begin fielding the technology in fiscal 2021. Meanwhile, Capability Set '23, which has preliminary design review scheduled for April next year, is focused on high-capacity, low-latency communications that aren't mature enough today, Gallagher said at the C4ISRNET Conference in May. Future capability sets will include emerging technologies that improve network resiliency. For example, after Capability Set '23, soldiers will have more bandwidth at the tactical edge, allowing for the increased adoption of machine learning and other emerging technologies. The Army is also in the planning stages of Capability Set '25. Even as the Army identifies key technologies for future capability sets, it must work within the constraints of budgets, meaning that the Network CFT and the C5ISR Center have to work together to identify S&T priorities. Coulter said the “key thing” that the CFT does is prioritize its portfolio and provide guidance on critical capability gaps. Breckenridge said the S&T community brings an understanding of adversarial threats to the network and what investments can be made to mitigate those threats to inform the CFT's prioritization. “One of the key things that S&T community does is ... identify those opportunities,” Coulter said. “So we're threat-informed and -aware, but we also are looking from a technology perspective of where can we get the leap-ahead opportunities that can impose challenges to our adversaries and take our network to the next level. So we have to rely on them heavily, not only for some threat information, but also ... those unique potential opportunities from a technology perspective as well.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/07/20/how-new-prototyping-dollars-will-help-army-network-modernization/
January 21, 2020 | International, Aerospace

Global Hawk drones: A look at Nato's new spy tool
The Nato military alliance has just received its first cutting-edge spy drones called Global Hawks. They'll help commanders on the ground identify potential threats to Nato members - with one single drone able to watch over a territory the size of Poland. BBC defence correspondent Jonathan Beale has been given an exclusive look at the new unmanned aircraft. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-51156680/global-hawk-drones-a-look-at-nato-s-new-spy-tool
January 23, 2020 | International, Naval

Congress should fund new, not used sealift vessels, say former Maritime Administration officials
By: David B. Larter WASHIGTON — Five former Maritime Administration officials have called on Congress to fund the construction of new sealift vessels instead of pushing the plan to buy and convert used ships on the open market. In a letter to the chairs of the House and Senate Appropriations committees, officials from both Republican and Democrat administrations said replacing the nation's organic surge sealift fleet, which has an average hull life of 44 years, is essential to maintaining the ability to send troops and materiel overseas on short notice. The letter, signed by former MARAD Administrator Clyde Hart, as well as four other former MARAD attorneys and policy chiefs, called for Congress to build new ships to spur shipbuilding in the United States and to cut down on maintenance hassles that could spell delays in a crisis. “First, the new ships would be immediately operational,” the letter said, “and the Maritime Administration won't have to spend precious time finding long-obsolete parts, therein delay surge capacity. Second, building ships in the United States creates jobs, spurs spending and strengthens the U.S. shipbuilding industry.” The letter comes in the wake of findings from last year's turbo activation that only about 40 percent of the sealift fleet would be ready to surge in a crisis, and that the force would be “challenged to be immediately ready for a large-scale inter-theater force deployment,” which is its entire raison d'etre. The sealift fleet is composed of 26 Military Sealift Command pre-positioning ships, 46 ships in the Ready Reserve Force and 15 command-owned roll-on/roll-off surge force ships. Many of the roll-on/roll-off ships are steam-operated, and the obsolete equipment is causing significant personnel issues in the pool of qualified civilian mariners needed to operate them. The White House's Office of Management and Budget favors a “buy used” policy for the sealift fleet, which is rapidly aging out. The Army in 2018 sent a warning to the House Armed Services Committee in an information paper regarding the nation's surge sealift capacity — which would be responsible for transporting up to 90 percent of Army and Marine Corps equipment in the event of a major war. The Army said the capacity would fall below its requirement by 2024. “Without proactive recapitalization of the Organic Surge Sealift Fleet, the Army will face unacceptable risk in force projection capability beginning in 2024,” the document said, adding that the advanced age of the current fleet adds further risk to the equation. “By 2034, 70% of the organic fleet will be over 60 years old — well past its economic useful life; further degrading the Army's ability to deploy forces,” the document read. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/01/22/congress-should-fund-new-not-used-sealift-vessels-former-maritime-administration-officials-say/

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