Ouch!!
U.S. to withhold F-35 fighter software codes
Tue Nov 24, 2009 2:21pm EST
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will keep to itself sensitive software code that controls Lockheed Martin Corp’s new radar-evading F-35 fighter jet despite requests from co-development partners, a senior Pentagon program official said.
Access to the technology had been publicly sought by Britain, which had threatened to scrub plans to buy as many as 138 F-35s if it were unable to maintain and upgrade its fleet without U.S. involvement.
No U.S. partner is getting the so-called source code, the key to the plane’s electronic brains, Jon Schreiber, who heads the program’s international affairs, told Reuters in an interview Monday.
“That includes everybody,” he said, acknowledging this was not entirely popular among core partners — Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway.
The single-engine F-35 is in early stages of production. It is designed to escape radar detection and switch quickly between air-to-ground and air-to-air missions while still flying — processes heavily dependent on its 8 million lines of onboard software code.
Schreiber said the United States had accommodated all of its partners’ requirements, providing ways for them to upgrade projected F-35 purchases even without the keys to the software.
“Nobody’s happy with it completely. but everybody’s satisfied and understands,” he said of withholding the code from partners and Israel, which also has sought the technology transfer as part of a possible purchase of up to 75 F-35s.
REPROGRAMMING FACILITY
Instead, the United States plans to set up a “reprogramming facility,” probably at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, to further develop F-35-related software and distribute upgrades, Schreiber said.
Software changes will be integrated there “and new operational flight programs will be disseminated out to everybody who’s flying the jet,” he said.
Representatives of the British defense staff in Washington did not return telephone calls seeking comment. Britain has committed $2 billion to develop the F-35, the most of any U.S. partner.
In March 2006, Paul Drayson, then Britain’s minister for defense procurement, told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that Britain might quit the program if the United States withheld such things as the software code.
The issue rose to the top. In May 2006, then-President George W. Bush and then-Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that both governments had agreed “that the UK will have the ability to successfully operate, upgrade, employ, and maintain the Joint Strike Fighter such that the UK retains operational sovereignty over the aircraft.”
HOLY GRAIL
The source code is “kind of the holy grail” for this, controlling everything from weapons integration to radar to flight dynamics, said Joel Johnson of TEAL Group, an aerospace consultancy in Fairfax
Lockheed Martin said all F-35 partners “recognize the complexity of the highly integrated F-35 software and the program plan to upgrade F-35 capabilities as an operational community.”
“This enables the aircraft to remain at the cutting edge of combat capability while allowing the program to meet affordability objectives,” John Kent, a company spokesman, said in an emailed statement.
Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier by sales, projects it will sell up to 4,500 F-35s worldwide to replace its F-16 fighter and 12 other types of warplanes for 11 nations initially.
The United States eventually plans to spend roughly $300 billion over the next 25 years to buy a total of 2,443 F-35 models, its costliest arms acquisition.
Competitors include Boeing Co’s F/A-18E/F SuperHornet; the Eurofighter Typhoon, made by a consortium of British, German, Italian and Spanish companies; Saab AB’s Gripen; Dassault Aviation SA’s Rafale; and Russia’s MiG-35 and Sukhoi Su-35.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5AN4JX20091124?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=11617
Double Ouch!!
More JSF Test Planes, Software Work Needed
Nov 24, 2009
By Amy Butler
The Pentagon is considering adding more flight test assets and software engineers to the $300 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program to avoid major delays to fielding the stealthy, single-engine aircraft.
A Joint Estimate Team, consisting of career cost estimators and program evaluators, has found the Lockheed Martin F-35 program is at least $16 billion over its project cost, and achieving the current flight test schedule is unlikely.
During a roundtable with reporters Nov. 23, Ashton Carter, the Pentagon’s acquisition czar, said more flight test aircraft would help to conduct the extensive test program in a “compressed period of time.” Another possibility is to add more software engineers, perhaps a shift of them, to “block and tackle” issues with the many lines of code needed to operate the aircraft and its mission systems, Carter says.
Though this would cost more upfront, Carter says what he calls an “investment” upfront would likely produce a more stable program in the long term. Achieving schedule — or mitigating changes to it — is key to maintaining interest from international partners planning to buy the aircraft.
Carter says some of these issues must be sorted out in the next “couple of weeks” to lay in the additional funding that would be needed in the Fiscal 2011 budget.
In past years, the Pentagon has actually removed two aircraft from the flight test program, citing confidence in the ability for Lockheed Martin to use modeling and simulation to validate the design. It is unclear whether this potential plan to add test aircraft signals a risk mitigation strategy or a concern that modeling and simulation will not suffice for some of the workload that it was to address.
Carter acknowledges that cost growth in the Pratt & Whitney F135 engine is a challenge, though he offered no specific remedies to that issue. He is receiving a briefing from the Joint Assessment Team formed to review the JSF engine.
An Independent Manufacturing and Review Team commissioned by Carter’s office to assess the processes at Lockheed’s F-35 assembly plant in Ft. Worth, Texas, may be able to outline some efficiencies that could amount to per-unit savings, Carter says.
However, he says that the government and Lockheed should share the burden of increased program cost. The final program price is not yet known; Carter’s team continues to assess options. Lockheed CEO Bob Stevens and the company’s JSF program leadership met with Carter on Nov. 22 to review these issues. “We don’t want to be in a situation where the government bears the cost of schedule slips all by itself,” Carter says. “It is reasonable that risk in a program be shared” with the contractor.
Carter also stuck to the Pentagon’s position that supporting the alternate General Electric/Rolls Royce F136 engine is a liability to the program. He said that he sees no cost models that predict the benefits of competing two engines on the fighter will reap enough savings to justify the up-front cost of developing and producing it. Furthermore, he says that continuing to fund the engine from the JSF program “has been disruptive” to its progress.
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=aerospacedaily&id=news/F35112409.xml&headline=More%20JSF%20Test%20Planes,%20Software%20Work%20Needed
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