On F-35B Depot:
Posted on InsideDefense.com: May 23, 2014
FLEET READINESS CENTER EAST, NC -- Under tremendous pressure to deliver 10 modified jets to the Marine Corps in time to meet the service's desired initial operational capability schedule, the Navy's F-35B depot in North Carolina is fighting to adapt to the complexity of the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft and a number of program-level issues as it comes close to finishing work on its very first Marine F-35.
JSF depot-level repairs and modifications are being performed at two Pentagon-run locations: the Ogden Air Logistics Complex, UT, which will service conventional-model F-35As and carrier-variant F-35Cs, and Fleet Readiness Center East (FRC East) at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, NC, responsible for the F-35B short-takeoff-vertical-landing version of the aircraft. Those depots are largely staffed by civilians and operate like businesses, with the same strengths and weaknesses as private-sector industrial centers. Inside the Navy visited FRC East on May 19 and spoke with three depot employees directly involved in modifying those B-model jets, and they described the many challenges they have been presented with in the roughly 10 months since the depot began accepting JSF aircraft.
FRC East is currently performing what are called Group 1 modifications -- a package of structural upgrades meant to replace or reinforce life-limited parts, problems with which were discovered in flight testing as a result of the F-35 program's concurrent development and production. The depot has one Marine Corps jet and a British aircraft in work, program office spokesman Joe DellaVedova said, and the Marine aircraft is about 30 days late, said Don Jeter, the F-35 task manager at the depot. The Group 1 modification is scheduled to take 120 working maintenance days, according to DellaVedova.
Falling behind on the first F-35 is not unique to FRC East -- the same occurred at Ogden ALC, as InsideDefense.com reported late last year. In a May 22 email, that depot's chief of F-35 sustainment, Lt. Col. Dave Moreland, said the facility wrapped up its first prototype jet in March and is on track to finish its second by July.
Jeter said that first Marine aircraft should be ready for delivery back to the F-35 unit in Yuma, AZ, on June 6, once it is finished with its low-observable coating restoration -- a challenging process under any circumstances, but especially so for FRC East personnel who are experienced aircraft technicians but have never had to develop expertise on stealthy materials. That fighter has been referred to as a validation/verification aircraft and is not one of the 10 that will count toward Marine IOC, which the service has adamantly stated it will achieve in the summer or fall of 2015.
Jeter's team will need to learn quickly from its initial experiences on the aircraft, as the depot will fill up with F-35Bs within the next several months. He said the facility was on track to induct a third jet on May 22 and will receive additional aircraft every four to six weeks until it hits its capacity of six Joint Strike Fighters at any one time. Those will generally go to MCAS Yuma or the Marine Corps' second operational squadron at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, SC.
Jerry Bennett, the depot's F-35 overhaul and repair supervisor, acknowledged the pressure the group is under but urged F-35 leadership to better understand the challenge of standing up a depot in a very short time frame, staffing it with technicians who have never worked on a Joint Strike Fighter, holding them to arbitrary time frames driven by Marine Corps IOC, and the sheer complexity of the aircraft. In recent months, F-35 Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan has repeatedly cited the need to get airplanes through the depot and equipped with needed modifications as the primary driver of meeting the Marines' and Air Force's program schedules.
"On this jet, if you make a mistake, it might not cost you a day. It might cost you a month on your schedule," Bennett said. "So you have to take the time to do it right the first time or you will miss your schedules. Everybody has to understand that if you rush something, that's what you're going to get. You're going to get a rush job, and this aircraft is not forgiving."
Bennett and Jeter said depot artisans are routinely working 40 to 80 hours of overtime each pay period and they both said they have worked close to 14 consecutive days at a time.
Program problems
The depot staff expressed excitement at the challenge of working on an airplane as cutting-edge as the F-35, which will probably sustain business at the facility for decades. They also went out of their way to praise the Lockheed Martin employees on site for sharing their JSF expertise and working very well with depot personnel. But the FRC East team voiced its frustration at a number of issues that need attention and improvement.
One is micromanagement from the F-35 joint program office. Jeter said the process for getting miniscule tasks which require additional time or money approved for execution is very cumbersome, especially when tied to an aircraft owned by an international operator. That approval process runs all the way to a JPO representative; as of quite recently, one has been assigned permanently to FRC East, which should help the speed of decision-making.
Jeter also described situations in which the JPO demands explanations for why a certain task took five hours of labor instead of four, an unprecedented level of scrutiny that drives inefficiency and takes time. He, Bennett and John Wesley Klor, an F-35 plane captain and airframes work leader at the depot, stressed that the technicians are still working on their first aircraft and have much left to learn about the best ways to perform certain actions on the JSF.
"In the big picture of things, to me it seems like it's a big waste of everybody's effort and everybody's time to worry about those small ancillary bites," Jeter said. "We're dealing with a $130, $150, $180 million aircraft and you're concerned over two or three man-hours worth of labor. To me, we're focusing on the wrong things a lot of the time."
Jeter was also critical of the F-35's Autonomic Logistics Information System, which is meant to manage all aspects of JSF logistics. He said the program remains immature and that ALIS training he received was insufficient. Moreover, it is unlike any other system used at FRC East to handle maintenance and supply chain processes, again giving depot staff large amounts of new material to get used to under significant time constraints. Problematically, one long-identified issue with ALIS is that it takes several minutes to perform basic functions. A vastly improved version of the program is expected for release next spring, according to Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor on the F-35 and ALIS.
Third, Jeter and Klor pointed to challenges with technical data on the F-35. The issue there is not a shortage of tech data, which might be expected given the aircraft's developmental status, but rather a flood of it that has made it difficult for maintainers to know where to turn for concrete information they need.
"The actual quantity of tech data we deal with is astronomical. It's huge," Jeter said. "The drawings and the prints and everything they provide for us are great, because we're used to legacy systems where they were drawn with a square and a rule and you've got this stuff now that's all [computer-aided design] drawn. That portion of it is great, but the quantity of it is huge."
Work remains to be done to build a better channel for communications between the depot in Utah, where Air Force jets are being modified, and FRC East. Moreland, the Ogden ALC official, said a "great partnership" exists between the two, and that they are in constant communication. Jeter said the two have shared some lessons and tips -- particularly as related to a fix to the auxiliary air inlet door and wing root rib that is common across all three F-35 variants -- but that the partnership has much room for growth. "The Air Force has their way of doing business, the Navy has their way of doing business, and even though we're doing the same thing, we don't communicate between the two very well," he said.
Finally, FRC East employees recognized that their depot itself has some resource constraints. ITN observed modification and maintenance hangars servicing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, AV-8B Harrier fighters, CH-53 heavy-lift helicopters, H-1 utility and attack helicopters and others, all working at or close to maximum capacity. Bennett recognized that despite the F-35 program's notoriety and importance, the Defense Department units sending those other aircraft to the depot have requirements and time lines they need to meet as well, and it is neither practical nor desirable to pull the best technicians away from those activities to assign them to the Joint Strike Fighter.
"The customers don't want to know the F-35 took one of my best guys," Bennett said. "They don't want to hear it. They still want their stuff on time."
For now, the Pentagon's F-35 depots are only working on A- and B-model JSF jets. Moreland said the first carrier-capable F-35C for the Navy is expected to arrive in Utah in mid-fiscal year 2015.
So now we have to put our money where our mouth is, the price of concurrency will now begin to accrue, is it worth it, well we only have to look to the 100 or so F-35s and the maintainers and flight crew already well along in their transition into this exciting new aircraft to say, yes, no, or maybe? he he he
