NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED BY

THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

STATEMENT OF

LIEUTENANT GENERAL ERIC FICK

PROGRAM EXECUTIVE OFFICER
F-35 LIGHTNING II PROGRAM

BEFORE THE

READINESS SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

APRIL 28, 2022

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED BY

THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
Introduction
Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member Waltz, and distinguished Members of the

Subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to provide you with an Enterprise update on the

F-35 Lightning II Program. As we have proudly briefed you and your staff in recent years, the

F-35 isn’t just coming – it’s here. Given ongoing aggression from Russia, China, and adversaries

across the globe, the platform’s capabilities remain more relevant – and critical – than ever. To

date, we have delivered more than 770 F-35s to our U.S. Services, International Partners, and

Foreign Military Sales (FMS) customers. These aircraft have logged over half a million flight

hours while operating from twenty-five bases and eight warships worldwide. For the men and

women of the F-35 Enterprise, the platform’s impact is real and palpable – this Air System is

making a difference every day.

The F-35 Program continues to advance and enhance international relationships and

operations while delivering world class capabilities. With the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ first

F-35C carrier deployments, the combined deployment of Marine Corps F-35Bs on the UK’s Queen

Elizabeth, NATO arctic patrols, and current operations in the Baltic and Pacific – F-35s are making

their presence known and are creating an unbroken line of western 5th Generation airpower from

the Arctic Circle to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and beyond.

As I briefed you last April, the mandate of the F-35 JPO remains the delivery of a capable,

affordable, and available Air System to the warfighter – outpacing our key competitors to win

tomorrow’s high-end fight as we develop, deliver, and sustain war-winning 5th Generation

capabilities at high-end 4th Generation costs. As we will surely discuss today, the F-35 Program is

not without its challenges. However, these challenges pale in comparison to the magnitude of

progress the F-35 Program has made in recent years. I am grateful for this opportunity to share the

full story of our progress with you today.

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 When I appeared before you last April, I heard your concerns loud and clear, and

committed to pursue continued improvement with a fierce focus upon sustainment affordability

and mission readiness. As the leader of the F-35 Program, I take full responsibility for our

challenges and the implementation of their solutions. Since becoming the Program Executive

Officer (PEO) in 2019, I have remained committed to open and transparent communication with

the Congressional Defense Committees. As part of this open communication, House Armed

Services Committee professional staff have identified key interest areas where Committee

Members expect to receive updates during this week’s hearings before the Tactical Air and Land

Forces Subcommittee and the Readiness Subcommittee. These include capability topics such as

Block 4 and Technical Refresh 3 (TR-3), Adaptive Engine Modernization and Integration, the

Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) to Operational Data Integrated Network (ODIN)

Transition, and Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E) and the Joint Simulation

Environment (JSE); availability topics such as F135 Power Modules and Propulsion Depot

Recovery, Spares Packages, Technical Data Rights, Depot Stand-Up, and Surge Sustainment; and

affordability topics with an emphasis upon Initiatives to Drive Down Sustainment Costs. The

following testimony addresses these requested topics.

CAPABILITY

Through current operations around the globe, we continue to prove the F-35’s

unprecedented and unmatched capabilities. As the F-35 Program looks to the future, the Block 4

suite remains our most critical development effort and TR-3 remains key to fully unlocking these

capabilities. When combined with legacy demands for subsystem power and cooling, continued

modernization of the F-35 beyond Block 4 will also drive a need for engine enhancements, and we

are in lock step with the U.S. Services as we mature our plans to meet this challenge. Meanwhile,

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we are modernizing our legacy logistics information system to enhance software, hardware, data,

and infrastructure capabilities – with an emphasis on the user experience and interface. Finally, we

continue to make progress in the completion of the JSE as we prepare for IOT&E. I look forward

to sharing our progress across each of these requested discussion areas.

Block 4 and Technical Refresh 3 (TR-3)

We are grateful for the Committee’s support of Block 4 in the FY22 National Defense

Authorization Act (NDAA). The FY22 budget reflects the investment priorities of the U.S

Department of the Air Force and Department of the Navy in ensuring we continue to deliver

capabilities to compete, and win, against peer adversaries. The Block 4 capability set – which we

have been incrementally delivering since 2019 – ensures F-35 lethality and survivability against

the most sophisticated threats for decades to come. Last year, in the face of an accelerated NATO

need date, the Program completed design, development, and testing of one of these critical

capabilities – Dual Capable Aircraft (DCA) – one-full year ahead of the planned schedule, a

remarkable testament to the alignment among the JPO, Industry, and the nuclear enterprise. Other

important capabilities including sensor and avionics enhancements, integrated weapons, and

interoperability and self-protection improvements will continue to deliver in the months ahead.

Our delivery of the TR-3 hardware suite brings significant increases in processing,

memory, and throughput to the platform. Our most pressing developmental task is to keep TR-3

on track for production cut-in at Lot 15 in the summer of 2023. The criticality of meeting this TR-

3 commitment cannot be overstated, and we’re leaning heavily into the development effort to retire

risks and execute to plan. Despite budgetary and developmental challenges, we continue to make

deliberate progress. We began Safety of Flight Qualification Testing on the Integrated Core

Processor – the brains of TR-3 – in March 2022, and we’re driving hard to achieve Lot 15 hardware

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insertion. We are working in lock step across this Government and Industry team to deliver on our

joint commitment.

Adaptive Engine Modernization and Integration

The original F135 engine specification allocated 15 kW of bleed air extraction to support

system cooling requirements, and the F135 engine was designed, tested, and qualified to this

specification with a level of margin available for future growth. During the final stages of initial

aircraft development, and the early stages of Block 4 development, the Air Vehicle cooling

requirements grew to exceed planned bleed air extraction. To provide the necessary bleed air, the

engine was required to run hotter, and early engineering assessments suggest that this increase in

operating temperature could decrease engine life, driving earlier depot inductions and an increase

in life cycle cost. Ultimately, we can maintain this level of bleed air draw through Block 4

development, but future capabilities that require increased cooling may further tax the engine,

causing degraded mission performance and exacerbating current engine life impacts. Today, the

amount of bleed draw is also approaching the max capacity of the Power and Thermal Management

System (PTMS), which is responsible for converting engine bleed air into electrical power and

cooling air for the F-35.

We have a clear plan to address this challenge. Multiple engine and PTMS options exist;

each with trade-offs across the entire acquisition spectrum including cost, schedule, and

performance. The F-35 JPO, along with the U.S. Services, is conducting a full Air System Business

Case Assessment (BCA) to examine a variety of engine options paired with a variety of PTMS

upgrade solutions. This BCA will be complete by the summer of 2022 and will provide actionable

cost, schedule, performance, and risk data to inform the decisions that lie ahead.

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 In accordance with FY22 NDAA Sec 242, the F-35 JPO is supporting the U.S. Air Force

in its report on the integration of the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP) propulsion

system into F-35A aircraft. As reflected by this NDAA language, currently proposed AETP

engines would likely be specific to the U.S. Air Force, which would likely bear the cost of its

development and implementation. Both current AETP offerings (GE Aviation’s XA100 and Pratt

& Whitney’s XA101) promise impressive improvements, and their consideration allows for

enhanced competition and capability. The proposed AETP engines would necessitate significant

modification requirements to become compatible with the F-35C and are not currently realistic for

the F-35B. Therefore, in accordance with NDAA Sec 243, we are also supporting the U.S.

Department of the Navy in a report on the Acquisition Strategy for an Advanced Propulsion

System for F-35B and F-35C Aircraft. While Block 4 capability will require enhanced engine

performance, initial Block 4 capability increments can function with the existing F135 engine.

Ultimately, the F-35 JPO is working closely with our warfighting customers and Industry to

develop a family of options to enhance engine power and cooling. We are committed to work with

these same parties to assess the cost and logistics implications of each of these families.

ALIS-to-ODIN Transition

Early in my tenure as PEO, we decided as an Enterprise to replace our legacy logistics

information system, ALIS, with a new and modernized system called ODIN. Early in this effort,

we envisioned a rapid, if not abrupt transformation between these systems. We quickly learned;

however, that such a transition was imprudent, so we developed a phased approach to address

ALIS’s most pressing hardware and software obsolescence challenges while simultaneously

evolving to ODIN. We are calling this transition ALIS-to-ODIN, or A2O. The modernization of

the logistics information system, the heart of the A2O transition, addresses multiple elements:

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software, hardware, data, and infrastructure. Each element is maturing at a different speed,

providing value to users along the way.

Through 2021 we have continued our user-focused engagements, leading to more frequent

releases of ALIS software that address our users’ most pressing concerns while strengthening

cybersecurity. Currently, two software releases are being installed at various units. Another release

is undergoing flight test and will field in June 2022. Through these ALIS updates, we have

dramatically improved system performance for the users, and have reduced the maintainer’s wait

time for Portable Maintenance Aid synchronization to aircraft or ALIS servers by forty-five

percent. Additionally, time to download air vehicle Portable Memory Device (PMD) data is

reduced by thirty-five percent through software efficiencies, with additional benefit of new ODIN

Base Kit (OBK) hardware processing PMDs nearly fifty percent quicker than legacy Standard

Operating Units. The combined software and hardware deliveries facilitate a face-to-face pilot

debrief with actionable maintenance codes in less than five minutes, vastly improving turnaround

time and sortie generation rate.

One additional (and final) ALIS software release is in development now, in accordance

with our cybersecurity risk burn-down plan, which addresses software and hardware

vulnerabilities. Following the fielding of this final ALIS software by early 2024, we will freeze

the code, modernize or containerize it, and move it to the cloud. We’ll concurrently initiate the

development of modernized applications and transition the classified code to the cloud as well.

Modernizing the software and its architecture will allow us to make faster code updates in the

future that are more aligned to commercial practices.

The F-35 JPO has made significant progress with the introduction of unclassified ODIN

hardware. We completed the initial phase of our ODIN hardware fielding, replacing the oldest

ALIS hardware in the fleet and fielding fourteen OBKs to units around the world. These OBKs

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are eighty percent smaller and thirty percent cheaper than the ALIS Standard Operating Units they

replace, and they perform substantially better. We will continue fielding the new hardware in 2022

and 2023 for new site activations and fleet technical refresh. We are also progressing well with the

design of the associated classified hardware and the country or service-level servers that aggregate

information from unit-level hardware.

We have also made significant progress with data quality, transformation, and

infrastructure. While we were tracking over 2,200 ALIS Action Requests (trouble tickets) in 2019,

the number of open ALIS Action Requests is down to just 199 as of March 2022. Additionally, we

are building a Data Centralization Archive and Retrieval capability, which will improve the

performance of unit hardware, provide easier access to data, and enhance fleet analytics. We have

initiated work to define our infrastructure as code – as opposed to hardware – which allows us to

publish software independent of the underlying hardware and transition seamlessly into our

developmental and production environments in Government-owned clouds. We have started these

efforts in Lockheed Martin’s cloud but will transition development into a JPO cloud by 2023.

While great work continues across major A2O elements of software, hardware, data, and

infrastructure, we continue our efforts in other ways to improve the user experience and decrease

costs. One example is the recent deployment of wireless barcode scanners to fleet warehouses.

These scanners eliminate manual data entry which removes errors inherent in manual processes,

accelerates the process of receiving parts, and makes parts available for use more quickly. In recent

years, we have also fielded multiple software improvements and system enhancements, and stood

up the National ALIS Support Center (NASC) to provide a centralized source of remote support

for system administrators. The NASC offers a consolidation of common activities that can be

remotely executed and allows practices and improvements to be applied across all systems, with a

smaller number of centrally located experts. The Air Force has evaluated NASC performance and

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found that it meets their needs in a way that brings efficiency – and lower costs – to managing

their F-35 logistics information system. I am happy to report that the Air Force has approved the

reduction of ALIS system administrators at their training and test units, using NASC for first level

response. As you can see, we are making solid progress across the board with A2O.

Initial Operational Test & Evaluation (IOT&E) and Joint Simulation Environment (JSE)

The F-35’s IOT&E includes an unprecedented evaluation of the aircraft’s capability against

the high-end threat, to be conducted in an extremely high-fidelity simulation facility. These final

sixty-four trials of F-35 IOT&E will test the F-35’s performance against a denser, more capable

threat than can be represented in open-air flights against aggressor squadrons and integrated air

defenses on test ranges. The development, validation, verification, and accreditation of a simulator

of sufficient complexity and fidelity to replicate that threat environment has proven to be an

incredibly complex task. Not only do we have to create an environment that looks right…it has to

be right. The F-35 is bright enough to know when it’s being tricked…and we can’t have that in

this facility. With that said, we are winding down the development phase of the Joint Simulation

Environment (JSE) and have delivered approximately ninety percent of the component

Verification & Validation (V&V) packages to the accreditors at the Air Force Operational Test

and Evaluation Center (AFOTEC). System V&V packages are now in development and will be

delivered to the accreditors later this summer. Once the Operational Test community reviews the

complete V&V data and performs final test readiness assessments, the sixty-four mission trials

will be conducted.

In coordination with NAVAIR and the JSF Operational Test Team (JOTT), the F-35 JPO

conducted an IOT&E Schedule Risk Assessment in May 2021. That analysis projected a test

completion date of summer 2023. Formal operational test activities are scheduled to begin in

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January 2023 with the JOTT’s “Test the Test,” which will inform their Test Readiness Assessment.

Once all test readiness criteria are met, the sixty-four trials are expected to take less than a month

to conduct. Upon completion of the JOTT’s analysis and evaluation, they will submit their final

IOT&E report to inform the Full Rate Production decision. When completed, JSE will allow us to

test new and existing aircraft digitally in the world’s most dense and lethal threat environments.

As we know, the threat environment is always evolving. This investment in JSE will ultimately

enable us to accelerate discovery in the developmental pipeline. This will reduce risk with future

development efforts as new capabilities are introduced.

AVAILABILITY

With capability delivery progressing according to plan, our attention remains particularly

focused upon availability. While our near-term objective remains the resolution of key degraders,

we will not lose sight of our long-term goal: an environment of comprehensive sustainment

excellence. Our approach, therefore, is twofold – First: At a tactical level, we must address key

near-term degraders such as F135 Power Modules and Propulsion Depot Recovery. Second: At a

strategic level we must enable an ecosystem that supports the program’s long-term sustainment.

This includes initiatives to keep parts on wing longer, maintaining an appropriate spares posture,

and enhancing repair capability and velocity. The following topics address both pieces of this

approach.

F135 Power Modules and Propulsion Depot Recovery

The F-35 Enterprise is driving towards year-over-year improvements to our Full Mission

Capable (FMC) rates by executing the foundations of our Life Cycle Sustainment Plan and Global

Support Solution. As the Committee is certainly tracking, F135 Power Modules have been a

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significant source of availability degradation across the F-35 fleet for the past couple of years. I’m

pleased to report that in 2021 we made significant progress against this availability degrader. This

past year we continued to execute a three-pronged recovery program designed to address the F135

Power Module crisis. First, this recovery program focused on increasing production at the Air

Force Sustainment Center’s Heavy Maintenance Center (HMC) at Tinker AFB. Second, this

program focused on standing up additional capacity within the Power Module’s global repair

network, including Contractor Logistics Support sites in the continental U.S. and select overseas

locations. Third, this program focused on keeping engines on wing longer through the execution

and assessment of an accelerated engine “lifing” effort that has matured our inspection procedures

and damage tolerance limits.

As a result of this effort, Tinker’s HMC beat it’s F135 Power Module production plan by

twenty-five percent by the end of 2021, tripling the number of Power Modules it produced in 2020.

I am very pleased to announce Tinker is on track to deliver more than sixty F135 Power Modules

to the F-35 Enterprise this year.

On the international front, the F-35 Program continues to expand its infrastructure and has

achieved significant milestones with our F-35 Partner Nations in 2021. Working with our

Australian and Dutch Partners, we activated F135 Regional Maintenance, Repair, Overhaul, and

Upgrade (MRO&U) facilities in those nations. These facilities provide the critical technical

support needed to overhaul and maintain F135 engines, and they deliver that service in strategically

located areas to provide optimal support to OCONUS F-35 operations. The Program further

matured MRO&U capability in Europe last year by inducting the first F135 Fans and Power

Modules at Norway’s regional engine MRO&U facility. These advances support our warfighters’

sustainment requirements and add resilience to the F-35 sustainment infrastructure to fortify

engine maintenance and repair capacity for the entire F-35 Enterprise.

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 As you and your staff analyze the data, you’ll see a slight decline in F-35 Mission Capable

rates in 2021. I assure you we understand the root causes behind near-term readiness degraders

such as F135 Power Modules, and we’re getting after them. Beyond these near-term degraders,

we’re also tackling Enterprise actions required to deliver a healthy fleet for tomorrow – keeping

parts on-wing longer, having spares available when those parts eventually fail, and establishing

repair capacity and velocity required to meet the ever-growing fleet demand. These fundamentals

are unchanged from when I spoke with you last, and we continue to drive forward in this area.

Spares Packages

The investment in Initial Spares provides the warfighter with the ability to sustain daily

flight and training simulator operations throughout CONUS and OCONUS regions. Between

FY15 and FY21, the F-35 program invested $4.8B in Initial Spares for U.S. Service, Partners, and

FMS customer requirements. Before FY15, the Program endured a shortage in Initial Spares

funding for myriad reasons, including under-execution of appropriated funds and a shortage in

initial spares funding from participants. The F-35 Program has reversed those trends over the past

three years, and has met appropriated execution targets of ninety-three percent per year for FY19,

FY20, and FY21. Additionally, we have focused on the expedited delivery of procured spares. To

date the program is experiencing a ninety-two percent On Time Delivery (OTD) between the

program’s prime contractors, Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney.

Technical Data Rights

The F-35 JPO is pursuing a strategy to deliver data for a strategic combination of

intellectual property, technical data and data rights in support of the F-35 program's objectives.

We have seen successes in deferred ordered delivery of Component Maintenance Manuals (CMM)

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to expand the Government’s ability to perform repairs. Additionally, the Government effectively

asserted rights on Failure Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action System (FRACAS) data to

streamline processes in identifying failure modes, developing corrective actions and fielding

corrective actions. We are committed to improving the data contracting processes to support

enterprise objectives. As such, we have established a Data Requirement Review Board (DRRB) to

review contracted data requirements within the program. The board evaluates and authenticates

requirements and reduces redundancy of data deliverables by reviewing contract data packages.

Depot Stand-Up Activities and Capacity

Depot stand-up efforts remain critical to the long-term affordability and availability of the

F-35 Air System. Through the execution of our Global Sustainment Solution, the F-35 Enterprise

has established Air Vehicle and Propulsion repair facilities in the U.S., Europe, and the Asia-

Pacific. We are also standing up organic depots to execute the repair of air vehicle components.

On 24 March, Ogden Air Logistics Complex (OO-ALC) declared repair capability for the Gun

System Control Unit. This marks the thirty-ninth workload established across six organic U.S.

depots. For those activated workloads, we’re executing seventy-one percent of component repairs.

In 2022, we intend to activate thirteen additional workloads; four of which have been

accelerated from 2023. We anticipate final activations will complete in 2028. While this progress

greatly enhances capacity, we’re building velocity through these depots as well, with twenty

activated workloads already beating our targeted thirty-day repair time. We are absolutely

committed to driving repair velocity into every depot. This velocity is critical to minimizing our

requirement for expensive spares inventory.

As we meet this challenge, we are working diligently with our prime contractors and

military service depots (MSD) to right-size repair capacity and increase repair velocity for

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activated workloads through targeted investment in depot repair material lay-in, test system

upgrades, and test equipment spares. So far this calendar year, 1,782 component repairs have been

completed in our organic depots. This expanding organic industrial base is a key lever to achieving

affordability targets for the program.

Partnerships with our global allies continue to add strength and resilience to the F-35 global

repair network. For example, on 28 February 2022, Kongsberg Aviation Maintenance Services

(Norway), achieved certification as a F135 Maintenance, Repair, Overhaul, and Upgrade

(MRO&U) facility, marking the third such OCONUS capability to be added to the propulsion

repair network in the past eight months. This additional capacity and shared knowledge will help

the Enterprise aggressively drive down the F135 Engine Power Module shortfall impacting flying

operations today. The collective repair network will deliver 122 Power Modules in 2022 compared

to seventy-six in 2021.

On the Air Vehicle front, F-35 modification operations at OO-ALC and Fleet Readiness

Center East (FRC-E) continue to bring fleet aircraft up to the latest configurations, delivering

decisive capability and improved reliability to the fleet. Ogden is on a glide slope to activate twelve

additional modification docks by 2024, adding to their twenty active bays. This accelerated build-

up of Ogden’s modification capacity, together with utilization of field teams and FRC-E’s nine

maintenance bays, will enable the CONUS F-35 modification network to meet customer needs for

Block 4 capability and Life Limiting Structure upgrades.

Within the F-35 JPO, we continue to drive towards increased organic participation across

our sustainment operations – not just in depot operations. In January 2021, we established an

agreement with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) for North American warehousing, and have

transitioned over 5,000 part numbers, and two million parts out of Lockheed Martin warehouses

and into DLA warehouses. We established an agreement with the U.S. Transportation Command

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for Global Transportation and Distribution and have conducted over 40,000 CONUS parts

shipments under that arrangement. We have also established an agreement with DLA for

Demilitarization and Disposal Services. Finally, we are requesting funding in the FY24 POM for

the procurement of Provisioning and Cataloging Data to enable the Services to participate in

organic supply chain management roles in the future and are actively exploring pathfinder

opportunities in supply chain management with DLA, the USAF, and the DoN. Our sustainment

strategy remains focused on getting the best bang for the buck in the near term, while laying the

groundwork for a future that will enable more organic sustainment activity.

Planning for Surge Sustainment

As we see right now in the European theater, the world remains dangerous and

unpredictable. As nations increasingly rely on the F-35 Air System to reinforce national and

regional security, the Enterprise must be ready to surge sustaining support to meet the demands of

contingency operations.

The F-35 Enterprise has established thoughtful policies and practices to manage surge

events. Business Rule #34 (Global Pooling Business Rules) establishes a common mechanism for

allocation and prioritization of limited resources via assignment of Force Activity Designation

(FAD) Codes when scarcity of parts exists. This system differentiates between the relative

significance of competing needs and creates a structure that is responsive to customer requirements

during peacetime and war. Through this system, we prioritize Enterprise support to the elements

of our global fleet most directly engaged in and supporting combat operations, resulting in

significantly enhanced readiness across these sub-fleets.

The Global Spares Pool system allows for flexibility across the F-35 fleets, as opposed to

legacy systems’ use of individual base supply warehouses. The F-35 global pooling strategy

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reduces individual participant stove-piped supply chains and provides the flexibility necessary to

enable the principals of the F-35 Global Support Strategy. Moreover, the JPO has recently pre-

positioned additional materiel at the European Regional Warehouse (ERW) in the Netherlands.

Finally, the Program Office contracts with Lockheed Martin to utilize analytical tools to properly

account for (and view) the GSP parts and components, and move inventories across the globe

based on activities, and leverages active production lines allow for flow of parts for reallocation

as needed for a surge. Surge sustainment is not limited to parts and material, and we are actively

deploying personnel across the enterprise in response to increased demand signals today.

AFFORDABILITY

As I have testified before, cost is the greatest threat to the F-35 Program. My team remains

laser-focused on Enterprise affordability, and I remain personally committed to cost reduction

across the acquisition lifecycle. Last year, we secured a significant affordability win for the

Program through the completion of the FY21-23 Annualized Air Vehicle Sustainment contract.

This historic agreement is the first multiple-year sustainment contract for our program, and it’s a

quantum leap forward toward securing affordable lifecycle costs for our customers. The contract

drives improvements to performance through an incentive structure focused on year-over-year

improvements in full mission capable rates and supply metrics. Under this contract, our average

cost per flight hour in CY23 - for all variants – is projected to be reduced 7.5 percent from existing

program estimates. This contract sets the stage for further cost reductions and performance

improvements, and positions the program well for an effective Supply Support and Demand

Reduction Performance Based Logistics contract in the coming years. I understand the Committee

remains particularly interested in initiatives to drive down sustainment cost. I look forward to

sharing our progress and plans with you today.

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Initiatives to Drive Down Sustainment Costs

Through April 2021, the JPO captured $19.8B (CY12$) of sustainment cost reductions into

the annual cost estimate (2021v1.0). These reductions reflect a collection of initiatives fielded

through the JPO’s Affordability Directorate and consist of various reliability and maintainability

projects, capability updates, and other cost reduction initiatives. Historically, the JPO has driven

down the CY12$k cost per flight hour (USAF A-Variant: O&S less indirects & mods, plus

production support) from $87.3k in 2014 to $33.6k in 2020. The recently awarded Lockheed

Martin FY21-23A contract represents an additional $3.6k reduction in CPFH for the F-35A from

$33.6k in 2020 to $30.0k in 2023. While we are seeing cost reduction related to the Air Vehicle,

we also see near term risk for propulsion sustainment, which could potentially offset the savings.

Under the Lockheed Martin FY21-23A contract, the CPFH at the platform level in FY2023 will

be reduced eight percent from the original JPO cost projection of $36.1k to $33.3k (by variant: F-

35A $30.0k, F-35B $41.7k, and F-35C $37.9k) [All in CY12$]. The CPTPY at the platform level

in FY23 will be reduced six percent from the original JPO cost projection of $6.7M to $6.3M.

Finally, my F-35 Product Support Manager (PSM) is leading a long-term effort to inject

cost-saving competition into the supply chain through an organic pathfinder initiative. We’re

studying methodologies and opportunities for USAF, USN, DLA to contract directly with Original

Equipment Manufacturers (OEM), rather than the prime contractor. This will ultimately unlock

the door to competition once the product is more mature within its lifecycle, and technical data is

procured. Right now, we’re working to identify candidate parts. Next, we’ll develop Ground Rules

and Assumptions, and work on U.S. Service processes and requirements development. We

envision moving forward with activations under this initiative in FY23.

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Conclusion

I thank you for today’s opportunity to share the full story of the F-35 Program, and I will

reiterate, the F-35 isn’t just coming – it’s here. The Air System we are delivering today is truly

remarkable, and its capabilities are unmatched. Through the efforts of the men and women of the

F-35 Enterprise, and in continued collaboration with Congress, senior DoD leadership, the GAO,

and other stakeholders, this Air System is becoming increasingly affordable and available. The

platform’s operational performance continues to speak for itself, and the international F-35 user

community continues to grow. In the wake of increased aggression from Russia and China, these

capabilities are more essential today than ever before. Like any Major Defense Acquisition

Program, the F-35 will always face challenges – but none of these challenges are insurmountable.

We will continue to demand the highest quality from our industry partners as we improve our Air

System’s Capabilities and Availability while aggressively driving down cost across the

Acquisition Lifecycle. Through these efforts, the F-35 will remain the premier 5th Generation Air

System for the U.S. and its allies for years to come.

Thank you for your time today; I look forward to your questions.

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