    [House Hearing, 117 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                              [H.A.S.C. No. 117-83]

                                F-35 SUSTAINMENT

                                   __________

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                           SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

                                     OF THE

                          COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                        ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                                  HEARING HELD

                                 APRIL 28, 2022

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    48-447                     WASHINGTON : 2023

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

                      JOHN GARAMENDI, California, Chairman

    JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut            MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
    JACKIE SPEIER, California            JOE WILSON, South Carolina
    JASON CROW, Colorado                 AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia
    ELISSA SLOTKIN, Michigan, Vice       JACK BERGMAN, Michigan
        Chair                            MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana
    JARED F. GOLDEN, Maine               MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee
    ELAINE G. LURIA, Virginia            LISA C. McCLAIN, Michigan
    KAIALI'I KAHELE, Hawaii              BLAKE D. MOORE, Utah
    MARILYN STRICKLAND, Washington

                   Melanie Harris, Professional Staff Member
                     Ian Bennitt, Professional Staff Member
                              Naajidah Khan, Clerk

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page

                  STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

    Garamendi, Hon. John, a Representative from California, Chairman,
      Subcommittee on Readiness......................................     1
    Waltz, Hon. Michael, a Representative from Florida, Ranking
      Member, Subcommittee on Readiness..............................     2

                                   WITNESSES

    Fick, Lt Gen Eric T., USAF, Program Executive Officer, F-35
      Lightning II Joint Program Office, U.S. Department of Defense..     4
    Maurer, Diana, Director, Defense Capabilities and Management,
      U.S. Government Accountability Office..........................     6
    Morani, Steven J., Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for
      Sustainment, U.S. Department of Defense........................     3

                                    APPENDIX

    Prepared Statements:

        Fick, Lt Gen Eric T..........................................    46
        Garamendi, Hon. John.........................................    31
        Maurer, Diana................................................    66
        Morani, Steven J.............................................    35
        Waltz, Hon. Michael..........................................    33

    Documents Submitted for the Record:

        [There were no Documents submitted.]

    Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:

        [There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]

    Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:

        [There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
                                F-35 SUSTAINMENT

                                  ----------

                      House of Representatives,
                           Committee on Armed Services,
                                     Subcommittee on Readiness,
                              Washington, DC, Thursday, April 28, 2022.
        The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:43 p.m., in
    room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Garamendi
    (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

    OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN GARAMENDI, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
            CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

        Mr. Garamendi. The meeting will come to order. The lawyers
    say I've got to read something for every hearing. It has to do
    with the hybrid hearings that we're doing.
        We have about an hour and 15 minutes unless votes are
    moving faster than we would anticipate, all of which means I
    would love not to have to read this. Are there any lawyers here
    that--okay. Can I deem it read? Oh, God. Okay. I'm going to do
    this as quick as I can.
        First some administrative and technical notes. Members are
    reminded they must be visible on screen within the software
    platform for the purpose of identity verification. Members must
    continue to use the software platform's video function while
    attending the hearing unless they experience connectivity
    issues or otherwise technical problems that render the Member
    unable to fully participate on the camera. If you experience
    technical difficulties, good luck. Please contact the committee
    staff, maybe you'll get help.
        When you are recognized, the video will be broadcast via
    television and internet feeds. You will be recognized as normal
    for questions, but if you want to speak at any other time, you
    must seek recognition verbally. Please mute your microphone
    when you are not speaking and remember to unmute prior to
    speaking and, please, lawyers, let's get rid of this wasted
    time.
        Please be aware that there's a slight lag between when you
    start speaking and when the camera switches to you. Please
    remember to keep the software platform video function on for
    the entirety of time you are attending the hearing. If you
    leave for a short period for other reasons to join a different
    proceeding, I will remember when it comes time for your turn.
        Please leave your video function on if you would leave to
    join a different proceeding or will be absent for a significant
    period of time, you should exit the software platform entirely
    and then rejoin it when you return.
        Be advised that I've designated a committee staff member to
    mute unrecognized members' microphones if necessary. Please use
    the platform chat feature to communicate with staff regarding
    the technical or logistical support issues.
        Finally, you will see a 5-minute video countdown clock on
    the software platform's display, but if necessary, I will
    remind you.
        Now, we're going to begin this in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
        Good afternoon. The committee will come to order.
        I'm going to dispense with the opening statement. Without
    objection, we'll put it in the record. I will simply make a few
    comments.
        The F-35 has been before this committee and other
    committees too many times. It's a 20-year program. And we still
    don't have it right, particularly on the maintenance of the
    platform.
        I am told that the current numbers are about 85 percent of
    the total cost of this system is in sustainment; that leaves
    about 15 percent of the total cost to buy it and then we've got
    to repair it. Obviously, it's over a long period of time.
        We've got to get this right. It's not right yet. The
    sustainment of this platform is not where it needs to be. With
    that, I'll yield to my ranking member, Mr. Waltz.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Garamendi can be found in
    the Appendix on page 31.]

    STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL WALTZ, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM FLORIDA,
               RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS

        Mr. Waltz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I, too, without
    objection, will submit my opening statement into the record so
    that we can have a more fulsome discussion given votes.
        I will just add to--I think we had on our call yesterday,
    and just add to the chairman's comments, that the concerns here
    are bipartisan and the concerns here are longstanding. And so
    what I'm interested in is how do we get to right and not be
    having these same types of hearings next year and the year
    after and the year after with all new faces, same issues.
        If you buy into the intelligence, at least I do, I think
    it's largely accurate from the briefings I've received from
    Secretary Kendall, the overmatch briefing and others, that the
    Chinese Communist Party will believe they have overmatch within
    the next 5 to 7 years, then the clock is ticking to get this
    right.
        And we don't want to be in a situation where, you know,
    perhaps Members of Congress felt back in the 1930s, and they
    see what could be coming--I hope it's deterred--but what could
    be coming. And we have a system that's 25 years in the making
    and still not sustained and ready.
        And I'll just close with saying I think we all have a
    teachable moment right now in Ukraine in watching the Russian
    Army what readiness can mean to the performance of a military.
    And I don't ever want to put our soldiers, sailors, airmen,
    Marine, guardians in that position.
        So I really look forward, as the chairman said on the call,
    to getting to real solutions that we can support you to get
    there so that we have a fully operable--68 percent in terms of
    the A variant at least from what I'm seeing, I believe that's
    the number GAO [U.S. Government Accountability Office] is
    reporting, is just unacceptable. I mean, it's just unacceptable
    to the taxpayer and to our military members. And with that, I
    yield.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Waltz can be found in the
    Appendix on page 33.]
        Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Waltz. Let's now turn to the
    witnesses. I welcome all of you. We have Steven Morani, Acting
    Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment. We have
    Lieutenant General Eric Fick, Program Executive Officer of the
    F-35 Joint Program Office. And we have Ms. Diana Maurer,
    Director, Defense Capabilities and Management at GAO.
        Let's start with Mr. Morani if you would.

     STATEMENT OF STEVEN J. MORANI, ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
          DEFENSE FOR SUSTAINMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

        Mr. Morani. Thank you, Chairman Garamendi. Ranking Member
    Waltz and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you
    for the opportunity to update you on the Department's progress
    on improving F-35 fleet readiness and affordability.
        I'm pleased to be joined with Lieutenant General Fick and
    Ms. Diana Maurer to discuss the state of the F-35 program. With
    more than 770 aircraft fielded across the enterprise, our U.S.
    and coalition warfighters are operating true cutting-edge
    combat capability, strengthening our alliances and building
    fifth-generation warfighter readiness.
        I'm proud of the many accomplishments achieved by our
    enterprise team of professionals to provide this critical
    warfighting capability to our joint force and international
    partners.
        That said, we recognize these capabilities are only useful
    if they are actually available to our warfighter, and the
    Department continues to prioritize improving F-35 readiness
    rates with a particular focus on improving air vehicle and
    propulsion reliability and maintainability in collaboration
    with our industry partners.
        This month the Department delivered a report to Congress on
    F-35 sustainment affordability in response to section 165(b) of
    the FY20 NDAA [fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization
    Act]. The report states that the Department reduced fleetwide
    sustainment costs per tail per year by 22 percent between 2014
    and 2020 and has made notable progress during the past year on
    managing sustainment costs and improving affordability as a
    result of the F-35 Joint Program Office's negotiation of the
    FY21-23 annualized air vehicle sustainment contract.
        While this is noteworthy progress, we fully understand that
    we still have work to do as we plan to support critical depot
    activations, address unscheduled and scheduled engine
    overhauls, and align spares requirements with our procurement
    schedules.
        The section 165(b) report also explains that the F-35
    affordability is a component of broader tactical aviation
    sustainment affordability challenges.
        The services are enduring the added cost pressure of
    operating and sustaining newer weapon systems while
    simultaneously maintaining aging legacy fleets. As such the
    Department requires congressional support for divestiture of
    aging weapon systems consistent with the President's FY23
    budget request.
        The F-35 program sustainment challenges must also be
    understood in the context of the Department's programmatic and
    statutory responsibilities to sustain its current and future
    aviation portfolio with a capable, modernized, and resilient
    organic industrial base [OIB].
        In my testimony before this committee in October of last
    year, I mentioned that the OIB is the Nation's readiness and
    war-sustaining insurance policy. Maintaining proper balance
    between organic and contractor sustainment will be a continuing
    challenge.
        This problem will only be exacerbated as legacy systems,
    which are largely sustained organically, are divested. As such
    the health of the OIB and the working capital funds that
    support it depends upon optimizing organic capacity to support
    the Department's newer weapon systems.
        Access to required technical data is a key enabler of any
    effort to increase the organic role in F-35 sustainment. The
    Department remains committed to obtaining the provisioning and
    cataloging technical data needed to transition to organic
    sustainment for supply chain management.
        With regards to F-35 provisioning of fiscal year 2020 NDAA,
    the Department acknowledges congressional intent and will
    actively support compliance with those provisions.
        The sustainment challenges facing the F-35 are reflections
    of similar issues affecting the Department's overall
    sustainment enterprise, which requires both government and
    industry teamwork to deliver effective warfighting readiness at
    an affordable cost.
        Ensuring accountability will be key. And I appreciate the
    opportunity to have these meaningful discussions with this
    committee as we aggressively address F-35 sustainment
    requirements and the capabilities of the defense sustainment
    enterprise. Thank you very much for your time, and I look
    forward to answering your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Morani can be found in the
    Appendix on page 35.]
        Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Morani, thank you very much.
        We now turn to General Fick. You are responsible for this
    program, so tell us how you are improving it.

       STATEMENT OF LT GEN ERIC T. FICK, USAF, PROGRAM EXECUTIVE
         OFFICER, F-35 LIGHTNING II JOINT PROGRAM OFFICE, U.S.
                         DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

        General Fick. Yes, sir. Chairman Garamendi, Ranking Member
    Waltz, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you
    for this opportunity to provide you with an update on the F-35
    program.
        As I briefed you last April, our mandate remains the
    delivery of a capable, affordable, and available F-35 air
    system. Outpacing the competitors to win tomorrow's fight as we
    develop, deliver, and sustain this fifth-generation capability
    at high-end fourth-generation costs. To that end, here is a
    quick update on the big hitters from a readiness perspective.
        Organic depot standup remains critical to long-term
    affordability and availability. In March, the Ogden Air
    Logistics Complex declared repair capability for the gun system
    control unit. This marks the 39th workload established across 6
    organic U.S. depots.
        For activated workloads, our organic depots today produce
    73 percent of the component repairs in the ecosystem. We will
    activate 13 additional workloads this year, 4 of which were
    pulled forward from it in 2023.
        While this progress greatly enhances capacity, we're also
    building velocity, with 20 of those activated workloads already
    beating our targeted 30-day repair turnaround time. As you
    know, this velocity is critical to minimizing the requirement
    to buy extensive spares.
        We've also made significant progress against our most
    critical sustainment degrader across 2020 and 2021, the F135
    power module availability. This progress is due to increased
    production at the Air Force Sustainment Center's Heavy
    Maintenance Center at Tinker Air Force Base, increasing the
    capacity of the global power module repair network, and
    maturing our inspection procedures and damage tolerance limits
    to keep aircraft on wing longer--I'm sorry, engines on wing
    longer.
        We made real progress in all three of these areas, but
    Tinker really crushed the F135 power module production plan for
    2021, reducing turnaround time from 240 days to 122 and
    delivering 51 power modules against a target of 40.
        Tinker is on track to deliver over 60 power modules this
    year, and FRC [Fleet Readiness Center] Southeast is on track
    for initial depot capability in 2024.
        Our collective repair network, including our international
    facilities, will deliver 122 power modules in 2022 compared to
    76 last year, enabling us to accelerate our power module
    recovery by years.
        As nations increasingly rely on the F-35 to reinforce
    regional security, we must also be ready to surge sustainment
    support. Our global pooling business rules feature a mechanism
    for allocation and prioritization of our limited resources.
        This system differentiates between competing needs and
    ensures responsiveness to customer requirements in peacetime
    and in wartime. That sustainment surge is not limited to parts
    and material as we are actively deploying support personnel in
    response to increased demand signals today.
        Historically, the program has endured initial spare
    shortages due to underexecuted appropriated funds and shortages
    in participant funding. Reversing this trend between FY15 and
    FY21, the program invested $4.8 billion in initial spares.
        For the past 3 years, the program met appropriated
    execution targets of 93 percent and our on-time delivery rate
    is currently 92 percent. Beyond those initial spares we're also
    maturing our afloat spares packages, our deployable spares
    packages, with lessons learned from recent CONUS [continental
    United States] and OCONUS [outside continental United States]
    deployments aboard Navy, Marine Corps, and Royal Navy cruises.
        I appreciate the committee's continued attention to F-35
    data rights. This attention has served to leverage industry
    accountability and fairness while facilitating organic
    capability. While we have struggled to secure the funding
    required to procure the provisioning and cataloging data we
    require to establish an organic supply chain function, we are
    working another initiative designed to deliver those data
    through pilot programs with the component OEMs [original
    equipment manufacturers] at low to no cost.
        Finally, we continue to make strides in driving down our
    sustainment costs. Mr. Morani already mentioned that our 2021
    through 2023 annualized air vehicle sustainment contract
    represents the first multiple-year sustainment contract for our
    program. And it's a quantum leap forward in securing affordable
    lifecycle costs for this program.
        It drives performance through an incentive structure that's
    focused on year-over-year improvements in full mission
    capability rate and select supply metrics. Under this contract,
    our cost per flight hour is projected to be reduced from our
    estimates by 8 percent in 2023.
        Additionally, the pathfinder initiative I just mentioned
    has us looking at methodologies and opportunities to contract
    directly with original equipment manufacturers rather than our
    prime contractor.
        Ultimately, this move will unlock the door to future
    competition, which unlocks the door to cost reduction and
    performance improvement. These topics are front and center in
    my mind every day as I lead this organization. We have made
    significant progress but I, like you, am not yet satisfied. The
    air system we are delivering today is unmatched capability-
    wise, and it is becoming increasingly affordable and available.
        With your continued support and your continued oversight, I
    am confident the F-35 will remain the premiere fifth-generation
    air system for the U.S. and her allies for decades to come. I
    thank you for your time and look forward to your questions.
        [The prepared statement of General Fick can be found in the
    Appendix on page 46.]
        Mr. Garamendi. I thank you, General Fick. I'm quite certain
    you are doing everything you can. I'd like to hear from Ms.
    Maurer about what is not being done.

     STATEMENT OF DIANA MAURER, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE CAPABILITIES AND
           MANAGEMENT, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

        Ms. Maurer. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Ranking
    Member Waltz, other members, and staff. It's a pleasure to be
    back before the committee this afternoon to talk about GAO's
    work on F-35 sustainment.
        Since last year's hearing, we've visited F-35 bases, and
    we've talked to pilots and maintainers and commanders. And
    we've heard that when it's flying, the F-35 is an impressive
    aircraft with cutting-edge capabilities.
        We're also encouraged that the Joint Program Office, OSD
    [Office of the Secretary of Defense], the services, and the
    prime contractors have increasingly focused on sustainment and
    that focus has yielded some improvements.
        ALIS [Autonomic Logistics Information System] servers are
    smaller and easier to deploy. The global supply chain is more
    responsive to user needs, and repair times for engine modules
    have improved significantly. However, the program's own
    measures show how much additional progress is needed.
        F-35 sustainment is getting better, but it is far from
    good. The F-35 still is not flying as often as the services
    would like. Mission capable rates have declined over the last
    year, and full mission capable rates are far below service
    goals.
        The program is still not meeting more than half of its
    reliability and maintainability goals. That means all too often
    the aircraft requires repairs sooner and takes longer to fix
    than expected.
        The F-35 also remains very expensive to operate and
    support. And the Air Force in particular faces substantial gaps
    between what it costs to fly the plane and what they can afford
    to pay. In other words, F-35 sustainment currently costs too
    much and does not deliver enough and that's not a reassuring
    bottom line for a $1.7 trillion investment into something
    that's so vital to our Nation's security.
        To improve that outlook, the program needs to address
    several interlinked sustainment challenges and uncertainties.
    Many of them stem from too many years of thinking about
    sustainment as something that can be addressed later. Well,
    it's no longer later. With over 450 F-35s in service in the
    U.S., now is the time to get sustainment right.
        And as General Fick and Mr. Morani just made clear, they
    understand this and they are grappling with several key issues
    to get this done.
        For example, DOD [U.S. Department of Defense] is
    reconsidering the division of sustainment responsibilities and
    control between contractors and the government, and striking
    the balance on access to technical data is a centerpiece of
    that issue. And those decisions are inevitably linked with
    whether, how, or when to pursue a performance-based logistics
    approach to sustainment.
        The program also needs to decide whether to upgrade the
    existing engine on the aircraft or develop new ones. Either
    path is going to have substantial implications for sustainment,
    both for the services and our international partners.
        DOD also needs to plan and execute moving sustainment
    responsibilities from the Joint Program Office to the services.
    This represents a major change in developing a clear path, and
    consensus for this handoff is vital.
        Now, our independent oversight at the GAO will continue to
    help in these efforts. Since 2014, we have recommended DOD
    develop or revise strategies for technical data, global supply
    chain, ALIS, affordability, and now engines, 34 recommendations
    in all. To its credit, DOD has generally agreed and taken some
    action on most but 21 of 34 still remain open.
        So the question was asked earlier, what should DOD do to
    fix F-35 sustainment? Well, first I'll waive my GAO flag and
    say fully implement GAO's recommendations.
        But second, maintain the focus on sustainment. Fielding new
    aircraft with new technology is important, but they won't
    contribute much if they're not sustained.
        Third, build on the progress we've seen in specific aspects
    of the program. These tactical successes should become a
    springboard to address the many strategic challenges we've
    highlighted in our reports.
        And finally, ensure that F-35 decisions support broader
    departmental sustainment needs. This won't be easy. It won't
    happen overnight. But taking these steps will help DOD fly the
    F-35 as intended, sustain it as planned, and be able to afford
    to do so.
        Thank you for the opportunity to testify this afternoon. I
    look forward to questions.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Maurer can be found in the
    Appendix on page 66.]
        Mr. Garamendi. I'm going to take a deep breath. I'm going
    to be as polite as possible. However, Mr. Morani, you and I had
    a clear conversation yesterday. Mr. Fick, we've had
    conversations over and over.
        But I will not tolerate any longer what has been--we're
    going to get on with it. We're going to do it. It hasn't been
    done. I've been watching the F-35 for a decade. And it has not
    been solved. It has not been--the attention necessary to
    sustain this $1.7 trillion platform has not occurred, plain and
    simple.
        We're going to go off and buy new bright shiny airplanes.
    They're going to be flying probably well for a few months and
    then they're going to wind up with a problem. They're going to
    go to a depot that's not prepared for them. They're going to
    have to go--maybe the engine is not working, which is a Pratt &
    Whitney problem. And they're going to be before this committee
    soon.
        And if they're in the audience and if they're listening,
    watch out. I'm coming at you in a very angry mood. You gave us
    an engine, and it doesn't work. Oh, it worked for a little
    while until it gets some dust around and then it doesn't work.
    What the hell? What's going on here?
        General, you and your predecessors have promised us a
    solution to ALIS. The entire thing is based upon ALIS, and ALIS
    doesn't work. Does not work. And can ALIS be compromised? Do
    you want to go into a classified hearing? I'd love to hear your
    answer to that.
        ODIN [Operational Data Integrated Network] is going to be
    the solution until it's not. And so ODIN becomes a new updated
    box. But it's connected back to ALIS, and ALIS doesn't work.
        What's going on here? We've got a contractor out there,
    Lockheed, that would love to build new airplanes. And I've got
    a lot of my colleagues that get off on buying new planes. This
    committee is responsible for making sure the planes are able to
    be flown. And they're not.
        Are you listening to what the GAO has put forward? Twenty-
    one of thirty-four. Well I suppose if you were a big league
    slugger, you could get by with that kind of a percentage. You
    cannot get by with that kind of percentage here nor can the
    military get by with it nor can our warfighters get by with
    that kind of a percentage. It cannot be done.
        The message from me, and I hope from my committee, and I
    know I'm going to raise hell in the full committee, is we're
    not going to buy more planes until we figure out how to
    maintain them. It is a fool's errand. It is a waste of money by
    the taxpayers. It is a bright, shiny machine until it doesn't
    work.
        So where shall we start? I know if I ask you about the
    engine, you are going to say that's Pratt & Whitney's problem.
    No, sir. Mr. Morani, Mr. Fick, Air Force, all of you, it is
    your problem. And if you're not jumping up and down on Pratt &
    Whitney about why they gave us an engine that works well until
    it doesn't work, and that period is very, very short, what's
    going on here?
        Some people tell me we're going to go back and revisit what
    we did a decade ago and that's have a great war between GE and
    Pratt & Whitney over whether we're going to have one or two
    engines. We made a mistake. We should have had two so that
    probably both of them can fail.
        For the contractors out there, what in the hell are you
    doing? Why can't you give us a piece of equipment that actually
    works? You should never have a contract. And for Lockheed, you
    want a 5-year maintenance contract, and you can't do what
    you're doing today? Come on. What are we thinking?
        I can consume a lot of time here. If I have not adequately
    expressed my frustration, I would assume that my frustration is
    less than the frustration of the pilots and the maintenance out
    there, the maintainers out there. We have to give them the
    tools that they need and that may be money, it may be
    direction. And in fact we gave direction in last year's NDAA.
        We're not going to buy more of these things until they will
    be able to be maintained. The primary maintenance
    responsibility on this is Lockheed, and you gentlemen. So,
    where do we go, ALIS, ODIN?
        General, bring us up to date on ALIS, ODIN, and tell me why
    I shouldn't be concerned. Everything is cool? Is that the case?
        General Fick. Sir, so first let me start by saying I share
    your frustration. The frustration you feel likely pales in
    comparison to those who confront it every day as we work to
    make it better.
        When I look at ALIS and ODIN, I think back to 2 years ago
    when I sat before this committee and talked about a very, very
    rapid transition, a light switch if you will, from one to the
    other. And we were educated over time that that was a foolish
    way to proceed.
        So I have a new material leader working ALIS. He arrived
    shortly before that hearing, and he's got a very, very solid
    plan in place.
        Mr. Garamendi. And if it fails, will he just get another
    promotion?
        General Fick. No.
        Mr. Garamendi. Okay. Carry on.
        General Fick. So our plan to transition from ALIS to ODIN
    contains four key elements, and you've seen and heard about the
    first of those elements, the rollout of the ODIN Base Kit, or
    OBK, right, 70 percent smaller, 30 percent cheaper,
    significantly faster from a throughput perspective, to replace
    the oldest squadron operational units out in the field and to
    give them enhanced capability from a processing perspective.
        Think about it from the context of the computer you had on
    your desk in the year 2000 versus the computer you have on your
    desk today. That's the order of magnitude shift that we've just
    given those folks as we've changed out that equipment.
        We're also working software updates, right? We have
    continued to accelerate the delivery of new capabilities on the
    ALIS baseline to the units in the field because that's the
    baseline that we have today.
        We changed from a paradigm that had us delivering software
    on 2-year centers to one that targets 6-month centers--actually
    targets quarterly centers. In most cases, we've now pushed
    those back to 6 months because those are easier for the field
    to digest.
        We're fielding two of those quarterly releases now, and
    we'll have one final quarterly release that's under development
    now and will release in 2023. And that will be the last release
    that we develop the way we're doing it now as we containerize
    that software, elevate it into the cloud and then do the
    development on the next release from the cloud. It will still
    field to the legacy architecture. But this is the beginning of
    now doing software development for our maintenance data system
    in the cloud.
        At the same time we're doing that, we're modernizing the
    underlying data infrastructure to take us away from that 2000-
    era infrastructure and into something that's more modern and
    scalable as the fleet scales in size and complexity.
        And then finally, we're changing the way we interact with
    the system, and we're disaggregating the software from the
    underlying hardware so that we can start to be--to use much
    less touch labor when it comes to pushing new software to the
    field and having to interact with the system in that way. So
    we're calling that infrastructure as code, and the IT
    [information technology] guys know far more about that than I
    do.
        But those four initiatives, all executed in parallel, are
    what is moving us closer and closer to ODIN. Think of it as the
    dimmer switch now instead of a binary light switch as we move
    from one to the other, increasing capability, increasing
    cybersecurity, decreasing weight, increasing responsiveness, as
    we add those capabilities into the ecosystem.
        Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, General. Ms. Maurer, are you
    buying that?
        Ms. Maurer. I think there's no doubt that ALIS has been
    getting better. It's certainly better than it was 2 years ago
    when we had the hearing.
        From our point of view from the GAO, there is still an open
    recommendation that the program develop clear measures of
    success, what is good enough, what is good. And that has been
    one of the challenges that we faced in assessing ALIS to ODIN
    over the years is that we hear about new initiatives or we hear
    about improvements.
        And we've seen, frankly, some demonstrable improvements.
    But it's not clear yet whether that is good enough. We do know
    that when we go out and we talk to maintainers in the field,
    they say that there's still a good level of frustration in
    working with the system; it still requires these ALIS
    expediters to navigate through the system. They will say that
    it's getting better, but it is not what it needs to be,
    currently.
        Mr. Garamendi. General, I would appreciate if you would
    give to this committee a specificity on the four projects that
    you just told us about.
        General Fick. Okay.
        Mr. Garamendi. Exactly what they are and exactly what you
    expect from them and exactly when you will get it done.
        General Fick. Absolutely.
        Mr. Garamendi. With that there is about 1,000 other--well,
    at least another question. I'm going to turn to my ranking
    member----
        General Fick. Sir----
        Mr. Garamendi [continuing]. And invite him to have a shot
    at this while I sit here and take a----
        General Fick [continuing]. I'd be happy to add one more
    piece if you don't mind, and it's a reflection of the progress
    that we've made.
        As we've worked our way through the requirements for the
    upcoming year, the first, I'll say, daylight that we've started
    to see is that the Air Force has actually reduced their request
    for ALIS administrators on our annualized sustainment contract
    by 16 heads in this coming year. That is due to the
    enhancements made to the system. And it is due to the standup
    of what we call the National ALIS Support Center, or the NASC,
    which is a centralized troubleshooting node to help the field.
        If you multiply those 16 technicians times the number of
    years left in the program, it's about a $250 million lifecycle
    cost reduction and that's just a start. Those are just at a
    couple of the training and test bases. As we stand up more of
    those installations and take advantage even more broadly, we'll
    start to see that compound.
        Mr. Garamendi. I am certain that all of us are pleased to
    see there is some progress along the line. Going forward, this
    year, from now until 365 days from now, exactly what are your
    priorities on ALIS and exactly what those will be, what the
    result of them will be, and exactly how you will get it done.
    I'm going to hold you accountable.
        General Fick Yes, sir.
        Mr. Garamendi. 365 days. I expect to be back here. I've got
    an election between now and then. But if I'm back here and I'm
    in this job, I want to see what it is you are going to
    accomplish with regard to ALIS-ODIN in the next 365 days. I'm
    going to hold you accountable? Okay? Very good.
        Mr. Waltz.
        Mr. Waltz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And just as something,
    I think, to think about 365 days from now when I hope we're
    both here is just to have industry at the table because I know
    we both will go visit industry, whether it's Pratt or Lockheed
    or whomever, and we get a very different story.
        And to get everybody in the same room, which I know that
    JPO [Joint Program Office], you know, that's the reason why you
    stood up, but from our perspective to get everybody on the
    record, and we can't get--any of this, I think, would be really
    helpful.
        I just have even--to take a step back. We just had the Air
    Force posture hearing. We're talking about NGAD, we're already
    talking about the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter but yet
    we can't take Joint Strike Fighter, which has roughly been
    around 20, 25 years, to Milestone C.
        What lessons would you take--before we dive into GAO and
    what you're doing now, I mean, just conceptually, did we try to
    make the Swiss Army knife and make this fighter everything, all
    things to all services and all partners? Did we not invest and
    look at sustainment first? Did we not hit that continuum
    between contractor and government the right way? What
    assumptions did we make? What should this committee be
    learning? What should we all be learning from, both industry
    and government, as we're already talking about the next fighter
    when we still have such issues with this one?
        General Fick. Sir, I think we've actually already learned a
    fair number of lessons from F-35. When I think about the
    origins of the F-35 and the timeline on which it was initially
    conceived and developed, we were in a far different place from
    an acquisition workforce perspective.
        We had just come down off of the Desert Shield, Desert
    Storm timeframe. We were eliminating dozens of thousands of
    acquisition professionals and no longer had the intellectual
    capacity to do the kinds of things internally that we had done
    for so many years before through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
        And we conceived this notion that we called TSPR, total
    system performance responsibility. And we decided that we were
    going to give that to the contractor and say, look, it is over
    to you. You make this work forever. That was the environment
    that was in place when the F-35 was born.
        Several years later, early 2000s, 2003, 2004, 2005
    timeframe, on a couple of other programs, probably including F-
    35, we realized that's really not where we wanted to be. We
    were kind of driven there by necessity, but we really didn't
    want to be there as we were seeing programs not succeed in
    delivering the outcomes that we wanted. And so we've begun to
    dig back out, to take more things back into our own hands
    organically.
        Dr. LaPlante, when he was the Air Force acquisition
    executive, talked about owning the technical baseline. We had
    no people to own the technical baseline in that time, but we
    are building them today. Right. My daughter is a computer
    programmer at Kessel Run. She is going to be able to own the
    technical baseline as she grows up within the Air Force. Our
    sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters can do that.
        So we had an organizational construct, an acquisition
    strategy that I think we decided was fundamentally flawed, and
    we backed away from it on almost every program and even F-35.
    And so we're still digging out of that. Right? That's one thing
    I don't think we'll ever do again.
        I do think that this program was extraordinarily complex.
    When you think about the capabilities that we deliver to the
    field today, for the threats against which it was designed, its
    capabilities are unparalleled. It is the best in the field
    because it was reaching, right?
        It was not something that had been done before. Sensor
    fusion, stealth, interoperability, those characteristics are
    unique to the
    F-35 and to some extent the F-22. No one else in the world was
    doing that. And so being on the bleeding edge of technology is
    very expensive. And so the complexity and the technological
    leaps required to bring this airplane to life were very, very
    challenging.
        We've adjusted to that. We've addressed that. We've learned
    from that when we look at how we're doing the B-21 and how
    we're looking at NGAD, how we're looking at open systems,
    right, how we're looking at competition, and how we're
    incorporating those things into the very basic acquisition
    strategy for those programs moving forward.
        So I think we've learned those lessons. We've taken them to
    heart. And as we look at other successes in the Air Force,
    whether you want to call it--within the Department, whether you
    want to call it B-21, whether you want to look at T-7, you look
    at other programs that are now taking those things that we
    learned through some blood, sweat, and tears, I think they're
    doing good things for us.
        Mr. Waltz. I appreciate that. And I know this is a longer
    conversation, Mr. Chairman. But, you know, the jury is still
    out in terms of B-21 sustainment, right? I mean, I think Ms.
    Maurer described it accurately. It's a fantastic platform when
    it works.
        General Fick. Yes.
        Mr. Waltz. But that leads me to my next question, I mean,
    what's the service's goals for FMC [full mission capable]? I
    know when I came up in the Army, if you were below 90 percent,
    you were fired. You were relieved. But yet I think the goal now
    is even less than that and then where are we sitting? We're
    sitting in the 60s for the A variant?
        General Fick. So for FMC, no. The numbers are below that.
    If I can pull up my chart here real quick to look. Our
    threshold for FMC, for the F-35A, in FY21 is 48 percent.
        Mr. Waltz. Is that acceptable? I mean, do you find that
    acceptable?
        General Fick. On one hand I would say no, absolutely not.
    On the other hand, this aircraft, even in PMC mode, this air
    system, even in a partial mission capable mode, delivers
    capabilities that other aircraft simply cannot do. I'll use an
    example. I had a weapons school instructor come when I was the
    deputy PEO----
        Mr. Waltz. I hear you. Just for the sake of time, but that
    is not what the taxpayer bought, right? And that's not what
    they were promised through this committee. And I would
    appreciate a follow-on briefing. I don't want to dominate the
    time in terms of how we get from 48 percent to where the----
        General Fick. Sir, I can help you with that. My perspective
    on it is this. My dad used to say when you're up to your neck
    in alligators, sometimes it's easy to forget you are there to
    drain the swamp.
        Mr. Waltz. Yes.
        General Fick. We have to do both things. We have to kill
    the alligators and drain the swamp, which means that we have
    near-term degraders that we're working on----
        Mr. Waltz. Right.
        General Fick [continuing]. Against mission capable rates
    and against full mission capable rates.
        Mr. Waltz. I've got that. And just last question. My
    understanding is most platforms, F-18, F-22, you can go down
    the list, in terms of engine sustainability, you're sitting at
    an acceptable about 1 to 2 percent. Although it is built in
    here as 6 percent, 6x, 3x or 6x, depending on how you want to
    look at it, 6 times the rest of the platforms and the engines.
        I mean, I'm just looking at what the standards are, what
    the reality is, and then how do we help you get there? So, I
    mean, are you satisfied with 6 percent of the engines?
        General Fick. So, candidly, no, I'm not. When the----
        Mr. Waltz. Why is that goal?
        General Fick. We're actively working with the services to
    determine what that right number is or if that's the right
    strategy. We're assessing whether the strategy that relies upon
    a 6 percent NMC [not mission capable] rate as a target is
    acceptable or not. And if you multiply that by the number of
    aircraft we'll eventually have, that's a huge number. So
    intuitively you say that does not make sense.
        If I wind the clock back 2 years though, right, while we
    had that 6 percent objective, right, we were hovering around 1
    percent or better. It wasn't until our power module crisis hit
    that we really started to dig at something that was more than
    about a percent or two. I remember looking at our early metric
    slides going why are we even tracking that? It is so low, but
    ultimately it ballooned.
        We figured out that the strategy that we have in place
    really works well at steady state, and it assumes that the
    spares are at the appropriate level. It assumes that our depot
    capacity is at the appropriate level and the appropriate
    velocity. And it assumes that we consume them at some set
    level, right? Only when all those things work does it all come
    together appropriately. And up until 2020, we were doing that.
    When the crisis hit, though, that's when the numbers went down.
        Mr. Waltz. Mr. Morani, when will we get the--what's the
    plan to address the GAO's recommendations? Why are we still
    sitting at 21 of 34?
        Mr. Morani. Ranking Member Waltz, thank you for the
    question. So we recognize we are late with that plan. We should
    have submitted an interim. That plan is in work with our staff.
        I will say that we have regular engagements even though we
    are late with the plan and the results, we do meet with GAO on
    a weekly basis to talk about this platform and other
    sustainment challenges. So it is not as if we are not
    addressing your concerns, sharing what we are doing, and
    working together to get to yes on these recommendations.
        We feel we probably need another 60 to 90 days to get it
    through coordination. It's about 80 percent right now. And I
    will let----
        Mr. Waltz. To be clear, just for everybody's baseline, this
    is just a plan to address the recommendations, not to actually
    implement the recommendations, correct?
        Mr. Morani. No, no.
        General Fick. So this response more accurately reflects the
    current status of our actions against each of those
    recommendations. I anticipate that when you see the final
    product here in 90 days or so it is going to recommend that a
    fair number of those recommendations actually close.
        Mr. Waltz. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Garamendi. Thank you. We'll now turn to Ms. Speier.
        Ms. Speier. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Thank you all for
    being here. You know, this reminds me on a much larger scale of
    the debacle with the LCS [littoral combat ship]. We are
    incapable of turning off the spigot when something doesn't
    work.
        So this is a $400 billion program to build them, and a $1
    trillion program to sustain it over the life cycle. And we're
    asking the American people to pay for F-35s, only 55 percent of
    which are considered mission capable, when the standard is
    supposed to be 75 percent. That only about 30 to 35 percent of
    the F-35s are fully mission capable compared to a target of 60
    percent.
        And maintenance is taking twice as long as originally
    intended, and there is a shortage of replacement parts. And on
    top of all of that, we created a sustainment contract much like
    we did with ALIS where we're not in charge. And Lockheed Martin
    has the maintenance contract. So it's a cash cow for them for
    the future.
        And since we have a record that the sustainment costs are
    double and a record that we can't keep those planes in air, how
    can we look the taxpayers in the face and say, well, that's
    just the way it is and shrug our shoulders? So my first
    question is, when are we going to take over maintenance?
        General Fick. So, ma'am, that's a multifaceted question as
    I'm sure you know. Ultimately, we have begun to do it already,
    right?
        We've stood up 39 of the 68 organic depots, depot
    workloads, that are basically bringing all of that product
    support provider work into the organic sphere. And we're going
    to continue to stand up those depots now until about 2028. And
    there's actually 31 additional activations in work to include
    13 more in this calendar year. So that is the organic depot
    work.
        We have taken from Lockheed the domestic warehousing
    function and assigned that to the Defense Logistics Agency
    [DLA]. We've taken the CONUS transportation network from
    Lockheed Martin and assigned that to USTRANSCOM [U.S.
    Transportation Command]. We've taken the disposition or the
    demilitarization of old parts and also assigned that to DLA.
        We are very gradually and deliberately, in ways that are
    intended to not adversely influence the warfighter, effecting
    that transformation even as we speak. My team is working very,
    very close with Mr. Morani's team to also explore pathfinder
    initiatives that allow us to work directly with the
    subsuppliers to stand up the more organic maintenance of that
    supply chain.
        And then furthermore as we look at the 2021 to 2023
    annualized sustainment contract that we mentioned, what that
    contract does is it ratchets up the requirements and aligns
    Lockheed's incentive fee to the achievement of those milestones
    from both the full mission capable perspective as well as
    different supply support metrics, what we call gross issue
    effectiveness and customer wait time. All of those things
    intended to hold them accountable to deliver the effects that
    we desire.
        Ms. Speier. So according to the GAO, the unscheduled
    maintenance is the highest sustainment risk for the F-35. And
    if it's not fixed, 43 percent of the F-35 fleet could be
    grounded in 2030 for lack of engines. What are we doing about
    that?
        Mr. Morani. So, ma'am, that goes back to the engine
    recovery conversation we had a few moments ago. When we
    discovered this accelerated wear on the hot section of the F135
    power module, we put into effect a three-pronged initiative
    aimed at increasing the production of power modules at Tinker's
    Heavy Maintenance Center, aimed at increasing the global
    production via both our OEM suppliers as well as some of our
    OCONUS depots for MRO&U [maintenance, repair, overhaul, and
    upgrade] of the F135 engine. And we also did accelerated engine
    testing to examine the limits that we had put upon the damage
    in the engine so that we can update them based upon actuals
    from the field and not engineering estimates.
        The combined effect of those three initiatives all together
    brought our recovery from the power module crisis back from
    sometime in the 2030s to 2026. So we have very, very
    deliberately worked to bat on a multiphased approach to bat
    back that crisis and turn it into something we can manage and
    not something that's going to ground 48 percent of the fleet.
        Now a lot of those numbers weren't in place by the time Ms.
    Maurer wrote her report because we have been moving that fast
    to make a difference across those three different lines of
    effort. So it's not surprising to me that the report says what
    it does. But when she comes back and we have the conversation
    this year, she's going to see the results that we've been able
    to accomplish together.
        Ms. Speier. My time has expired, Mr. Chairman, but if there
    is a second round, I would like to have Ms. Maurer actually
    respond to those comments.
        Mr. Garamendi. I would like to have you have that right
    now, but the normal processes here don't allow me to do that.
    We now turn to Mrs. McClain.
        Mrs. McClain. I'm learning the rules, so thank you. Thank
    you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being here. As you know,
    an essential responsibility of this subcommittee is to ensure
    that the appropriate resources are being authorized to meet
    mission readiness requirements yet unfortunately we
    consistently lack the level of detail in the annual budget
    request to conduct this critical oversight work.
        The first question we must answer, and we really must
    answer this question, is what are DOD's mission readiness
    requirements in support of the national defense strategy?
        To that end, Congress required in fiscal year 2021 in the
    NDAA for all the services to submit readiness metrics for every
    major weapon system within the President's budget request
    starting this year.
        Secretary Morani, the Department of Defense has yet to
    submit these materials. Unless I'm missing something, and I've
    missed it, which could possibly happen, when can we expect the
    Department to comply with this requirement, because it kind of
    seems to be a pattern of lack of requirement?
        Mr. Morani. So, ma'am, I'm going to take that one for the
    record so that I give you the right response. I believe that
    the first reporting period was last year for that, and I
    believe we did submit that. That in conjunction with other
    NDAA----
        Mrs. McClain. Well, I'll take it for the record because I
    had an opportunity to question General Milley and Secretary
    Austin, and they said they would get me that information. And I
    still have yet to receive it. So it seems like pretty important
    information that we should have before we spend the taxpayers'
    dollars.
        The second question is why was the budget even submitted
    without this information? If that's a requirement, why was it
    even submitted?
        Mr. Morani. So, ma'am, you're asking me questions that in
    my capacity that I don't have the authority to determine
    whether it should be submitted or not. So I will take that for
    the record and get you an answer from the appropriate office.
        Mrs. McClain. Do you think we should have criteria before
    we spend taxpayer dollars, and do you think we should adhere to
    that criteria? Do you think that's important?
        Mr. Morani. I do.
        Mrs. McClain. Thank you. General Fisk, another question we
    need answered is what is our return on investment for the F-35
    program in terms of readiness? In other words, for example,
    when you put a dollar into that program, are we getting, in
    your opinion, adequate return on that dollar of investment in
    terms of readiness?
        General Fick. So, ma'am, that's an outstanding question.
    I'm not entirely sure how to answer it, but what I can relate
    it to is one of the things that we do to improve readiness is
    we put reliability and maintainability improvement program
    [RMIP] initiatives into the hopper.
        This program was very, very slow to get started on RMIP.
    From 2015 through 2019, I think we invested a total of about
    $10 million, maybe $20 million.
        In 2019--I'm sorry, 2020 and 2021, the total was about $100
    million. And as we look at what that $120 million has done or
    is expected to do, we are expecting that to net about a $5\1/2\
    billion return.
        Mrs. McClain. When?
        General Fick. Over the life cycle of the program. So----
        Mrs. McClain. Roughly 50 percent capacity in readiness,
    that's a good return on investment is what you're saying?
    You're pleased with the return on that investment?
        General Fick. No, ma'am. These are things that we are
    doing, identifying systems within the aircraft that need to be
    fixed to allow us----
        Mrs. McClain. So we're not really pleased with the return
    on that investment? Let me move on. If this committee requires
    you to provide that information with the objectives and metrics
    required within the budget, can I get your commitment to
    actually deliver them?
        Mr. Morani. Ma'am, you have my commitment.
        Mrs. McClain. Thank you, sir. How would this readiness and
    sustainment information improve the GAO's ability to audit and
    assess the F-35 program?
        Ms. Maurer. Yes. Thank you for the question. We're always
    happy to have additional information, additional facts. It
    enhances our ability to----
        Mrs. McClain. Would it help you?
        Ms. Maurer. It would be helpful, yes.
        Mrs. McClain. I have 12 seconds left so with that, I will
    yield back, sir.
        Mr. Garamendi. If we have time for another round, I'll add
    12 seconds.
        Mrs. McClain. Thank you, sir.
        Mr. Garamendi. Very good. I will now turn to Mr. Courtney.
        Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Maurer, in the
    last NDAA, there was actually some movement in terms of
    sustainment issues. There were four different provisions that
    were included in the bill.
        One involved the comptroller general so that obviously
    they're not here to, you know, update us; but there were, I
    mean, first of all, what was your general take on the changes
    or the amendments that were passed last year in terms of just
    where GAO is with your recommendations?
        Ms. Maurer. Sure, absolutely. Let me just state that I work
    for the comptroller general so I can certainly speak to that
    requirement. It's a reporting requirement. We have ongoing work
    right now looking at the status of maintenance, both field-
    level and depot-level maintenance, for the F-35.
        In terms of the other requirements, we're always pleased to
    see Congress playing an active role in providing oversight of
    this program, both because it involves so much money but also
    because it's so vital to national security.
        We're not going to take a position on whether the specific
    changes were good or bad because we serve the Congress as a
    whole. But it is good to see Congress weighing in directly on
    issues of sustainment concern: engines, trying to find a better
    balance between contractor and government led work, for
    example.
        Mr. Courtney. So, again, we're not that far away from
    markup for 2023. If you had, again, in terms of based on the
    GAO recommendations, what would be your recommendation today in
    terms of what you would like to see us do?
        Ms. Maurer. Well, I think first and foremost continue to
    have hearings like this because I think the visibility is
    important, the oversight and attention is important.
        In terms of areas of emphasis, continue to focus on
    sustainment. I think the Congress is asking the right questions
    about decision-making around purchasing additional number of
    aircraft. I'm being very careful here that we do not have a
    position----
        Mr. Courtney. Right.
        Ms. Maurer [continuing]. At GAO what those numbers should
    be. But having good robust conversations around striking that
    balance, right, between new capabilities and the ability to
    sustain those capabilities is very important.
        Mr. Courtney. So, I mean, there was in one of the sections,
    you know, some incentives or handcuffs that actually tied the
    number of aircraft to, you know, the affordability issue. So, I
    mean, I think there really was an attempt to try and use the
    law, you know, to really stimulate change.
        Ms. Maurer. And exactly. I think that was in alignment with
    one of the matters we had for Congress in a report last year on
    F-35 affordability. We asked Congress to consider making that
    direct linkage, seeing progress on affordability or lack
    thereof and using that to drive decision-making on future
    purposes. And Congress did exactly that.
        Mr. Courtney. Right. Thank you. So, General, in your
    opening remarks you talked about, again, the effort to sort of
    shift the balance between contractor and government. You
    described again some of the, you know, concrete actions that
    have taken place. I think I heard you say that there was some
    funding limitations in terms of, you know, that process of
    trying to either acquire the data or take ownership of the
    data. I'm not sure I--did I hear you right?
        General Fick. Yes, sir, you did.
        Mr. Courtney. And could you sort of tease that out a
    little?
        General Fick. Sure. So as we have talked about--with the
    U.S. services about their role in F-35 sustainment, they have
    expressed an interest and a desire and an intention to more
    organically manage the sustainment supply chain.
        Associated with that activity, we need to be able to
    deliver to them the provisioning and cataloging data associated
    with the parts within that ecosystem.
        We have the rights to that data. It's not a matter of data
    rights. It's a matter of data delivery, right, and being able
    to have that data delivered is going to cost money. And that
    money is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of about a
    half a billion dollars divided amongst the services to help
    enable that activity to stand up.
        Mr. Courtney. So----
        General Fick. Because we haven't been able to make that
    happen, that is why we've started exploring these pathfinders
    as ways to have that data delivered as a matter of course at
    low to no cost. And so we're trying to find ways to keep
    moving----
        Mr. Courtney. Got it. Got it.
        General Fick [continuing]. [Inaudible].
        Mr. Courtney. So based on what the general just said, Ms.
    Maurer, if, you know, we were able to find that half billion,
    would that be an investment that would show a good rate of
    return for the taxpayer?
        Ms. Maurer. I think there is the potential for it doing
    that. You know, one of the things that we hear a lot when we
    were talking to maintainers in the field is their--and we're
    talking about service members on the flight line--their
    frustration with the limitations and being able to repair the
    aircraft.
        And it comes down to very specific things like is this
    particular part of the F-35, is it broken enough for us to take
    it off the plane? If it needs to come off the aircraft, what
    tool do we use? How do we replace it? What tool do we use to
    put it back on?
        Those are the kind of specific levels of information that
    is part of technical data sort of writ large. And that is one
    of the challenges that we're making--that they face.
        Mr. Courtney. If I heard you correctly, General, again you
    sort of saw this as something that could be spread out amongst
    the Navy and the Air Force in terms of the service budgets?
        General Fick. Sir, I believe that is the intent is that
    both departments are participants within that ecosystem. I know
    that the Air Force probably has voiced the most overtly their
    desire to do this work, but I think the Navy is onboard as
    well. Steve, I do not know if you can help.
        Mr. Morani. No. I would confirm that. And I would want to
    go back to what General Fick said about other options to get
    that data and to work directly with some of the sub-tier
    suppliers.
        We have arrangements in place with many of these vendors
    today where we can leverage those contracts and become that
    provider. Our FRCs, you know, our NAVSUP [Naval Supply Systems
    Command], ICP, the Air Force's 448th supply chain wing, they
    all have those professionals that do that kind of work and have
    those arrangements.
        So we can leverage those contracts and through that scale.
    And, again, we don't want to pay for it twice. We want to move
    it into the organic supply chain management role because we do
    that work. And we are responsible to you to do that work as
    well.
        So if we can do that without paying for the data, that is
    the path we want to go.
        Mr. Garamendi. I believe we are going to have time for a
    second round amongst the three of us that remain here. And we
    will go until we have to go to votes, which is unknown but will
    happen. So I'm going to get this started, this second round.
        Several issues have been illuminated by the questions and
    the answers. This committee needs to have a serious
    conversation with Pratt & Whitney about the engine. In the
    meantime, I won't go into it now, but to note that that is a
    problem we discussed earlier, planes with holes in them, in
    other words, no engines.
        General, you mentioned something. I don't want to ask a
    question about it, but there are limits on performance of the
    aircraft because the engine may not work at a super high
    performance level. Is that correct? No? I'm pleased to learn
    that. You shook your head yes, no.
        General Fick. Sir, I don't know what you're referring to. I
    apologize.
        Mr. Garamendi. Well, this is supposed to be the super
    plane.
        General Fick. Yes.
        Mr. Garamendi. There appear to be limits on what it can do
    because the engine may not be able to perform.
        Mr. Morani. Chairman, I believe--I mean, this current
    engine can meet the current specifications for the aircraft and
    for the TR-3 [Technical Refresh 3], Block 4, if that's what you
    mean. The performance specifications, it's sized to be able
    to----
        Mr. Garamendi. If you're going to tell me I'm wrong, this
    is a good one to tell me I'm wrong about. And I thank you for
    that.
        We do need to get into this engine issue in great detail.
    And I know that we are going to be faced with the issue of two
    engines. And General Electric is going to make a full attack on
    the committee to come back--you know, General, you can laugh,
    but that's what's going to happen. And they are going to want
    us to authorize two engines. So we're going to have to deal
    with that.
        I also know that in the President's budget, there is depot
    money that is going to slide forward. We'd like to say to the
    right. And I'm going to have a problem with that.
        The issue of the depots being fully capable of taking up
    their tasks remains a major concern for this committee and for
    the chairman. So we're going to look carefully at that if
    there's a question about whether there is adequate money for
    the depots to be fully prepared to take on their tasks. Tell me
    that I don't have to worry about it, General.
        General Fick. So, sir, what I think you are referring to is
    we've had conversations. And I can't go into the details of our
    ongoing production contract negotiations, but historically the
    Department has taken some risk at what we call the below the
    line or support costs associated with things like depot standup
    and have counted on us to yield savings in those negotiations
    that can then be used to shore up those funds.
        The headwinds we are facing due to COVID amongst other
    things are limiting our ability to do that, we believe, in this
    year and that is what we're struggling to work with both the
    SAEs [service acquisition executives] and the DAE [defense
    acquisition executive] to chart a path forward.
        Mr. Garamendi. Is that a nice way of saying that you intend
    to pull money out of the current money for updating all of the
    depots? Tell me that's not what you said.
        General Fick. Sir, that's not exactly what I said. What I
    said was historically the Department has underfunded that line
    within the budget. And they've relied upon us to negotiate
    savings in our contracts that we can then apply to that delta
    so that they are fully funded. We are going to have trouble
    doing that this year, I believe. So the Department does not
    want to not fund the depots. And so they've tasked us to come
    back to them and figure out what are the COAs [courses of
    action], whether it be through internal funding from other
    sources or ATRs [above threshold regrogrammings]. What would be
    required to make sure that we keep that depot infrastructure
    whole? That is the task that we've been given.
        Mr. Garamendi. I'm reading you to say that the money
    necessary to prepare the depots to carry out their tasks is at
    risk and that the risk is you have to find the money to do what
    the Department is unwilling to directly fund. Correct?
        General Fick. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Garamendi. The problem of the F-35 is a shared problem.
    It's a problem of the contractor, Lockheed Martin, and others.
    It is a problem of the Department of Defense not paying
    attention to sustainment. And it is a problem of this committee
    and the Senate wanting to buy new bright shiny things and not
    paying much attention to the sustainment of what the
    [inaudible] has been purchased.
        I've seen it here over and over again. Every year, it is
    this committee together with the appropriators and the Senate,
    that buy new equipment and shortchange the sustainment money
    necessary.
        I am not going to go through this next. If anybody out
    there is listening, if any of my colleagues are listening, I'm
    going to raise holy hell about what we have failed to do and
    that is our share of this responsibility.
        I see Mr. Moore. I welcome you back. I'm going to cut off
    my own comments here and go to you. Thank you for rejoining us,
    Mr. Moore.
        Mr. Moore. Thank you, Chairman Garamendi. I appreciate you
    highlighting the F-35. I expressed my commitment to it as well.
    Utah-1, Utah's First District, heavily committed to the F-35
    and making sure we find the solutions. No weapon system is
    perfectly rolled out. We understand that. We do. And I
    appreciate how you've mentioned the various stakeholders that
    are involved and the roles that we all play. And I remain
    committed in this role to make sure we see this through.
        The perspective that I would say matters the most is from
    those that fly and maintain the plain.
        At the Hill Air Force Base, our F-35 pilots have made it
    very clear in multiple conversations and business I've had with
    them that when this plane is operational, it simply cannot be
    beat. The Ogden Air Logistics Complex, where all F-35A depot
    maintenance is performed, our maintainers are proud to work on
    the Joint Strike Fighter, the most capable and lethal fighter
    ever in operation.
        While a program of this scale is not without challenges as
    we have discussed, when our pilots are flying in the war, they
    want to be in an F-35. And I believe two things can be true at
    once. We can exercise aggressive oversight to improve
    sustainment while also not permitting these challenges to
    disrupt our commitment to the present and future American air
    superiority.
        Ms. Maurer, when it comes to sustainment costs tied to the
    program, what do you see as the breakdown of costs tied to who
    owns the costs among U.S. Government, Lockheed, and Pratt &
    Whitney? What do you see as the breakdown of that? And then,
    you know, recommendations to provide full transparency in
    ownership costs to develop a plan to drive sustainment costs
    across the enterprise. I appreciate your context.
        Ms. Maurer. Great. Thank you very much for the question.
    Broadly speaking, the cost of F-35 sustainment ultimately all
    goes back to the U.S. taxpayer and to DOD. So DOD is
    responsible for the oversight.
        In terms of execution, the vast majority of sustainment
    responsibilities falls on Lockheed as a primary contractor for
    the airframe and Pratt & Whitney as a primary contractor for
    the engine. So in terms of the breakout of the costs and
    responsibility, I think that's pretty much how the way it does
    play out.
        And the issue that you raise about the sort of the
    disconnect between the way pilots view the aircraft and the
    sustainment outcomes is something that we saw when our team
    visited Hill Air Force Base 2 months ago. And one of the most
    striking things we heard from folks on the ground there, was
    that the essential message was that they had just completed a
    deployment, a successful deployment of F-35s to Europe at a
    time of great national need. And they showed great resilience,
    and they showed great creativity in doing that. But what we
    heard from them was they did that despite the way the program
    is currently set up from a sustainment perspective.
        And I think that's a good informal measure of ultimately
    reaching success. That they are able to make those deployments
    successfully because of the way the program is structured for
    sustainment, and we're not there yet.
        Mr. Moore. Thank you. I appreciate the context. General
    Fick, pilots that have deployed downrange have expressed
    concerns over the DOD's reliance on contractors and the lack of
    proprietary flexibility. Could you please describe the
    Department's efforts to acquire the necessary technical data to
    transition to more organic sustainment and what barriers might
    prevent this effort from succeeding?
        General Fick. Certainly. So we're working today. We just
    had a conversation a few moments ago before you came online
    about how we are working to procure the technical data that
    will allow us to take a greater role in the management of the
    F-35 supply chain.
        So that is one way in which the Department is looking to
    take a more significant role.
        Today the product support integrator, the hybrid product
    support integrator for the F-35, is an Air Force officer whose
    name is Shane Henderson. He's stationed at Wright-Patterson Air
    Force Base, and he runs the HPSI op center there.
        He is in the middle, they are in the middle, we are in the
    middle of all of those sustainment decisions from an F-35
    perspective today. And we're going to continue to mature the
    HPSI construct, the op center construct, there at Wright-Patt
    as we work our way into the future.
        Mr. Moore. Thank you, General. Chairman, I appreciate your
    adjustments in letting me ask my questions. I will yield back
    but just end with a firm commitment to being a part of the
    problem-solving aspect of this. And I appreciate people's
    honesty and context to helping us get there and being a
    reasonable and productive stakeholder here. So thank you all.
        Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Moore. I will note that from
    time to time you have brought to my attention the depot
    problems at Hill.
        Mr. Moore. From time to time. From time to time or every
    day.
        Mr. Garamendi. We have votes underway. The reality is there
    is probably 15, maybe 20 minutes, before we're going to have to
    run. I am going to do--Mr. Kahele has returned. We're going to
    do a lightning round here. Mr. Kahele, your late arrival limits
    your time to about 2 minutes. So one question and then we'll
    come back through from here. Thank you.
        Mr. Kahele. All right. Thank you, Chair. I'll be quick
    then. I guess I'll just right in to General Fick. Can you give
    us an update at all on supply issues with the fan modules and
    the power modules from Pratt in regards to the F-35?
        General Fick. So I'm tracking very, very closely the power
    module issue broadly within the enterprise. What I can tell you
    is that right now at the fleet level we have about a 5 percent
    not-mission-capable rate associated with power modules.
        We are down from a much, much larger number over the course
    of the summer. But the three-pronged effort we put in place to
    increase throughput at Tinker, increase global throughput and
    keep engines on wing longer by expanding operating limits have
    really helped us to recover from that crisis much, much faster
    than normal.
        Fan modules is popping onto my radar as well. I'm tracking
    Tinker as my primary repair source for the fan modules, but I
    don't have much more of an update on the fans.
        Mr. Kahele. Part of it, sir, is what I have been hearing is
    coming out of Nellis and, you know, the high OPSTEMPO
    [operations tempo] with the F-35 there with Red Flag
    [exercises], and issues that they're having with fan modules,
    power modules, the FAD [force activity designator] code, you
    know, real specific things that the maintainers are having in
    regards to the F-35.
        General Fick. Right. Certainly the FAD codes assigned to
    units are associated with the activity that they undertake. And
    we, as an enterprise, establish those FAD codes to prioritize
    units in combat or directly supporting combat knowing that
    sometimes that meant the test or training units that were back
    home suffered a little bit longer waits for parts that were
    limited in their supply.
        Obviously the solution to this problem, I don't think, is
    to change the FAD code system but to fix the supply problem so
    that we have fewer parts that are actually in that limited
    mode.
        Mr. Kahele. I guess it is fair to say then that deployable
    units always get higher priorities than other units.
        General Fick. And you see that reflected in the MC [mission
    capable] and FMC [full mission capable] numbers even today.
    Those units that deploy forward, deploy forward and frequently
    operate at MC and FMC rates in the high 80s and even in the
    90s.
        Mr. Kahele. Right. Mahalo, Mr. Chair. I think that was my 2
    minutes. Two minutes? I'll take the other 2 minutes, but no,
    I'll yield, Mr. Chairman, and if I have another opportunity,
    I'll ask another questions.
        Mr. Garamendi. You've got another minute.
        Mr. Kahele. All right. Let's go. All right. A question then
    for Lieutenant General Fick again in terms of are there trade-
    offs involving upgrading fourth-gen versus retrofitting F-35s
    with increased Block 4 capability? Are there any attempts to
    analyze the cost and capability of those impacts?
        General Fick. So ultimately, I think that is a better
    question for the Air Force than it is for the JPO. But when you
    think about it, the F-35s that came off the line at the end of
    the system development design phase, the SDD phase, were
    designed against the Eastern European threat that we knew about
    back in 2000.
        The Block 4 capability suite was really designed to go
    after the emerging and evolving threat from China and the more
    advanced systems from Russia.
        So depending upon what you need to do with the aircraft or
    you intend to employ it, is it a training jet or is it one that
    you're going to take downtown, that would help to determine
    whether or not you need the full capabilities of Block 4 or
    whether you can stay in a legacy TR-2 or--configuration.
        Mr. Kahele. Okay. Mahalo, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Garamendi. That question needs to be fully understood
    by us. There's really a differential here between what will be
    the training and then the actual downtown used for work. So we
    want to keep that in mind because there is a differential. Mr.
    Moore. Excuse me, Mr. Waltz.
        Mr. Waltz. If I could get just a quick update. I believe
    you mentioned it, General, on the Navy's Fleet Readiness Center
    in southeast--or Navy's Fleet Readiness Center Southeast in
    Jacksonville. And then a broader question on, if there was one
    thing this committee could do in this next NDAA to get those
    FMC rates where they need to be, what would that be? And if you
    want to take that for the record, and Ms. Maurer, I'd throw
    that one at you as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Are we doing a
    lightning round, Mr. Chairman? All right.
        General Fick. Sir, I'd be happy to chew on that one and get
    back to you with a more complete answer.
        From an FRC Southeast perspective in JAX, they are going to
    be standing up to go initial depot capability for F135 power
    modules in 2024, towards the end of 2024. And then I believe
    there's a MILCON [military construction] request pending that
    will allow them to ramp production from 24 to 120 and that
    comes in, I think, the 2025 timeframe.
        Mr. Garamendi. A very, very good important point.
        Ms. Maurer. Do you want me to do 15 seconds on that? Right.
    So I think if you want to get after FMC rates, I would imagine
    R&M metrics, reliability and maintainability metrics. Make sure
    that the parts that you are putting onto the aircraft and
    maintaining the aircraft with are reliable and that when it
    comes time to fix it you can do it within the allotted time
    would help with FMC rates. But a lot else goes into that in
    achieving high FMC rates.
        Mr. Waltz. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Mr. Garamendi. There's a lot more detail in that very quick
    answer that we really need to understand how to get to what you
    described. Ms. Speier.
        Ms. Speier. One clarification. We're spending $400 billion
    on these planes. Lockheed Martin is obviously receiving a
    profit from that. And then the technical data that we need to
    be able to maintain it, we can't get from them. We can only
    leverage it through some subcontractors? Is that what I
    understand it?
        General Fick. So, ma'am, in most cases the technical data
    that we're looking for is actually data that comes from those
    vendors. It's not Lockheed's IP [intellectual property]. It's
    the vendor's IP.
        Ms. Speier. All right. Ms. Maurer, there's been a lot said
    about the questions that I asked, and I wanted you to be able
    to respond.
        Ms. Maurer. So real quickly, on the engines piece, in our
    most recent report, and some of the summary of that information
    is contained in my statement for the record today, we point to
    three different baselines that have been developed by the Joint
    Program Office for getting to a better position on engines.
        The original baseline, which was the one that you cited,
    showed about 43 percent of the aircraft sitting on the tarmac
    and that was based on where the program was about a year or so
    ago. They have gotten some--they have seen some improvements.
    It looks like the outyear is not going to reach at that dire of
    a situation. That is sort of reflected in our numbers.
        We are waiting to see the full execution of what they want
    to do, but we have seen some improvements. So some of the
    things that General Fick and Mr. Morani were talking about,
    we've seen some improvements.
        So the engines are staying on the wings longer. They are
    repairing them faster at the depot. And they have made other
    improvements in the process as well. So it's not going to be as
    bad as 43 percent, but I can't predict from a GAO angle how
    much better it's going to be down the road.
        General Fick. And, ma'am, we're happy to share those
    projections with you as well.
        Ms. Speier. Can I ask one last question? I know, General,
    you're leaving, probably gleefully from this position, is that
    correct?
        General Fick. Ma'am, the Department of Defense has not made
    any public announcement relative to my position.
        Ms. Speier. Oh, you said something that gave me the
    impression that you were--normally, there's a period of time
    that you serve and then move on to something else, correct?
        General Fick. Yes, ma'am.
        Ms. Speier. So my question is, to anyone, because this is
    so important, because this is so expensive, does it not make
    sense to have someone in your role for a longer period of time
    to be able to get a handle on the long-term ramifications and
    fixes?
        General Fick. Yes, ma'am. Ultimately, the Joint Program
    Office charter was updated back in 2015 to remove what used to
    be seen kind of as term limits relative to a PEO's tenure, a
    program executive officer's tenure. You may remember General
    Chris Bogdan, he was the PEO for 5 years prior to Admiral Mat
    Winter, who was my predecessor.
        If I add my deputy PEO time and my PEO time together, I
    come up with 5 years so that seems like a long time to me. But
    I certainly appreciate that you don't want a revolving door for
    someone just to walk in and then back out and not have to eat
    their own dog food so to speak relative to making progress with
    plans that they put in place.
        Ms. Speier. All right. Thank you. I yield back.
        Mr. Garamendi. I have not had an opportunity to talk to the
    professional staff on my own team as well as on the minority
    team. However, I would like to schedule briefings, not formal
    hearings because we don't have a space for that, but briefings,
    informal, but I think very informative to go after these issues
    in greater depth.
        We're going to write an NDAA, and we absolutely have to get
    it right and move this thing along with both authorities as
    well as responsibilities.
        We haven't had time to talk about a joint simulation
    environment. We could. We haven't talked about a lot of things
    here. So be prepared. I would like very much if we can schedule
    it, to go back with briefings rather than a formal hearing.
    Melanie, get ready for that.
        With all of you, thank you so very much for the testimony
    today. We've made progress. I think this whole system has made
    progress, insufficient, but nonetheless progress. I thank you
    for that effort. This meeting is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 4:04 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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