[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
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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.
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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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A P P E N D I X
April 28, 2022
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
April 28, 2022
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