F-35 ALIS Collusion

Collusion: an agreement between two or more parties to limit open competition by misleading, or typically by gaining an unfair market advantage.

Oct 2001: F-35 Programme of Record: Contract Award.

July 2006: The F-35 Programme enters system Development and Production simultaneously; under an Acquisition Strategy called "concurrency" development; versus traditional design maturity and risk reduction, before entering the Production phase. Subsequently, F-35 aircraft would start rolling off the production line with planned "block" modifications, but more consequential; unresolved technical problems.

Feb 2008: During the statutory (ref: DoDI 5000.02) Independent Logistics Assessment (ILA), inspectors find that the Maintenance Planning does not contain enough detailed Logistics Product Data (ref: SAE GEIA-STD-0007) to identify and determine Supportability resource requirements. To complicate matters further; Maintenance Plans, (which are mandatory CDRLs between technical reviews and acquisition decision points), were allowed to be delivered in contractor format; versus autonomically generated directly from the Supportability source data in the Advanced Technical Logistics Application System (ATLAS) tables. As concurrent development and production were underway, the built-in system design changes and/or modifications could not be seen in the already statically delivered Maintenance Plans. Thus, the Provisioning impacts would be under-stated.

Dec 2009: SECDEF Gates, frustrated by ever growing cost/schedule, views the Joint Program Office contractual relationship as “too cozy” with Lockheed Martin Aeronautics (LM Aero). There was a perception that LM Aero was in-charge of their own contrived market advantage, from design and fabrication to maintenance and logistics; while the Joint Program Office was just kind of watching.

Feb 2010: The F-35 Programme breaches the statutory 1983 Nunn-McCurdy Act threshold on cost, and is required to re-visit Milestone B entry/exit criteria. Regrettably, ATLAS is still unable to generate updated Maintenance Plans detailing logistics resource requirements.

March 2012: Milestone B is re-approved (i.e., the original MsB was Oct 2001), and concurrent development continues along with known technical risks, including one of the most prominent being in the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS).

June 2015: F-35 Ejection Seat Maintenance Plan (LCN: A9510): During LM Aero’s ejection seat status briefing to JPO, it is revealed that the numerous ejection seat change requests from the maintainers are behind schedule. Part of the rationale offered is that the changes, along with ensuing logistics product data, have to be manually cut & pasted into the existing “paper” A9510 Plan. Further, it is noted that an updated Maintenance Plan cannot be automatically generated by the supposedly S1000D-compliant ATLAS database, and that all other contractor formatted maintenance plans (e.g., A24 Electrical Power, A32 Landing Gear, A3240 Wheels & Brakes, A9550 Survival Kits, etc.) are in the same boat. Two mitigation paths are offered: a) expend additional labor hours working a fix to ATLAS, or b) continue with manual updates. Short-sightedly, the latter risk is chosen in order to expedite the pending change requests and get back on schedule. Even more perplexing, after the briefing, an LM Aero representative incorrectly offers that; “the maintenance manuals will be the Maintenance Plans.”

According to LM Aero; the F-35 Lightning II advanced jet fighter was designed with Sustainment in mind. QUOTE “The Autonomic Logistics Information System is the fleet management backbone for the F-35 aircraft. Pilots plan and debrief missions, and sustainment professionals maintain the F-35 using ALIS. Delivering an integrated interface to maintenance, supply chain, and sustainment information; ALIS is the single management tool supporting all F-35 operations.” UNQUOTE.

But, according to Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson; “ALIS is a proprietary system so frustrating to use, maintainers have said they were wasting 10-15 hours a week fighting with it … and looking for ways to by-pass it to try to make F-35 aircraft mission capable.”

As stated by the 2018 Operational Test and Evaluation (OT&E) Report; “Users must employ numerous work-arounds due to data and functionality deficiencies. Most capabilities function as intended only with a high level of manual effort by ALIS administrators and maintenance personnel. Manual work-arounds are often needed to complete tasks designed to be automated. Configuration management of ALIS software and data products remains complex and time-consuming.”

As published in an April 2019 GAO-19-321 Report on F-35 Aircraft Sustainment: F-35 aircraft mission capable (MC) rates are well below the 80% MC requirement; and "DOD is not maintaining a database with information on F-35 parts the U.S. owns, and it lacks the necessary data to be able to do so."

DoD/IG Report 2019-094 Audit of F?35 RFI Spare Parts and Sustainment Performance Incentive Fees. Findings: poor contract over-sight by F-35 JPO; LM Aero contract non-performance; inflated/unverified F?35A Aircraft Availability hours; and potential overpayment of $10.6 million in performance incentive fees. Recommendation: PEO work with DCMA to develop an electronic QASP and data repository; and assign CORs to all F-35 sites to track systemic contractor performance problems.

May 2020: According to a Congressional Research Service Report, Over budget and behind schedule, F-35 Program Milestone-C full-rate production decision for FOC has been delayed until sometime in FY2021. Among the CRS Report issues cited are: failure to deliver ready-for-issue spare parts, ALIS defects, lack of Sustainment cost data, P&W F135 engine cost transparency, and supply chain accountability.

From these findings, two earlier ALIS promises appear to be paramount; a) ALIS must have accurate data, and b) ALIS needs to automate the aircraft maintainer’s processes. Plus, those of us in USG Service (Mil or Civ), often fail to hold the Prime Contractor to statutory and mandated Cost, Schedule, Peformance, and Supportability KSAs (Am, MTBF, and TOC).

Frustrating indeed, especially in light of a trail of previous "Lessons Learned" on other MDAPs; going as far back as the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. The DOD and several Aerospace & Defense companies have long[1] recognized the need for an automated set of LSAR[2] protocols (e.g., the Army Materiel Command's PowerLOG-J, and Raytheon’s EAGLE, and ISS Corp's SLICwave, and Siemens PLM software). Applications, such as these, are typically used to help integrate Supportability Analyses data, and also enhance configuration management; as the weapon system progresses from a handful of prototype test articles through DT&E/OT&E, and onto LRIP/FRP fielding/deployment. With this in mind, LM Aero used MIL-HDBK-502A for Product Support Analysis to create an ATLAS database to house the Supportability data and feed ALIS.

Again, as displayed in the following chart, LM Aero installed ATLAS to capture logistics product data resulting from Supportability Analyses on the F-35 Systems Engineering requirements (ref: the F-35 System Supportability Analysis Plan). The value-add is not in just capturing the requirements and data, but in influencing the Design for Supportability.

ISSUES:

Even more detrimental than the ALIS defects is a flawed set of ATLAS relational database tables. Early during DT&E, LM Aero and JPO were advised by the ILA inspectors that ATLAS did not contain sufficient maintenance planning Logistics Product Data to generate the DoDI 5000.02 mandatory Maintenance Plans (ref: Annex G of the Life Cycle Sustainment Plan). Meeting this early design criteria would have enabled a truly autonomic logistics information system.

Conversely, failure to maintain an accurate, authoritative, up-to-date ATLAS will constantly put configuration management between “as-designed” and “as-maintained” at risk (ref: Chapters 3 and 6 of the F-35 Configuration Management Plan). This results in a backward-looking ALIS, fragmented logistics, and negatively impacts all other downstream Logistics elements (e.g., manpower, support equipment, tools, spares, provisioning data, training material, computer resources, facilities requirements, and other logistics factors) resulting in increased life-cycle cost.

In fact, the flawed ATLAS could not even generate a Repair Parts & Special Tools List (RPSTL), nor an Illustrated Parts Breakdown (IPB) for inclusion into the maintenance manuals; let alone an up-to-date Maintenance Plan. The Maintenance Plan is a human-readable artifact that arrays logistics product data into information. The Maintenance Plan documents all of the R&M approved maintenance tasks, and identifies each resouce requirement (e.g., tools, test equipment, etc.) necessary to perform the task. Typically, it is used by the APMLs to verify Contractor due-diligence, and to program/budget items for the Product Support Package (PSP). In turn, the PSM should question funding requests for any PSP item that does not have traceability via an LCN[3] back through the Maintenance Plan to the ATLAS database tables.

OUTCOMES: wasteful manual logistics process steps, key-punching the same product data into different computer systems, paying for Provisioning data multiple times, procuring Support Equipment that was not identified during the MTA, lack of spare parts, excessive K-ball rates, sub-par Materiel Availability (Am); for example, poor MC rates.

RISK: Life-Cycle Cost, and configuration management between as-designed, as-built, as-delivered, and as-maintained.

MITIGATION: update the ATLAS database and ensure Maintenance Plan generation.

SUMMARY: but wait ... sorties are being launched & recovered now, ...without a Maintenance Plan, how is this possible? .....by using costly fragmented logistics...

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Note: Supportability Analysis, Product Support Analysis (PSA), formerly Logistics Support Analysis (LSA) are synonymous; and are often used interchangeably by the DoD Acquisition & Sustainment community. Regardless of which Supportability process term is used, the output focus is the same: to "integrate" the logistics requirements for the lowest life-cycle cost. See the following White Paper on F-35 Supportability for an explanation of the difference between “fragmented” Logistics and “integrated” Logistics: 

https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/sam-pennartz-7641ab17/detail/recent-activity/documents/

Footnotes:

[1] In 1984, seven Aero Space & Defence (ASD) countries and Ministry of Defence (MoD) customers started development of the S1000D international specification based on the Air Transport Association (ATA) Spec 100 for commercial aircraft (now ATA iSpec 2200).

[2] https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/legacy/video/Teamcenter2008_Web_English/PublishFolder/collateral/MRO_LSAR_WP.pdf

[3] LCN: LSA Control Number; the Product's key data element for Provisioning in the indentured parent/child relationship of the S1000D standard numbering system.