Modernising the RAAF’s F-35 fleet

1

In the US, the F-35 has just begun the initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E) phase, which should lead to a Milestone C decision in very late 2019 and then full rate production. While seven years later than envisaged in 2002, the F-35 entering testing now is a positive sign. In early 2017 the director for the Office of Test and Evaluation forecast the aircraft would be sufficiently developed to enter IOT&E late 2018. F-35 enthusiasts contested this assessment believing August 2017 was possible, but time has proven the Director right and suggests the aircraft is now sufficiently developed to pass IOT&E.

Accordingly, the US is now ramping up production to reach a highpoint in 2024 when the program's reaches its largest annual procurements for the American services. In 2002 this was due to happen in 2012. This notable delay has had significant impacts in two areas. Firstly, there are an increasing number of old-build standard aircraft flying that will be different to the still evolving 2024 configuration. Secondly, the operational environment has evolved making upgrades to the F-35 essential so the aircraft can keep up with threat systems. Both these factors combine to trouble the introduction of the F-35 into Australian service.

The Royal Australian Air Force's (RAAF) F-35s are, and will be, built in different Lots. These are Lot 6 (two aircraft), Lot 10 (eight aircraft), Lot 11 (eight aircraft), Lot 12, 13, and 14 (fifteen aircraft each) and Lot 15 (nine aircraft). The last Lot 15 aircraft is expected to be delivered in July 2023 and ferried to Australia the following month. These nine Lot 15 F-35s are the Holy Grail version. They are anticipated to be in the fully-developed standard as broadly envisaged in 2002.

The F-35s currently at Williamtown fighter base are Lot 10 aircraft that use the Block 3F software load. This gives them an air-toair capability using AMRAAM and Aim-9X missiles and a basic air-to-ground capability using the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and laser guided bombs. These two aircraft and others arriving in early 2019 will embark on a two-year verification and validation program, with Initial Operational Capability expected in late 2020.

In December 2018, the first two of Australia's F-35 Joint Strike Fighters arrived at their new home base at RAAF Base Williamtown near Newcastle. This represented the culmination of considerable effort, Australia having joined the program many years ago in 2002. The arrival though is more another step on a long and winding road than a conclusion as the fighter remains in active development. The two F-35s that arrived at Williamtown are an interim configuration not the acquisition project's final one. AUSTRALIAN Air Power .

The Lot 15 aircraft will be in what is considered the final developmental configuration. These aircraft will be of a standard adequate for RAAF to formally declare Final Operational Capability and start wrapping the acquisition project up. This should be in December 2023 when the nine Lot 15 aircraft are operational in Australia. The Lot 15 will be in so-called Block 4 or 'Follow on Modernization' standard, recently further retitled as 'Continuous Capability Development and Delivery'. This rebadging has some validity, not in the hardware changes but instead in the new software change approach being adopted.

All the RAAF's 63 older F-35s are planned to be gradually modernised to the Block 4 configuration. Not just aircraft will be impacted. The complete maintenance and support system including the simulators and training centres will also need to be modernised to this standard. This will take time and some significant money but there is no choice. If they are not upgraded, the earlier Lot F-35s -almost all the RAAF's F-35 Fleet -will become increasingly hard to maintain, miss out on software updates and quickly become operationally deficient.

The Block 4 Standard F-35

The Lot 15 production aircraft will be the first built to the Block 4 standard with modernized hardware and software. Overall, some 53 capabilities will be introduced. The crucial hardware change is the Technology Refresh 3 (TR3) avionics upgrade. The TR3 modifications include installing a new integrated core processor, memory system and panoramic cockpit display.

Harris's new Integrated Core Processor (ICP) will process data from the F-35s core electronics systems including the cockpit and helmet displays, electronic warfare system, sensors, communications equipment and navigation system. It is expected to provide 25 times more computing power but cost 75% less. The faster processor will sharply improve weapons employment and significantly enhance electronic warfare capabilities allowing much faster enemy radar system identification through deeper integration with on-board mission data threat files. The ICP will be easier to maintain and more reliable but crucially has an open architecture backbone that will allow much easier software changes than is possible currently with proprietary architectures.

Harris will also supply a new cockpit display electronic unit and aircraft memory system. The Advanced Memory System will expand available data storage and generate higher resolution imagery to help pilots with navigational and targeting information. Israel's Elbit company will make the new Panoramic Cockpit Display System for the F-35 in its' American plants.

Separate to TR3, at least two other hardware changes will be made. The existing Northrop Grumman AN/AAQ-37 electro-optical Distributed Aperture System (DAS) will be replaced by a Raytheon product. This new system will be five times more reliable, have twice the performance, draw less power, be 45% cheaper and cost half as much to maintain. Moreover it will be 7kgs lighter. Weight is an ongoing worry in the heavy F-35.

The existing DAS has been a source of some annoyance as more modern electro-optical systems have much better performance but there was no wish to change the contract given ongoing delays with aircraft development. The new Raytheon system is better but still not state-of-the-art. Lockheed is offering F-35 users from Lot 15 onward its Advanced Electro-Optical Targeting System that offers superior performance especially in target detection and recognition. The enhanced combat performance, particularly in airto-air missions, may be worth the cost. At least it would be buying state-of-the-art technology not somewhat superseded technology that will at some time need replacing on operational grounds.

The second hardware change is installing an automatic ground collision avoidance system (Auto-GCAS), already standard on the F-16 and other older aircraft.

Auto GCAS is designed to prevent controlled flight into terrain. If it senses an Right: Australia's first two F-35A 'Lightning II' fighters fly in formation with F/A-18s on the delivery flight to Australia in December 2018. The F-35 will replace the 'Classic' Hornets over the next four years. (Defence) imminent crash, the system calculates the best way to recover, overrides the flight controls and manoeuvres the aircraft out of danger. The F-35 Auto-GCAS is currently being evaluated at USAF's 461st Flight Test Squadron.

In 2018 there was talk of replacing the BAES-built electronic warfare system in the F-35. This seems to have been dropped at the moment but the issue apparently remains under study. The Lot 15 aircraft may yet have a new electronic warfare system as well.

Hardware changes represent only some 20% of the Block 4 upgrade. Most of it is in software changes and this is where the term Continuous Capability Development and Delivery becomes real. The original plan was to have a four stage Block 4 where each stage took about two years to be developed, tested, incorporated and then formed the baseline for the next iteration. This is the traditional approach aircraft like the F-18 Hornet use but these have much simpler software than the F-35 and the F-22. Lockheed Martin was already having significant difficulties in keeping the complicated F-22 software upgraded in terms of sticking to budgets and schedules. This combined with the wellknown F-35 software troubles, made the US Department of Defense nervous about the Block 4 plans based on traditional methods. The F-22 program though has recently pioneered a new approach to break the software upgrade logjam and this is now proposed for the F-35 as well.

The new approach envisages agile software development involving smaller, incremental updates instead of one big drop. This will ideally allow the overall process to speed up, or at least to meet its planned timelines. Small updates will be completed each six months in an iterative fashion that progressively builds to the full Block 4 upgrade.

Greg Ulmer, Lockheed's F-35 program manager, calls the old F-35 software upgrade methodology a "big bang approach." In contrast, the agile approach "pulls in the warfighter to be a part of the development cycle, so, rather than do the development cycle and then present what you developed to the warfighter, the warfighter actually sits down with the coders, with the software developers and, as they develop it, they insert [it] themselves." Moreover, as each new software update is coded, the developers perform integrated testing to find and solve software bugs in more manageable chunks. In the old approach, they would wait until the end of each planned two-year subblock development to begin testing.

The agile software approach is only achievable with a government-owned open systems architecture making TR3 an essential element. In this, the US Department of Defense will also need to acquire the necessary data rights and employ suitably skilled staff.

The agile software development approach does not however solve all problems. In the F-22 program it was used for small software changes that did not affect flight safety, and therefore did not need an extensive validation process before being flown. This allowed the program to rapidly test new improvements. Some of the F-35 changes under Block 4 will include hardware modifications and will impact flight safety. These may need to follow the more traditional software development process. This will be particularly so for those changes involving new weapons like the Small Diameter Bomb II and the GBU-54 planned for Block 4.

From an Australian perspective, the software process improvements are most welcome but there remains the fundamental problem that getting Australian requirements included in the Block upgrade program is difficult. For example Australia would like an anti-ship missile included in the early years of the Block 4 upgrade to give the RAAF's F-35s a competent maritime strike capability but the US's F-35 users are less concerned. The US Services however have the largest production offtake and so they dominate requirements selection. The crowded Block 4 program features the integration of nuclear weapons, an area not of interest to most others.

Even so the partner nations pickup a considerable share of Block program costs. F-35 program executive officer Vice Admiral Mathias Winter recently advised that the Block 4 software cost spilt for 2018-2024 is US$7.1bn for the US and US$3.7bn for the partners. Beyond this time there will be extra costs as Block 4 has more work to undertake then can be completed by 2024.

Sustainment Concerns

The twin problems of having numerous different F-35 Lots flying and the aircraft still being under development also have serious support implications.

In common with other international partners, Australia will use the US's Global Support Solution (GSS) to keep its F-35 fleet flying. The GSS is run through America's F-35 Joint Program Office and manages critical sustainment aspects including spare parts, maintenance, supply chain support, training systems, and engineering. The GSS is still under development creating problems now with the first F-35s in Australia and beyond into the next decade.

In late October 2018, the Australian Defence Department's Independent Assurance Review raised three issues.

First, spare parts are difficult to get and this situation seems likely to persist for several years. In October 2017, the US audit office determined that the spare parts shortage is mainly because developing the F-35 repair capabilities at US military depots is six years behind schedule. As a consequence, the original equipment manufacturers are both building new parts for new F-35s and repairing old parts. The companies simply cannot keep up with demand.

Second, the RAAF will be concurrently operating several different F-35 Lot number configurations for many years. Each Lot number has some unique support needs meaning the highly centralized F-35 maintenance and mission support system cannot completely move onto the Block 4 standard. The support package for each Lot number will need to stay in service until all RAAF aircraft are finally upgraded to Block 4 standard.

Lastly, it is unknown how much F-35 sustainment will cost. Funding cannot be allocated until the operating costs of the F-35 aircraft can be determined. While hundreds of F-35s have been built they are not of a single configuration and so making robust support cost estimates has proven impossible. The difficulties are most obvious in Lot 6 and earlier aircraft (RAAF has two Lot 6 aircraft). These have availability rates of 50 per cent and less. Lockheed recommends impacted customers upgrade their aircraft to the latest configurations.

The core F-35 support element is the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) that manages each aircraft's maintenance from cradle to grave using modern big data techniques. The concept is excellent but in being implemented mid-last decade it is now lagging behind technologically. There have been ongoing troubles with cyber security, a lack of redundancy, an aged 1990s-based computer architecture, poor software, software development delays, deployabilty and inadequate testing. ALIS remains a work in progress. The Australian Defence Department recently assessed ALIS as "one of the most significant technical and schedule risks to the international JSF Program."

It is perhaps surprising that in a program with more than 350 aircraft built that so much remains problematic.

The Air 6000 Phase 4 Project

The 72 F-35 aircraft ordered so far were acquired under a major project named Air 6000. A further fourth phase of this project remains. At one stage this was envisaged simply as buying an additional 24 F-35As but there now seem other possibilities.

It will take a considerable time to upgrade the RAAF's 63 old Block standard F-35s to Block 4 standard. Moreover, given history the Block 4 configuration will take longer to develop than currently anticipated. This suggests there might be an opportunity to have the fifteen Lot 14 aircraft the RAAF is buying modified in the US in 2023 to Lot 15 Block 4 standard before they are flown to Australia. This would most helpfully expedite the RAAF fleet's changeover.

The cost of making the aircraft and support systems Block 4 standard will be considerable and there is some possibility that the Air 6000 Phase 4 funds may be used for that. Even if this happens though, funds will need to be found to keep the F-35 fleet operationally viable. A fundamental problem was created for defence long-term force structure planning in 2002 in the rush to lock Australia into the F-35 program. The original Air 6000 plan in the 2000 Defence White Paper was to take a more balanced approach, examine Australia's long term air combat needs, likely technological developments and emerging geostrategic challenges. This approach was abandoned in 2002.

The result is that air combat force is becoming increasingly unbalanced over time. This lack of balance has been exacerbated by the ten-year delay in F-35 development. Undoubtedly the decision to acquire 24 Super Hornets and then 12 Growlers has acted to reduce the operational impact but does not fully address the force structure unbalance.

The greatest near-term issue is that China has developed an impressive military with some advanced weapon systems. RAAF focussed on acquiring F-35s rather than on also building a capability to defend the airbases they might operate from. China's long-range attack capabilities now mean that in time of crisis, the RAAF might be ill-advised to deploy F-35s to South East Asian airbases. This makes Australia's commitment to Malaysia and Singapore under the five-power IADS agreement tricky. The dangers of possible long-range attack in time of crisis is also starting to apply in Australia's northern bases and will only grow over time.

Phase 4 funds could be used to help develop an Integrated Air and Missile Defence system to protect forward deployed F-35 units. The emerging Air 6500 major project has some ambitions for this but seems to have grossly inadequate funding for this technically challenging task. A late start to address the problem however is better than no start at all.

China has also apparently developed the capability to shot down the air refuelling aircraft of hostile nations. The F-35 is a fuel-hungry aircraft, burning some 60 per cent more than current fighters. Tanking is really important to getting the most out of the F-35 fleet and the RAAF's large MRTT aircraft remain essential. For forward deployed operations though, the MRTTs might be well-complemented by robot tankers. These would be much less vulnerable to Chinese attacks whether in the air or when on the ground. Accordingly, another use for Phase 4 funds could be acquiring some unmanned MQ-25 Stingray tankers that USN is developing.

The growing airbase defence issue suggests a more divergent option. The F-35B variant has a Short Take-off and Vertical Landing capability albeit having a severely limited range and payload compared to RAAF F-35As. The F-35B might though be suitable for point air defence of deployment airbases and thus contribute to an Integrated Air and Missile Defence system. Crucially F-35B aircraft could be frequently moved around to random locations. This would make an adversary's task of targeting them very difficult compared to targeting the F-35As that need long runways. F-35Bs would be inherently more survivable when on the ground than F-35As. The F-35B is rather expensive and the idea is more complicated than it seems at first but nevertheless this is another potential use of Phase 4 funding.

The F-35 is proving a difficult aircraft to introduce into RAAF service. It has taken an unexpectedly long time and considerable money to get to having two Lot 10 F-35s on the flightline at RAAF Williamtown. It will take even more time and money to reach the RAAF's desired final operational capability of having Lot 15 Block 4 standard aircraft in service. However, there is no discretion. The RAAF has been locked in since 2002 and remains so.