Tom Burbage’s first thoughts at winning the Joint Strike Fighter competition last October were, “Fantastic! We won!” Burbage, program general manager for the Lockheed Martin JSF team, was sitting in the auditorium at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company in Fort Worth, Texas, when Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche stepped up to a podium at the Pentagon to announce the Lockheed Martin-Northrop Grumman-BAE Systems team was the winner of the multiservice fighter contract. A sobering realization set in after that: “Now we actually have to build this thing.”

“Winning the JSF program is like a dog chasing after a car and catching it,” says Burbage, a former Navy test pilot who later served as F-22 program vice president for Lockheed Martin. “Only in this case, his teeth are caught in the tire and the car is speeding along at sixty miles per hour.”

The JSF program is conspicuous in size and speed. Its massive value, potentially $300 billion over the life of the program, could qualify it for the Fortune 500 list. Its international industrial team, more than eighty-five companies and five countries, spans nine time zones with two more likely to come. More than 3,000 aircraft will be designed, built, flown, and supported with export sales to other countries likely to increase that total. Unlike other acquisition programs in which a new weapon system replaces an old system, this new fighter will replace four varieties of existing combat aircraft.

The pace of the program is rapid. So rapid, in fact, that the Integrated Baseline Review, or IBR, which affirms the program’s schedule and cost management, was completed in six months. IBR completion typically has required more than a year in other programs. The first major technical milestone occurs only eight months after contract award when the external lines of the aircraft are frozen (the external configuration is locked in) at the end of June 2002. First flight of a System Development and Demonstration, or SDD, aircraft is scheduled for forty-eight months from go-ahead in late 2005.

The current design, development, and testing phase will last 126 months. But production will take up the next three decades. During that time, three similar but distinct versions of this single-engine fighter will roll off one advanced assembly line at an anticipated rate of seventeen per month. These technologically advanced, stealthy, and affordable fighter aircraft will fill the needs of six different services in three separate countries, with other nations expected to join the program in the coming months.

Of course, turning out advanced fighters at a drive-through pace of a local McDonald’s is nothing new to this program team. They completed a highly successful flight test program in just ten months in which two X-35 demonstrators flew 100 times before one of the demonstrators was modified with a never-tried-before propulsion system and then was flown thirty-nine more times.

Roles And Missions

The goals for the JSF are lofty: to be a single-pilot, survivable, first-day-of-the-war combat fighter with a near-precision, all-weather strike capability that uses a wide variety of air-to-surface weapons and that defends itself in a dogfight. Moreover, the JSF program is multinational, multiservice, and emphasizes low unit flyaway cost and significantly reduced life cycle costs while meeting a wide range of operational requirements.

The JSF family tree branches into three JSF variants. The conventional takeoff and landing, or CTOL, variant, will replace F-16s and A-10s in US Air Force service. It will complement the F-22 Raptor air dominance fighter as a nine-g rated aircraft with an internal 27mm gun mounted on the left intake shoulder and a combat radius of more than 600 nautical miles. This model will have two internal weapons bays each capable of carrying a 2,000-pound precision-guided munition and a radar-guided AIM-120 air-to-air missile. The CTOL will be the most produced variant, as current requirements call for nearly 1,800 aircraft.

The UK is also a Level I partner on JSF, which guarantees UK companies (led by team partner BAE Systems) the most industrial participation on the program and the greatest ability to influence overall JSF system requirements through the US government’s joint program office. Other countries are also seeking participation as JSF partners at different levels. Level II partners, Italy and the Netherlands, would have a somewhat lower level of industrial and program participation; Level III partners, Denmark, Norway, Canada (already signed to SDD), and Turkey, would have access to all of the JSF technical data, with slightly less industrial and program participation. SDD partners can be among the first to receive export versions as well.

“We offer a guaranteed opportunity for the industries of a partner country to compete their way onto the program,” notes Burbage. “But we don’t want to pay premiums for lesser quality work. Partners have to qualify to participate. Participation is based on providing the best value to the entire program.”

Managing The Program

With four major customers in Washington, DC, six other influential customers on two continents, one team partner in California (Northrop Grumman), one in England (BAE Systems), a lead engine builder in Connecticut (Pratt & Whitney), another engine builder in Ohio (General Electric), and a host of suppliers all over the world, managing the entire program became a big challenge early on. Even accomplishing the basics on this large scale, like making sure everyone has a place to sit, takes effort. At downselect, approximately 280 people were working on JSF at the Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth. By the end of this year, the number will increase to more than 3,500.

“Everything is going at warp speed,” notes Clay Porterfield, JSF program integration lead. “This is the most ambitious staffing ramp-up the company has ever experienced, short of World War II. We are getting thousands of résumés a week. The real challenge lies in choosing the best candidates.” Other JSF team sites are facing similar résumé influxes.

In anticipation of winning the JSF program, Lockheed Martin set up an SDD readiness team last year. The team defined specifications for computer hardware and software based on what each technical specialist needs to do the job. The team also established an onboarding center to consolidate procedures for getting new employees up and running on the JSF program. Now when employees are hired, center staff members take care of all the employees’ essential items, such as desks, computers, e-mail accounts, identification badges, and telephone service. New and transferred employees also receive detailed orientation briefings on the program at the center.

Burbage approaches the challenge of managing an effort the size and scope of the JSF program with a philosophy centered on planning, reporting program status frequently, and minimizing rework. Planning for JSF involves managing the details essential to program success. “We will arrive at a program milestone, such as the first flight of the first production aircraft, because we have completed the detailed tasks leading up to that milestone,” Burbage explains. “Consequently, our planning must be good enough to accomplish all the tasks leading to that milestone, or what we call a critical path. We have identified ten critical paths for JSF. Ideally, we can construct a confidence curve, a graphical representation of where the team stands, for each one to see how decisions today impact the program in the weeks and months ahead.”

Reporting status comes in the form of an earned value management system, which is basically a report card that tracks accomplishments and their associated costs. Charting earned value is the domain of Craig Happel, JSF director of business management. “Weekly earned value management reporting provides immediate insight into how we are doing,” notes Happel. “It shows trends, like spending, and highlights any problem areas. How well we respond to what this system shows is a big key to the success of the program.”

Previously, other programs reported earned value once a month. “It could take three months to recover when something was discovered,” Happel continues. “With a weekly frequency, we can recover in two weeks. Our top suppliers are also implementing this system so that program managers will eventually have more detailed insight into about ninety percent of the program every week.”

Weekly earned value numbers are posted on a secure Internet site on Wednesday nights for the JSF customer to view as well. “We can expect a call from Maj. Gen. John Hudson, the system program director, first thing on Thursday with a question about something on that report,”adds Happel.

Hand-in-hand with a greater focus on weekly earned value reporting is a greater focus on cost. “Every decision we make across the program has to address cost,” explains Jim Engelland, the JSF systems integration director. “We’ve always worked under a performance mantra, that is, get as much performance out of an aircraft as we can. Before JSF, nobody ever said, ‘If I can add five pounds here, this part will be easier to manufacture and will cost less.’ We have asked all of our integrated product teams to design and develop as though they were spending their own money.”

One key way to minimize cost is to minimize rework, performing a task more than once. “Rework arises from a variety of sources, including from major changes in customer requirements and interfaces between engineering and manufacturing or between engineering and suppliers,” explains Burbage. “Our ability to understand why and how rework occurs and our drive to control it are critical to keeping down the cost of this aircraft program.”

To understand how to move a program along successfully, Burbage has called on the talent of seasoned veterans with detailed experience on other programs in affordability, flight controls, and program management. “We call these program veterans wizards, ” he says. “They act as mentors and coaches to the integrated product teams.” The three or four experts designated as wizards are essentially applied technical fellows working on the IPTs. These positions are held in high esteem.

Building, Flying, Fixing

JSF will not only launch a revolution in highly evolved aircraft and in innovative management, but it will also launch a revolution on the factory floor and in the hangar. As much attention is being paid to how to build and how to fix the aircraft as how to make sure it meets its speed, altitude, and payload requirements.

The path to these requirements? A digital thread. “We start with a digital design, then we build and assemble the aircraft using that same digital data,” explains Larry Mestad, the JSF airframe systems engineering lead. “After that, we deliver and repair the aircraft with the exact same digital information.”

For decades, the concept of maintaining new aircraft came only after the aircraft was built. Then it had to conform to an existing logistics structure. Not so with the JSF. The JSF logistics system has to be up and running before the first aircraft is flown. “The government directed the logistics system be built concurrently with the air vehicle and that it perform with a level of information accuracy, best value, and total life cycle cost from the beginning,” explains Don Searles, deputy director of JSF autonomic logistics.

The autonomic logistics system, as the JSF system is called, will monitor the health of the aircraft systems in flight; downlink that information to the ground; and trigger personnel, equipment, and parts to be pre-positioned for quick turnaround of the aircraft. Ultimately, this automated approach will result in higher sortie generation rates. Like the rest of the program, the autonomic logistics system is on a fast track. It has to be available to support the air vehicle during operational test and evaluation.

The impetus for the logistics system, like the impetus for so many of the other requirements on JSF, is to lower cost primarily through commonality. Building a logistics system for each country and user would be an incredibly difficult, time-consuming, and cost-prohibitive proposition. Another key impetus is to cut delays and to speed logistics response time. Improvements in all these areas dramatically drive down overall costs.

Autonomic logistics is also something of a mind reader. Through a system called prognostics and health management, computers use accumulated data to keep track of when a part is predicted to fail. With this aid, maintainers can fix or replace a part before it fails and keep the aircraft ready to fly.

“We are not doing anything that isn’t already being done in other industries,” says Searles. “Caterpillar uses prognostics and health management to keep heavy equipment around the world in operation because time really is money for a construction company. Caterpillar and Honeywell formed an alliance for the JSF program to develop the same type of prognostic system for an aircraft fleet. This alliance shows how we are finding the expertise we need to execute the program more cost effectively.”

While the automotive industry was not a source of expertise for JSF, it was a source of inspiration to the people who will build the aircraft. “Automotive plants don’t keep inventory on an auto assembly line,” says Mestad. “They only have about two hours worth of inventory on the floor at any given time. Even the seats come off the delivery truck in sequence of installation. Our assembly line will resemble that line. It is called mixed model production. We won’t have three assembly lines; we’ll have one line. We might build a CTOL version today, and a STOVL version tomorrow.”

The JSF line will be notable for its automation, reduced tooling, and the virtual elimination of hammered rivets. The subassemblies will be loaded into simplified tooling capable of building any of the JSF variants. The machine will do its work, and the entire assembly—tool and all—will move to the next position. Previous manufacturing technologies would require different tooling for each variant so that the subassembly would have to be unbolted from one tool and reinstalled in another before the next process could proceed —a time-consuming exercise. Because all three variants share more than eighty percent common parts, which are located in the assembly tooling in a common manner, major components, such as bulkheads, can be manufactured from the same blanks; milled and drilled on the same fixture; and assembled using common tools. In fact, the bulkheads of the three variants differ only in thickness.

“The main task is to build the aircraft affordably,” says Mestad. “We want to eliminate as much tooling as possible, improve production flow, and reduce disruption and delays. By using precise fabrication and robust assembly methods, we can eliminate hand fitting and rework as the assemblies come together. We are not using technology for technology’s sake; we are using technology to reduce cost.”

What will be built on that assembly line during the current phase of the program are the first twenty-two airframes —fourteen flyable aircraft and eight non-flying ground test articles. The test fleet will include five flyable CTOLs, four STOVLs, and five CVs. Static and fatigue test articles will be built for each variant, along with a CTOL model signature test article. A CV drop test article will be used for live fire testing later on. A CTOL will be the first JSF to be flown from the NAS Fort Worth JRB runway next to the Fort Worth plant in three and a half years.

“The SDD aircraft will look a lot like the X-35,” says Paul Park, the director for the JSF air vehicle. “Your grandma won’t be able to tell the difference, but the production models will be different from the X-35 demonstrators.” The SDD and production aircraft are a low cost, optimized design that will be slightly longer than the X-35 demonstrators. The Navy variant will also have a slight increase in wingspan over the X-35C. The verticals will have an increase in the length of the trailing edge and the two fins will be canted more vertically. “Most of these changes were made to satisfy evolving requirements that are being put on the aircraft,” Park notes.

The biggest external change to the JSF is to the engine inlets. The current design inlet configuration features three edges instead of the four on the X-35. The change will give the aircraft a better high angle-of-attack capability. The new inlet is thirty inches shorter and 150 pounds lighter.

“The internal arrangement is radically different, though,” says Park. “While the X-35 had no weapons bay and the landing gear was off-the-shelf, the production JSF will have a complete weapons bay and landing gear optimized for the design. The engine fan design was also improved. As with any design, getting things to fit within the given space represents a large challenge. As the internal systems become real, they have a tendency to grow. Packaging in the JSF, though, is a three-variant issue. More of these internal systems are common than they are variant-specific. So when we solve a packaging problem for one variant, we solve it for all variants.”

The JSF powerplant is the F135-PW-100 engine being built by Pratt & Whitney, which is based on the F119 engines that power the F-22. All SDD aircraft will be powered with the F135. But General Electric will build a competing powerplant, the F136-GE-100, which is installed the same way, is functionally the same, and has the same software and procedures. During production, the two companies will compete to provide engines similar to the engine competition between the F100 and F110 powerplants in the 1980s. Once again, lower costs are the driver.

Both engines will power the shaft-driven lift fan in the STOVL JSF variant. The lift fan in the STOVL model will have a second-generation vane box nozzle on the underside of the aircraft. The nozzle, which looked like a baby buggy hood in the X-35, will now look more like a Venetian blind. The revised design increases safety and improves durability and reliability. This vane box approach began as an effort to reduce weight but resulted in offering a 600-pound net increase in thrust (and it’s thirty pounds lighter).

“Freezing the external lines this summer will help us meet the requirements for the first flight forty-eight months after contract award,” says Park. “To do that, we have to work up the final structural loads this summer. We want to do loads testing only once. If we get a good set of loads, then we can do detailed part design.”

“We are really on our way,” Engelland concludes. “I told some new hires that we will have a first flight in about forty months. We will see some tears and a lot of goose bumps that day. If you don’t get either one, you are in the wrong business.”

Jeff Rhodes is a communications specialist at Lockheed Martin.