The F–35 Joint Strike Fighter Lightning Ii Program

i [H.A.S.C. No. 115–79] THE F–35 JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER LIGHTNING II PROGRAM HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES OF THE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION HEARING HELD MARCH 7, 2018 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 29–417 WASHINGTON : 2019 SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio, Chairman FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts PAUL COOK, California, Vice Chair JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island SAM GRAVES, Missouri JIM COOPER, Tennessee MARTHA MCSALLY, Arizona MARC A. VEASEY, Texas STEPHEN KNIGHT, California RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona TRENT KELLY, Mississippi JACKY ROSEN, Nevada MATT GAETZ, Florida SALUD O. CARBAJAL, California DON BACON, Nebraska ANTHONY G. BROWN, Maryland JIM BANKS, Indiana TOM O’HALLERAN, Arizona WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York ROB BISHOP, Utah JIMMY PANETTA, California ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia MO BROOKS, Alabama JOHN SULLIVAN, Professional Staff Member DOUG BUSH, Professional Staff Member NEVE SCHADLER, Clerk (II) C O N T E N T S Page STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS Tsongas, Hon. Niki, a Representative from Massachusetts, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces ................................................ 3 Turner, Hon. Michael R., a Representative from Ohio, Chairman, Subcommit- tee on Tactical Air and Land Forces .................................................................. 1 WITNESSES Conn, RADM Scott D., USN, Director, Air Warfare (OPNAV N98), Office of the Chief of Naval Operations ........................................................................ 11 Harris, Lt Gen Jerry D., USAF, Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans, Programs, and Requirements, Headquarters U.S. Air Force .............................................. 12 Rudder, LtGen Steven R., USMC, Deputy Commandant for Aviation, Head- quarters U.S. Marine Corps ................................................................................ 9 Winter, VADM Mathias W., USN, Program Executive Officer, F–35 Joint Program Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense ........................................... 5 APPENDIX PREPARED STATEMENTS: Conn, RADM Scott D. ...................................................................................... 77 Harris, Lt Gen Jerry D. ................................................................................... 85 Rudder, LtGen Steven R. ................................................................................. 67 Turner, Hon. Michael R. .................................................................................. 35 Winter, VADM Mathias W. ............................................................................. 38 DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: [There were no Documents submitted.] WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: Mr. Gaetz .......................................................................................................... 99 QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: Mr. Bacon .......................................................................................................... 107 Ms. Rosen .......................................................................................................... 106 Ms. Tsongas ...................................................................................................... 106 Mr. Turner ........................................................................................................ 103 (III) THE F–35 JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER LIGHTNING II PROGRAM HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES, Washington, DC, Wednesday, March 7, 2018. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:05 p.m. in room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Michael R. Turner (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL R. TURNER, A REP- RESENTATIVE FROM OHIO, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES Mr. TURNER. The committee will come to order. The subcommittee meets today to receive testimony on an update to the F–35 Joint Strike Fighter [JSF] program, and integrating fifth-genera- tion tactical fighter capabilities into the services’ fighter fleets. I want to welcome our witnesses for today’s panel. We have Vice Admiral Mat Winter, the Director of the F–35 Joint Program Office [JPO]; Lieutenant General Steven Rudder, Deputy Commandant of Aviation for the United States Marine Corps; Rear Admiral Scott Conn, Director of Air Warfare for the United States Navy; and Lieutenant General Jerry Harris, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Air Force for Plans, Programs, and Requirements. Gentlemen, thank you for being here, and thank you for your service. This year marks the beginning of an important transition for the F–35 program. After 17 years of development and engineering activities, the F–35 will complete its baseline development program by May of this year, and then enter into an operational test period this September to assess and validate if each variant of the F–35 provides the capabilities needed to meet operational requirements defined by each of the military services before us today. F–35 acquisition is still increasing, but still not to the level the services require. Last year, the Department of Defense [DOD] re- quested 70 F–35s. This year the request is for 77, with plans for the services [to] budget for 99 aircraft per year by 2023. Procurement costs for F–35s are steadily declining. Last year, ne- gotiated costs for the three F–35 variants were over 6 percent lower than the previous year. Hopefully, projections for actual costs continue the recent trend of coming in below the program office’s estimates. Last year marked several notable accomplishments for the F–35 program. Among them, all developmental weapon testings was— were completed; the final version of the Block 3F software was pro- (1) 2 vided to some of the fleet; and the 66 F–35s were delivered to the U.S. services. Additionally, F–35 deliveries were made to Italy, Norway, Israel, Australia, and Japan. But the F–35 program continues to face challenges ahead. In ad- dition to beginning operational testing, this year also marks a transition from initial development activities to follow-on development, which has become known as continuous capacity development and delivery, or C2D2. While the goal of C2D2 methodology is designed to deliver continuous modernization to the warfighter in smaller increments and an expedited timeline, the recent Director of Operational Test and Evaluation’s [DOT&E] report to Congress questioned whether or not the C2D2 program is properly resourced, and whether the testing community will be provided sufficient test aircraft built at a current production configuration to perform and validate future capabilities. In terms of oversight, this subcommittee has always had affordability at the forefront of its F–35 oversight activities. To supple- ment our F–35 oversight activities, the subcommittee included a provision in the fiscal year [FY] 2017 National Defense Authoriza- tion Act [NDAA] that required the Government Accountability Of- fice, or GAO, to review the F–35 sustainment support structure and provide Congress its findings in subsequent recommendations to address affordability issues. We look forward to those. I am sorry, we actually—the GAO’s report released in September of last year noted that the F–35 program is facing key sustainment challenges that include repair capacity at depots; spare part short- ages compounded by insufficient reliability of various parts and components; unfunded intermediate-level maintenance capabilities; and delays in development of the computer and network-based Automatic Logistics Information System, known as ALIS. We look forward to GAO’s continued review of those issues. To address these issues, we understand that the F–35 program in the past year has executed $114 million of fast-track in standing up depots, made investments in reliability and maintainability im- provement projects, and obligated $1.4 billion to increase spare parts purchases, and also built up repair capacity and improved the speed of repairs. The F–35 program office has also developed a 5-year technical road map for ALIS to address future requirements. ALIS, in its current state, is not user-friendly, and has caused the services’ maintenance personnel to create burdensome manual tracking processes and insufficient—and inefficient workloads. We have not only received testimony about that, I know a lot of our members have traveled to sites and spoken to them, the personnel, directly. And they continue to relate to us the difficulty with ALIS. More troubling, each service continues to rely heavily upon con- tractor-provided information technology experts to manipulate ALIS’s intricate software and complex databases, because the ALIS system still does not meet contractual capability requirements that would enable our personnel within each service to independently operate and input data into ALIS. As much attention and effort that was being paid to getting F– 35 development and procurement costs to a reasonable level, this 3 same level of effort and attention now needs to apply to ALIS and its functionality. Despite these efforts, the three services operating the F–35 are—still share a critical concern about rising F–35 operations and support [O&S] costs affecting affordability. We understand the F–35 program needs

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