The head of the F-35 joint program office said completing a series of Joint Simulation Environment "runs for score" will not occur in fiscal year 2022, pushing a potential full-rate production decision to at least 2023.
Still, Lt. Gen. Eric Fick cautioned a small group of reporters Tuesday that the JPO has not yet completed its updated acquisition program baseline, meaning officials haven’t yet laid out a threshold and objective date for FRP, a long-delayed decision previously expected in March 2021.
But to reach FRP, the program needs to conduct its 64 runs for score, a step that will wrap up initial operational test and evaluation and clear the way for the conclusion of the effort’s operational test phase. Those runs for score, Fick said, aren’t expected until summer 2023 -- a timeline that means the long-anticipated milestone may not occur until late that year, after the beyond low-rate initial production report is generated.
Fick said he doesn’t believe the timeline rules out an FY-23 FRP decision, though he acknowledged the path forward could be tight.
“In the event that our runs for score were to slip by any appreciable margin, there’s not a lot of leeway between the end of the summer, the generation of report and the ability to have a milestone decision,” he noted.
In the meantime, before those runs for score can begin, officials are left working to validate, verify and accredit the remaining components of the JSE which, when completed, will provide a high-end simulated threat environment for F-35 testing and training. In all, Fick said, around 44 of the 88 packages have been checked off, with work expected to be completed by this coming May.
Beyond that, though, the program then has to finalize system validation and verification, bringing many “of those components together into broader scenarios and doing those broader system-level set-ups,” Fick explained -- efforts he said are slated for conclusion in “the September timeframe.”
Validating, verifying and accrediting the JSE, Fick said in response to a question about why the process is taking as long as it is, “is really hard to do.” The work, he explained, involves “modeling the interaction of electronic components in a digital battlespace,” meaning officials must be confident “that all of the electrons flowing out of emitters and sensors out of both our platform” and the dozens of others involved are “transmitted and received in the right order, with the right orientation.”
If that doesn’t happen, he said, the receiving platform won’t present information to the F-35’s operational flight program in a way that the jet can use it.
“The F-35’s smart enough to know that if that’s not right, it’s just going to reject the signal outright. . . . And that doesn’t work. It’s not like Candy Crush Saga or Wordle, or even the video games my kids play,” he added. “It doesn’t just have to look right; it has to be right at the 1’s and the 0’s level, and that’s really hard to do.”
As for the remainder of this fiscal year, Fick said he’s looking ahead to finalizing a Lot 15-17 production deal with Lockheed Martin, which he told reporters would “likely” feature increased costs “on a tail-by-tail basis.”
Fick is also “working closely” with the Pentagon’s acquisition and sustainment office on finalizing “the right dates” for the APB, though he said he didn’t have a timeline for completion. Fick said in December he anticipated an updated baseline would be ready for release in January.
Separately on Technology Refresh 3, Fick said the program is still targeting its first flight test by the end of June for a development test aircraft equipped with the critical enabler of the program’s advanced Block 4 capabilities. The first TR3 hardware is slated to be cut into the production line in early fall, he added, with software to follow in spring 2023.