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You Can Track Your F-35s, At ALIS' Maintenance Hub
Oct 29, 2014 16:38 UTC by Defense Industry Daily staff
Latest update [?]
Say "aaaah…"
ALIS development & operations contracts.
Oct 28/14: Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Fort Worth, TX receives a $391.6 million cost-plus-incentive-fee contract to provide recurring sustainment support for delivered F-35 Lightning II systems – including, but not limited to: ground maintenance activities; action request resolution; depot activation activities; ALIS operations and maintenance; reliability, maintainability and health management implementation and support; supply chain management; and activities to provide and support pilot and maintainer initial training for the USAF, USMC, US Navy, and international partners. $360.3 million in FY 2014 and 2015 budgets is committed immediately, using budgets from the American services and international partners.
Work will be performed at Fort Worth, TX (35%); El Segundo, CA (25%); Warton, United Kingdom (20%); Orlando, FL (10%); Nashua, NH (5%); and Baltimore, MD (5%), and is expected to be complete by Nov 30/15. This contract was not competitively procured by US NAVAIR in Patuxent River, MD, according to FAR 6.302-1 (N00019-15-C-0031).
Oct 20/14: ALIS Israel. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Fort Worth, TX receives a $7.7 million cost-plus-incentive-fee contract modification to provide updates for the Israeli effort to develop their F-35A/i and the Autonomic Logistics Global Sustainment system, under the Foreign Military Sales program. $2.6 million is committed immediately.
Work will be performed in Orlando, FL (70%), and Fort Worth, TX (30%), and is expected to be complete in December 2017. US NAVAIR in Patuxent River, MD manages the contract on behalf of their Israeli client (N00019-02-C-3002).
Keep reading for the whole story with recent events put in context
Keeping track of…
For the last 50 years, newer fighters have been sold as requiring less maintenance than their predecessors, due to technical advances. As people like Chuck Spinney and the Congressional Research Service have documented, the reverse has been true.
That decades-long defense death spiral has finally reached a point where it's prompting musings about the collapse of American TacAir, and European countries with their small and dwindling defense budgets are also strongly affected. If the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter was to have any hope of becoming a commercial and operational success, it needed to change that operating cost dynamic. To do that, Lockheed Martin, BAE, and the international JSF team have turned to embedded HUMS (Health & Usage Monitoring System) diagnostics. Even that probably won't be enough, absent integration with the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) – which an IEEE paper has described as "perhaps the most advanced and comprehensive set of diagnostic, prognostic, and health management capabilities yet to be applied to an aviation platform."
What's On ALIS' Menu?
Got to be better
Escalating complexity in electronics, engines, wiring, etc. delivers better capabilities, but creates multiplying points of failure. Each component may be more reliable than its predecessors on an individual level, but the math ensures that they fall short together. More maintenance equals more money spent.
In addition, escalating complexity makes fixes in the field more difficult – and sometimes impossible. This shifts more maintenance to large, specialized rear-echelon depots, which in turn requires more transportation of parts, and more infrastructure. That costs money.
The rearward shift also ensures either longer turnaround times, a larger parts inventory of expensive equipment, or both. So operations & maintenance costs rise again.
To make matters worse, not only does each new generation of fighter aircraft sport a price tag that rises faster than inflation, it's also less available for flight than its predecessors. Lower readiness magnifies the impact of the numbers cuts from higher prices, by creating a drop in operational aircraft that's even sharper than the drop in replacement purchases.
The military's reaction is to keep numbers up by keeping aircraft in service for much longer periods, hence the aging aircraft issue that plagues the USAF and most other air forces around the globe. New aircraft types are also expected to serve longer, of course, which drives up their initial costs coming out of the design stage. And the flat spin continues.
Enter ALIS
Building the F-35
The goal of Lockheed Martin's ALIS is to counteract the lowering readiness curves and higher maintenance costs that consistently correlate with advancing technology in fighter jets. Ultimately, they want to change the traditional 10 man-hours maintenance per 1 hour of flight ratio. Each F-35 will constantly monitor its own systems via Health and Usage Monitoring systems (HUMS) components, and automatically relay information to ALIS.
The aircraft's technical breakthroughs with self-reporting wiring will be especially helpful, as diagnosing and fixing electrical issues is an especially large and difficult problem with most aircraft. One that tends to escalate with age.
Once that data is collected and fed in, ALIS will provide an information infrastructure that captures, analyzes (autonomously or with human intervention), identifies, and communicates F-35 characteristics and data, providing information and decision support for every F-35 customer via a global network. That way, each national F-35 fleet benefits from the global experience of all fleets. The F-35 aircraft's health and maintenance orders, and even the location of parts, will be generated through ALIS. To close the loop, ALIS will contain easily-updated interactive technical manuals, and track maintenance issue resolution.
ALIS integrates a variety of commercial-off-the-shelf applications, in addition to its proprietary programming. Key software contributors include the UK's IFS Applications (supply chain management) and Trilogi (interactive technical manuals), Canada's MXI Maintenix (aviation maintenance management), and Siebel (CRM communications, maintenance request tracking, etc.).
ALIS will also interface with the Norwegian JSF4I project, which is targeted at small and medium size defense operators who might seek to use different national systems instead of, or as a supplement to, ALIS.
All of which leads us to the most important question: will even ALIS be enough? Only time, and experience, will tell.
Contracts & Key Events
DOT&E verdict: not ready for prime time and nothing is stable; USMC: buggy system may need human overrides; ALIS vs. Christine?
March 31/14: GAO Report. The US GAO tables its "Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs". Which is actually a review for 2013, plus time to compile and publish.
"Three of the program's critical technologies are nearing maturity while one is immature. The program has made progress addressing technical risks including the helmet mounted display, which is needed for the aircraft to fully perform its missions, and the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), which is critical to the operations and sustainment of the fleet. The program recently chose to end development of an alternate helmet due to progress made on the original helmet design and work on development of a newer generation helmet. ALIS integration and testing continues with the next, more capable version expected to be delivered in 2014."
March 28/14: ALIS v2 SDD. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Fort Worth, TX receives a $52.1 million cost-plus-incentive-fee contract modification to develop ALIS Standard Operating Unit Version 2 (SOUv2) phase 3. Phase 3 includes integration of the SOUv2 with both the ALIS sustainment system, and the F-35 jet.
$37.8 million is committed immediately from FY 2013 USAF and FY 2014 USN/USMC budgets, with $9.1 expiring on Sept 30/14. Work will be performed in Orlando, FL (70%) and Fort Worth, TX (30%), and is expected to be complete in August 2015. US NAVAIR in Patuxent River, MD manages the contract (N00019-02-C-3002).
ALIS v2 development
Feb 25/14: Human override. ALIS is featured in the CBS News TV show "60 Minutes," which focuses on the fact that ALIS can't be overridden when it does dumb things. For instance, grounding functioning aircraft thanks to a faulty part database, against the recommendations of the pilots and maintainers.
Machine diagnostics can sometimes catch things that all the human miss. They also make mistakes, and the law of large numbers already makes sure that there will be more mistakes than fortuitous discoveries. When a system isn't performing well (q.v. Jan 28/14), higher odds of making a mistake times number of opportunities for error can and will make a system impossible to rely on. Senior officials like program manager Gen. Bogdan and USMC Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle are doing what should have been done from the outset, and publicly committing to a system that can be overridden "in a measured way." Which is to say, false groundings and Action Request issues will remain higher than they could be, but lower than the machine alone would dictate. Sources: Defense Tech, "Let Humans Override F-35 'ALIS' Computer: Bogdan".
Jan 28/14: DOT&E Testing Report. The Pentagon releases the FY 2013 Annual Report from its Office of the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E). The short version is that there's a huge need for ALIS. Fully 25-30% of F-35 downtime involves waiting for Action Request responses, due to "inadequate technical data in the field." That problem is expected to worsen over the next 2 years, but ALIS is "immature and behind schedule," with "shortfalls in functionality and data quality integrity."
Before F-35 Block 2B software can begin operational utility evaluation, they must correct deficiencies in ALIS 1.0.3, finish development of ALIS 2.0, and integrate the propulsion module in ALIS 2.0.1, which is required for Marine Corps Initial Operational Capability (IOC). Unfortunately, v1.0.3 still has 3/4 critical Category I deficiencies unfixed from v1.0.2, and "diagnostic system performance has failed to meet basic functional requirements, including fault detection, fault isolation, and false alarm rates." Meanwhile, the program has discontinued the development of all enhanced diagnostics for the remainder of SDD – which is to say, until 2020. In the field, ALIS is being avoided by using manual workarounds, built-in tests, and contractor support personnel, "for more accurate diagnostics of system faults."
It's hard to move forward with software when you're still fixing fundamental flaws. Especially if you also have to make the Squadron Operating Unit (SOU) a smaller and lighter "SOU V2" at the same time, as "a critical delivery item for meeting Service IOC dates" and support F-35 Block 2B, 3i, and 3F planes.
To sum up: The hardware isn't stable. The existing code/feature base isn't stable. And it's necessary to add a lot of new capabilities on top of that. Nothing is stable, which is a very, very serious problem in technical development.
To cope with this, the F-35 Program Office has divided the SOU V2 development into 3 increments. SOU V2 and ALIS 2.0.1 are needed to begin testing at Edwards in January 2015. That's already a challenging timeline, and if it slips so do Initial Operating Capability dates that already border on the fanciful.
Subsequent increments have no current funding plan. ALIS Increment 2 would provide sub-squadron reporting capabilities, and inter-squadron unit connectivity. ALIS Increment 3 would add decentralized maintenance capability, without connectivity to the main SOU.
Dec 4/13: Bogdan update. Program Executive Officer Lieutenant General Christopher Bogdan gives an update on the F-35 program at WBR's 2013 Defense Logistics conference. He readily acknowledges that software remains the program's number 1 risk, with an even larger number of lines of code around the aircraft – about 12 million – than within it (about 9 million, though a Product Support Manager later tells us that the total has grown towards 26 million lines of code). ALIS is a significant part of that mix, and is one of the many moving parts still very much in "catch up mode."
Bogdan says Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney have not yet "earned the right" to be the product support integrators on the program, and he'd like to keep competition "everywhere we can" and as much as possible. To that effect, we asked Lt Gal Bogdan his thoughts on how ALIS' delays could affect the government's ability to compete F-35 support, and there's the issue of operating ALIS itself. Part of the root problem is that ALIS had not initially been developed with the same rigor as the software running the jet itself, brushed aside as "just a logistics system." It has been moved under the main software development team to hopefully improve coding standards.
Another sticking point we inquired about is data rights, which Bogdan said nobody asked about until about 18 months ago. He thinks the government should own the data rights as much as possible, and wants to fight hard to secure them, but admitted that these discussions with Lockheed Martin, involving lawyers on both sides, are "nowhere near done." Bogdan had made a similar statement at another conference in March 2013, so 8 months later the timeframe for these support-related competitions remains rather fuzzy, somewhere within the next 24 months. On the administration of ALIS itself, the use of organic and/or contractor staff is still under consideration, but for Bogdan the idea that you'd "need a bunch of contractors" on base paid to be watching computers "doesn't pass the giggle test." Opportunity for a public/private partnership under title 10?
Bogdan sounded much more confident on the overall production schedule and how little impact the slippage of a few fighter orders from the Marines or US Air Force should have on the big picture – if the international customers stick to their own buying schedules that is. Incidentally, Lockheed Martin was sued by Command Technology Inc. over (lack of) access to F-16 technical manuals in digital format, so one may expect the prime contractor not to readily open systems that are critical to maintenance, and maintenance competition, unless they really have to.
The Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office at the Pentagon reportedly had a cost review scheduled for the fall 2013, though that office has no director since Christine Fox' departure in June 2013, and any public news have yet to emerge from that review. With her appointment as acting deputy defense secretary, these issues may rise to a higher profile. Ms. Fox had indicated in her testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee in May 2011 that software integration was one of two key drivers behind the increase in development cost and schedule, which she said her office had been pointing out while underestimating the magnitude of the impact. Smart people try to avoid making the same mistake twice.
FY 2011 – 2013
Report from OUE testing; F-35 projected O&M cost not coming down.
Getting there?
March 20/13: Australia. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Fort Worth, TX receives an unfinalized, not-to-exceed $9.8 million modification for Australian-specific non-recurring support activities. It includes ALIS equipment and sustainment and logistics support, and will be bought under the LRIP Lot 6 contract. $4.9 million is committed immediately.
Australia was set to buy 2 F-35As for IOT&E preparation under LRIP Lot 6. The timing of their follow-on buy of 12 F-35As may be uncertain, but this contract seems to indicate that they'll buy the 2 IOT&E jets.
Work will be performed in Fort Worth, TX (35%); El Segundo, CA (25%); Warton, United Kingdom (20%); Orlando, FL (10%); Nashua, NH (5%); and Baltimore, MD (5%), and is expected to be complete in January 2019. US NAVAIR in Patuxent River, MD manages the contract (N00019-11-C-0083).
March 6/13: DOT&E OUE. The NGO POGO gets its hands on a copy of the Pentagon's Operational Utility Evaluation for initial F-35A training, dated Feb 15/13. With respect to ALIS, the OUE notes that it lacks a backup power supply, which can create unsafe temperatures for the system if there's a base power outage or generator failure in hot conditions. This has already happened in thunderstorms. Beyond that, "continuity of operations plans are not written and procedures for off-site storage of back-up data are not in place." The lack of back-up data is inconvenient and a loss, but the former would seriously impair operations. Full Report [PDF]
Nov 16/12: Hacked. Reuters reports that ALIS is at 94% of final capability, but a changing computing landscape has bitten it. A Navy "Red Team" hacked into the ALIS system. ALIS reportedly includes both classified and unclassified data streams, and the 2001 specifications didn't require separating them to prevent intrusions. That was reportedly all the Navy team needed, and this kind of failure to plan for computer attacks doesn't reflect especially well on all concerned.
Lockheed Martin was surprised by the result, but say that they've developed a "fairly straightforward fix" that didn't involve major adjustments. The bad news? The political exercise of choosing F-35 suppliers in nearly every U.S. state, and beyond the USA, increases general exposure to cyber attacks.
The latest version of ALIS has been in use at Edwards AFB, CA for several months. It's also scheduled for use by the Marines at Yuma, CA this year, and by Nellis AFB, NV when Lockheed delivers 4 F-35s for testing within the next month or 2. Meanwhile, The Pentagon is looking to compete ALIS operation, and F-35 maintenance, beyond Lockheed Martin, in an attempt to drive down rising Operations & Maintenance cost projections. Reuters.
Nov 14/12: During an industry day dedicated do ALIS an overview [PPTX] of the system's purpose, capabilities, infrastructure, and administration needs is released.
April 3/12: F-35 schedule & costs. Aviation Week's Bill Sweetman takes a deep look into the Pentagon's latest Selected Acquisition Reports, which was released on March 30/12. Excerpts:
"Another three-year slip to initial operational test and evaluation, the culmination of system development and demonstration, which now is due to be complete in 2019 – the target date is February but the threshold date is October… it appears that the main culprit is software and hardware, mainly in terms of… sensor fusion and emission control – that take place in the fighter's main processor banks… In what follows, I'm going to use average procurement unit cost (APUC)… recurring flyaway is the lowest cost, but neither the US nor anyone else can put an aircraft on the ramp for that money. And all numbers are base-2012… The APUC for the F-35A in 2013-14 is $184-$188 million, versus $177m (2009 dollars) for the last F-22s. And that is at a much higher production rate."
Most ominously for the F-35's future cost structure:
"Although the basis of the numbers has been changed, the SAR still compares the F-35A with the F-16, and shows that the estimated CPFH [DID: Cost Per Flight Hour] for the F-35A has gone from 1.22 F-16s in the 2010 SAR to 1.42 today – versus 0.8 F-16s, which was being claimed a few years ago. Where is that operations and support money going to come from?"
SAR: dates slip, O&M rises
Sept 16/10: LRIP-4. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Fort Worth, TX receives a $424.4 million cost-plus-incentive-fee advance acquisition contract modification, for sustainment activities in support of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's LRIP Lot IV production. Sustainment activities will include autonomic logistics information system (ALIS) operations and support, block upgrade and concurrency modification planning, site activation, training systems, and support equipment.
This modification combines purchases for the U.S. Navy ($62.0M/ 15%), U.S. Air Force ($135.7M/ 31%), U.S. Marine Corps ($194.5/ 46%), and international partners ($32.2M/ 8%). The work will be performed in Fort Worth, TX (35%); El Segundo, CA (25%); Warton, United Kingdom (20%); Orlando, FL (10%); Nashua, NH (5%); and Baltimore, MD (5%), and is expected to be complete in December 2012. US Naval Air Systems Command in Patuxent River, MD manages the contract (N00019-09-C-0010).
ALIS development contracts, and support inclusions; Norway going its own way.
July 2/09: LRIP-3. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Fort Worth, TX receives a $441.9 million modification, finalizing the previously awarded Joint Strike Fighter LRIP Lot 3 advance acquisition contract (N00019-08-C-0028, see also March 25/09 and June 2/09) to a cost-plus-incentive-fee/award-fee contract.
This modification adds performance based logistics support and hardware to support the ordered aircraft: 7 USAF F-35As, 1 Dutch F-35As, 7 U.S. Marine Corps F-35B STOVL, and 2 United Kingdom (UK) F-35Bs. It also includes material necessary to support activation of JSF bases; 2 Aircraft Systems Maintenance Trainers; 1 Weapons Loader Trainer; 2 Full Mission Simulators; 1 USMC and 1 UK Deployable Mission Rehearsal Trainer; 16 LM-STAR avionics test stations; hardware and software for the Integrated Training Center; Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) shipboard certification and deployment for American aircraft carriers; ALIS depot trade study; and associated technical and financial data.
Work will be performed in Orlando, FL (42%); Fort Worth, TX (37%); El Segundo, CA (9%); Nashua, NH (2%); Baltimore, MD (1.5%); Cleveland, OH (1.2%); Rolling Meadows, IL (1.1%), San Diego, CA (1%), Warton, United Kingdom, (4%); and Cheltenham, United Kingdom (1.2%); and is expected to be complete in December 2011. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, MD, is the contracting activity.
Dec 4/07: ALIS. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Ft. Worth, TX receives a $38.5 million modification to a previously awarded cost-plus-award-fee contract to provide for the design, development, integration and testing the Joint Strike Fighter autonomic logistics information system (ALIS) central point of entry system.
Work will be performed in Orlando, FL (67%) and Fort Worth, TX (33%), and is expected to be complete in October 2013. The Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River, MD issued the contract (N00019-02-C-3002).
April 30/07: The ALIS system is formally switched on during a ceremony at Lockheed Martin, and will begin receiving data from the test planes. By aviation program standards, it's an extremely early introduction for this sort of application.
Formal switch-on
Nov 9/06: The JSF4I (Joint Strike Fighter International Information Interchange Initiative) consortium is led by Det Norske Veritas (DNV), with CORENA Norge AS, Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace, and Jotne EPM Technology as equal partners. The NOK 24.3 million (about ) contract from the Norwegian government is aimed at small and medium size defence operators who might seek to use different national systems instead of, or as a supplement to, Lockheed Martin's Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) maintenance hub for the F-35 fleet. Lockheed Martin is a participant as well, contributing $800,000 and helping to ensure interoperability.
The Norwegian Defence Logistics Organisation's terms of reference were that the JSF4I solution must be based on the international standards ISO 10303-239 (PLCS) and ASD/AIA S1000D for exchange of information between systems. The CORENA release covers a contract to support JSF4I's exchange of product support information between the F-35 prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, and the national defense organizations who will be operating the F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft.
Norway's parallel JSF4I
Oct 26/01: Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Fort Worth, TX receives an $18.98 billion cost-plus-award-fee contract for the Joint Strike Fighter Air System Engineering and Manufacturing Development Program. "The principal objectives of this phase are to develop an affordable family of strike aircraft and an autonomic logistics support [ALIS] and training system."
This family of strike aircraft consists of 3 variants: F-35A conventional takeoff and landing, F-35C aircraft carrier suitable, and F-35B short takeoff and vertical landing. Under this contract, the contractor will be required to develop and verify a production-ready system design that addresses the needs of the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps and the United Kingdom. Work will be performed in Fort Worth, TX (66%); El Segundo, CA (NGC, 20%); and Warton/Samlesbury, United Kingdom (BAE, 14%), and is expected to be complete in April 2012. This contract was competitively procured through a limited competition; 2 offers were received (Boeing's X-32 was the other). The Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River, MD issued the contract (N00019-02-C-3002).
DID would like to thank by John Batchelor for permission to use his F-35B schematic in our article.
Lockheed Martin – ALIS. See also single-page brochure [PDF].
DID's F-35 FOCUS Articles – F-35 Lightning: The Joint Strike Fighter Program, 2012-2013 | F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: 2009-2010 | F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: JSF Events & Contracts 2007-08 | F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: SDD Contracts & Events 2006.
DID Spotlight Article – Aging Array of American Aircraft Attracting Attention
IEEE Abstract from the 2007 Aerospace Conference (March 3-10/07) – Prognostics and Health Management A Data-Driven Approach to Supporting the F-35 Lightning II
Congressional Research Service (March 7/07) – Testimony before the House Armed Services Committee Air & Land Forces Subcommittee [PDF format]. Inter alia: "The military services generally would prefer to invest in new aircraft rather than modernize older aircraft. They often argue that new aircraft will be cheaper to operate and maintain than the aircraft they will replace. Frequently, this has not proven to be the case. Newer aircraft are often more complex than those they replace, and cost more to operate. The estimated flying hour cost of the F-22, for example, is $22,284.00. The estimated flying hour cost of the F-15C/D it will replace is $14,139/$13,524."
Lockheed Martin (Oct 23/03) – F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Autonomic Logistics Supply Chain [PDF]. Presentation released as "non-technical data" for ITAR purposes, provided via UPenn Wharton School servers.
US GAO (#GAO-01-163, Feb 9/01) – Tactical Aircraft: Modernization Plans Will Not Reduce Average Age of Aircraft. The spiral in action.
D-N-I (Nov 8/2000) – Defense Death Spiral
D-N-I (June 5/99) – A 'Walk-About' Through the Howling Wilderness of Acquisition Reform. The dynamics described above aren't the only problem. The author was a civilian logistician with 26 years experience working for the US Air Force. He describes the effect of poor measurement choices on the lean logistics efforts in the US Air Force, and what it means for spares and readiness. Unless skewed incentives and measurements like this are fixed, ALIS will have a limited effect on rising operating costs.
tag: ALISmaintenance, f-35alis, f-22perhour
Categories: Americas - Other, Avionics, BAE, Britain/U.K., Contracts - Awards, Contracts - Modifications, Fighters & Attack, IT - Software & Integration, Lockheed Martin, Logistics, Other Corporation, Spotlight articles, USA