Executive Vice President of Aeronautics, Lockheed Martin Corp
AFA's vASC 2020: Sponsored Interview - Greg Ulmer of Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin Sponsored Interview with Greg Ulmer.
About Gregory Ulmer
Gregory Ulmer, Executive Vice President of Aeronautics at Lockheed Martin, has discussed the F-35 program's progress in production, cost reduction, and sustainment. He stated that Lockheed Martin reduced its portion of F-35 sustainment costs per flight hour by 44% over the past five years and aims to lower it another 40% over the next five years, targeting a cost of $25,000 per flight hour by 2025. Ulmer noted that the company signed block buys for lots 12, 13, and 14, achieving an $80 million unit cost for the F-35A model in lot 13, one year earlier than planned, with the lot 14 price below $78 million. He also addressed the transition from the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) to the Operational Data Integrated Network (ODIN), describing an 80% reduction in hardware components and successful initial flight tests. Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, Ulmer said supplier delays impacted production, leading to an alternate work schedule for 12 weeks, with a revised delivery target of 121 aircraft for 2020, down from a pre-pandemic plan of 141. Ulmer has also highlighted the F-35's international partnerships and capabilities. He noted that the United Kingdom, as a Tier One partner, builds 15% of the value of planned F-35s, supporting over 20,000 UK jobs annually. He confirmed that the F-35 was selected in Switzerland's competition, ranking first in three of four categories and quoted about 2 billion francs below the next competitor. On the fastener issue, Ulmer stated that a worst-case engineering analysis assuming every fastener was in the wrong location showed a design limit load of 131%, providing significant margin, and that corrective actions included kitting materials to prevent commingling. He also discussed the F-35's sensor fusion, 360-degree situational awareness, and plans to expand internal weapons bay capacity from two to six air-to-air missiles.
Transcript (26 segments)
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Tobias Nager0:14
Hello and welcome to this sponsored interview at the virtual Air, Space and Cyber Conference. I'm Tobias Nager, editor-in-chief of Air Force Magazine, and I'm joined today by Greg Ulmer, F-35 Vice President and General Manager, Lockheed Martin. Greg, welcome, thanks, I appreciate it.
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Gregory Ulmer0:31
Tobias, good afternoon.
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Tobias Nager0:32
So let's just get into it. The pandemic devastated all kinds of industries, but it doesn't seem like it slowed the F-35 production line very significantly. How have you managed that?
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Gregory Ulmer0:41
Well, in response to COVID-19, supplier delays did impact the F-35, but what we did is we really reached into our supply base to understand that impact significantly. We understood it, and then we implemented what we call an alternate work schedule. So we took our workforce, understanding the constraints of our supply as COVID-19 kind of played through that supply, and then we adjusted essentially our production line and workflow to really accommodate the supply as it was available. And we did that for about 12 weeks, and then as our supply base kind of re-energized, reinvigorated, and came back online, we went back to our full work week schedule on about August 17th time frame. So we are now back to really a full work complement as we were in pre-COVID time.
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Tobias Nager1:35
So how does that change the delivery schedule, and how do you see that evolving over the next year?
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Gregory Ulmer1:42
Yeah, so from a pre-COVID perspective, we were on track to deliver 141 aircraft this year, kind of stepping up from where we were last year at 134. And we've had to dial that back. So right now we're forecasting about an 18 to 24 aircraft reduction against that 141. So we're settled in right now targeting 121. And then as we implement our workforce back in place, we get our suppliers turned back on, it'll take us a bit of time to earn back those lost deliveries, so to speak, from a scheduled position. But in the next two years, you'll see us recover that nicely.
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Tobias Nager2:19
So where are we in terms of getting to full rate production with the F-35? I think we heard from Miss Lord, Secretary Lord, just a few weeks ago, they're shooting for, I want to say, the March 2021 time frame for a full rate production decision.
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Gregory Ulmer2:35
There's still some work to be accomplished in what's called a Joint Simulation Environment laboratory. So if you think about testing the F-35 in the high-end fight, it's very hard to replicate the ability to run the airplanes through its paces in a high-end threat environment. And the government will do that in a lab environment called the Joint Simulation Environment. And that's really the last step required, I think, to get to that full rate production decision in the spring of '21 time frame.
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Tobias Nager3:02
And at that point, what kind of numbers are we talking about in terms of production?
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Gregory Ulmer3:06
Yeah, if we look forward through Lot 15, it'll increase to around 165 aircraft. There'll be a slight decrement in quantity, think down to around 130 or so in Lot 15, and then you'll see it ramp back up slowly but surely to a higher quantity again, think 150, 155 through Lot 16 and 17 time frame.
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Tobias Nager3:32
And so cost performance has been a significant issue. Where are we in terms of cost performance with F-35, and do you still expect to maintain the declining cost slope that we've seen over the last few years?
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Gregory Ulmer3:44
Well, if you look at it from a production perspective, which I assume the question is, we were able to get to what we call an $80 million airplane, or fourth-gen equivalent, a lot earlier than planned. So Lot 13, not this year's deliveries but the next year deliveries, and then Lot 14 a little even further down from that. And then going forward, it's really a trade going on relative to quantity. So I mentioned Lot 15 would come down in quantity, so there'll be some pressure on cost. We're also putting new technology into the airplane as we go forward, so there'll be some pressure relative to new technology insertion. Our intent really is to cost-neutrally sustain that $80 million type cost around technology insertion as the airplane matures and gets more capabilities going forward.
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Tobias Nager4:33
So as production has increased, you've made some progress in terms of cost per flying hour. Where are we now, and where do you see that going?
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Gregory Ulmer4:45
Yeah, if we talk about cost per flying hour, a target of $25,000 per flying hour by 2025. And today we're on a trajectory, in collaboration with our customer, to focus on getting that cost out. If you take that cost per flying hour and break it up into the components of who's responsible for the different elements of that cost, Lockheed Martin is responsible for about 39% of every dollar from an O&S perspective. About 13 cents has to do with the propulsion system, and the remaining is O&S costs: fuel, flight ops, MIL work, and so forth. So we have been very focused on reducing the Lockheed Martin part of that in terms of cost per flying hour. So if you look from FY15 to about today, FY19, FY20, we've been able to reduce the Lockheed Martin content by about 40% across those five years. We still have more content to do, so Lockheed thinks another 50% reduction potential to get the Lockheed Martin cost out. But we're also very focused as an enterprise, the F-35 enterprise, on the propulsion system as well as the fleet or the government-owned O&S cost perspective. And the way we're really focused on that is improve diagnostics on the airplane, the way the airplane communicates it has issues or predicts that it will have issues, that we do repair capacity improvements so the supply that we have in repair, we get that repair turned quickly, that we reduce demand relative to the parts on the aircraft. So think of those reliability improvements, quality improvements to the material on the airplane. As we get those out, then the mechanics are not pulling parts off the airplane. And then really focused on also reducing the footprint in terms of the support around the airplane, so maybe contractor support, it might be government blue suiter support, but we want to reduce the number of folks that operate around the airplane. And we see that the airplane, based on its performance today, has that potential and ability to take that cost out going forward.
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Tobias Nager6:59
So here you are, you're talking about the maintenance and logistics. The Autonomic Logistics Information System, ALIS, was supposed to be a boon for F-35 logistics but ran into some challenges. So now you're replacing it with something new, the Operational Data Integrated Network, or ODIN. So how are we making out on that, and do we have a story to tell yet, or is it still something to be understood?
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Gregory Ulmer7:27
No, we have a bit of story to tell. We have some progress made. The government decided late last year, 2019 time frame, to transition to an ALIS system, which think about as an integrated technology system really before that was defined before the iPhone even existed. So from a hardware-software point of view, we have not tech refreshed the ALIS system. And so we're going to do both going forward in an ODIN construct. We're going to update the hardware, so we're going to do a technology refresh in terms of hardware processing power, the footprint if you will, as well as a software and integrated data environment supporting the ODIN construct. And we're going to do that, Lockheed Martin is participating with our government to do that jointly. The recent successes: we've been able to port the existing ALIS software onto the new ODIN hardware structure. So think about about an 80% reduction in terms of components, size, weight, space, and we've already ported that over to the new hardware. We've gone through initial flight test at Patuxent River, and now we are headed to an operational assessment out of Yuma here in the coming months. So we're making a bit of progress. If you look a little longer than that, we're seeking what we call initial operational capability in the fall of next year, and then full operational capability about a year beyond that. So some progress has already been made, and we have more to do relative to transition to ODIN.
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Tobias Nager9:00
So F-35 has been really probably one of the first demonstrated uses of agile software development in a major weapons platform. You just described one aspect of that, but you're also rolling out updates roughly every six months for the aircraft itself. So how does that kind of rapid development work in a military contract? How does it work, and how are you moving more quickly?
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Gregory Ulmer9:26
Yeah, so we have been working with the government, the JPO in particular, to look at a DevSecOps agile kind of transformation going forward. And we have been able to do that where we are focused on six months, we call them six-month centers, working to look at what kind of capability can we release on a six-month center. So we look at from a hardware perspective what's in front of us, from a software or capability perspective it might be EW, it might be weapons integration, it might be other elements, Auto GCAS is another example. And we look at those capabilities and then we look at the ability based on the maturity of those systems within the six-month cycle to bring those forward and implement into the system going forward. We're on the very front end of that. We've had some success. So Auto GCAS is an example of success where we were able to pull that, accelerate that technology in, really leveraging the work accomplished already on the F-16 program and bringing that into the F-35. And so that's really the construct going forward as we move out in this agile DevSecOps kind of environment.
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Tobias Nager10:35
So you're going to work with agile development a lot more, I suppose, as Joint All-Domain Command and Control develops, and that seems to be a unifying focus not just across the Air Force but across all the services now. And the combination of stealth, sensors, onboard processing could be a huge part of that, but it also requires an ability to rapidly share intelligence, targeting data, and presents particular challenges in protecting the nature of the aircraft. If you're going to be sharing information, maybe you're going to violate some of your own stealth. How does that work, and what are some of the trade-offs that you're going to have to deal with?
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Gregory Ulmer11:18
Well, I think the F-35 is very well suited. You kind of alluded to it: the sensor suite, the integrated data fusion that the F-35 has, the ability for the F-35 to exfil that data off platform to other entities, be they fourth-gen air assets, land, air assets, C2 aspects. We've seen that very strongly. The F-35 in particular, the three variants themselves, we're seeing interoperability between services or partner nations. We're seeing the ability, for example, of the F-35, the USAF, to integrate from an interoperability perspective with the Norwegians or the Italians or the Israelis very quickly, very rapidly. And so I think the F-35 itself, based on its architecture and its approach, is very well aligned to a JADC2 kind of environment. We've had some recent success. I think we had an Orange Flag exercise where we integrated U-2, taking a series of information, feeding that to the F-35, and then transitioning that down to an Army asset relative to targeting location and weapon engagement. So we've had some very good, I think, recent experimentation relative to the F-35 and the ability to kind of operate in a JADC2 or a JADO kind of environment.
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Tobias Nager12:41
So as new and as advanced as the F-35 is, we're now of course talking about the next fight or beyond. The Air Force acquisition chief, Will Roper, has been talking about a digital century series. Just this morning, the Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett announced a designation for digitally developed weapon systems. So how do you see that advancing in the future, and do you see these things developing like the F-35 or operating in parallel with the F-35? And how do you anticipate the F-35 working alongside these other aircraft, the Next Generation Air Dominance systems or low-cost extrudable aircraft, even the F-15EX?
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Gregory Ulmer13:33
Well, I think it ties back to the comments I just made. I think the fact that the F-35 is very strong in terms of integration within its own variants, A, B, C variant, and some of the work we've already done, I mentioned Orange Flag, there's been some other experimentation exercises with the U-2 and some other projects where we've seen very strong success relative to the F-35 operating in a JADC2 or a JADO kind of environment. And that will continue. If I look west toward my brethren out at the Skunk Works and the work that they're doing, and the integration that they do between vehicles or system family of systems, system of systems, F-35 is a big part of that thinking and that architecture and that thought. And so I think there is just a lot more to come from F-35 participation in that kind of environment.
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Tobias Nager14:30
Well, Greg, thank you so much for taking the time to share some of these points with us. Great to speak with you and great to learn a little bit more about the F-35. Thanks very much.
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Gregory Ulmer14:42
Thank you. I very much appreciate the opportunity. Have a good day.
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Tobias Nager14:45
You too. Let's do it again sometime.
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Gregory Ulmer14:46
Yep, take care.