31 Oct 14. F-35 Heading Toward Block Buy. Every year, the Pentagon and its corporate partners hash out contracts for individual low-rate initial production (LRIP) lots of the F-35 joint strike fighter. If the man running the program has his say, those days are numbered. With the negotiations over LRIP 8 at a conclusion, Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, the head of the F-35 joint program office, is planning on negotiating LRIP 9 and 10 together. And come LRIP 11, he wants a whole new model of procurement in place. “By next summer we will put out a request for proposal on LRIP 11 jets,” Bogdan told reporters Thursday. “That RFP will ask Lockheed to do a block buy for our partners. At least, that is my intention.” It’s not the first time Bogdan has raised the idea of a block buy. He first publically mentioned the idea at July’s Farnborough International Airshow, indicating it was still a ways off. But Thursday marked the first time he has placed a public stake in the ground as to when that could begin, and why it makes fiscal sense. A number of partner nations have already committed to large procurements of the fifth-generation stealthy jet, so bundling their orders together is just logical, Bogdan said. “If you were to take their requirements and put them together, you could actually have a substantial number of airplanes, starting in LRIP 11 and spanning LRIP 11, 12 and 13, bought as a block of airplanes, almost as if it was a multi-year [buy] for the US,” he said. Participation in a block buy would be open to all international partners or foreign military sales customers who are interested, and Bogdan said he expects ‘substantial savings’ for those involved. But while a block buy could benefit international partners, the US would not be able to participate in such a buy due to acquisition rules barring a multi-year procurement until the jet enters full-rate production. In other words, the United States would be paying more per F-35 model than a country such as, for argument’s sake, South Korea, which has pledged to procure 40 F-35A fighters through foreign military sales. (Source: Defense News)
30 Oct 14. A-10 retirement restrictions imperil F-35A IOC for USAF. Key Points:
* The USAF’s F-35A fleet might not be operationally deployable by August 2016 as planned
* Experienced A-10 maintenance personnel were expected to comprise the majority of new F-35 maintainers, but lawmakers are working to block the legacy aircraft’s retirement
The US Air Force’s (USAF’s) goal to make its new fleet of Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter combat aircraft operationally deployable in August 2016 has been imperilled by lawmakers’ efforts to halt the service’s plan to retire its Cold War-era Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt close air support (CAS) aircraft fleet, the Pentagon’s F-35 programme manager said on 30 October. “Up until recently, 2016 IOC [initial operating capability] was looking pretty good,” Lieutenant General Christopher Bogdan told a handful of reporters at the Pentagon. However, the USAF now expects a shortage of fully trained maintenance personnel because the A-10 maintainers it had planned to move into F-35 work may have to remain with the legacy programme. A combination of new and experienced maintainers was expected to complete F-35 maintenance training to meet the need for 1,100 personnel at the outset of IOC. The USAF had planned to retire the A-10 and anticipated that many of the experienced maintainers would come from the A-10 career field, the general said. “Now they’ve come to me and said, ‘We don’t think we can get rid of the A-10, and if we don’t get rid of the A-10, you don’t get experienced maintainers,'” he added. The US House of Representatives in June voted, via a measure that would prohibit the Department of Defense from using money to retire any A-10 aircraft, to block the plan to retire the A-10 fleet as part of its fiscal year 2015 (FY 2015) defence spending legislation. The measure was off