JSF programme manager Tom Burbage is working hard to keep international partners on board
Tom Burbage remains an optimist. Two years into the Joint Strike Fighter programme, he insists each member of the international partnership team is on track to receive a full return on their investment by 2012.
The Lockheed Martin F-35 programme manager says an early round of workshare shortfalls that prompted a wave of criticisms from partner states can still be overcome in the later stages of the 10-year system development and demonstration (SDD) phase.
Burbage is eager to remind his embattled partners that the SDD period contains not only contracts for 22 test vehicles, but also five low-rate initial production (LRIP) contracts. "Across that time span we're expecting all the countries to achieve more return on their investment than they've actually invested," he says. "There are 465 airplanes today in those low rate production lots. And then you look at the higher production rates and the sustainment [contracts] that are to come: they'll achieve more of a return on their investment."
Burbage invites the international partner group to consider the non-industrial advantages of participating in the F-35 programme, particularly what the JSF will mean for future coalition operations. He points to the most recent 10 world conflicts, each of which involved coalitions of countries on at least one side. "We could have our first joint coalition operation as early as 2013 with everybody flying the F-35s".
But despite Burbage's assurances and his confidence, the vision of international participation is proving harder to sell and not so easy to sustain. If the eight partners were expecting a quick return on their investments, all but the UK and Canada, it seems, have been disappointed. Opposition parties in some participating nations have seized on the slow progress of JSF industrial returns to call for dropping the programme, and government officials from just about all member nations have publicly questioned Lockheed Martin's management.
Burbage says any perceived damage to the programme has been overblown. "In most countries, when you get into the department of ministry and trade," he says, "there is a clear recognition of the advantages of the programme. There aren't many foreign government investments that show the immediate industrial return like this one is showing, and allows them to buy the top-of-the-line - from a technology standpoint - airplane without paying for the development internally."
Part of Lockheed Martin's difficulty in making a convincing case to concerned governments stems directly from the SDD schedule. The first LRIP contract for 10 aircraft is expected to be awarded in 2006, followed by planned annual orders that peak at 168 aircraft in 2011. Until the first LRIP deal is signed, however, Lockheed Martin is unable to offer any tangible proof that its workshare goals can be achieved.
"What we're saying is: 'We've committed to you that you'll get this return over the production lots.' And what they say is: 'If you're committing to me, then give me the contract'," says Burbage. "By US laws we don't have the contracts, so we can't award the contracts. So there is a bit of a trust-me factor in this in that the partners need to trust that we're going to deliver."
Trust seems to be a critical issue among the international participants as the programme enters its third year. Although it appears the JSF programme will be spared a US domestic proposal to strengthen "Buy American" provisions, Burbage acknowledges the underlying message from US Congress is another issue proving troublesome to international partners.
"When the international partners read about Buy American it's like us reading about 'Fortress Europe'. You get a negative perception from some of the partners that they may be excluded from some of the competitions they'd like to participate in on the programme. And that doubt is a factor in the relations on the programme, or could be a factor."
A related criticism of the programme is turnaround times on bids that are too fast for non-US companies to answer. Burbage says this issue is European-focused, with its basis lying in that continent's business culture.
Missed opportunities"In some cases there are holidays and closed periods when companies miss an opportunity because it's in the mail," he says. "There are things like that that are real frustrating because we have a schedule to meet. August is generally speaking a vacation month in Europe. Well, we don't close the programme during August."
The combined fears of Buy American and bid turnaround times have a corollary in the persistent complaint by disaffected partners that a pro-American bias infects contracting decisions by the F-35's US-based primes.
Burbage sees this latter issue as challenging the international programme's integrity. His response has been to intervene in the decision-making process when international suppliers are judged against US companies for awards. "When we have a bid opportunity that involves international partners, we have a high level of review," he says. "Most of them come to me. I don't turn a decision over, but I will make sure that the international companies that were bidding, particularly the ones that didn't win, did get a fair shot, according to the rules and regulations of the best-value system that we have."
He adds: "I've never found a single case where that didn't happenÉWe're very disciplined in how we do that."
Source: Flight International
