Israel’s F-35I Combat Experience Is Providing Lessons – showing that ALIS, JIT supply chains and not having control over the software running are disasters waiting to happen
LaPlante lauded Schmidt’s ability to rapidly field mission data files, packages of information loaded onto F-35s before each flight.”What General Schmidt and his team did, in about a week – week-and-a-half – is turned around these mission data files. That’s the brick that goes into the airplane. And that I think the lessons learned on how you did that can apply all the way around the world.”
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The ‘just-in-time’ logistics strategy and the cloud computing hub that is the foundation for F-35 logistics are of especially high concern. While those systems may be adequate for peacetime operations — and even that is highly debatable — during a time of conflict, relying on them could leave F-35s stranded on the ground.
Those lessons are in addition to the Pentagon’s own review of its long-distance F-35 logistics operations.
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“This program was set up to be very efficient… [a] just-in-time kind of supply chain. I’m not sure that that works always in a contested environment,” Lt. Gen. Schmidt said. “And when you get a just-in-time mentality, which I think is it’s kind of a business model in the commercial industry that works very well in terms of keeping costs down and those kinds of things, it introduces a lot of risk operationally.”
“The biggest risk is that F-35 units have little in terms of spare parts on the shelf to keep their aircraft flying for any sustained amount of time.”
This US Navy graphic provides a very general look at the many layers of complexity just in that service’s logistics chains, including joint service, non-military U.S. government, foreign military, and commercial entities. USN
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logistically specifically, it was designed to be maintenance on demand, essentially. So the aircraft could relay a message to the supply warehouse and say, this part is getting ready to fail. And then Lockheed could send that part out to the base and it could be replaced, rather than having to have large warehouses full of supply parts, not knowing which was gonna fail and what you might need. You take that into the maritime service and the challenge, Tyler, is that you can’t logistically operate that way because we could have a ship, in this case, off the coast of Taiwan that needs a part, and Lockheed Martin can guarantee its arrival into Okinawa. But now there is no FedEx, UPS, DHL that’s gonna get it out to the aircraft carrier. So it stops and now you have a delay and it has to go get picked up and the aircraft might be down. I don’t know if they have resolved that challenge…”
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In addition to being supplied by the U.S. with a surge in spare parts and other items, Israel enjoys an advantage with its F-35 fleet no one else has. It’s developed its own additional sustainment and upgrade system and is the only partner that can test modifications and deploy them, including to the jet’s software, on its own. The IAF even has its own specially configured test F-35 to assist in these efforts.
The IAF realized early on that a troubled U.S. centralized support structure for the jets – a centralized cloud-based ‘computer brain’ called the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) – wouldn’t meet its needs, especially during a large-scale conflict.
The F-35 JPO ultimately decided to abandon efforts to fix the system in favor of a completely reworked architecture called the Operational Data Integrated Network (ODIN). That replacement system is still in development.
Even before the inception of ODIN, Israeli officials negotiated a unique arrangement giving them a degree of independence from the rest of the program.
The F-35Is have a distinct configuration that is importantly not dependent on ALIS. On top of that, it is the only user of the F-35 to have the authority to install entire suites of additional domestically-developed software on its jets and to perform completely independent depot-level maintenance.”
“The ingenious, automated ALIS system that Lockheed Martin has built will be very efficient and cost-effective,” an anonymous Israeli Air Force officer told Defense News in 2016. “But the only downfall is that it was built for countries that don’t have missiles falling on them.”
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There is a major lack of spare parts within the F-35 ecosystem as it is, so the Israel case does serve as an example of what readiness can look like if the parts needed to support the fleet during wartime were actually available.
Israel’s experience, however, doe offer, as was previously pointed out: “an important example of how things might be structured differently and that it can be done. If nothing else, the drivers behind the IAF’s push for independence from the broader F-35 program all speak directly to many of the issues that Lt. Gen. Schmidt and others are just starting to raise more publicly now.”
