Energising the supply chain

Mike Richardson hears how the Lockheed Martin JSF programme team and its incumbent supply chain are taking steps to ensure it will meet customer demand. The development of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fifth generation advanced tactical fighter aircraft has required the formation of a huge partnership within the international community to ensure it can meet future war threats and ultimately have an undeniable advantage over them.

To encompass all the latest technology available, Lockheed Martin has established an ethos in building a formidable fighting machine that is both affordable and maintainable by employing the latest design tools and automated production techniques. More importantly, it has harnessed the power of the global manufacturing supply chain to ensure the company meets the challenging production targets set by its customers.

The single-seat, single engine, stealth multirole fighter can perform close air support, tactical bombing, and air defence missions. With three different models: F-35A, conventional take off and landing (CTOL) variant; F-35B, short take off and vertical landing (STOVL) variant; F-35C, carrier-based (CV) variant, Lockheed Martin claims the F-35 is a ‘game changing' aircraft.

The prime contractor performs overall system integration, development of aircraft systems, flight controls and mission systems, builds the forward fuselage and wings, and performs final assembly. Major partners include Northrop Grumman for the active electronically scanned array radar, infrared distributed aperture system, communications, navigation, identification, centre fuselage, weapons bay, and arrestor gear, and BAE Systems for the aft fuselage and empennage, horizontal and vertical tails, crew life support and escape systems, electronic warfare systems, and fuel system.

The digital thread

As vice president and deputy programme manager for F-35, Eric Branyan provides the leadership focus for the successful execution of the system design and development programme, with an emphasis on affordable and a timely transition into rate production.

“Many of the concepts unique to building the F-35 in an affordable way start with what we call the digital thread,” he begins. “In this age of high speed computing, everyone has similar design tools and a common database to help eliminate any errors in the manufacturing process across all the partners in the consortium. This has enabled us to distribute components across a huge industrial base, so that large subassemblies down to individual items can be sent to lower tier suppliers in the supply chain.

“For example, BAE Systems, Samlesbury performs the assembly of the entire aft fuselage and uses a number of suppliers in the UK to build subsystem components. Once fully assembled, it's shipped to Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth and integrated with a centre fuselage built by Northrop Grumman, as well as the wing and forward fuselage that are built here in Fort Worth. These component parts are assembled on an electronic ‘mate and alignment' station as they are moved along the production line and if all four components are available, we can make something that looks like an aircraft in four hours.”

Branyan says the digital thread plays a huge role in enabling Lockheed Martin to build more aircraft with fewer errors by using automated equipment to perform assembly operations, such as the automated drilling of structures that require several components held together and stack drilled.

“Fort Worth has one of the largest auto drillers in the world, drilling more than 6,000 holes in an entire wing structure in one shift,” he claims. “The same techniques are employed at Samlesbury, which was instrumental in developing some of the techniques to perform precision milling of components which provides high accuracy control of all the outer surfaces.”

Demanding global supply

Lockheed Martin has harnessed the global supply chain to reach out and, on a best value basis, selected those companies that can deliver quality items at an affordable price and with the capability to scale to the kinds of production rates it anticipates.

“All our partners have expertise in supply chain management; they vet and evaluate the capabilities of their suppliers and then elicit proposals from them to achieve best value for the programme,” continues Branyan. “BAE Systems is a full partner to the programme, but we have many other suppliers in the UK. For example, GE Aviation delivers the electrical power management systems, secondary flight display and input/output devices, Martin Baker supplies the ejection seat and Rolls-Royce builds the liftfan system. Although the supply chain is global, there is still a heavy emphasis on the European theatre because of the significant number of the partners involved: Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway are all integral partners on the programme.”

With each aircraft consisting of approximately 20,000 parts, Branyan reckons the production rate imposed on the global supply chain will represent a formidable challenge. To meet this goal, Lockheed Martin has begun a ‘production readiness review' process where it meets each supplier to evaluate its ability, plant equipment, their plans to prepare for high rate production, appropriate investments, and ensure it performs as expected and is accomplishing its plans to meet the high rate production.

“It's not a ‘trust me' situation; we set the expectations and then work with the suppliers to ensure they can achieve these expectations,” he confirms. “We want to extend into the global industrial base by building one aircraft per month now, but over the next six years increase to 20 aircraft per month. Therefore, we'll need many more second tier suppliers to keep our production rate on track. Although the European community has a key role in the programme, it needs to perform at best value, be affordable and meet quality and rate demands. Although F-35 is at low rate now, it will accelerate to our full rate of production target by 2017.”

Lockheed Martin's first static test article - an F-35B STOVL model - has already undergone a rigorous 15 month structural test and evaluation programme with representative loads placed upon the aircraft.

“BAE Systems' Samlesbury and Brough facilities have major roles as partners in the test programme,” says Branyan. “Brough has the CTOL structural article in a test rig which is about 68% of the way through its structural integrity programme with completion planned for the second quarter of this year. It's already completed full aircraft high G load evaluation. The final part of the test will be analysing the loadings that pull up on external weapon carrying load points. It's been a global partnership with BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman as ‘team mates' and together they bring a wealth of technical expertise, particularly in building STOVL aircraft – a hallmark of BAE Systems – whereas Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin combine the ability to build low observable stealth aircraft. The combination of these three companies provides a formidable set of resources in accomplishing what is an incredibly complex task.”

The here and now

Branyan says that the design of the three F-35 variants is now complete with more than 53,000 drawings accomplished to document each design. All of the development aircraft are in production flow and 15 have been delivered from production to either flight line or structural testing. Lockheed Martin is gradually moving through the development phase into the flight test period where it can verify the capabilities of the aircraft.

“In production terms, the acquisition methodology for this programme was based on a high level of concurrency using modern tools and methods to provide a higher confidence of success,” he continues. “We're under low rate initial production (LRIP) for three production lots: LRIP 1, 2, and 3. While we are completing the build of the development airframes, we are building the initial production airframes too.

“As we enter LRIP, the ramp rate increases, while we verify the design concurrently and energise the entire production system. Once we have the entire flight tests accomplished and we've verified the capabilities of the system, we will be meeting the challenge of high rate production. While we have a fantastic aircraft system with some extraordinary engineering applications, all of the industrial engineering required to produce it at rate is as formidable and extraordinary as the engineering itself.”

The STOVL aircraft began preliminary flight tests in May 2008, but it wasn't until January this year that the full liftfan propulsion system was engaged in the air. Lockheed Martin intends to move to a short takeoff and vertical landing demonstration sometime later this year. STOVL introduction into service for the US Marine Corp is 2012. Delivery of the first two UK operational test and evaluation aircraft (produced at LRIP 3) is in 2011, with the third (produced at LRIP 4) in 2012. F-35 baseline production continues through 2036 and will be operating beyond 2050. Total planned production for the aircraft is estimated to be over 3,000.

“For me, it's a tremendous responsibility because the international community is depending on Lockheed Martin to deliver the F-35,” Branyan concludes. “We are building this aircraft on the philosophy that it will be effective, survivable, affordable and maintainable. This is a huge challenge, but it's one that is being met by all the partners contributing to it. They should be proud of the accomplishments the programme has achieved so far and I look forward to many more successes during the flight test programme and ramping up the production rate.”

www.lockheedmartin.com