JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER (JSF)
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The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Program will develop a family of strike aircraft, capitalizing on commonality and modularity to maximize affordability while addressing the needs of the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and United Kingdom Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. This family of strike aircraft will consist of three variants: (1) Conventional Takeoff and Landing; (2) Aircraft Carrier Suitable; and (3) Short Takeoff and Vertical Landing (STOVL). The focus of the program is affordability: reducing the development, production, and ownership costs of the JSF family of aircraft. The family of JSF variants will provide the Navy with a first-day-of-the-war, survivable aircraft to complement the F/A-18E/F; the Air Force with a replacement for the F-16 and A-10 and complement the F-22; the Marines with a single STOVL platform to replace the AV-8B and F/A-18C/D; and the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force with a supersonic STOVL fighter/attack aircraft to replace the Sea Harrier and GR-7, respectively.
The JSF will be a single-seat, single-engine aircraft capable of performing and surviving lethal strike warfare missions using an affordable blend of key technologies. A high degree of commonality (70-80 percent) exists amongst the three variants. Aircraft sub-systems that will be identical in all three designs include the wing and fuselage structures, engine core, avionics and onboard computers, cockpits, electrical wiring, electronics, flight controls, control surfaces, and fuel tanks. The JSF system consists of the JSF air vehicles and all support training equipment, related facilities, materiel, software, services, and personnel to ensure that the system can accomplish its intended operational role.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
A multi-year $2.2 billion JSF Program Definition and Risk Reduction (PDRR) effort commenced in November 1996, with competitive contract awards to Boeing and Lockheed Martin for the PDRR Program. These competing contractors each built two concept demonstrator flight test aircraft to conduct concept-unique ground demonstrations and continue refinement of their ultimate delivered weapon system concepts. Pratt & Whitney provided propulsion hardware and engineering support for both Boeing's and Lockheed Martin's JSF PDRR efforts. The JSF Alternate Engine Program with General Electric continues to develop an alternate engine for production in order to reap the financial and performance benefits of competition. On October 26, 2001, the Lockheed Martin team was announced as the winner of the competition.
The System Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase, which follows PDRR, is structured to develop the JSF weapon system in a series of block upgrades with successively increasing capabilities. The first three blocks are intended to achieve the full performance capabilities currently set forth in the Joint Operational Requirements Document. As SDD progresses, the users are expected to require new capabilities for future block upgrades as the strengths and weaknesses of various emerging technologies become apparent.
The JSF program qualifies as a covered program requiring both lethality and vulnerability Live Fire Test and Evaluation (LFT&E). The overall JSF LFT&E strategy includes full-up, system-level Live Fire Vulnerability Tests of one aircraft variant and Live Fire Lethality Tests of the new gun and ammunition.
Dot&e approved the JSF Alternative LFT&E Plan on August 3, 2001. A waiver from full-up, system-level testing for the other two variants has been requested by the JPO. Due to the high degree of commonality between variants, the data from the full-up, system-level Live Fire Tests of an SDD air vehicle will provide a considerable amount of information needed to evaluate the survivability of the other two variants. Live Fire Tests of variant-unique components and features will be accomplished by using a drop-test article, full-scale propulsion systems, large assemblies, and components. The plan also requires extensive Live Fire testing of the engine.
The JSF LFT&E strategy also includes realistic, end-to-end lethality tests of the new gun system. The gun lethality LFT&E Program consists of ammunition lethality characterization tests, followed by actual gun firings from an aircraft engaging targets expected to be attacked in combat.
TEST & EVALUATION ACTIVITY
DOT&E has continuously participated in JSF OT&E and monitored LFT&E planning activities since June 1995. Integrated Product Team meetings have been held to coordinate the integrated program of DT&E, OT&E and LFT&E planned during SDD phase. The Combined Test Working Group (CTWG) is responsible for all T&E efforts in executing the JSF PDRR program and planning for the SDD program. The CTWG provides a single point of contact for the member services, OSD, and the weapon systems contractors for all T&E related matters. During the JSF PDRR Phase, competing contractor teams led by Boeing and Lockheed Martin each built, qualified, and flew Concept Demonstrator Aircraft designated the X-32 and X-35, respectively. Rather than being prototypes with full-up systems, these demonstrators incorporated the engine and outer mold lines of the contractor's JSF design and largely used off-the-shelf systems and avionics. These aircraft demonstrated the viability of each contractor's airframe design concept, including the ability to accomplish short take-offs, hover and transition to wingborne flight, up-and-away performance, and low-speed handling consistent with landing aboard a carrier. During this phase, each contractor was responsible for planning and executing the ground and flight tests and demonstrations.
The PDRR Phase allowed early test insights into the viability of basic aircraft designs of the competing contractors to meet the requirements of commonality/modularity for an affordable family of multi-Service aircraft. In addition, these aircraft demonstrated specific short take-off and vertical landing, hover, transition, and low-speed approach characteristics.
LFT&E activity in FY01 consisted of ballistic testing of two critical F119 engine components, the first-stage integrally bladed rotor (IBR), and the second-stage IBR. Seven shots were fired at rotating IBRs at the Naval Air Warfare/Weapons Division Weapons Survivability Laboratory, China Lake, CA.
TEST & EVALUATION ASSESSMENT
At this stage of the JSF program, the integration of program planning and T&E planning appears to be on a solid foundation. However, in view of the complexity of the program objectives, numerous T&E opportunities and challenges are being, and will likely continue to be, encountered.
The JSF program adopted an iterative approach toward facilitating the Services' development of fully validated, affordable operational requirements. This approach emphasized the early and extensive use of cost-performance trades. In addition, the evolutionary acquisition strategy planned for JSF will result in three successively more capable blocks of aircraft, each of which will be tested against JORD requirements before production.
The JSF is expected to have significantly improved interoperability and C4ISR capabilities, as well as a very highly evolved set of sensors, all of which will be highly integrated with the avionics systems. These systems will provide the JSF with some of its most distinctive and important operational capabilities. Adequately testing these advanced capabilities at an operational mission level will be a challenge to the test program.
The JSF will employ some new technologies, and these must be identified early in the program so that they can be monitored during the test program. As one example, the method of providing vertical thrust to the STOVL variant will be a significant advance over the current operational systems and thus carries a corresponding risk, and extra attention should be given to this sub-system. Another area that should be given extra attention is the performance and maintenance requirements of the Low Observables (LOs) and other classified capabilities on the JSF, particularly in the shipboard environment. Current LO systems have experienced difficulty after being fielded, and the JSF test program should endeavor to identify these during early testing so that any required corrections can be completed prior to fielding the system.
Due to the expected high degree of commonality of the three variants, a single integrated test program is planned, which should save both time and money during the test program. During SDD, an integrated test team will perform all developmental testing and OTAs will conduct operational assessments and dedicated OT&E. The OTAs for JSF, AFOTEC and COMOPTEVFOR, with participation by the United Kingdom's Air Warfare Centre, are conducting an EOA that will support the Preliminary Design Review of the Lockheed Martin preferred weapon system concept in 2003.
During SDD, ground test and flight test aircraft will be built representing all three variants, and will be augmented by full-mission simulators and flying avionics testbed aircraft. The OTAs and DOT&E will continue as active participants in the Combined Test Working Group throughout SDD; and the OTAs as members of the JSF Integrated Test Force, will independently plan, conduct, and report a series of OAs. OTA activity will culminate with the conduct of dedicated OT&E in the FY10 timeframe in support of a full-rate production decision.
Although economy of testing is expected, the JSF is expected to perform many different missions, and the way each service carries out these missions sometimes have subtle but important differences that must be taken into account in OT&E planning. Adequately exploring this range of missions will be another challenge for the JSF test team.
Modeling and simulation is expected to play a large role in the operational evaluation of the JSF. For example, the JSF plans on supplying the Strike Warfare Collaborative Environment (SWCE) as Government Furnished Equipment, while the contractor will provide digital product descriptions (DPDs) of the JSF that will operate within the SWCE. These efforts will provide new opportunities for integrating M&S with flight testing, but they will also raise new issues.
The planning and conduct of SDD include ample opportunities for the conduct of OAs leading up to dedicated OT&E. As the program matures, it will be essential to define specific accomplishments/ characteristics that each of the operational test periods can confirm consistent with the event-driven acquisition strategy required by DoD Regulation 5000.2-R and adopted by JSF. The current planning for dedicated OT&E includes 14 LRIP flight test aircraft in block two plus several ground test articles. While this quantity of aircraft is adequate for the conduct of a thorough operational test, it is not too many since three different aircraft configurations must be tested in the accomplishment of a variety of missions. In block three, six additional jets, two of each variant, will be added to allow for additional operational test requirements.
While survivability has two primary components, threat avoidance and damage tolerance, the JSF focused early on defining its susceptibility requirements (threat avoidance) in terms of radar and infrared signature levels. The program has identified engagement probabilities of kill given a hit (damage tolerance) to establish vulnerability and reparability requirements. The engine IBR ballistic tests indicated that the rotors could tolerate the damage inflicted by the threats tested. The overall effect of the damaged first-stage and second-stage IBR on overall engine performance is still being analyzed.
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