Long has the F-35 been coming to the forefront.
The US government has waited to see the white of Lockheed eyes before moving
forward with a robust allotment of F-35 block buys. It needed milestones,
political will, and good news before the onslaught of block buys for the F-35
program could head-up its steam. Sometimes Lockheed would build the F-35 on its
dime and then milk the US Government with installment payments before a Block
buy was completed. When a block buy was approved like Low Rate Initial Production
9 (LRIP 9) much of the work was already an item on Lockheed's production floor,
thus avoiding expensive restarts of the production when funding had yet not
been approved.
Fig.
1 F-35 Block Buys in Units and types
A second strategy evolved having a massive
block buy effort for saving cost on the program when using an old school thinking of... “economy
of scale’. The more ordered, the price drops as Lockheed can now expand its
production and buy parts and assemblies in mass quantity. Lockheed could rely on its suppliers to drop
supply prices for services rendered in a large scale.
Analysis
of the table above in Figure 1 represents a recent signing of Lot 10 for 90 F-35's
for Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP). When will that end and go to Full
Rate Production (FRP)? It is hard to say however, lot 10-14 has been classified
as a LRIP status for the time being. Lockheed is building production space over
the next two years. The testing phase awaits 3F and 4F coding validation
before allowing Lockheed a ramp up the F-35 program to FRP. The block 12-14 contract anticipates
Lockheed moving forward.
Breaking
down the numbers and time is a guess and here is my best guess. Lot 10 building
starts in 2017 going forward to sometime in 2018. Lot 11 is not yet a signed
contract as it should take a greater part of 2017 to sign it. Lots 12-14 is
the granddaddy of all contracts to date. This is the real costs reduction
negotiation where President Trump will involve himself during this period. It
is different because it is not a lot-by-lot contract process, but an all-in-one
for the three lots having a fixed price of about 85 million per aircraft cost (without
engines), I would think. It is a contracting for 410 units of the F-35 through this three lots buying strategy for the US military and its partnered nations around the world.
The
time line for all this production becomes a mystery but an educated guess based
on blocks buys that tend to follow a rule of a year's production equals one
lot. Using that as a thumbnail sketch Lot 10 should be completed during 2018
and then Lot 11 and so forth. Listed above is five lots thus five years of
production with concurrent testing using software 3F and 4F. By the end
of the fifth year there should be 629 of the F-35’s delivered to the US and its
partnered nations starting from lot 10 going forward. By 2022 the US could have about 600
F-35's in its service. Some of which remain as testing aircraft but a great
majority combat ready fighters.
It
will have taken from 2011 to 2022 to get to a point where the F-35 will have
taken its right full place as a feared fighter. By then the pilots are still
discovering new ways of using the F-35 capabilities as pilots learning becomes a
works in progress during the next 40-50 years.
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