Defence gives an average price of less than $126 million for Australia’s 72 F-35s when fully delivered. But the Australian Strategy Policy Institute estimates the sustainment costs to be triple those of the F-18 fighters it replaces.
In August last year, Australia’s defence minister Linda Reynolds praised a computerised system that has a crucial role in the operation of Australia’s new F-35 fighter planes. Senator Reynolds described the system as “a cost-effective solution for key aspects of Australia’s F-35 maintenance management”. Once again, Defence was guilty of wishful thinking. In reality, the system called ALIS (Autonomic Logistics Information System) was far from cost-effective.
In contrast to Senator Reynolds, Heather Wilson, the secretary of the US Air Force in February 2019 recognised that ALIS was a costly failure. She said, “I can guarantee that no Air Force maintainer will ever name their daughter Alice.” In January this year, the Pentagon announced it would scrap ALIS because it was causing operational delays of 45,000 hours a year.
Apart from maintenance and logistics, the system is used for mission planning and numerous other purposes. Although billions had been spent on developing ALIS, a US Government Accountability Office report to Congress in July said that its information was so unreliable, or missing, that crews couldn’t know if a plane was safe to fly. Astonishingly, an earlier GAO report said the system’s data could not be backed up.
A replacement system called ODIN (Operational Data Integrated Network) is now being developed by the F-35’s manufacturer Lockheed Martin which was responsible for designing ALIS in the first place. The GAO said Pentagon officials had trouble contributing to ODIN’s development because Lockheed Martin refused to share key information such as computer source code which it guards as its own intellectual property.
The new system is also likely to suffer costly faults. A report by the Congressional Research Service in May quoted a former F-35 program manager General Christopher Bodgan as saying, “Complexity of the software worries us the most … Software development is always really, really tricky.”
The F-35’s cost effectiveness also suffers from a poor record in meeting targets for how often the planes are “fully mission capable”. GAO figures for the US fiscal year ending in September 2019 show the overall F-35 fleet was only fully mission capable for 31.6 per cent of the time. The minimum war fighting target is 60-65 per cent.
Whether the figures improve for Australia’s standard F-35A model in future years will depend on difficulties in integrating ODIN before ALIS is fully replaced. When the F-35 was conceived in the 1990s, it was promoted as a “cheap truck” for delivering bombs. A trucking firm would not tolerate having two-thirds of its fleet unavailable.
Although Defence had not finished assessing the contending planes, the then prime minister John Howard chose the F-35 in 2001 when it was only a paper plane. With an inflation adjusted cost of $US400 billion for a planned US order of 2400 planes, the F-35 is the most expensive weapons program ever.
Although the unit production costs are coming down, the ongoing sustainment costs of maintenance and support are the killer. The Pentagon’s Cost Assessment Office now estimates that its life cycle operating and sustainment costs will be $US1.2 trillion – a figure it described as “unaffordable”.
Defence gives an average price of less than $126 million for Australia’s 72 F-35s when fully delivered. But the Australian Strategy Policy Institute estimates the sustainment costs to be triple those of the F-18 fighters it replaces.
The sustainment problems are so bad that there’s a serious prospect the US will keep cutting the total number of planes purchased, adding to unit costs. The US Air Force recently ordered some F-15EX fighters which have much lower maintenance costs. It can also go faster, higher, further and carry bigger weapons payloads than the F-35.
These features would have significant advantages for Australia. However, the F-35 has some more advanced attractions, in particular, its stealth capability. But the plane can be detected by over-the-horizon radars and others that operate on different frequencies to those that suit stealth. Unfortunately, stealth disappears if the F-35 carries weapons or fuel tanks on wing pylons rather than inside the plane.
This article was first published in the Canberra Times on September 1, 2020.
Brian Toohey is author of Secret: The Making of Australia’s Security State.
Comments
10 responses to “Problems with new F-35 fighter planes shouldn’t fly under the radar (Canberra Times Sep 1, 2020)”
The F-35 fighter bomber was rejected by independent military persons as inadequate for the proposed uses due to inadequate fighting capabilities yet the politicians overruled this expert advice and proceeded to purchase a third rate plane to keep the US arms manufacturers in the manner to which they wished to remain.
Our Defence purchasing policies and procedures are simply horrifying. I am still trying to come to terms with our forthcoming massive expenditure on submarines their shortcomings, and now learn of the problems of the F-35 fighter bomber – and all of the interdependency with the US government and its arms manufacturing industry that this entails.
These enormous expenditures and the directions they point our country to are made without any consideration by the general public. We must have a much better and open system.
John,
Public input will lead to nothing. These projects are so complex that only a few really understand them.
I think the only way to improve this is a much more detailed assessment, specifically without the “input” of the weapons manufacturers, who’s assistance is by definition aimed at selling their product, probably regardless of its inherent merit for the buyer. Although this would also impede full understanding.
But possibly more important is a much more independent review of whether we need attack aircraft at all. Australia barely has an independent view from the Americans and possibly the French as many of our ministers and senior public officers have little compunction to move from their government position straight into the positions offered by their weapons contractors. Ethics don’t count for much and the absence of an federal ICAC certainly doesn’t help.
Ah, Hans, spoken like a real senior Minister. I can almost hear the Defence Minister explain that his government will continue to spend six and a half percent of the national budget on defence (about the same as education expenditure) with no public consideration or input because it is far too complex for us subjects to understand or query. Or was your comment a proposed “Yes Minister” script?
And I thought it was so obvious which one it is.
What underlay Howard’s captains pick of the F35? What inducements, what promised favours?
Well it’s Lockheed Martin; and I understand the buy goes back to Labor decision-making. Beazley is of course Godfather to the weapons industry arrangements we have now and Beazley was chair of Lockheed Australia during that period. The Weapons industry run the ministers. Yes Minister.
And sustainment and new sales are everything. We at Wage Peace have set up a database with an over view of projects. The money is in sustainment. It’s long term and it is always increasing. …like your car. And it’s hundreds of billions for nothingness. Join Wage Peace. And think about actions against the weapons companies themselves. We are gathering targets for options. There are no solutions in the government arena. That is a fantasy of your pasts which is got us to this point today. you have been the guardians of that system. You should now be taking the risks as old people.
Modern Russian missiles systems and more importantly the radar that supports those systems will make short work of that fighter a very costly ball of fire!
The very concept of manned fighting machines is anachronistic in the extreme.
Just as we were prepared for the Japanese invasion by equipping most of our soldiers with rifles of WW1 design and build, our military ‘leaders’ are still thinking in terms more suited to the limited conflicts which have been notoriously unsuccessfully executed since WW2.
Creative imagination is not a quality beloved of Military “planners”.
But using workers to fight their wars is very much on the agenda!