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F-35 "relationship therapy" showing signs of success

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posted on Sep, 23 2013 @ 12:12 PM
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A year ago, Gen. Christopher Bogdan, the now head of the F-35 program "threw a hand grenade into the room" and famously called out Lockheed Martin. He said that the relationship between Lockheed and the Joint Program Office "the worst he has ever seen". Since then, the JPO and Lockheed have made some quite significant changes to the program, and the relationship is showing major signs of changes.

One of the big changes is the LRIP 6/7 negotiations. LRIP 5 took almost a year, and there was a lot of public animosity between the government and LM. LRIP 6/7 took less than half that time, and Lockheed has assumed all responsibility for airframe cost overruns. That was something that Gen. Bogdan was adamant about. This is also the first time that the F-35A has cost under $100M a copy.

Another major change is Lockheed creating a "Cost War Room". Lockheed has offered space in it's Crystal City Fighter Development Center for CEOs of all the top contractors to house people to work on bringing costs down wherever possible. The Cost War Room is going to develop a life cycle cost for each customer based on their individual policies and procedures, instead of just one lump cost. Both the Virginia submarine and Typhoon programs used a similar program, and were able to bring costs down successfully.

Looks like someone is finally getting things right with the F-35 program. Too bad it's taken so long, but at least it's finally happening.


USAF Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, F-35 PEO and survivor of the Air Force's KC-46 competition (he led that effort), once again had the audience rapt at the annual Air Force Association conference this week. He's known for plain speak and for holding ccontractors and stakeholders in major programs to their word. And, if they don't keep their word, he's known for calling them out.


“I threw a hand grenade into the crowd, and that was intentional," Bogdan said of his appearance last year at this event. See Av Week's article on his presentation last year here. He famously called out the F-35 team -- prime contractor Lockheed Martin in particular -- for a dysfunctional relationship with the Joint Program Office. "It is the worst I have ever seen," Bogdan said of the team's relationship.

At that time, he was the program deputy and Vice Adm. David Venlet was the outgoing director. The program was in the midst of contentious and protracted production contract talks. He ascended to Venlet's position later in the year.

His tone at this year's conference changed; it was a mix of pride in the changes (Lockheed's new leadership seems to be much more responsive to the government), righteousness (he did -- after all -- state the obvious last year and was the only program director to have the guts to do it) and ambition (he still wants things to get better).

Relationship therapy



posted on Sep, 24 2013 @ 03:12 AM
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reply to post by Zaphod58
 


Good news. Lower costs mean more buyers, which means the end result will be a better product and we will get our moneys worth. Wonder if this will help influence Canada in their decision making.



posted on Sep, 24 2013 @ 07:55 AM
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OccamsRazor04
reply to post by Zaphod58
 


Good news. Lower costs mean more buyers, which means the end result will be a better product and we will get our moneys worth. Wonder if this will help influence Canada in their decision making.


Sure hope so. The cost overruns could easily have killed the Cdn procurement.



posted on Sep, 24 2013 @ 09:58 AM
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reply to post by palg1
 


The biggest thing isn't so much the cost per unit coming down, as it's that they're going to customize the life cycle costs per customer now. Which is something they should have been doing from the get go.




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