Ellen M. Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, conducts a news conference in the Pentagon briefing room, October 29, 2019.
Transcript
Morning, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. This morning, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, Miss Ellen Lord, and F-35 Program Executive Officer, Lieutenant General Eric Fick, will provide an F-35 Program update, and additional detail on the U.S. Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin agreement, regarding the production and delivery of F-35 Lots 12 to 14. Miss Lord just gave an acquisition update earlier this month, so please keep questions limited to the F-35. They will both have opening statements, and then we will take your questions. We do have a hard stop at 9:05, so please be respectful with your questions so everyone will have a chance. Ma’am, over to you.
Thank you, Mike, good morning ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate you being here. As I have consistently said, the F-35 Program remains one of my top Acquisition and Sustainment priorities. Earlier this month, at our last press briefing, I made a commitment to come back to you when we were ready to announce the next F-35 contract, so here we are. As the F-35 Program Milestone Authority, alongside Lieutenant General Eric Fick, the F-35 Program Executive Officer, we’re here to announce that the U.S. Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin have made tremendous progress and now have an agreement regarding the Lot 12 through 14 production contract. This is an historic milestone for the F-35 Enterprise, as the F-35 is our largest Tac Air investment and will form the backbone of the U.S. and allied 5th Generation inventory for the foreseeable future. ANS and the Joint Program Office are laser-focused on driving cost out, quality up, and achieving timely deliveries of our capability to our war fighters. With respect to on-time delivery, we have exceeded the total aircraft quantity we delivered to the war fighter last year, and we have a 96% on-time delivery rate, a tremendous improvement from where we were last year with an average on-time delivery rate of 64%. On quality, while we have made progress, there are still significant opportunities for improvement and we continue to communicate specific concerns to Lockheed based on the data we collect. The $34 billion agreement for F-35 Low-Rate Initial Production Lots 12 through 14, includes the delivery of 478 F-35 aircraft, 149 for Lot 12, 160 for Lot 13, and 169 for Lot 14. In support of our U.S. Military Services, our partner nations, and our foreign military sales customers. This agreement represents our continued commitment to reduce F-35 cost aggressively, incentivize industry to meet required performance, and deliver advanced capabilities to our war fighters at the best value to taxpayers. There are several notable achievements that this contract represents. First, this is the first time the F-35 Joint Program Office will award a significant F-35 aircraft procurement in the same fiscal year as the Congressional Appropriation year. Second, we will reach a Unit Recurring Flyaway, URF, cost per aircraft target of $80 million, for U.S. Air Force F-35A price by Lot 13, which is one Lot earlier than planned, a significant milestone for the Department. The F-35 Enterprise will continue to save in the Lot 12 through 14 contract award. For example, in Lot 14, the F-35A unit cost represents an estimated overall 12.8% reduction from LRIP 11 cost for the Conventional Landing Variant. The F-35B unit cost represents an overall 12.3% reduction from Lot 11 cost, for the Short Takeoff and Landing Variant. The F-35C unit cost represents an overall 13.2% reduction from Lot 11 costs for the Carrier Variant in Lot 11. With an average of 12.7% savings across all three Variants from Lot 11 to 14. These represent some of the largest achieved savings Lot over Lot for the Program. This contract will allow U.S. men and women in uniform, alongside our F-35 partners, to maintain a competitive advantage with its unique, unmatched 5th Generation capabilities. Understandably, there will be questions today on the Program deviation I told you about earlier this month that is due to delays in integrating the F-35 into the Joint Simulation Environment Test Infrastructure. Lieutenant General Fick will provide more detail on that shortly. I want to reiterate that I have full faith and confidence in the F-35 Program, and our ability to deliver F-35 combat capability anywhere in the world. Make no mistake, the F-35 is the world’s most advanced, lethal, and inner-operable aircraft ever developed. I want to thank Congress for their continued support of this vital Program. I regularly meet with members and professional staff to provide updates and answer questions, so their leadership is greatly appreciated. As the F-35 fleet continues to grow, we’re also growing our sustainment capabilities to ensure these aircraft are ready and capable. Due to the efforts across the F-35 Enterprise, led by Lieutenant General Fick, DoD combat coded operational unit mission capability performance increased from 55% in October 2018 to 73% in September 2019. While we are making progress, we are not where we need to be. We have industry’s commitment on accelerating improvements in sustainment. Our focus is on improved F-35 fleet readiness and driving towards the service affordability goals. To that end, we are placing particular focus on accelerating our depo repair capability, accelerating fleet modifications, and improving Autonomic Logistics Information System, better known as ALIS, functionality and responsiveness. As of last month, over 440 aircraft have been delivered at 17 bases worldwide, with over 850 pilots and 8,200 Maintainers. On Turkey and the F-35, there has been no change to return Turkey to the F-35 Program. The S-400 Air-Defense System, which is incompatible with the F-35 remains in Turkey. As I said previously, Turkey makes nearly 1,000 parts for the F-35 and will continue to do so until Turkey’s F-35 supply chain responsibilities transfer at the end of March 2020. Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney are responsible for that supply chain, so I’ll defer any questions to them. In closing, I want to reiterate how regrettable it is that we are again under a Continuing Resolution. CRs cause great damage to our military readiness and disrupt our ability to modernize our strategic forces, including nuclear for the future. I strongly urge Congress to pass a Defense Appropriations and Authorization Bill now so that we can forward, we can move forward with the many important programs needed to ensure our readiness and deter our adversaries. We at DoD are grateful for our Congress passing a two-year budget agreement that provides the budgetary certainty the Department needs to implement the National Defense Strategy. With that, I’ll let Lieutenant General Fick make his statement and then I’ll be happy to answer questions.
Thank you, Miss Lord, and thank you ladies and gentlemen for your interest in the F-35 Program. The agreement we announced yesterday is a significant one for the Program in a number of ways, not the least of which are its size and overall value. 478 aircraft and $34 billion. This total includes aircraft for all three U.S. Services, our international partners, and our four military sales customers, totalling 351 F-35As, 86 F-35Bs, and 41 F-35Cs. I am proud to be here today to represent the F-35 Enterprise and to share with you some of my thoughts on the state of the Program. Our initial development efforts are coming to a close as Initial Operational Test and Evaluation proceeds, but as you are all aware, as Miss Lord just mentioned, we have delayed our Milestone C in full-rate production decision until such time as the Joint Simulation Environment is available to support the Director of Operational Test and Evaluations assessment of the Program. We look forward to his thorough assessment and are working hard with the Naval Air Systems Command and Lockheed Martin to fully integrate the F-35 into this complex synthetic environment. This integration is not only critical to the completion of the IOT&E, but it will become increasingly important to future modernization efforts on the F-35. To that end, while the Program has reached initial operational capability for all three U.S. Services, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, and Israel, and is about to do so again in Norway, we understand the need to continue its modernization to ensure it stays relevant over time. Our mandate to deliver the next increment of capabilities to the Program, known as Block 4, on a very tight timeline, drove us to look at modernizing the air system in a new way. A way strongly influenced by agile developmental methodologies standard in industry today. The continuous capability development and delivery model was born of this need, and to date, we have fielded four software releases using this methodology. These releases have focused primarily on the correction of minor deficiencies, but have also resulted in the delivery of new capabilities, most notably the life-saving capability adherent in the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System. Through close work with the Operational Requirements and Test communities, the C2D2 process will mature and continue to deliver increments of capability over time to ensure our war fighting customers stay ahead of the threat well into the future. Miss Lord captured well the status of yesterday’s production award, including the significant savings we’ve realized for our war fighters and taxpayers. My Joint Program Office and Greg Ulmer’s Lockheed Martin negotiating teams worked tirelessly on this deal, and I’m very proud of the work they’ve done under excruciating pressure. With this award, we see from a production perspective the most dramatic rate increases in the production line are now behind us. Lot 12’s 149 aircraft represent only a 6% increase over Lot 11’s quantity of 141, and the deltas for Lot 14 and Lot 13 are similar. You will recall that the Lot 11 quantity was a full 50% higher than Lot 10, which was itself 65% greater than Lot 9. This dramatic production rate increase has proven to be challenging for the supply chain, but the comparatively minor quantity changes across Lots 12 through 14 should give it some breathing room as we move forward. This stabilization will help with the timely delivery of parts to the production line, and spares in repairs to the field. Speaking of the field, our Hybrid Product Support Integrator Team has reached full operational capability, and is currently sustaining a fleet of more than 440 aircraft in eight nations around the world, including the U.S., Norway, Israel, Italy, the U.K., Australia, Korea, and Japan, and operating around the world both ashore and afloat. The Netherlands will join this elite group soon with their first aircraft arrival ceremony happening here later this week. From a sustainment performance perspective, I’ll note that while we fell short of the Secretary of Defense’s 80% mission capability mandate, we have definitely moved and continue to move the needle, increasing, as Miss Lord mentioned, the mission capability rate from our operational fleet from 55% in October of 2018 to 73% in September of 2019. Within that same timeframe, 70 deployed units saw sustained MC and FMC, that’s Mission Capable, and Full Mission Capable, levels well above 80% and even into the 90s. Are we finished? No. Are we making progress? Absolutely. Much, but not all of that progress is due to the actions implemented as a result of the publication and the execution of a new lifecycle sustainment plan in early 2019. Unlike many other plans like it that tend to be forgotten as soon as they’re signed, this one is actually executable, driving deliberate and near-term actions across 10 different lines of effort, including accelerating fleet modifications, accelerating maintenance plan changes to the field, accelerating supply chain capability and organic depo repair capacity, and enhancing our reliability and maintainability improvement plan. All of those actions are ongoing today. On top of these actions, I need to acknowledge also, that much of this progress is also attributable to the significant work of our airmen, marines, and sailors operating and sustaining this impressive air system in the field today. They are doing what airmen, marines, and sailors do, they make things work, and for that, we are extremely grateful. We will continue to work closely with them to realize the full war fighting potential of the F-35. We are at a strategic inflection point now in the Program, moving from initial development and fielding, to modernization, high-rate production, and global fleet sustainment. As we partner with Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney to deliver cost-effective, war winning capabilities, we’re changing our contractual relationships with these industry partners as well. Our contracts today are transitioning away from ones that feature purely cost-focused incentives, and now feature incentive structures that for our development contracts, motivate that transition to agile and able processes I mentioned previously. Our production contracts including this Lot 12 through 14 contract, features supplier incentive fees, and performance incentive fees that drive cost reduction at the supplier level, and improve production line velocity. And our sustainment contracts incentivize mission capability rates and supplier metrics that ensure our war fighters have the system they need when they need it. We continue to look for ways to improve these business relationships including, potential multiple-year and multi-year contracts for production and Performance-Based Logistics, or PBL contracts for sustainment. In fact, we are working today with Lockheed Martin to define the parameters of a sustainment PBL that meet our war fighters’ operational demands, our taxpayers’ best value demands, and our Enterprise’s demands for greater organic involvement in F-35 sustainment. In closing, let me reiterate that I’m proud to be with Miss Lord here today, to represent the men and women of the F-35 Enterprise, I’m excited to be your Program Executive Officer, and I’m looking forward to your questions, thank you.
We’re gonna start here with Tony.
I just wanna, for both of you, couple weeks ago, you announced that there was gonna be delay in full-rate production decision, so someone that involved in the F-35 Program is gonna ask, why is the Pentagon putting on a contract for 478 more planes, when they’re delaying what they call full-rate production, while the combat testing intended to approve whether it’s effective and suitable, hasn’t been finished yet, in more for maybe a year? So a layman’s question and for General Fick, just some figures here, yesterday was a $7 billion contract mod, was that the first triage of the $34 billion, or was that more like last November, when you put $6 billion on it along lead? And the Joint Simulation Environment, what’s the earliest you think it’ll be up and running?
So, first of all, the Department has full confidence in the planes that are flying today. The Air Force and the Marine Corp have both deployed squadrons and are very, very happy with the capability. The criteria in terms of getting out of IOT&E, is to test against threats that we will see 10 years from now in the densities we would see 10 years from now. We can only do that in a synthetic environment, so we’ve completed over 90% of the testing, we are very confident in the configuration of the aircraft and we are just working on the nuances of working against these advanced threats. So, the public should be extremely comfortable with the aircraft that is out there today, the full-rate production decision basically codifies the final capability of the aircraft when we get through the testing, versus advanced threats.
[Tony] OK, sir?
So relative to your question on the $7 billion, so this is a part of a series of contract awards and obligations that have been made over the course of a number of years, in the execution of this effort, so if we look back to what was previously announced, we previously announced 255 aircraft, along with about $11 billion obligation for advanced procurement, economic ordered quantities, and work done previously on the Undefinitized Contract Action, or UCA, associated with the ongoing work for the U.S. and partners in Lots 12 and 13. The announcement yesterday added 114 aircraft to that total and added an obligation of about $7 billion for work to begin on those aircraft. In addition to that obligation, we also obligated an additional $10 billion or so, to Lockheed that was not included in the announcement because the announcement was already made, previously made for the initiation of those tales. So that second $10 billion really is for the completion of the initial work done on those 255 first aircraft.
[Tony] Can you total that up?
We are still left then with roughly 100 aircraft to go, and about, and another $7 billion to go, associated with the work to be done for U.S. Services, in accordance with the PB 20. So, we don’t have that budget yet, we can’t make that contract award for the final aircraft until such time as we have the statutory authority to do that.
[Tony] $27 billion roughly, of $34 has been obligated piecemeal over the last couple years,
You got it.
And $7 billion to go, OK.
So relative to the JSE, so the JSE is a synthetic, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the Program, the JSE is a synthetic environment that allows us to fully assess the capabilities of the F-35 against a wide range of air and surface threats, and operationally representative of threat densities that the Director of Operational Testing and Evaluation, in his role in assessing the Program, looks at the current threat as well as the threat 10 years into the future, and getting into an environment like the JSE is critical to our ability to assess the system against that future threat. The integration of the F-35 into the JSE, as was mentioned previously, is taking longer than anticipated. The validation of verification, early validation of verification runs for the JSE, will begin this Fall, I believe mid-November, I’m expecting those to begin, and then they’ll continue throughout the Spring. We believe they’ll be ready for test in the March, April timeframe, should conclude by June or July.
[Female] Hi, thanks for doing this. Could you please explain for the layperson, why a brand-new aircraft isn’t at a 80% mission capable rate or above that, since all the parts are new, just because when we’ve had this conversation before, it’s because of the cannibalization of parts with older aircraft.
Right, so let me give that a shot, then I’ll hand it over to Eric. Traditionally, we’re trying to get capability fielded and then we are building the sustainment tale behind that. Right now, as Eric mentioned, we have ramped up significantly throughout the integrated supply chain, and what we have found is we did not have the capacity in the throughput for a repair of repairables and spares, so we are lagging in some of those repair parts. We are particularly having issues in three areas, one is canopies, two is engine fuel, hydraulic tubes, and then wingtip lenses. So, those are the areas, the particular parts, that are holding us back. So, we believe we are making very good progress and moving forward.
You did really good. Ultimately, I would just, I’d amplify a little bit by saying, as a aircraft is fielded and parts fail, and parts ultimately do fail, you take them off and you replace them with another. In my prepared remarks, I talked a little bit about the rate of acceleration, the ramp that we’ve been through from a production perspective that affects, not just Lockheed and how they process aircraft through their production line, but all of the lower-tier vendors as well that are now producing the parts at dramatically increasing rates, and then they must also produce spares, even above those rates, right? And making that ramp not just from a production perspective, but from a purchase of spares perspective has been challenging. So one of our initiatives is to push additional spares to the field, putting additional spare purchases on contract so we can get those ready for the Maintainers to install them, but then also, to take action both within the existing supply chain, and to stand up organic depo capacity to repair the parts as they come off so that they’re available to the field to reinstall them on the aircraft. That’s been a huge part of this effort to drive higher mission capability rates, just making sure the Maintainers have the parts on the shelf when they’re needed.
[Host] Valerie?
I’ve got a couple kinda finicky numbers questions. So, if I heard you right, I think you said, Lot 12 has 149 aircraft in it, is that correct, and if so, I think the original number that was given when you guys did the handshake deal was 157 aircraft, so what’s the reason for that difference? Were those the Turkey aircraft? And then secondly, you’re saying that there’s an average 12.8% reduction for Lots 12 through 14 for all Variants, and again, in the handshake deal, it was said that there would be a drop of around 15% from Lot, sorry, Lot 11 to Lot 14 across all Variants. So, is that just a non apples-to-apples comparison, can you kind of put it in context for me?
Sure, I can’t address the 157 number right off the top of my head, so I’m gonna have to go back into time to figure out where that number came from and we’ll circle back to you on it. Relative to the discrepancy between the 12.8% and the roughly 15% reduction that you may have heard, the air vehicle reduction from Lot 11 through Lot 14, for the A models was 14.4%, for the B models 15.3%, and for the C models 14.6%. When we add in the engine, the reductions for the fraction of the overall Unit Recurring Flyaway cost that is attributable to the engine, reduced at a much lower rate. So the engine rates are only down on the order of 3% between Lot 11 and Lot 15, so when you sum those together, it brings the overall reduction in cost at the Unit Recurring Flyaway level, across airframe and engine, down to roughly 12 to 13%, that’s the difference.
[Host] John?
To Miss Lord. Dr. Roper at the Air Force is pursuing something called Digital Century Series, where he thinks that in five years, they could get an airplane of the next technological generation to outfit the Air Force. Could you explain for us how, at least for the Air Force and maybe for the other Services, the F-35 might be modified to accommodate Digital Century Series airplanes, and how that will also be squared against the F-15EX?
We are staying the course with the F-35. I will say, that Will Roper and the Air Force team are doing some very innovative and interesting things in terms of developing new fighter aircraft. We look at the total capability here versus the adversary and we find a place for the F-35, the F-15, and the new Century Series, so we continue to fight with what we have today, and focus on the future and optimize what we will have for our fleet in the future, but we are taking all of this in aggregate with a mission engineering approach, using all the assets we have.
So at this point, there’s no revision or rethinking of the 1763 for the Air Force?
[Ellen] No.
Yes, picking up with inside Defense, General Fick, I wondered if you could provide some more details on the technical issues that you’re working through with the Joint Simulation Environment? And then second, you mentioned the PBL for Sustainment. Lockheed has said that having some sort of PBL in place is crucial to achieving the $25 million cost per flying hour by 2025, is that your position as well, and do you now think that that goal is achievable? We’ve heard some mixed things from the Pentagon on that.
Sure, OK, so first relative to the JSE, I wouldn’t characterize that we have any specific technically challenging hurdle to overcome, but there are a lot of, just a lot of smaller hurdles to overcome. Ultimately, what we’re doing, is we’re taking a digital representation of the aircraft, right? And we’re integrating it into a synthetic representation of the threat space, right? To include ground threats, air threats, both blue and red weapons, environmental effects, all of those things, and we’re integrating them together so that the systems talk to one another digitally, and that’s just a very, very large task to get done. We got off to a slow start due to some disagreements with Lockheed Martin on how to proceed. You’ll recall that back in the early days of the Program, there was no JSE, there was BSIMM, which was a Lockheed Martin proprietary environment in which we were going to do that work. We elected about two PEOs ago, to pull that work out of that proprietary environment and put it into a U.S. government-owned facility in the JSE that will allow us to then integrate other aircraft, perhaps from other manufacturers, and do that system of systems work later, right? So that’s kinda the reason we went to the JSE. Again, there’s just simply a lot of work to be done and as we do that integration, and as we make progress, the system rolls more of those pieces into the fights, the fights get more complex, then you find more things relative to the interactions between all of those systems.
Did the Program Office underestimate how much work needed to be done?
I don’t know that we underestimated how much work to be done, but we struggled getting out of the gates, in particular, with our relationship with Lockheed and actually doing that work. So the relationship is very much better now, we’re working side-by-side with teams of embedded Lockheed coders and engineers sitting side-by-side with the NAVAIR folks at Pax River, doing that integration and I think they’re making decent progress.
So I have a little more time, so we’re gonna go Marcus, Nick, John, go ahead.
[Marcus] General, both of your predecessors have talked about the strained relationship with Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney over the years, I was hoping you could, get your thoughts on how you characterize the relationship now and where there might be areas for improvement.
So, I think at, between myself and Greg Ulmer, and I guess I would characterize between Mr. Geurts and Michelle Evans, and likely between Miss Lord and Marillyn Hewson, that the relationship is much improved. I have daily conversations and email exchanges at my level, I know that Mr. Geurts and Miss Evans talk regularly and as well as Miss Lord, well I’ll let you speak to your own relationship, but I have I think a very open and trusting relationship with my counterpart at Lockheed Martin. It is still a business and they’re still driven by business-focused goals, and we work through that balance of that every day working to find the balance between a taxpayer and war fighter, friendly solution that meets Lockheed’s business objectives. We need them to stay in business to continue building these aircraft, but we’re not doing it at any cost.
Guys, a quick followup on the canopies, are they just breaking? Are the canopies on the planes just cracking or breaking, or are they breaking at a higher rate than other aircraft?
The issue with canopies has to do with the loss of the coating that’s applied to the outside of the canopy, and we’re working to mitigate that with the prime contractor, Lockheed and their subsidy, KN and PPG.
[Host] Nick?
A picture from biggest news era, thanks for doing this. Undersecretary Lord, if I could go back to Turkey. Couple of questions, the S-400, what is the status of that deployment, has it been moved around, has it been turned on, and has Turkey slow-rolled or delayed the parts that you talked about, that it is still working on through March at all, and then just lastly, you’ve talked about the cost increase because of Turkey’s removal from the program in the past, does that cost increase, stay the same?
So, first of all, we enjoy very, very good mill-to-mill relationships with Turkey, and Turkey is an excellent supplier. At this point, I’m getting lost in some of your questions here, you were asking, remind me again?
S-400
Oh, S-400, we anticipate that being fully operational towards the end of the year.
Then you said excellent suppliers, so no delay in Turkey’s supplying,
No, Turkey has been very forthcoming, and again, we’re on the path to March 2020, to transition all of those parts out.
And cost increase, you’ve said it before, but is it,
Well we, we the U.S., because we took responsibility for the moving the parts out, absorbed about a $600 million bill for that. We are still working through any unit price adjustments, we think those will be relatively modest, but any adjustments that might take place due to those 900-plus parts moving.
[Host] John?
When will the delay in the 4-8 production decision actually start to affect production, and is it inevitable that that delay will delay production down the line? Or could you potentially,
I will issue documents before the Christmas holidays on our path forward with an APB and so forth, and we do not see this constraining production whatsoever.
[Male] Can I ask a clarification?
[Host] Hold on one second, go ahead.
Hi, Pat Hose from Jane’s, what role is OSD and the JPO playing in the development of the Air Force’s JSE, because Randall Walden made it sound like the Air Force isn’t doing a whole lot of talking with the Navy about lessons to learn from their JSE, and we all know how messed up the Navy’s JSE is.
Oh my, so one of the functions of OSD is to act as the corporate entity across all of the Services. So that’s the reason I have a technical staff working under Kevin Fahey as ASDA, and what we do is bring the Services together to make sure we pass along critical information. The main way I do that, is I meet biweekly with all three Service Acquisition Executives, and then the off-week, I meet with them individually. So, whereas Waldo might not be totally up to speed with everything going on in the Navy Joint Simulation Environment, I will tell you that members of Hondo Geurts’ team as well as Will Roper’s team, are very involved in that. As you know, we have both Air Force and Navy billets in the Joint Program Office, and we do cycle people in and out, we also have Integration Offices. So, one of the reasons OSD exists, is to make sure we have that cross-pollination, if you will.
[Host] We’re gonna let the last one right here, Mike.
Thanks, can I just get an update from you guys on this new pricing and how you expect it to drive international demand, if you could run through the list of folks that are solid in the international new interest bucket, and then maybe a little bit further afield, in terms of competitions that you might be eyeing?
So, let me just say, there is no significant change in pricing here that I think would drive any decisions one way or the other, we have quite a few active discussions on FMS cases.
We do, we have active discussions ongoing with a number of FMS customers, we’ve talked to Poland and Singapore, among others, who are interested in pursuing the F-35. That overall list is about 10 different countries, I won’t rattle them all off now, but I think you could look to anyone flying a U.S. MDS today and think of them as potential customers for the F-35 off into the future.
Ma’am, we’re gonna go ahead and stop there, do you have any closing remarks?
Just wanna thank you all for coming today, and you will see a renewed focus on sustainment over the next 12 months out of my office, working with the JPO. We are taking a very data-driven approach towards a potential PBL with Lockheed Martin, so we are working hard at understanding where the operational availability, the mission capability, and where the cost per flight hour are being driven, and making sure we come up with a win-win situation for both the war fighter as well as the taxpayer, thank you.
[Tony] Can I get clarification on the thousand parts, Miss Lord, are those thousand individual parts, or a thousand part types?
Individual parts.
OK, thank you ladies and gentlemen.
[Male] General, do you have a minute to finish your thought with me?
My only thought was that I would not characterize the JSE as all messed up. There’s work to be done, I would not characterize it as messed up.
[Male] What are the lessons learned, what are you doing differently?