WASHINGTON — A hiring wave, course of overhauls, and new instruments and gear have helped a U.S. Air Power base lower by greater than half the time it takes to restore and overhaul F-35 engines, from a mean 244 days to 106.
And the commander of the bottom’s Oklahoma Metropolis Air Logistics Advanced hopes that in two years, if it will get the required sources, Tinker Air Power Base will be capable to restore anyplace from 105 to 120 F135 energy modules per yr. That might be greater than double the 51 it dealt with in 2021, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey King mentioned in a Might 26 interview. The air logistics complicated is an enormous facility at Tinker — the biggest of three depots in Air Power Materiel Command — that maintains a wide range of plane and engines for the Air Power, together with the F135.
A shortage of working and out there F135 engines has plagued the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and more and more dragged down the jet’s mission-capable price.
The Authorities Accountability Workplace instructed Congress in April that, throughout the navy’s fleet, F-35s had been unable to fly as a result of a scarcity of spare elements for about 17% of the time in fiscal 2020 and monetary 2021. An absence of useful energy modules — the engine’s core, which accommodates key controls and parts that generate the thrust to propel the plane — was the highest purpose these F-35s weren’t mission succesful, the watchdog company mentioned.
Enhancing the capability of depots that carry out the heaviest upkeep on F135 engines is likely one of the key methods the navy is making an attempt to sort out that worsening scarcity. By far, Tinker AFB’s Heavy Upkeep Middle handles probably the most F135 upkeep work. The navy can also be making an attempt to scale back the quantity of needed work on engines, partly by extending how lengthy they’ll keep on a jet earlier than they should obtain upkeep.
“The discount of move days from 244 all the way down to … 106 [between the beginning of 2021 and today] was not accidentally, and it was not by simply lobbing off fats,” King instructed Protection News. “It was a deliberate, meticulous software of [process improvements]. We modified up how we inspected elements after they had been eliminated, we modified how we educated our personnel. We redesigned store flooring and redesigned store processes to eke every single day out of the manufacturing course of to go quicker.”
The F-35 Joint Program Workplace in fall 2020 put in place a plan to repair the engine’s sustainment troubles, specializing in enhancing depot capability and protecting engines on plane longer.
RELATED
Tinker additionally elevated the variety of energy modules it maintains every year, from 14 in 2020 to 51 in 2021. This yr, King mentioned, it’s more likely to flip round greater than 70, beating its objective of 60. And subsequent yr he hopes the depot will be capable to end about 90, paving the best way for it to hit between 105 and 120 in 2024.
Jennifer Latka, vice chairman for the F135 program at Pratt & Whitney, which makes the engines, mentioned in a Might 18 interview that the navy’s funding in depots obtained a gradual begin as a result of the F-35′s engines carried out properly initially. However that meant when the engines began having issues, the depot capability wasn’t there to deal with them, she mentioned.
Over the past two years, she defined, the navy and the corporate centered on enhancing depots’ skill to keep up extra engines. And this yr, she added, all websites sustaining F135s — together with Tinker, Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland, Edwards Air Power Base in California and worldwide websites — are anticipated to beat their mixed goal of 122 engines, way over the 76 all websites maintained final yr.
‘Methods of the commerce’
In early 2021, Tinker personnel, the F-35 Joint Program Workplace and Pratt & Whitney started mapping out processes used to keep up engines, mentioned Bobby Hager, director of the 544th Propulsion Upkeep Squadron at Tinker. On the similar time, they saved a watch out for bottlenecks that led to further work, or in any other case hindered how briskly the middle might flip round engines.
Base personnel discovered a number of constraints, she mentioned, together with sluggish coaching for mechanics. In addition they realized a number of varieties of gear essential to disassemble and reassemble engines weren’t out there on the store flooring, Hager added.
“We realized that, as we get deeper and deeper into the upkeep of this engine, there have been sure important items of tooling that we both didn’t have out there or didn’t have expertise with, simply because we’ve by no means used it earlier than,” mentioned Lam Dinh, the F135 propulsion flight commander within the 544th. “A few of these [assembly] toolings had been new to us, as we had been studying how this engine goes collectively or comes aside.”
The dearth of kit and of correct specialised coaching was felt most acutely throughout heavier work, King mentioned.
The middle is working to get extra of the correct of kit into mechanics’ fingers, Hager mentioned. However within the meantime, officers are reorganizing processes so work is carried out at totally different instances, when a few of that gear is out there.
King mentioned Tinker mechanics have traveled to Pratt & Whitney websites, together with in Middletown, Connecticut, the place the engines are constructed, to “be taught methods of the commerce.” These visits helped Tinker personnel choose up delicate methods that quicken and enhance the meeting course of, he added, and they’re now cataloguing these classes to share with a brand new F135 upkeep heart set to open at Naval Air Station Jacksonville in Florida.
Latka mentioned the Jacksonville web site will deal with a comparable variety of engines to Tinker when it comes on-line in a couple of years.
As Tinker personnel work on engines, they’re additionally changing older turbine blades with contemporary blades that includes a brand new coating that higher resists degradation from salt and sand. This turned a problem within the Center East and through deployments at sea.
Latka mentioned about 35% of the F-35 fleet now has blades with the brand new coating, up from roughly 25% final October. Your entire fleet ought to have the contemporary coating by 2030, she added, if not sooner.
Quicker responses, extra hires
Two years in the past, when Tinker wanted Pratt & Whitney to clear up an engineering or course of query, King mentioned it might take as much as two weeks to get a solution. Now, he mentioned, the corporate tends to reply complicated questions in two days, if not in minutes — if the precise engineer is on the store flooring.
And that was one other concern altogether.
Tinker confronted a problem when it first began engaged on F135 engines in 2015, Dinh defined: It had skilled mechanics engaged on plane engines, however none on that particular mission, and nearly no outdoors specialists it might rent.
And so the bottom turned its consideration to coaching its mechanics on the engine in as brief a time as doable by “micro-gating” — an strategy that breaks down a course of into a number of smaller duties with a view to higher practice mechanics on every particular person step. This meant mechanics would repeatedly carry out the steps till they might excel at them, Dinh mentioned.
Dinh mentioned this was higher than making an attempt to show mechanics “to soak every little thing in suddenly, and on the finish of the day, get nothing out of it.”
King agreed it was advantageous. “That depth led to proficiency, which led to pace and high quality.”
Tinker has additionally dramatically elevated the variety of mechanics engaged on F135s — and has plans to herald extra.
Dinh mentioned that when he began engaged on this system across the starting of 2017, there have been about 17 different mechanics engaged on F135s there. As of a few yr and a half in the past, that workforce had grown to 79 over a single shift.
With 103 mechanics now centered on the F135, Tinker added a restricted second shift and expanded the variety of energy modules it might work on concurrently from 9 to 21. All however three of these mechanics are civilians, which offers extra continuity since they don’t get transferred each few years, King mentioned.
Tinker plans to rent a number of dozen extra mechanics over the subsequent few years so the bottom can work on 30 energy modules without delay, King added. Funding, gear and instruments are additionally on the best way to permit the bottom to deal with these further engines, he mentioned — basically doubling the scale of the present store.
King mentioned plans are into consideration to develop Tinker’s functionality to keep up 40 engines without delay, although that effort hasn’t acquired funding.
And in 2024, Tinker expects to start conducting preventative engine upkeep scheduled prematurely at full scale, with a few handful of scheduled engine removals deliberate for 2023. At present, solely unscheduled engine removals — that’s, repairs that have to be carried out when issues come up — are carried out on F135s, King famous.
However above all, King defined, Tinker will maintain searching for methods to convey down the price of sustaining F-35 engines. Pratt and Whitney mentioned it’s discovered methods to chop the price of the F135′s first scheduled upkeep go to by about 40%, which it mentioned would save greater than $14 billion over the lifetime of this system. These cost-saving methods embody extending the lifetime of elements till their subsequent upkeep cycles and discovering new methods to restore engine parts that keep away from changing elements with new spares.
“Now that we’ve gone from a pediatric to an adolescent engine, price management is exceptionally essential, particularly as we subject extra F-35s and put extra F135 engines into the sector,” King mentioned. “We’ve obtained to go quicker, the standard wants to remain excessive. However we’ve obtained to do it cheaper.”
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter at Protection News. He beforehand reported for Navy.com, overlaying the Pentagon, particular operations and air warfare. Earlier than that, he coated U.S. Air Power management, personnel and operations for Air Power Instances.
