Jane Edwards
Executives from Lockheed Martin and Boeing have discussed how their companies could help the Defense Department increase readiness of fighter jets, Defense News reported Wednesday.
Defense Secretary James Mattis issued in October a memo that directs the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy to boost the mission capability rate to up to 80 percent of F-35, F-22, F-16 and F-18 aircraft.
Bruce Litchfield, vice president of sustainment at Lockheed’s aeronautics business, said he believes the adoption of a conditions-based maintenance approach that uses algorithms in data analysis would benefit the services’ F-35, F-22 and F-16 jets.
“We can start looking at data feeds from the jet,†Litchfield told the publication.
“We can start looking at probabilistic modeling of when things fail and inspections that are due and when preventative maintenance happens, and then bundle those so they have the least amount of downtime on the aircraft.â€
Dan Gillian, F/A-18 program manager at Boeing, told Defense News the company has implemented new measures to help the Navy build up sustainment work on F/A-18s such as deploying more field service representatives to provide aircraft sustainment support.
He said that Boeing has started to establish an “integrated demand†framework that seeks to provide suppliers a stable projection of the demand for parts by taking into account the defense contractor’s life-extension and production lines.
