You Can Track Your F-35s, At ALIS’ Maintenance Hub

Keeping track of…

For the last 50 years, newer fighters have been sold as requiring less maintenance than their predecessors, due to technical advances. As people like Chuck Spinney and the Congressional Research Service have documented, the reverse has been true.

That decades-long defense death spiral has finally reached a point where it’s prompting musings about the collapse of American TacAir, and European countries with their small and dwindling defense budgets are also strongly affected. If the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter was to have any hope of becoming a commercial and operational success, it needed to change that operating cost dynamic. To do that, Lockheed Martin, BAE, and the international JSF team have turned to embedded HUMS (Health & Usage Monitoring System) diagnostics. Even that probably won’t be enough, absent integration with the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) – which an IEEE paper has described as “perhaps the most advanced and comprehensive set of diagnostic, prognostic, and health management capabilities yet to be applied to an aviation platform.”

Spain Announces Procurement Revival But Reportedly Faces Poor Jet Readiness

• After years of belt-tightening by postponing procurement programs, Spain’s Defense State Secretary and former Boeing executive Pedro Argüelles announced a €10B investment plan that includes F-110 frigates and 8×8 infantry vehicles, writes La Semana [in Spanish]. Spain’s economy is starting to recover from a deep-seated post-bubble crisis, but that comes at the cost of painful adjustments [The Telegraph].

• A Spanish news website reports that according to anonymous sources within the Spanish Air Force, only 6 of its 39 Eurofighters are fully ready to fly. This will bring Schadenfreude to their German peers facing similar issues. El Confidencial Digital [in Spanish] | The Local.