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Development of an upgraded software capability for the F-35 fighter aircraft is maturing but more slowly than expected and while Lockheed Martin is still aiming to deliver the third Technology Refresh (TR-3) by June, it is more likely customer acceptance will slip into the third quarter of this year, Jim Taiclet, the company’s chairman, president and CEO, said on Tuesday.

“As we have said before, there continues to be risk in TR-3 deliveries due to delays in software maturity,” the F-35 Joint Program Office said on Jan. 23. “We are exploring a truncation plan with the [military] services and our partners to accept aircraft ahead of full validation of TR-3 capabilities. Any aircraft involved and delivered as part of the truncation plan will provide valuable capability to the warfighters while TR-3 completes final verification and validation.”

Last fall, Lockheed Martin said it expected the TR-3 software to be delivered with the F-35s beginning in the second quarter of 2023.

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Corporation – Fort Worth – Mikaela MaschmeierrEvent:Arctic Lightning Air Show 2021 – Eielson AFB. Devin Hartman photo

“We are taking the time and attention to get this technology insertion right the first time because it will be absolutely worth it,” Taiclet said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. “The step function technological advances of TR-3 will provide our customers with the onboard digital infrastructure of data storage, data processing, and pilot user interface to provide unmatched capabilities for many years to come. These include increased types of capability for air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions, advanced sensing, jamming, and cybersecurity capabilities and more accurate target recognition to achieve this level of reliable capability for the long run.”

In 2023, Lockheed Martin delivered 98 F-35s, all in the TR-2 configuration, and in 2024 is forecasting between 75 and 110 deliveries. Except for a “handful” of deliveries in the first half of the year, 90 percent of fifth-generation fighters are expected to be delivered during the second half with production of the aircraft slated to restart in the third quarter once the upgraded software is ready.

Taiclet said that the company’s TR-3 hardware suppliers will have to keep pace with F-35 production demand. Jay Malave, Lockheed Martin’s chief financial officer, said that further delays with TR-3 would force the company to revisit F-35 “production cadence.”

Lockheed Martin is currently building F-35s at a rate of 156 per year and Taiclet said the demand signal remains strong. But, he cautioned, meeting Defense Department demands for an expanding set of capabilities is challenging.

The TR-3 core processing and software will create the infrastructure for an ongoing modernization of the aircraft called Block 4, which is expanding.  Block 4 will allow the aircraft to carry more missiles, provide more electronic warfare capabilities, and greater target recognition.

“So, it is essential that this production line keep up,” Taiclet said. “Basically, the recapitalization of the allied fighter aircraft force is the F-35. And so, I think the key to that is full transparency and realizing the reality of the situation.”

That situation is that the more technology loaded onto the F-35, the aircraft customers must “be honest about the schedule, what industry can do, what can the test and evaluation community handle in the various militaries to accept that technology, and what’s the supply chain capacity?” he said.

Lockheed Martin is “brutally honest” with the services and the program office about what the supply chain’s capabilities are in meeting production demands, Taiclet said. And while that is “starting to get traction, I hope it gets more traction because we cannot afford to be over optimistic in the ability to deliver these technologies as rapidly as one might like,” he added.

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The new Veryon Work Center is a service center management solution tailored to meet the aircraft maintenance needs of business aviation operators and management companies. (Photo: California Aeronautical University)

Veryon Tracking recently launched Veryon Work Center—a unified platform designed to streamline the maintenance and return-to-service process for business aviation operators and management companies. The company claims that Work Center fills a gap in the market by providing an all-in-one solution for maintenance tracking, parts procurement, and invoicing.

Veryon was formerly known as ATP, and the company has been involved in the aviation industry for over 50 years. Flightdocs joined Veryon in 2020.

Overview of Veryon Work Center

The Veryon Work Center aims to expedite aircraft return-to-service by unifying various aspects of aviation management. According to Veryon’s website, the software provides real-time airworthiness information. It also offers customizable workflows, pricing profiles, and invoicing solutions.

Addressing Industry Pain Points

In an interview with Avionics International, Kent Pickard—Veryon’s vice president of product management—said that Work Center is a response to customer feedback, particularly in the areas where Veryon’s existing solutions fell short. “We had really good depth in maintenance tracking,” Pickard shared. “Work Center multiplies the value of all those tools that we already had, in terms of inventory, maintenance tracking, et cetera. We created a hub for the mechanic to get stuff done from one single place.”

“What a mechanic wants to do is fix and maintain the airplanes,” he explained. “They want to get the job done. That’s what is in everyone’s best interest—to focus on the actual work. We can actually measure our success from a mechanic’s perspective: the less time that they spend in software, the better. Work Center really enables them to do that.”

Pickard added that when the mechanic’s work becomes easier, it also simplifies the management of the entire organization. “The managers are able to plan the work, understand exactly what parts are needed, and where and how they’re going to get those parts.”

(Photo: Veryon)

Part 135 Operators

Work Center is designed with Part 135 operators in the business jet charter and management industry in mind. The software aims to improve operations by optimizing logbook generation, tracking costs and labor, and streamlining the procurement and invoicing processes.

ROI and Value Proposition

While Pickard didn’t specify exact figures, he stated that early adopters of Work Center have seen some great returns on their investments. With supply chain issues exacerbated by COVID-19, the new platform could prove to be a crucial tool in navigating procurement and operational challenges.

Wing Aviation is one of Veryon’s customers. Jeremy Gee, Wing’s CEO, commented, “Veryon Maintenance Tracking has been an integral part of our aircraft management workflow for many years. We’re excited to participate in the growth of Work Center and look forward to leveraging it to efficiently manage our diverse charter fleet. Implementing Work Center has allowed us to consolidate our maintenance software into a single platform helping us to further simplify our processes, improve our clarity, and continue the scalable growth of our business.”

(Photo: Veryon)

Value for Management Companies

One of the features Pickard was particularly excited about was Work Center’s invoicing capability. This new feature enables management companies to capture all costs and markups, and to generate invoices for in-house work, making it an attractive option for businesses that manage aircraft for owners.

Strategic Priorities

“Our mission as Veryon is to get our customers more uptime,” said Pickard. “Through the course of the next year, I think that we now have the critical mass as the ideal aircraft maintenance operations platform. We have these revolutionary new capabilities. I expect us to keep evolving that through the course of next year.”

He also mentioned the Veryon Technical Publications product, used in general and business aviation. “We can use our new depth with work execution, and the synergies between that other product in new and exciting ways. We’ll be continuing to refine that.”

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Boeing hopes to leverage 5G technology to improve aircraft maintenance and increase safety for military technicians. (Photo: Boeing)

Boeing is aiming to increase military aircraft mission capable rates and increase military technician safety through two efforts leveraging 5G technology—Autonomous Aircraft Inspection (AAI), using drones to take high-resolution photos of aircraft to spot damage, and Augmented Training Operations Maintenance (ATOM), which uses a Microsoft Hololens to allow military forces “secure reach back” to industry representatives to help fix parts.

“The [AAI] pictures that are being taken and the data being captured and analyzed is immensely valuable so that’s the big strategic sustainment value of what we’re doing–and the operational impact of keeping young airmen off the tail, or when they go up to the tail they know what they’re looking for,” Scott Belanger, team leader for next generation product support for Boeing Global Services and a retired U.S. Air Force colonel/logistician, said during a virtual interview on Aug. 15.

“Right now, 50 percent of all damage, when humans do the [aircraft] inspection, is missed—commercial and DoD,” he said. “That’s the industry standard. In DoD, that [percentage] may be a little higher because their technicians are more junior, less experienced. The small test we’ve run the past two years at [Joint Base Pearl Harbor] Hickam, we’re at 73 percent, and that’s pretty good, considering we started at 50 percent. We think we’re going to get into the high 70s as far as capturing anomalies and damage.”

AAI inspections are hangar-only but may expand to outdoor ones at Hickam next year.

The AAI effort began in 2021 and has used drones by a Pittsburgh-based small business, Near Earth Autonomy, to inspect C-17 cargo planes at Hickam. The aft sections of the drones have Boeing’s Automated Damage Detection Software (ADDS).

Verizon is constructing a 5G network on Oahu, but the network is not yet complete.

AAI has thus relied upon credit card-sized, government-provided “puck” mobile phones to emulate a 5G network until the Oahu project is finished.

By contrast, the ATOM experiment is using the Verizon 5G network. “They have positioned the experiment on the flight line on a C-17,” Belanger said. “Verizon mounted some of the emitters for the network on a really old World War II-era smokestack on base to get the right coverage down.”

Alli Locher, the inspection group lead for Near Earth Autonomy, said during the Aug. 15 virtual interview that AAI “is not going to eliminate the need for visual inspections.”

AAI “is going to make [inspection] more flexible and decrease risk to airmen,” she said. “We’re taking the same airman that’s either on a lift or walking the aircraft and putting him on the ground and enabling him to do his job quicker and safer.”

Locher said that 4G and Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks are insufficient for military data needs. “We have large photos that, in order to accelerate and take full advantage of, we want to be able to store them on the cloud,” she said. “You’re looking at uploading 61 megapixel photos over a network and need that network to be able to handle large files.”

Near Earth Autonomy’s work on drone inspections for aircraft maintenance began in 2017 when NEA collaborated with Boeing on a research and development project for C-17s at Boeing’s maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) plant in San Antonio.

Inducting a C-17 into an Air Force depot or modification process at Boeing’s MRO or to the Air Force’s Warner Robins Air Logistics Center in Georgia “takes about 180 hours,” Belanger said. “We think we can cut that substantially down [to] around 50 [hours] and get a much more accurate assessment of the aircraft before it gets sent [to depot].”

“That’s a week where the aircraft is outside being externally inspected by a team of six to eight technicians,” he said. “They’re taking digital photos by hand, but the photos aren’t the same every time and don’t have the quality the drone’s [photos] have, and it’s dangerous. [Technicians] are getting in lifts and putting on harnesses and having to get up on the multi-stories high T-tail. The [NEA] drone will inspect the upper surfaces of the [C-17] jet in about 30 minutes, and the photos coming off of it are analyzed by the Jedi software that NEA has and the aircraft damage detection system that we have which produces a report for the technician to show them where the damage is.”

Boeing plans to expand the AAI work to other aircraft, possibly to Navy aircraft at Whidbey Island, Wash., and other Air Force cargo planes, tankers, and bombers.

Boeing and NEA have teamed on “scanning in and beginning to establish the operational foundation for drones for [the] C-5,” Belanger said. “We just scanned in KC-135 and KC-46, and we’re laying down plans this year to get after B-52 and even P-8.”

Human technicians will still be a maintenance mainstay, since 80% of DoD aircraft, including the C-17 and the venerable B-52, are not digitally designed, model-based engineering (MBE) planes, Belanger said. MBE aircraft include the Air Force’s T-7A Red Hawk trainer and the U.S. Navy’s MQ-25 Stingray refueler–both by Boeing.

The AAI goal is “not to cut manpower,” but “to make the existing visual inspection more efficient, safer, and more beneficial to mission readiness,” Belanger said. “We are capturing over the past two years with C-17 at Hickam really a ‘poor man’s digital record’ for each [aircraft] tail. That’s a powerful tool when it comes to sustainment planning. That ‘by tail’ information is not being captured right now.”

“I think DoD is committed to it,” Belanger said of AAI. “They seem to be funding it every year, and, as long as they do, Boeing will be there with partners like NEA to try to get the warfighter technology that they need now, especially in the Pacific.”

This article was originally published by Defense Daily, a sister publication of Avionics International. It has been edited. Read the original version here >>

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