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https://insidedefense.com/inside-navy/f-35-testers-complete-weapons-delivery-accuracy-tests
Lt. Col. Tucker Hamilton, commander of the 461st Flight Test Squadron, said the testing completed on Nov. 30 is awaiting data analysis before it's validated.
Hamilton told Inside Defense in a Nov. 30 interview here the milestone is significant, particularly considering a 2015 analysis from the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation predicting weapons tests could be delayed until 2021 if the testing rate did not increase.
Hamilton said that while the skepticism was understandable given the program's history, it didn't account for the improvements testers would see as software capability increased over time. The software's well-known stability issues had led to performance problems and testing slow-downs. But once it stabilized, the team was able to move faster through its test points.
"Once they got the software capable enough, then on the execution side, we started doing surges," Hamilton said.
WDA events are intricate missions that involve proving and assessing that the system can hit its intended targets with the weapons it will employ. In the summer of 2016, the program performed 31 WDA events in 30 days, a pace that Hamilton said is "basically unheard of."
Following the 2016 surge, the program had about eight to 10 events remaining, which Hamilton said became easier as F-35 software became more capable. In July and August of this year, the team conducted another weapons surge and then completed two more WDAs in late August and October. Since October, the team has completed more than 20 tests of the F-35's gun, culminating in the final test last week. The gun tests assess the weapon's accuracy and lethality.
With WDA testing essentially complete, Hamilton said the path is almost clear toward wrapping up the final developmental test activities to close SDD. The remaining work includes completing mission effectiveness exercises, which assess whether the F-35 can carry out a particular mission set from beginning to end.
The squadron finished offensive counterair mission effectiveness testing two months ago, close air support two weeks ago and has three mission effectiveness tests left -- defensive counterair, suppression of enemy air defenses and maritime air interdiction.
That remaining activity should be complete by mid-December, and Hamilton expects that the developmental test team's work under the traditional SDD program will be completed by the end of December, at which point the program will begin to shift its resources from developmental operational testing as well as post-development activities.
The joint program office has established a new strategy for post-development called continuous capability development and delivery (C2D2). The approach gives the program a mechanism to correct deficiencies and potentially add new capability after the close of SDD and before the start of the more focused post-development work, which has been referred to as Block 4 or Follow-on Modernization.
As the program moves toward C2D2, it will pull some planes and personnel from the developmental test team. The 461st FTS currently has 10 planes, and will drop to six in January. The test team, once 1,200 people, has also been slowly shrinking in recent years to about 800. That number will soon fall to about 700 and perhaps lower, Hamilton said.
However, when the more focused follow-on development phase begins, likely in the summer of 2019, the squadron may see additional aircraft or personnel to support that work.
Hamilton said he thinks the C2D2 framework provides an important opportunity to address deficiencies that previously may have waited to be fixed until the start of Block 4.
"What C2D2 allows is you don't have to wait for big blocks to continue to bring in capability to the F-35," he said.
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