ROME – Italy and Turkey are the big winners in the first wave of F-35 global sustainment competition.
Italy's existing final assembly and checkout (FACO) facility at Cameri Air Base in northern Italy will provide heavy airframe maintenance for Europe, with the UK potentially gaining extra business if Italy cannot handle the workload. Turkey, meanwhile, will be the first of three European heavy engine maintenance facilities to come online, eventually followed by Norway and the Netherlands.
Italy and Turkey have been told to have their facilities up and running by 2018.
The assignments were announced Dec. 11 by US Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, the F-35 program head. "Heavy" maintenance covers work involving changes or repair to the body of the aircraft, such as a replacement of a bulkhead or the fixing of a wing.
The sustainment plan divides the F-35 customer base into the US, Europe and the Pacific, with regional centers filling different sustainment missions. The program office selects the best bids for each part of the sustainment operation as a cost-controlling method.
Bogdan said that Italy's $1 billion investment in its assembly line had played a role in the country landing the work. The FACO will now double as a maintenance center.
"Italy was chosen from among many countries as a maintenance hub for all the F-35s flying in Europe, including the US aircraft flying here," said Italian Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti, who added that the decision was an "extraordinary result."
While Italian firm Finmeccanica is now teamed with Lockheed Martin at the site, it is still to be seen how much of the maintenance work at Cameri will be undertaken by US technicians only.
Italy will be the sole provider of the heavy airframe work in Europe — the UK will get that work only if Italy's FACO responsibilities grow to the point the facility has overflow maintenance, Bogdan said.
The decision follows plans laid by the UK to run its own maintenance program in cooperation with Norway.
Turkey will meanwhile have to split the engine maintenance with Norway and the Netherlands.
Bogdan's apportioning of formal responsibility for maintenance to Italy contrasts with the less committed attitude shown by Lockheed Martin to Italy's decision to assemble its jets at Cameri.
The Pentagon's vote for Italy may be designed to help mollify political opposition to the program in Italy, which has grown as Rome makes deep cuts in spending to combat an economic crisis.
Italy has already trimmed its order from 131 to 90 aircraft, and last year Parliament voted to suspend orders of the plane. A non-binding motion was then voted this year to halve spending on the program. Nevertheless, Pinotti said in October that more orders for jets would be confirmed this year.
"The choice of Cameri as a hub confirms the belief of the Italian Ministry of Defense that, apart from from the fact Italy needs this aircraft, there is also now an opportunity for an economic development, which can only have an impact on opinion here," said Domenico Rossi, an Italian undersecretary for defense.
Officials at Finmeccanica have also expressed little enthusiasm about a program on which they claim to have gained little high value work.
Finmeccanica CEO Mauro Moretti praised the choice of Cameri in a statement on Dec. 11, but added he hoped "Finmeccanica will also be involved in other high-quality components of the aircraft, such as the avionics and electronics, which would generate further important benefits in terms of new jobs, research and innovation."
Moreover, until maintenance work kicks in, the FACO will be assembling planes at a slower rate than expected, given the cut in Italy's order.
But one analyst said that was a price worth paying. "The real business is the maintenance, and the FACO, which showed Italy's financial commitment, served to get the maintenance work," said Michele Nones, head of the security and defense department at the Istituto Affari Internazionali, a Rome think tank.
"And without the experience of building the FACO, it would have been impossible to handle the maintenance because the aircraft is so complex," he added.
Maintenance work would finally provide Italy the work share it has called for, he added. "It is estimated that three times more staff will work on maintenance than on assembly," said Nones, "and there will be 500 aircraft flying in Europe, each one requiring a total revision every five years."
It is unclear whether Italy or Turkey will come online first, but Bogdan indicated they would be up and running within a few years of Turkey's operations going live. Over the summer, Norway signed an agreement with engine-maker Pratt & Whitney in what a government official openly said was an early play to try to win the engine sustainment piece.
The decision to have three nations in Europe do the engine maintenance was one of cost, Bogdan explained, noting that no nation was willing to produce more than one engine test cell — a costly but key part of any engine maintenance program. With the Pentagon estimating that Europe needs three test cells, dividing the work among three countries was the logical conclusion.
It also gives Bogdan a chance to compete the three nations against each other. While each country is guaranteed a minimum amount of work that matches the number of F-35 jets purchased domestically, the work from other regional nations will be competed based on price, capability and workmanship.
A press release from the Norwegian government confirmed the work would be done by AIM Norway, a state-owned enterprise.
"I am very pleased by this decision, and it proves yet again how Norwegian industry is widely recognized for the quality and skill that they continue to deliver to the F-35" said Øystein Bø, Norwegian state secretary for defense, said in a government statement. "This is also a clear result of the comprehensive, and long standing efforts by the Ministry of Defence to help promote Norwegian industry within the F-35 program."
Bogdan did not have numbers at hand for how much work each country would get in the coming years, but said the overall global sustainment plan will involve "hundreds of billions" of dollars in the next 40 years. Some estimates put the F-35 sustainment market as growing to $1.9 billion by 2022.
The general added that the Pacific region choices would be announced the week of Dec. 14. Australia is a partner on the program, while Japan and South Korea are foreign military sales customers. Japan is also standing up its own FACO, and so like Italy, could have an edge on the airframe maintenance part of the competition.
In addition to the competition over sustainment, Bogdan told Defense News on Dec. 4 that he wants to see greater competition in the training and simulation realm for the stealthy jet. He also emphasized that in the coming years more sustainment work would be pushed out to the partner nations for competition.
"There is still much work to be had," Bogdan said. ■
Aaron Mehta in Washington contributed to this report.
