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Question: It is clear that you are having to adjust the test culture to deal with the F-35.

How would you describe the change?

Answer: One aspect is clearly with regard to testers themselves. With legacy aircraft,
you tended to have various specialists — a hydraulics expert, or flight controls expert,
or a radar expert.

On the F-35, unlike anything that I've dealt with before — and I've been in test and
evaluation for 30 years now — you find you certainly still have specialists in those ar-
eas. However, it's not satisfactory to only know that system because it is so interactive
across the airframe from a software standpoint, from a controls standpoint, that it really
requires everyone on the team to be an integrator. You need to be an integrator across all
the different disciplines on the airplane, and that's been a challenge.

Question: In this past decade, you have established your basic test approach, which
really is built around spiral development.

And this decade is laying down the foundation for the next where the combat experi-
ences of the service and partner fleet become folded into the next round of develop-
ment of the aircraft.

How would describe the process that you have established?

Answer: We have been developing three different variants of the F-35. It was clear that
the services would need the aircraft prior to some notional finished aircraft.

And so the program was intentionally put into a spiral development type of mode in
which there were going to be defined blocks. And each block represents a combat-ready
variant of the aircraft, or of a particular model of the aircraft.

We defined all the different capabilities of the airplane that were going to be shaped
over time. The end point, so to speak.

And then we divided them up into blocks in which there were going to be useful war
fighting capabilities. Those were provided at incremental blocks to the airplane.

Second Line of Defense Lessons Learned at Pax River
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