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por Penguin » Seg Out 04, 2010 9:17 pm
Ares
A Defense Technology Blog
Leadership Changes On JSF + End-FY Update
Posted by Bill Sweetman at 10/4/2010 5:04 AM CDT
Joint Strike Fighter program office director VAdm Dave Venlet has gone to ground (if that term can be used of a Navy officer) since he was confirmed in May. However, he did not waste much time in bringing in two newcomers as his top civilian deputies on the program.
Robert Townsend of Avis, in his 1960s management classic Up The Organization, advocated the "Man from Mars" approach to problem solving. Venlet has done the next best thing with the Man from Area 51, appointing Doug Ebersole as Director of Engineering in the JPO. Ebersole's last-but-one in a series of tough assignments was as chief of the USAF's special test programs division "led a small team...providing oversight and governance of the Special Test Mission Area responsible for test, training, evaluation and fielding of highly classified Special Access Programs."
Ebersole's appointment date was May 2010. He succeeded John White, who had been with the program since 2007.
Another newcomer is Todd Mellon, a logistics specialist. His JSF program biography does not list his title or his appointment date, but a news release shows that he was under Venlet's command at Navair in the summer of 2010.
With the program currently grounded, the team has its work cut out: but in addition to temporary suspensions, it is now increasingly apparent that the program will have challenges meeting objectives set in March. Specifically, Pentagon procurement chief Ashton Carter told Congress in March that goals included the "commencement of flight training at Eglin AFB this year" and 2011 milestones including STOVL sea trials and "delivery of all LRIP-2 (12 aircraft) and at least 13 of 17 LRIP-3 US and partner aircraft."
Deliveries, however, are running well behind the last specific schedule, released in September 2009. At that point, the program planned to deliver 12 aircraft - ten SDD jets and the two LRIP-1 aircraft - to Patuxent River, Edwards or Eglin by this summer. Only four of those aircraft have been delivered and six (AF-4, CF-2/3, BF-5 and the two LRIP-1s) have not flown.
In order to start training, the two LRIP-1s have to fly, clear initial tests and go to Eglin and the jet has to be declared ready for training, criteria for which are under study by the DoD's Technical Baseline Review team. Meanwhile, Carter's delivery goals through the end of 2011 imply that an enterprise that delivered four aircraft in the last 12 months will now deliver 33 aircraft in the next 15 months - a six-fold rate increase.
Sempre e inevitavelmente, cada um de nós subestima o número de indivíduos estúpidos que circulam pelo mundo.
Carlo M. Cipolla