F-35 nations prize spare parts, as US dismisses kill-switch angst
One spotlight now lies on the distribution of spare parts, a potential bottleneck that F-35 nations are moving to preempt.
Endre Lunde, special adviser to the Norwegian Defense Materiel Agency, said it is rare to see spare parts transferred from one F-35 nation to another, with components remaining American property until they are mounted on a country’s jets.
At that point, they are handed over to the user country for budget, accounting and custom purposes, and this also applies to any parts manufactured by the Norwegian industry for the F-35, Lunde explained.
“They do so as subcontractors of the F-35 prime contractors, [therefore] the parts are exported to them for use either on new aircraft or to be used as spare parts – we do not buy F-35 parts directly from our industry, as all of them are pooled or distributed to the user nations through combined contracts,” Lunde told Defense News in an email statement.
As F-35 countries rarely possess more components than what they require for their daily operations or national readiness stocks, it is infrequent to see instances where spares are sent to other users.
“So far, the only examples we’ve had of F-35 parts leaving Norway have been when they are shipped back to the U.S. for repair and replacement,” Lunde said.
In general, every F-35 nation also maintains a national readiness stock of spare parts for its aircraft, known as security of supply. For Norway, this has looked like investing in separate spare parts packages for the country’s readiness requirements, where it can operate the aircraft independently for a certain period during crises.
Woensdrecht Air Base, the main support base of the Royal Netherlands Air Force, acts as one of three global distribution hubs for F-35 parts for several countries.
The three hubs store U.S. supplied parts that are then forwarded to F-35 users, with the parts remaining property of the U.S. until they’re mounted on an F-35, according to court documents. The Dutch distribution hub supplies parts to countries including the Netherlands as well as Israel, which is a user but not a partner in the F-35 program.
The Norwegian Air Force, for its part, trains regularly for situations where it may not have access to central maintenance servers and must fly the aircraft unassisted for a given length of time, Lunde said.
https://www.defensenews.com/global/euro ... tch-angst/
F-35 Logistics & Sustainment
Overview Brief
Gp Capt Pete Grinsted RAF
Deputy Director of Logistics & Sustainment
https://www.sae.org/events/dod/presenta ... erview.pdf
