A new maintenance solution for the Royal Australian Air Force’s fleet of F-35 fighter jets has been unveiled by Lockheed Martin and the Belgium-headquartered ILIAS Solutions.

The new F-35 fleet management solution provides real-time access to aircraft maintenance operations data, according to a public statement made by Lockheed on 26 April this year.

Data is integrated from the Autonomic Logistics Information System (holistic fleet management) and the ILIAS system to provide RAAF maintainers with detailed insights into past, current, and future state of fleet readiness. Using the solution, it is possible for the RAAF to perform sovereign fleet data analysis, improve aircraft availability, and improve the use of ALIS in maintenance execution.

The F-35 program manager for Australia, Rob Weitzman, said the RAAF implementation will serve as the benchmark to introduce the technology to other F-35 fleets and will also be expanded to support C-130J fleets.

“The F-35 fleet management solution integrates RAAF F-35 data with the ILIAS Defense Platform to enable a modern user interface,” he said.

“This provides an intuitive set of fleet management visualisations, planning, scheduling, and decision-making tools to F-35 maintainers.

“Through close collaboration with the RAAF and ILIAS, we were able to deliver one source of truth for the RAAF F-35 fleet.

“With the new fleet management solution, RAAF F-35 maintainers now have enhanced real-time analysis at their fingertips, with quicker decision-making power to launch the mission.”

In addition, Lockheed Martin was recently (28 April) awarded an US$8.3 million contract modification to provide logistics, sustainment, and system engineering support for the government of Republic of Korea regarding the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program by the US State Department.

The US State Department also awarded another US$7.79 billion contract for the production and delivery of 126 Lot 17 F-35 aircraft internationally, according to details released on 28 April.

That order includes 81 F-35A aircraft for the US Air Force, eight for Finland, seven for Italy, six for the Netherlands, six for Poland, four for Belgium, four for Japan, and three for Denmark. Twenty-six F-35B aircraft are requested with 15 for the US Marine Corps, seven for the United Kingdom, two for Italy, and two for Japan.

Nineteen F-35C are also requested with 13 for the US Navy and six for the US Marine Corps.