Joint Strike Fighter program

Background to the JSF Program

The JSF is America’s largest ever defence program. Customers include the US Navy, US Air Force and the US Marines. The British Government is also a key customer as it plans to replace its Harrier fleet with the STOVL, or Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing Jet. The STOVL is one of three aircraft variants being developed under the program. As its name suggests, the STOVL variant requires the ability to hover, much as a helicopter would.

Development of the STOVL variant is shared between the huge defence companies Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, and BAE SYSTEMS. The aircraft has been divided into sections, with Lockheed Martin working on the forward fuselage and wing areas, Northrop Grumman on the central fuselage, and BAE SYSTEMS on the tail.

Background to the Company

GKN Aerospace Engineering Services (GKNAES) is part of GKN, a global engineering company focused on automotive and aerospace. It provides highly engineered products requiring complex manufacturing to most of the world's producers of automotive vehicles, aircraft and aero engines. Some 40,500 people work in GKN companies and joint ventures in more than 30 countries.

In Australia, GKN Aerospace Engineering Services employs 240 people and has a turnover of between AUD 40 million and AUD 50 million per annum. The Australian operation commenced when, in 2001, GKN recognised that there was a pool of underutilised aerospace engineers in Australia and decided to set up an engineering office as a resource provider for their activities in Europe. Australia was chosen due to the availability of experienced aerospace engineers and, of equal importance, the excellent engineering graduates produced by Australian universities.

Background to the Project

The company’s original focus was civil aviation, but this changed dramatically after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. To survive, the company turned to defence, deciding in 2002 that it would become involved in the Joint Strike Fighter program and executing a 12 month capture plan. The goal was to engage the JSF partners by integrating virtual engineering teams into the core of the JSF design activity, operating in such a way that a GKN engineer sitting in front of a computer in Australia would perform the same work in the same way as the Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman engineer sitting in the USA.

In mid-2003, after the Australian Government committed to the System Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase of the JSF program, GKN was awarded a small work package by Northrop Grumman. This initial work involved 18 staff (9 in America and 9 in Australia) and focused on structural design. Over the next 13 months the team in Australia grew to 100. Lockheed Martin now also contracted GKNAES and the team grew to 220.

Problem Being Addressed

Aeroplanes generally become heavier as they are further developed. By the end of 2003, the JSF partners agreed that the STOVL variant would become significantly overweight unless something was done at that time to reduce large amounts of weight from the airframe. The problem threatened not only the viability of the STOVL variant but the whole JSF program. It was so significant that Lockheed Martin organised a "weights stand-down day" where every member of the JSF team, including GKNAES engineers, stopped work and participated in a global design process which aimed to find innovative engineering proposals to save weight.

Response – The Design Process

“Design is about creating IP.”
Tony Quick, Director and General Manager, GKN Australia

The design brief from Lockheed Martin to the participants was deliberately open. It outlined the problem and the target weights for each component, but placed no limitation on possible responses. This meant that design practices considered too difficult or expensive to manufacture (in previous military aircraft projects) were now considered viable.

Stage 1 – Brainstorming

As the weights stand-down day was a world-wide JSF initiative, all GKN Australia staff working on the project were involved. And as staff came from a wide range of backgrounds with differing levels of experience, brainstorming sessions were used to get ideas down on paper and best utilise the diverse range of skills available from all employees. Engineers worked in their usual workgroups, focusing on their particular area of work.

Experienced engineers then provided assistance in grouping the ideas into three groups: proceed immediately; more thought required; and impossible to implement. The main limitation to this process was the requirement to abide by JSF design practices, which are rarely changed without large amounts of additional work. The Australians did succeed in getting some of the manufacturing rules changed, through providing clear and reasoned justification.

Several suggestions from GKN Australia were directly incorporated, gaining the company high-level visibility and credibility in the eyes of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Ideas included changes in design, materials and manufacturing methods.

Stage 2 – Trade Studies (Detailed Design)

It was decided to conduct several trade studies to further analyse the effects of the proposed changes. These studies varied greatly from the simple task of removing material from structural components, to more complex studies looking at replacing complex fabricated assemblies with single piece integrally machined parts and looking at smarter ways to optimise carbon fibre skins.

As each trade study was completed, proposed design changes were sent to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman for final investigation and approval. The openness of the Americans was crucial to the acceptance of many ideas. They made decisions quickly, often agreeing with the proposed changes within a week of receiving a presentation.

Time pressures were not acute. The JSF partners had predicted the need for weight reduction early enough in the process that changes were accommodated within normal development schedules. The speed of their response to ideas from Australia was much more a function of the close working relationship between the parties and the emphasis that the Australians had placed on this. While there were cultural differences, and the odd misunderstanding due to the Australians’ pronunciation of some words, the good relationship between the parties was crucial to the success of the project. As an example of the efforts made, the Australians brought forward the start of their working day in order to ‘overlap’ more with the Americans.

Stage 3 – Implementation of the Weight Savings

A number of design changes put forth by GKN Australia directly contributed to the dedicated weight reduction objective. Significant effort was undertaken to optimise large, complex carbon fibre composite skins. GKN used innovative programs to automate repetitive calculations and gain a high degree of fidelity as to where weight could be removed from the composite structure. This included reducing the size of fasteners used on composite skins were possible which opened the door for further weight savings through the removal of additional material associated with larger fasteners.

Secondly, it was shown that the replacement of complex fabricated assemblies with integrally machined parts and complex castings would reduce part counts and fastener usage and thereby saving weight in key areas of the airframe. This initiative may also help to save time later in the manufacturing process as fewer assemblies of small parts will need to be completed.

GKN also developed several Engineering Automation tools (and continues to do so) to save engineers considerable amounts of time. These tools were designed to eliminate repetitive tasks and improve accuracy of general analysis calculations.

These initiatives were not simply one-off design changes; the methodologies developed during the weight-saving effort were implemented across the program on all three variants.

Impact and Results

As a direct result of their work on the weight reduction effort, GKN Australia was rewarded with multiple work packages from Northrop Grumman, covering metallics, composites and subsystems across all three variants of the aircraft. After a further year's engineering activity, the best-value contributions that were made to Northrop Grumman were recognised by Lockheed Martin, who gained sufficient confidence in the engineering capabilities of GKN Australia to award major work packages on the wing structure. The combination of these new work packages has meant that the JSF team at GKN Australia has grown from 15 engineers in August 2003 to approximately 200 between 2003 and 2007, constituting more than 1 million work-hours to the development of the JSF project.

The key to customer satisfaction has been the effective completion of initial tasking, and the establishment of a reputation for delivering good design services. Performance has relied heavily on the construction of a team with the correct skills and experience, the ability to grow and develop that group, exploitation of the time zone, and the support of an organisation able to insert the appropriate tools and processes. The GKN Australia teams have been structured along the same lines as the customer’s Integrated Product Teams (IPT), ensuring that unique IPT specific practices and conventions are preserved in the work of the virtual team.

GKN’s success on the JSF program has had a significant flow-on effect to the Australian manufacturing industry. With the engineering design process at the root of much of the value created in manufacturing, new growth in aerospace does not make sense without a solid design capability at the core. By setting up a virtual engineering services team in Australia, GKN Australia has been able to retain this engineering knowledge in Australia. It has also created the opportunity for Australians to return home while still working on the latest aerospace projects.

It is planned that the next phase of Australian JSF involvement will include the local manufacture of Australian designed components. With experience gained on JSF to date, GKN Australia is well-positioned to support local manufacturing activity, and ensure that Australia continues to make a value-adding contribution to this program.

“Engineering is about solving a problem. It comes down to an art form at the end of the day.”
Miles Kenyon, Engineer, GKN Australia

Facts at a Glance

Challenge

Removing weight from the airframe of the STOVL Jet in the Joint Strike Fighter program (STOVL = Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing)

Type of designer engaged

Aerospace engineers from within GKN Australia

Most important part of the process

The interpersonal relationships which developed between the Australian and American engineers, and the openness of the Americans to new ideas

Most difficult part of the process

Having the confidence at an early stage to voice ideas to companies who’d been doing this work for many, many years.

Solution

World first 24 hour global aerospace engineering service designing 3,000 separate parts, constituting 12% of the jet’s total airframe and 19% of its wing and central fuselage by part number

Outcome

Innovative customer service has resulted in flow on work for GKN Australia, not just from within the Joint Strike Fighter program, but also other military and commercial projects. GKN Australia has grown to be a key player in the global aerospace industry and a strategic partner on the JSF program. Both Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, two of the three major partners in the JSF program, have recognised the role GKN has played in achieving the milestones on the program.