Control Room Lessons Learned – A Perspective From F-35A Testing

Jeff Newcamp, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Defense’s largest acquisition program in history, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, is a multinational defense program with nine partner nations. As of January 2018, the program’s 260+ flying aircraft have flown over 115,000 flight hours at 14 military installations around the globe. The aircraft’s flight envelope is proven, munitions are cleared for carriage and the aircraft has reached operational capability. One decade prior, AA-1 was the sole flying F-35 struggling to achieve test points because of immature hardware and software. AA-1 and subsequent developmental test aircraft flights were managed by a control room, staffed by a team of flight test engineers. The evolution from requiring 40 control room engineers for a flight to today’s state provides countless lessons learned. This paper encapsulates the flight test period of the F-35A from 2009-2012 and provides practical control room lessons learned from the mistakes and successes made during developmental testing. It is shown that the flight test engineers made advances in control room procedures to accommodate the complexities of the F-35A systems and were thus able to meet the demands of the test program schedule.