JSF.mil > Program > Organization

The F-35 Air Vehicle team is comprised of several IPTs as described below. The overall goal of the Air Vehicle team is Through effective teaming with the contractor develop, validate and deliver an affordable, operationally effective, operationally suitable, production-ready and sustainable JSF Air Vehicle within SDD cost and schedule constraints for the warfighter. The Air Vehicle team accepts total system performance and integration responsibility for the JSF air vehicle that satisfies all SDD and production affordability/ risk objectives and satisfies JSF air vehicle performance requirements.

Air Vehicle Systems Engineering Integration Team
The Air Vehicle Systems Engineering Integration Team cuts across the Air Vehicle IPT to ensure integration at all levels. The team is also responsible for the following functional areas: Environmental Issues; Propulsion Integration; Requirements and Specialty Engineering; Aerodynamic Performance; Flight Sciences.
Basing and Shipboard Suitability
The mission of the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) Basing and Ship Suitability (BASS) team is to ensure that Lockheed Martin (LM) produces an F-35 Air System that is compatible with and operationally supportable from all F-35 basing options.
The primary tool for assessment, verification, and design influence for basing and ship suitability is the BASS checklist which is comprised of over 300 line items consisting of relevant basing explicit requirements, prior military specifications and standards, and recognized good design practices developed in conjunction with LM. The JPO BASS team coordinates with LM and reviews BASS Assessment Reports (BARs) for each line checklist line item.

JPO BASS team led processes include maintenance of the ship integration watch list, which consists of potential ship alteration issues, and disposition of these through the Facilities Available Conference (FAC) which is a forum that has provided F-35 designers an understanding of existing shipboard facilities and interfaces. The intent is to influence designers to develop a JSF air system that fits within and is compatible with existing facilities and interfaces in wake of recognition that there are JSF contractual capability requirements that conflict with contractual ship compatibility requirements. In the event of ship alterations, this forum led by the BASS IPT, consisting of representatives from the JPO, LM, NAVAIR, NAVSEA, OPTEVFOR, USN and USMC requirements offices, and Naval Aviation type commanders, determines the best systems of systems approach to integration in time to properly budget and plan necessary ship changes.

Other BASS IPT responsibilities include helping to initiate and foster relationships for technical exchange with all critical govt BASS stakeholders external to the program, provide feedback on IPT trade studies, participate in BASS advisory panel reviews, coordinate with IPTs on status, risk, issues and requirements; and support mitigation of program-level risks associated with BASS.
Airframe / Manufacturing
The F-35 team has developed and prototyped state of the art manufacturing concepts, tooling, and techniques as part of the JSF Concept Development Program. Lockheed Martin completed a comprehensive Airframe Affordability Demonstration (AAD), which demonstrated innovative fabrication, assembly, and tooling techniques for use on JSF. In addition, Northrop-Grumman and BAE SYSTEMS demonstrated advances in composite technologies and flexible tooling which will greatly reduce the cost and time for manufacturing.
Vehicle Systems
The Vehicle Systems team is responsible for a wide variety of systems in the aircraft such as the Flight Control System Hardware and Software; Utility Systems (Electrical, Thermal, Hydraulic, Landing & Arresting, Fuel, Fire Protect, Ice Detection, Etc.); Onboard Vehicle Systems Processing Infrastructure (Vehicle Management Computer, Remote I/Os, Operating System); the Vehicle Systems PHM Area Manager/Software; and the overall propulsion systems integration.
Mission Systems
The Mission Systems IPT is responsible for the functional flow of the complete sensor to shooter thread. The specific capabilities of the JSF Mission System have been carefully selected to provide a cost effective, specification compliant system optimized to meet the warfighter need. Because of the integrated nature of the Lockheed Martin JSF Mission System, there exists functional dependencies between many of these capabilities.
To meet its mission requirements, the F-35 will be equipped with an integrated sensor suite which includes an Electronically Steered Array (ESA) Radar; Electronic Warfare Countermeasures (EW) suite; Integrated Communication, Navigation, Identification (CNI) suite; Electro-Optical Target System (EOTS, available on some aircraft); and EO Distributed Aperture System (DAS). In addition to state of the art fighter air-to-air capability, the air-to-surface functional capability includes: large area, high resolution SAR maps and precision relative targeting; and slow ground moving target detection and classification.

Within the Mission Systems team are several sub-teams such as Airborne Software, Tactical Information Systems, Integrated Core Processing, Offboard Mission Support and Test & Evaluation. All of these teams and systems play a crucial role in the survivability and mission effectiveness of the JSF weapon system. The mission system has been designed with sensor management capabilities that maximize sensor utilization while balancing the need for Low Observability, RF compatibility, and emission safety.
Weapons Integration
The Weapons Integration Team will deliver to the warfighter the ability to load, carry and employ weapons. The team manages all aspects of weapons integration into the JSF Air System. This includes hardware and software products as well as weapons certification. The F-35 will employ a large array of weapons that enables the aircraft to engage both air and ground targets.