Electronic file, we are making we are innovating as we go through this process with our customer. This has been a concurrent program. So we concurrently have developed, produced and sustained this aircraft and the products that we utilize to do that. An electronic equipment log book contains quite a bit of sophisticated engineering information. It doesnt simply just track a part. It includes technical data, graphical data, and data, it contains a lot of different information. Through the business process there are elements that we can corrupt this data. It can be presented that way or a customer can misinput information and so there are a lot of complexities relative to the book and we have worked with the jpo and weve seen improvement up to 83 ready for issue, and im fully committed to supporting that continued engagement to resolve those issues going forward. Im also committed to meeting with the Defense Contract Management Agency as well as the jpo to sit down and reconcile the concerns and adjudicate the cost appropriately. Well, i appreciate your concern, but i come from a military family, and every time a pilot gets in those planes and flies up into the sky theyre risking their life, and i know many widows and children that have lost their their father because of faulty equipment, and 85 isnt good enough for the u. S. Military. Its got to be 100 , and a contract is a contract, and the contract says you will deliver a plane which has been done beautifully. Its a beautiful plane, but it also says that the material that is needed to fly that plane has to be delivered, too, and our military managers dont want to be sending people up in the air when they dont have everything perfectly there that is in that contract. Thats only fair. So i i hope that you will change your mind and at the next hearing have an update at how you are now at 100 and how you have worked out the understanding of this equipment so that it is working for the military. One of the most heartbreaking things to me in the last meeting is that one of the managers said he said i cant even repeat it. Its too upsetting. I would now like to say, mr. Olmer, i sent you a letter or lockheed marti Lockheed Martin a letter on june 18, 2020 and i would appreciate Lockheed Martins cooperation so far in producing documents in getting back to us with some answers, but many documents have not been provided. So do you commit that Lockheed Martin will produce all of the remaining documents before the end of the month . I must tell you, its just upsetting to me. If you cant deliver a document, i have no trust that you can deliver a plane thats going to operate and that has all of the equipment true. Its a complicated plane. You have complicated equipment, but the contract for a trillion dollars to maintain it, the contract calls for the supportive equipment to be delivered and operating, and how can you expect our military to respond . This isnt peacetime. Id hate to think what happens if there were a war. And the men and women had to fly a plane that didnt have the Technology Working or the pieces working that are supposed to be working with this plane. So this is really, i would say not just a money issue. Id say a life and death issue. What good is a plane that cant fly according to some of the managers because all of the equipment is not working . So i look forward to following up with you on this request for the documents, and also on the request that Lockheed Martin live up to its contract. The American People have paid a lot of taxes to live up to our contract with producing this important plane, but Lockheed Martin is not responding to our request for documents and it is not responding to the militarys request for equipment that they feel that they need to fly this plane. So i now yield to the distinguished lady. I am going mrs. Norton from the district of columbia, okay . And thank you, madam chair, and i want to thank you for this hearing. I want to say mr. Olmer, lockheed and indicating innovations and the rest. I just want to say for the record that can you hear me . Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. Yes, congresswoman. I want to say for the record that we signed that contract, we didnt sign the paper innovations, and we didnt sign for the pay for cost. We are paying for cost overruns and that is something that has simply got to stop. We have a question beginning with miss morrow of the gao and the staff also visited the f35 bases and they pointed at that time that alice was the root cause of the problems with the electronic logs and that the logs do sometimes overnight after maintenance crews have already cleared the f35 to fly the next day, talking about dangerous. Is what the Committee Staff found and its visit consistent with what the gao has found in its work . Thank you for the question. Yes, those findings are consistent with what we found in our work and well summarize those findings as part of our work last year. Our team visited five different installations within the United States where they had f35s and there was a great deal of frustration from pilots and from commanders. There was a grave amount of concern and frustration, frankly, with the problems with yields and with the problems with the interface with itself. These are longstanding problems. We noted them and our reports went as far back as 2014. Much of this is rooted in the fact that this is an old system, and we hope that dod is implementing it, and well be watching that carefully to make sure that these problems do not continue in the future. Its definitely a problem in the past. Thank you. Mr. Olmer of lockheed, lockheed, think, has acknowledged loss and analysis and it provided the committee with the presentation and in its presentation you indicated that alice is currently looking at its manpower hardware, increased labor costs and decreased readiness. What steps, when you consider all of these, what steps is lockheed taking now . This is from mr. Olmer, what steps is taking now to improve alice until that system can be replaced . Congresswoman, we have gone to a Software Development process with the system just to let everybody know, alice is an i. T. Infrastructure that was in the early 2000s before the software existed. Its an antiquated hard beware,d Software System systems. We have improved processing time on the order of 50 or more. Weve gone to quarterly releases and it has taken us 12 to 18 months to provide Software Updates and with the jpo releasing Software Updates. We are receiving positive feedback and reduced wait time and significant processing time. You can get all of the information in front of you and significantly reduce button clicks to get to information and to process data. So quite a bit of improvement has occurred on the system recently. Madam concern, i can hear concern on both sides of the aisle. I can only hope that this hearing moves us ahead to at least get ahead so the taxpayers dont pay and there are redundant flaws. My time is up and thank you. The chair now recognizes the gentle lady from north carolina, ms. Fox for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Olmer and Lieutenant General fik. Ready for issue means a spare parts supplied contractor are ready to be installed on the aircraft and have electronic yield assigned. Can you explain in laymans terms what an electronic equipment log is in its importance to overall maintenance and sustainment of an aircraft such as the f35 . Yes, maam, i can. So an electronic equipment log id like to think of as a personal Health Record associated with that specific part. It follows the part digitally or electronically and some of the functions we ask of that are to track life limits associated with that part to track implementation of ectds and to look at tail number compatibility and to manage an ejection seat and lower embedded orr or indentured yields and as well as inspection requirements for those parts. Thank you. Mr. Olmer, would you like to respond . Yes, maam. I concur with general finks review. To be clear, ooh an electronic file. We implemented quarantine that when we released material that it is in fact in place and appropriate. Here in fort worth where we produce the aircraft in late 2016, early 2017, we implemented and we could not deliver aircraft without yields being compliant, it is consumed within the alice system. The information that general fink described populates the information structure thain forms the Maintenance System how to operate and sustain the airplane. The business process is behind the transfer of that information and the communication of that information and the input of that information is whats resulting with the yield issues to date and thats where we are very focused on creating solutions from an i. T. Business process point of view to resolve these issues and thats what we have seen in the last six months in particular the significant increase of ready for issue parts. Thank you. This question is for both Lieutenant General fink and mr. Olmer. What challenges are the f35 program experiencing on the electronic equipment logs and what is being done to identify and understand the root causes of sustainment issues with the f35 program . Ill speak to them in general terms, maam. I think there are three problems. One would be does it exist and mr. Olmer addressed that in his comment with the initial existence of an eel on delivery. Both of those have more to do with alice and the i. T. Systems and how the eels are passed around rather than the substantiation of the eel itself and that may be that theyre corrupted or stripped inadvertently as the electronic footprint of that part works its way to the system from lockheed to the supply point and eventually to a squadron. Mr. Olmer, if you think that the general finks answers sufficient, if you say so, my time is running out and i have one more question. Congresswoman fox, i concur with the peo. Thank you. Mr. Olmer, what actions has Lockheed Martin taken to address the nonready for issue parts and ensure accuracy of the electronic equipment logs more than what youve already stated. If theres Something Else you need state and Lieutenant General fifrpg, have you seen improvements for issue in ready for issue parts. If your question is yes or no, then that would be easy, general fink. And we have seen an improvement associated with rfi parts that require an eel. And remember eels are only required out of a thousand out of the overall 50,000 count part so it is a very small amount that require eel. And whether an eel is truly required so we reduced this problem. Mr. Olmer . Mr. Olmer . Congresswoman fox, weve invested 30 million toward improving reading for issue parts and that improvement as we have described the eel and the engineering content associated with that, the complexity of that content. Weve done a very formal Systems Engineering approach and im talking about the enterprise jpoa and Lockheed Martin with the war fighter and weve conducted events where weve gone out to the war fighter. We witnessed the concerns and we document the concerns and go back and come back and go through a formal Systems Engineering process to determine root cause and corrective action, and those actions then play forward relative to the improvements were seeing. We have two formal initiatives this year as we work to raise the bar relative to effectiveness. Madam chair, mr. Chair, i yield back. The gentle lady yields. I will issue myself five minutes. Ms. Hall in the beginning of the testimony you mentioned the term with the current contract mr. Chairman thats a republicans turn. Ms. Fox just spoke. She is still a republican, right . Okay. All right. Thats okay reclaiming my time. We will start the clock again for five minutes. I respect the gentlemans right. Ms. Haul in the beginning of your testimony you mentioned the term of the Lockheed Martin contract on the f35. How long was that . The contracts, theyre annual contracts and some have gone beyond a year. As part of our review, we looked at on the eel issue and the time period of 2015 until about april of 2019 or sorry, the 2018 contract and our eel review covered a position of 2015 through 2018. Okay. Are there problems and i know ms. Lord and lute laieutenant g fick you were onboard when we went with the larger contract. Is this lot 12 . Yes, sir. Were delivering lot 12 now. Thats 149 aircraft, is that correct . Roughly . Its 147. All right. I trust you. Close enough. Is there a problem with the way we have framed this contract that makes Lockheed Martin less responsive to issues like this, do you believe. I dont believe so. I know that on the sustainment contracts okay. I dont have a whole lot of time. Yes, sir. Is Lockheed Martin still getting incentives despite the facts that they are delivering noncompliant parts . So we assess, Lockheed Martins performance this we built into the production contract. Isnt that on flight time . So if you fix a noncompliant part and get that up in the air, does lockheed get the bonus . Yes. They get the incentive. So thats what im getting at. Yes. Is there a gas we could and mr. Olmer, i would like you to consider this, and that part of the contract, the fact that you are getting an incentive bonus because dod personnel have spent approximately 300 million in a workaround on your noncompliant parts to allow you to receive a bon bonus that you didnt do correctly. So you need to go back and figure that out. You can work with the defense Contracting Management agency. That portion of the benefits youre receiving is not fair and just under the contract, and i would highly recommend if you want to avoid reputational damage, you need to rethink the terms of that contract and come back to the table and work something out thats fair for the american taxpayer. Lockheed martins had a long, strong history in the defense sector. We respect that, but i dont believe based on the facts here that the American People are being treated fairly and that will be to the detriment. If that continues, that would be to the detriment of Lockheed Martin so we have to look at that really hard. I do believe that the f35 is probably one of the finest aircraft out there, when it flies. When it flies and thats the problem that weve got this whole work around in terms of this whole program. So youre on notice, mr. Olmer. Id like to ask you some questions. Mr. Olmer, do you believe that we are we are i have a report right now that tells me that the Inspector General of dod in addition to the Government Accountability office and the staff delegation, republican to democrat, we agree on this, this is not a partisan issue that because of pervasive problems with the f35 spare parts and missing and electronic log, military personnel must be reassigned to trouble shoot problems and pilots must fly f35s on a near daily base wiss defective spare parts and theyre allowing aircraft to fly with potentially dangerous issues. So weve got a problem. According to dod, our unified staff and the Government Accountability office so what are you going to do about it and how quickly do we get these things fixed, mr. Olmer . Congressman, i take this extremely serious. We are very focused on manufacturing and sustaining the f35 and safety is at the forefront as well as their worthiness of the vehicle and for the record, i would like to state to the chairwoman, to my knowledge, all documents have been provided. So i would like to connect with your staff to make sure that that occurs to your satisfaction and my belief is were doing that. Well follow up on that. Thank you, sir. Sir, you asked me what have we done . So i indicated we have spent 30 million to resolve this issue to date. We continue to meet directly. Weve had six direct meetings with the dcma since april 2nd. We were meeting with the dcma prior to april 2nd to work on this issue together. We continue to have regular engagements with the joint Program Office. We continue to make adjustments to the alice system to improve the system and not just from an eels electronic equipment point of view and from an alice point of view and participating with the jpo relative to the Lessons Learned from the experience and informing the oden experience as we go forward. So were taking several different approaches relative to problem resolution. We have seen market improvement. We have more to go. Woo understand we have more to go and we will continue to support and you have our resolve to fix this problem. Okay. As you know, this is the largest single contract weve got. This is an important part of u. S. Readiness, and we have unanimity that we have to get this right. And the chair recognizes the gentleman from texas, mr. Cloud, for five minutes. Thank you, chairman. This is quite the ordeal. Its amazing to think that 20 years into this program this is still where were at. You know, no doubt the f35 is an amazing piece of technology. We are glad to have it in our force and we are certain we want to make sure that the United States stays preeminent when it comes to the race in the technology and dominance. Its not just collateral and especially today as we look to the threats from china its economic and its cyber. Its multifaceted and when nations have risen and fallen through history its not because they didnt have the latest technology in the battlefield and they collapsed internally. Its extremely important that we get this right and efficient, as well. Weve spent 1 trillion in the last five years on this and at least the estimates that we have here and its, you know, that could have gone to a lot of different places. You know, we have china invading our cyber and doing other different things, and so its just important th