Originally Posted by Lonewolf_50
...Not only is MTBF data counted (and if you don't have a five year average you can't even start, from what I have seen) but causation for removal/replacement of the more expensive bits needs to be understood to fold into the predictive models. That would give the logistician a fighting chance to estimate long lead time materials, to consider just one piece of the problem. There are others, to include suppliers suddenly becoming unqualified after an audit.
Is the F-35 mature enough for that kind of data driven logistics tail support? I can't see where the data would be coming from ...
The first two production F-35s (AF-1 and AF-2) arrived at Edwards AFB on 17 May 2010, i.e. over five years ago (
link). F-35s had clocked up over 15,000 flying hours by April last year (
link) so the figure is liable to be significantly higher by now. There have been no incidences of in-air catastrophic failure as far as I can tell and the level of system instrumentation and monitoring has been unprecedented.
Serious question: Wouldn't that provide sufficient data to start populating a MTBF database with some degree of confidence?