Air Force Test Community Launches an App Store For 5th Gen Fighters

Nearly four years after its conception, a project born within the Edwards Air Force Base flight test community has given rise to an application marketplace for the F-35 and F-22.

When it began, Project FOX (Fighter Optimization eXperiment) was envisioned as a way to rapidly integrate and test new hardware and software for the F-35. That vision expanded as a team of Edwards test pilots, software developers from the 309th Software Engineering Group (SWEG) and the Air Combat Command Federal Laboratory designed and stood up an application interface through which to bring new software to the F-35 – and simultaneously to the F-22.

The concept became real when an F-35 from the 461st Flight Test Squadron (FLTS) at Edwards took flight this Spring with a complement of software applications previously tested on the F-22, demonstrating for the first time the ability to use the same tactical software applications on both stealth fighters.

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Those applications were transferred to the F-35 via an “app store”, essentially a government-owned digital distribution platform for mobile software applications – in this case, new tactical software.

While this illustrated the potential to speed weapons system software development and integration, many of the details of how Project FOX functions are classified or tough to pin down. For example, an Air Force Materiel Command release on the project highlighted its ability to “set the foundation required for agile combat employment.”

In the release Project FOX’ lead F-35 test pilot, Marine Corps Major Kyle McLeod, affirmed that, “We need to be able to rapidly adapt and update our weapon systems based on emerging intel or changing conditions while executing distributed operations. We demonstrated just that with this test. We flew a set of applications at Edwards, updated the simulated threat dataset in the software from the development location at Hill AFB and re-flew the software in less than 24 hours.”

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It’s an impressive demonstration and a fine, if obvious, idea. However, the Project FOX team accomplished this rapid app update within the U.S. in peacetime with full connectivity.

In the full-scale agile combat employment conflict scenarios the Air Force has envisioned in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere, the likelihood of having sufficient connectivity to push software updates to widely dispersed front line fighters in a matter of hours would probably be low to zero. That reality applies to U.S. adversaries as well as our own forces but Project FOX reflects another reality.

Its development by the Edwards’ flight test community was mostly to create a way to rapidly integrate and test new hardware and software in developmental and operational test settings – not on the front lines a major shooting war.

At its inception, Project FOX was conceived by the 461st FLTS’s Future Technology Team, led by Marine Corps F-35 pilot, Major Jason “Strap” Schulze in cooperation with Lt. Col. Raven “Rost” LeClair, a test flight commander stationed at Edwards with the 370th Flight Test Squadron (LeClair is also an instructor test pilot with the 461st).

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Their chief interest was in speeding the pace of innovation for the F-35 via agile software development. Accordingly, the first Project FOX demonstration in 2021 proved the capability to take data output from an F-35 flight test instrumentation system and convert it to communicate with mobile applications running on a commercial tablet.

Lt. Col. LeClair told me they were also motivated by the frustrations of pilots in front line Lightning II units.

“One of the frustrations was about [not] having a significant level of influence over what the software looks like, how it interacts [with pilots] and having the ability to influence that. Having the ability to input their desires into the software [design] is something fleet pilots are excited about.”

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Project FOX enables such input from F-35 pilots and as importantly, from a wider constituency of commanders and application developers says team member and F-22/F-16 experimental test pilot, Major Allen Black (USAF).

“One of the benefits we see is creating an [application] marketplace where we can open the aperture to more contributions that have a viable path to essentially get evaluated and if they’re the best option to fit a specific need, they can get fielded more rapidly.”

Another of the benefits of “opening the aperture” is potentially lower cost for adding new capabilities. This is expected to derive from spreading test and development costs across a larger pool of weapons systems given FOX’s “cross-platform” capability. As proved in the initial 2021 flight demonstration, the FOX interface takes data from an aircraft and converts it communicate with mobile applications. It can do this regardless of whether the aircraft is an F-35 or an F-22.

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Receiving data and pushing updates is simply a matter of having the correct, current APIs says Omar Morales, F-35 lead software engineer at the 309th SWEG at Hill AFB, Utah.

“Our process is, you can develop [software] across both [types] and once it’s ready, you can field it on both weapons systems,” says Lt. Col. LeClair.

The process potentially increases the pool of developers working on new apps or updates through the government-owned interface, freeing the Service from being locked into one contractor working on development for one specific aircraft type. It can also increase access for companies with desired expertise in areas like cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and machine learning, getting more innovation into the development path.

Savings may also be found in quicker update turnarounds thanks to the fact that the FOX interface is segregated from the fundamental operating software of the 5th gen fighters.

“[Project FOX] allows the opportunity to work separately from the underlying operational flight program, the [operating system] of the flight controls etc,” Major Black explains. “We can update the [weapons/sensor] software a lot faster which means we can iterate faster to develop capabilities and get them to the warfighter a lot quicker.”

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Project FOX’s pacing and cost advantages could extend beyond weapons systems. Lt. Col. LeClair asserts that FOX is completely flexible “wherever there is data to be ingested and applications to be run.”

That means it could be used to add and update apps for elements like the F-35’s ALIS and ODIN digital maintenance and sustainment systems. “I see it as applicable to any weapons system or pieces or parts that support that weapons system,” LeClair adds.

As can be expected, setting up and running a new operationally relevant digital distribution platform like FOX makes it an immediate and obvious cyber target for U.S. adversaries. According to Omar Morales, all open-source software destined to go through the FOX app store is vetted to Impact Level 5 or higher. New apps go through a pipeline with approved scans and required artifacts for certain classification levels.

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“Software isn’t allowed to hit the jet unless it has proven to pass a certain level of testing, scanning and security compliance,” Morales adds. Applications can only be submitted by approved parties and the update quality built into FOX theoretically allows for quick mitigation of malware, malfeasant activity.

“If there are cyber vulnerabilities identified, we now have the ability to do rapid updates. We demonstrated a 24-hour turn-cycle with new software on the aircraft so we can fix things like that very quickly,” Black affirms.

Interestingly, the team confirmed that Project FOX apps run on the fighters’ mission systems without injecting code into them. The scheme may be similar to the cloud-based virtual workspace application that software maker Hypori is providing for the Army’s Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) remote work program. As the company’s mantra goes, “no data is at rest on the device”, a feature FOX could bring with it.

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The cross-platform capability that FOX offers may prove as useful or more useful for the Air Force’s 4th generation fighter fleet. If apps developed for the F-35 and F-22 can be shared with the F-16, F-15, A-10, OA-1K fleets (aircraft which still do the bulk of the shooting despite increasing F-35 numbers), the cost savings and added capabilities that FOX was designed to iterate could be better tactically and financially amortized.

Allowing allies and F-35 partner nations to access the app store could be beneficial as well though at present there are no explicit plans to do so. As for FOX’s potential to render rapid tactical updates in the field during a conflict, Lt. Col. LeClair allows that, “You may or may not have connectivity. It’s all going to depend on whether you have that or not but we can’t speculate much further.”

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He points out that in the developmental space FOX doesn’t require flight test organizations “to have connectivity to have useful functionality of the things we’re working on. They can be isolated for weeks or months if necessary.”

The need for faster testing and development is what initially drove Project FOX and essentially where its focus remains LeClair says.

“Rapid updating is oftentimes for the testing environment. Being able to rapidly iterate while developing software is extremely important in accelerating the overall timeline from acquisition to fielding, not just once it’s in combat. [Combat] updates are helpful as well but there’s a lot of lower hanging fruit that can be gathered in the development process.”

Further fruit will be gathered this summer. The Project FOX team is slated to commence flight testing in two weeks, likely evaluating new applications and resuming an agile software cadence in two and six-week cycles for further app development. As it does, the shelves in the app store will be stocked up.

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