"...JPO chief Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan [told] reporters last week after testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee there is "absolutely" no truth to the claim that a failure to connect to ALIS could ground the fleet.... All ALIS servers connect through encrypted land or satellite military networks, rather than the "internet" we usually think of, Scott noted [Dave Scott, vice president of training and logistics solution business development for Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training].
There is only one global ALIS server, called the Autonomic Logistics Operating Unit (ALOU), where spare parts are ordered and reliability trends are analyzed, Scott said. Each partner nation has its own server, called the Central Point of Entry (CPE), which stores sovereign data and transmits that information to the ALOU, Scott explained. Individual squadrons operate locally with a server called the Standard Operating Unit (SOU), which communicates with that nation's CPE. Squadrons can operate independently and store data for about 30 days without connecting to the partner nation's CPE, Scott said. Then, when a connection is re-established, the SOU uploads the stored data to the CPE....
... the overall F-35 fleet should be able to operate without connection for up to 30 days with maintainers tracking the work off-line, the Pentagon told GAO. Losing connectivity to ALIS would be a pain, but hardly fatal, the JPO contends. If jets are unable to use ALIS — a ground-based system that provides sustainment and support, but not combat capabilities for the jet — the F-35 is still a usable plane. In fact, the worst case scenario would be that operators would have to track maintenance and manage daily squadron operations manually, just as older jets do.... [BEST READ it all at the URL]
Could Connectivity Failure Ground F-35? It's Complicated
