60 replies to this topic

[Simpleton]

ATTN: Mods plz merge this with the F-35 thread whenever it's put back up.



February 27, 2012 12:13 PM

F-35 fighter training leaves pilots grounded

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. - The best fighter pilots from the Air Force, Marines and Navy arrived in the Florida Panhandle last year to learn to fly the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive, most advanced weapons program in U.S. history. They are still waiting.

Concerns about the stealth jets' safety, cost overruns and questions about the entire program's feasibility have delayed the training and left about 35 pilots mostly outside the cockpit. The most the pilots do with the nine F-35s at Eglin Air Force Base is occasionally taxi them and fire up the engines. Otherwise their training is limited to three F-35 flight simulators, classroom work and flights in older-model jets. Only a handful of test pilots get to fly the F-35s.

"The most-frustrated pilot is one who isn't flying at all," said Marine Col. Arthur Tomassetti, vice commander of the fighter wing and a former test pilot for the F-35 prototype.

Built by Lockheed Martin under a 2001 contract, the F-35 is supposed to replace Cold War-era aircraft such as the Air Force's F-16 fighter and the Navy's and Marines' F/A-18 Hornet. It would also be sold to many NATO countries and other U.S. allies.

Costing between $65 million and $100 million each, depending on the version, the F-35 is described as a generational leap from older fighter jets. A single-seat aircraft, it can fly at about 1,050 mph and, officials say, fight both air-to-air and air-to-ground significantly better than its predecessors.

One version can land on an aircraft carrier while another can hover, landing on and taking off from a helicopter carrier. It carries more fuel and more ordnance internally than older fighter jets, allowing it to maintain stealth, and has the latest onboard computer systems, allowing the pilot to control the plane and communicate with other aircraft and interact with ground commanders like never before.

"From a flying perspective, what we call the stick and rudder is the same for any platform, but when you integrate the sensors, the pilot has the capability to make much better decisions and be much more precise," said Air Force Col Andrew Toth, the training wing's commander. His name adorns one of the school's F-35s.

And because it is to be used by all three branches of the U.S. military that fly fighter jets and by U.S. allies, training and maintenance could be handled jointly. That's intended to save money compared to having separate, parallel maintenance and training groups in each force.

But just as the program appeared to be taking off, it was grounded over a variety of concerns. They range from improperly installed parachutes under the pilots' ejector seats, to worries at the Pentagon that there has not been enough testing of the jets, to ongoing concerns by some in Congress that the entire F-35 program is too expensive. Its projected cost has jumped from $233 billion to an estimated $385 billion, including development. Forty-three F-35s have been built and another 2,443 have been ordered by the Pentagon.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said earlier this month that the Air Force wasn't ready to start student flights at Eglin.

"The plan will be to start flying, not training, but to start flying with test-qualified aviators initially to do what we call local area orientation," he said. "We will build to a threshold, which will allow the training leadership in the Air Force to declare `ready to train' with other than test-qualified aviators."

Questions about funding, slow production of the aircraft and uncertainty about overall strategy have contributed to inefficiencies in money and manpower, said Baker Spring, a defense analyst with the Washington-based Heritage Foundation.

Spring said the complicated way the Pentagon budgeting process worked has trickled down to the pilots at the school.
"You have people out there twiddling their thumbs waiting for planes. This contributes to the high unit costs," Spring said.
All of this has left the first batch of would-be F-35 pilots in training limbo. This is supposed to be the first time fighter pilots from all three branches train together and they are looking forward to both the competition and learning from each other.
"All of the pilots here are incredibly talented, hand-picked, board-selected, they are the best of the best and the opportunity to come here is and fly the F-35 as a Marine operator is truly the career opportunity of a lifetime," said Marine Lt. Col. Jim Wellons said at ceremony for the jet at Eglin last year.

"There is so much that we can learn from each other. We in the Marine Corps are focused on supporting the Marine on the ground, even though we have an airplane that can perform air combat and the full range of tactical missions. The Air Force fighter community also supports the man on the ground but they have a significant strategic focus. The Navy is very focused on shipboard operations, so we all have our different strengths and probably weaknesses."

When the school becomes fully operational, dozens of pilots and hundreds of F-35 crew members will funnel through Eglin each year.

"Right now it looks like a large building out here with empty hallways, but we are going to have 900 students soon," said the Marine's Col. Tomassetti during a tour of the largely empty school last year.

Tomassetti said this month that the school continues to wait for a "ready to train" order from the Pentagon. The colonel said he and the Marines he commands are eager to fly new jet.

"We do have F-16s on loan and some of our pilots are going off station to fly other jets. They are flying and they understand that this is part of standing up a new program," he said.

When the Pentagon decides to allow the Eglin planes to fly is anyone's guess, said J.R. McDonald, Lockheed's Eglin-based vice president of corporate domestic business development.

"I think we are close but it is a U.S. government decision and the government enterprise will decide when it decides. The (fighter wing) just has to patient because they have done everything they can do," he said.

"I've stopped making predictions."

[Simpleton]

New fighter jet training stalls, grounding pilots


Published February 27, 2012
| Associated Press

Read more: http://www.foxnews.c.../#ixzz1oPfOx3fY

[Simpleton]

Japan says may cancel Lockheed F-35 if price rises



TOKYO | Wed Feb 29, 2012 7:13pm EST

(Reuters) - Japan may cancel orders for Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 fighter jets if the price rises or deliveries are delayed, Defense Minister Naoki Tanaka said on Wednesday, casting doubt on Tokyo's choice of next-generation combat aircraft.

Tokyo has warned Washington against increasing the price, but this was the first time Tanaka publicly raised the possibility of cancelling the order.
The Pentagon this month confirmed plans to put off its own orders for 179 F-35s over the next five years to save $15.1 billion, a move that a Lockheed executive said would increase the price of the radar-evading warplane over time.

Smaller orders make it more difficult for Lockheed to order components in bulk from its suppliers. This can lead to higher prices in the short term. The company also has to spread its fixed infrastructure costs over a smaller number of planes.

Japan is due to pay 9.9 billion yen ($122.96 million) per fighter for an initial batch of four F-35s scheduled for delivery by March 2017. Japan plans to buy 42 in total.
"As for the first four planes, I expect an official contract to be concluded by this summer. If it turns out they cannot meet what they have proposed by that time, that would raise concerns about our defense capability," Tanaka told parliament.

"I believe we would need to consider as a potential option matters like cancelling our orders and starting a new selection process if that is the case."

Continued schedule delays and talk of lingering technical issues have prompted the eight countries helping to fund development of the F-35 to rethink their own near- and long-term plans. The group includes Britain, Australia, Turkey, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Italy and the Netherlands.

U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz on Wednesday told Reuters the U.S. government was pressuring Lockheed to increase efforts to hold down the cost of the plane, despite the delay in orders from the United States.

The Air Force authorized the start of initial, limited flights of the Air Force variant of the F-35 by certified test pilots at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, where pilots and maintainers will be trained.

Schwartz said a first flight was planned at Eglin next week, part of a phased approach that will evaluate the training curriculum and gain more experience on the airplane before transitioning to more active training flights later in the year.

"This will be a crawl, walk, run sort of undertaking," he told reporter at a breakfast meeting.

Japan, which is concerned about China's rapid military buildup and constant threats from impoverished North Korea, in December chose the F-35 over combat-proven but less stealthy rivals.

The F-35 competed against Boeing Co's F/A-18 and the Eurofighter Typhoon, made by a consortium of European companies including BAE Systems.

Lockheed Martin has said it is committed to providing F-35s that meet the cost, schedule and industrial requirements of the Japanese government, but says F-35 pricing is determined by talks between the Japanese and U.S. governments.

Japan's defense budget has been under pressure with the country saddled by a public debt twice the size of its economy.

Stealth technology has drawn much attention in Japan since China, which has a long-running territorial dispute with Japan, confirmed last year that it had held its first test flight of the J-20 stealth fighter jet.

(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka and Tim Kelly in Tokyo; additional reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa in Washington; Editing by Nick Macfie, Phil Berlowitz)

[Simpleton]

What If Japan Dumps Lockheed Martin?

By Navjot Kaur, The Motley Fool Posted 3:24PM 03/05/12

Japan recently made its first public announcement that it may cancel its big order for Lockheed Martin's (NYS: LMT) F-35 fighter planes if the company adds to the pre-decided price or extends the delivery period of these planes. The cancellation can potentially wipe out more than $5 billion that Lockheed is expected to earn from the deal.

A flashback
After the death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il late in 2011, uncertainty and instability cropped up in the Korean peninsula, an area where 1.7 million troops from North Korea, South Korea, and the U.S. are stationed. In the wake of North Korea improving its ballistic missiles and both Russia and China developing stealth fighters, Japan -- with the world's sixth-largest defense budget -- also planned on improving its air defense network.
Japan placed an order to buy 42 F-35 fighter jets, costing between $114 million and $122 million per unit. This marked the F-35's first win in a competitive tender, as well as Japan's costliest fighter jet procurement. The company is expected to begin delivery of the planes in 2016, beginning with four jets.

F-35 program in trouble
The F-35 is expected to become the centerpiece of military forces in the U.S. and other countries. Lockheed Martin is supposed to develop 2,400 F-35s for the U.S. and other nations, helped by industry peers Northrop Grumman (NYS: NOC) and BAE Systems. However, the program has run into a series of cost overruns and delays.

Recently, Lockheed faced a delay in orders from the U.S. and some order cancellations from Italy, owing to defense budget cuts in those nations. This has effectively slowed down the company's production and reduced its ability to generate bulk orders for supplies, thereby increasing the cost per aircraft. In fact, the cost of this program has now increased to $385 billion from $233 billion earlier, and it may go up even further.
This means Lockheed will now have to charge a higher price per aircraft, and there is a chance of delay in delivery, as well.

The Japanese dilemma
Given its uncertain economic condition and military buildup in neighboring countries, neither the delay nor the price hike will go down well in Japan. The Japanese military requires further confirmation and clarity on the cost and delivery details before summer, without which the country has threatened to cancel the F-35 order and look for a replacement instead. That's surely bad news for Lockheed.

What if Lockheed fails?
Naturally, the other bidders for this contract stand to gain. Lockheed's F-35 jet was short-listed over two lower-cost, combat-tested aircraft, including Boeing's (NYS: BA) F-18 Super Hornet and Eurofighter GmbH's Typhoon fighter. Despite costing over $100 million per unit, the F-35 was selected because of its next-generation stealth design, which provides radar-evading facilities from the front and back of the aircraft.

The F-35s are supposed to replace Boeing F-4s, which were last assembled in Japan in 1981. In case Lockheed fails to clinch the deal, Boeing definitely has an edge over other competitors, as it is a tried-and-tested supplier of Japan's military requirements.

[Simpleton]

Seoul fears delivery delays of F-35 jets
03-06-2012 16:36

By Lee Tae-hoon

Chances are high for the government to pick the F-35 fighter jet as the mainstay of the Air Force later this year, but it is doubtful whether the new aircraft can be delivered to Korea as promised from 2016.

Seoul is expected to announce the winner of the bidding for its next-generation fighter acquisition project in October this year in line with its plan to introduce 10 advanced jets in 2016 and 2017, respectively, and the remaining 40 by 2020.

“Lockheed Martin officials recently informed us that the F-35 development and testing is progressing faster than anticipated and that they are confident of delivering fully operational fighter jets by 2016,” a senior official of the state-run Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said Tuesday.

“But it is dubious whether their claims can be accepted as the F-35 program, which is still in the early stage of flight testing, continues to encounter development delays and cost overruns.”

Lockheed Martin, which has proposed to sell F-35s, is competing with its U.S. rival Boeing and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) for the 8.29 trillion won ($7.3 billion) deal.

Another DAPA official pointed out that Korea will face great difficulties in imposing any significant penalty even if Lockheed Martin fails to deliver its latest stealth jets on time.

“Both Lockheed Martin and Boeing intend to sell their aircraft to Korea through the Foreign Military Sales program (FMS), which is often considered an unfair trade practice. It will leave little room for Seoul to punish them over delivery delays,” he said.

“Given that the FMS program is a contract based on trust between the U.S. government and another nation, no one has ever succeeded in negotiating with the Pentagon on a strict penalty for delays.”

The DAPA official said his agency plans to ask the U.S. government to pay up to 10 percent of the contract price as compensation for delivery delays, but it remains doubtful whether the Pentagon will agree to this.

“As it is unlikely for the U.S. government to comply with DAPA’s demand, it is also mulling ways to give lower marks to Lockheed Martin during the test and evaluation process later this year unless it can dispel mounting concerns over production delays,” he said.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Concurrency Quick Look Review published on Nov. 29 last year concluded that U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin will only be able to start producing a fully operational version of the F-35 in 2017.

“The program was not making sufficient progress toward meeting operational effectiveness criteria for the helmet mounted display, night vision capability, aircraft handling characteristics, and certain classified issues,” the Pentagon report said.

“The system was not on track to meet certain suitability requirements, including thermal management, the performance of the Autonomous Logistics Information System (ALIS), and aircraft material repair times.”

According to Aviation Week, Canada’s F-35 project manager said, although the country plans to purchase F-35s in 2014, and take delivery in 2016, the first aircraft will not arrive until 2019 and initial operation capability is not expected before 2020.

[Simpleton]

Tom Cruise to 'fly' last manned fighter jet in 'Top Gun 2'

Controversial F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to co-star in sequel


By Jeremy Hsu Innovation News Daily Senior Writer

updated 3/5/2012 1:54:24 PM ET

Hollywood is going back to "Top Gun" school with its upcoming sequel to the 1986 film, but hotshot pilot Maverick won't be flying any killer robot drones. Instead, Tom Cruise is set to return in the starring role as a test pilot for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — a plane that could well be the last manned fighter aircraft made in the West.

The news slipped from the lips of the Lockheed Martin's F-35 program manager during a National Aeronautics Association luncheon last week, according to FlightGlobal's military aviation blog The DEW Line. If that plot decision shapes the final "Top Gun 2" film, the choice to feature a manned aircraft stands out in a time when U.S. military drone pilots can see far more action in a week than most fighter pilots see in months.

While Tom Cruise may jump into the seat of an F-35, entire squadrons of real U.S. military fighter pilots have already switched over from manned aircraft to remote-controlled drones such as the Predator or Reaper. Many of the best test pilots from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School now graduate having extensive flight time with drones.

Maverick's own U.S. Navy has begun testing the sleek, futuristic X-47B drone that could take off from aircraft carriers as soon as 2013. That drone could end up flying alongside manned fighter jets such as the F-18 Super Hornet — the F-14 Tomcats flown by Maverick and Iceman in the original "Top Gun" retired from operational service in 2006.

The "Top Gun 2" choice of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter may also prove controversial based on the aircraft's own merits — both outside experts and government reports have cited years of delays and technical issues leading to an estimated lifetime cost of $1 trillion. When Foreign Policy recently asked 76 defense experts to list three programs that they would cut immediately from the U.S. defense budget, the most popular No. 1 choice was the F-35.

"We have had only one fighter jet shot down by an enemy fighter jet in the last 40 years," said one expert interviewed by Foreign Policy. "We simply don't need to spend over a trillion on a new fighter at this point."

Even military supporters who insist that the F-35 JSF is a necessary sixth-generation aircraft for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps admit that it may prove the last manned fighter aircraft for the U.S. and its allies. They include past Pentagon leaders such as Mike Mullen, a retired U.S. Navy admiral and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"There are those that see JSF as the last manned fighter — or fighter-bomber, or jet," Mullen said during a Senate Armed Service Committee testimony in 2009. "I'm one that's inclined to believe that."

"Top Gun 2" could still end up taking moviegoers on a wild cinematic ride when it comes out, and perhaps even showcase the challenges faced by human pilots in the era of robotic drones. But if the film merely echoes the original "Top Gun" parade of aerial combat and fighter jock culture, it risks losing itself in a Hollywood fantasy far removed from the futuristic reality of modern warfare.

[Simpleton]

First U.S. Air Force F-35 Pilot Training Sortie Cut Short

By Tony Capaccio - Mar 7, 2012 4:15 AM GMT+0500

The U.S. Air Force’s first pilot training flight of its new F-35 jet was cut short by a possible fuel leak, the service said today.

The possible leak reduced today’s scheduled 90-minute flight of the Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) jet to 15 minutes, Colonel Andrew Toth, commander of the 33rd Fighter Wing at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, said in a statement.

The pilot ended the flight due to an “in-flight emergency,” according to the statement.

Development test pilots have been flying the jets at Edwards Air Force Base in California equipped with instruments monitored by ground-control personnel, who alert them of performance flaws as they fly. That’s different from the so- called “uninstrumented” flight training that’s beginning at Eglin with pilots experienced on other aircraft.

“Our first sortie is truly a milestone,” Toth said of the initiation of pilot training, which had been delayed for months as the service responded to concerns from the Pentagon’s testing office. “Unfortunately, things happen.”

The pilot “did the exact right thing in returning the jet back to Eglin,” Toth said.

The pilot testing was to have started as early as November. It was put on hold after the Pentagon’s director of test and evaluation said in October that the Air Force must delay training combat pilots until testers worked through technical issues and the service resolved potential safety “shortfalls” that risked a “serious mishap.”

Michael Gilmore, the director of operational test and evaluation, said in an Oct. 21 memo that there were “serious concerns” with commencing initial training at Eglin.

The Air Force said in starting the training flights that it had acted on Gilmore’s concerns.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net

[Simpleton]

Cantor, Hoyer look to speed sale of F-35 aircraft to Israel

By Pete Kasperowicz - 03/06/12 08:54 AM ET

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) proposed pro-Israel legislation on Monday that would require the Obama administration to submit reports to Congress on how to speed the sale of F-35 fighter aircraft to Israel.
The legislation, introduced the day of a state visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also asks the administration to show how the United States can boost Israel's overall security and help Israel maintain its military edge over its neighbors in the Middle East.
The United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act, H.R. 4133, was introduced on the same day that both members spoke to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and told the powerful group that the United States remains committed to Israel's security.
"The ties that bind the United States and Israel are cemented by our mutual dedication to freedom, opportunity and democracy," Cantor said upon releasing the bill. "We must support our ally and send a message that the United States and Israel will always stand together."
Hoyer added that the bill reflects the "enduring bond" between the two nations.
"It is a bond that reflects the shared values of our people and our shared interests in preserving stability in the Middle East," Hoyer said. "The threat from Iran’s nuclear ambitions is real and demands serious, cooperative effort by both the United States and Israel."
While much of their bill reads like a non-binding resolution, the report requirements it imposes on the administration give it a weightier status. Specifically, it calls for a report from the administration 180 days after the bill's passage that explores "actions to improve the process relating to Israel's purchase of F-35 aircraft to improve cost efficiency and timely delivery."
The same report must also examine ways to "expand cooperation between the United States and Israel in homeland security, counterterrorism, maritime security, energy, cybersecurity and other appropriate areas," as well as ways to integrate Israel into the defense of the eastern Mediterranean.
A separate report, also due 180 days after passage, would have to examine the status of "Israel's qualitative military edge in light of current trends and instability in the region."
More broadly, the bill reaffirms the U.S. policy of commitment to the security of Israel, to help Israel deter military threats, veto anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations and support Israel's right to self-defense. It also calls on the government to "pursue avenues to expand cooperation with Israel in both defense and across the spectrum of civilian sectors, including high technology, agriculture, medicine, health, pharmaceuticals and energy."
The bill also includes a sense of the Congress finding that the United States should help Israel develop missile defense systems, give Israel strategic military equipment like air refueling tankers and offer Israel surplus defense items as the United States draws down force levels in Iraq.
The legislation is co-sponsored by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and ranking member Howard Berman (D-Calif.).

[Simpleton]

Pentagon Helps New Stealth Fighter Cheat On Key Performance Test


6:00AM Today | David Axe - Wired

It seemed like a promising step for America’s next stealth fighter: The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter passed a key Pentagon test of its combat capability. But it turns out that the family of jets cleared the mid-February exam only because its proctor agreed to inflate its grade. In essence, the military helped the F-35 cheat on its midterms.

The collusion between the Pentagon testing body, known as the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), and the F-35 program — first reported by Inside Defense – confirmed that the US’ most expensive warplane met previously established performance criteria. Specifically, the review was meant to show that the jet can fly as far and take off as quickly as combat commanders say they need it to.

But the review council, which includes the vice chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, eased the standard flying profile of the Air Force’s F-35A model — thereby giving it a range boost of 30 miles. And it tacked an additional 15m onto the required takeoff distance for the Marines’ F-35B version, which US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta just took off budgetary probation.

The grade inflation comes at a critical time for the new warplane. The military’s new five-year budgeting blueprint, also released in February, cut more than 100 existing Air Force fighters while leaving intact plans to produce nearly 2500 F-35s — essentially doubling down on the new plane despite a recent report listing 13 serious design flaws. The total cost to buy and fly the full fleet of F-35s over 50 years is estimated at around $US1 trillion, once inflation is factored in, making it the costliest defence program in human history.

In fairness, it’s not unknown for capability standards, also known as “Key Performance Parameters”, to shift during a weapon’s development. But the shifts usually reflect the evolving needs of the military or some change in the operational environment, such as a likely enemy tweaking its own defence plans. In this case, the JROC gave the F-35 a pass that was apparently designed so the over-weight, over-budget, long-delayed stealth fighter could avoid yet another embarrassing scandal.

Citing earlier efforts to boost the Joint Strike Fighter’s image, defence analyst Winslow Wheeler accused the Pentagon of “putting lipstick on the p.i.g”. That’s an apt characterization of recent moves by the Pentagon’s F-35 boosters.

Last month, the Marine Corps held a lavish ceremony marking the arrival of two F-35 training models at the main Joint Strike Fighter “schoolhouse” in Florida. “It’s a significant jump in technology,” said Marine Lt Col David Berke, who neglected to mention that the training jets were not even cleared to fly locally. That clearance came a couple of weeks later, but again with an asterisk: Only specially qualified test pilots would be permitted to fly the jets, for now.

Increasingly, it seems the F-35 only passes tests when the tests are rigged. The good news for the fighter program typically comes with buried caveats. In response to Wheeler’s criticism, Stephen O’Bryan, then a vice president for stealth-fighter contractor Lockheed Martin, insisted that “the F-35 is meeting or exceeding every single one of the Key Performance Parameters that the services have mandated”. Of course, it’s easy to ace a test when the teacher’s already decided you passed.

[Simpleton]

F-35 Performance Requirements Altered So Fighter Aircraft Could Pass Critical Tests, Say Reports

March 6, 2012. 12:42 pm •

InsideDefense.com in the U.S. is reporting that the Pentagon last month relaxed the performance requirements for the Joint Strike Fighter, allowing the Air Force F-35A variant to exceed its previous combat radius — a benchmark it previously missed. They also granted the Marine Corps F-35B nearly 10 percent additional runway length for short take-offs, according to Defense Department sources.
More from InsideDefense.com
On Feb. 14, the Joint Requirements Oversight Council — in a previously unreported development — agreed to loosen select key performance parameters (KPPs) for the JSF during a review of the program convened in advance of a high-level Feb. 21 Defense Acquisition Board meeting last month, at which the Pentagon aimed to reset many dimensions of the program, including cost and schedule.
Pentagon sources said a memorandum codifying the JROC decisions has not yet been signed by Adm. James Winnefeld, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the JROC chair.
Sources familiar with the changes, however, said the JROC — which also includes the service vice chiefs of staff — agreed to adjust the “ground rules and assumptions” underlying the F-35A’s 590-nautical-mile, combat-radius KPP.
http://insidedefense...enu-id-926.html

The Danger Room is also reporting more details on this issue:

The collusion between the Pentagon testing body, known as the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), and the F-35 program — first reported by Inside Defense — confirmed that the U.S.’ most expensive warplane met previously established performance criteria. Specifically, the review was meant to show that the jet can fly as far and take off as quickly as combat commanders say they need it to.
But the review council, which includes the vice chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, eased the standard flying profile of the Air Force’s F-35A model — thereby giving it a range boost of 30 miles. And it tacked an additional 50 feet onto the required takeoff distance for the Marines’ F-35B version, which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta just took off budgetary probation.

[Simpleton]

Schwartz defends reduced F-35 combat radius

By Marcus Weisgerber - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Mar 6, 2012 16:23:19 EST

The Air Force’s top uniformed officer played down changes to the joint strike fighter’s requirements that allow the multibillion-dollar jet to meet flight test goals.

Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, told members of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee Tuesday that reducing the combat radius of the F-35A by five miles is more cost-effective than modifying the fighter to meet performance goals set a decade ago.

“The difference between the key performance parameter for distance versus the estimate for performance is five miles,” Schwartz said at the hearing. “The question to me is: How much do we want to invest in order to recover that five-mile margin? It was a judgment call and I think not an unreasonable one.”

Last week, InsideDefense.com reported that the Pentagon had shortened the combat radius requirements for the F-35A, the Air Force version of the fighter jet. The website also reported that DoD officials had increased the take-off length of the of the F-35B, the Marine Corps version.

[Simpleton]

BAE jet designs targeted by spies

By David Coates
Published on Sunday 11 March 2012 19:34
Top secret plans for a Lancashire-built fighter jet have been hacked by Chinese spies, it has been revealed.

A senior security figure has revealed computers used by workers at BAE Systems for its F-35 fighter jet programme were hacked to steal details about the design and systems of the aircraft.

The company’s base at Samlesbury, near Preston, is the major manufacturing hub for its part of the F-35 manufacturing, building the aft fuselage, vertical and horizontal tails for the jet, which is assembled in the United States.

BAE declined to comment on the attack which has sparked fears the radar developed for the jet could have been compromised.

In a statement, BAE said: “We do not comment on allegations of cyber attacks against the company. BAE Systems’ own cycber security capability can detect, prevent and rectify such attacks.”

A source told the Sunday Times that an unnamed senior BAE executive had spoken at a private dinner of security experts that its systems had come under attack from Chinese hackers for 18 months.

It is understood the attacks had taken place in recent years. A report by the UK Office of Cyber Crime and Detica, the security arm of BAE Systems, last year showed cyber crime cost the UK economy £27bn every year. Detica managing director Martin Sutherland said that business was bearing more than three-quarters of the cost.

He urged the Government to “mobilise” itself to tackle the growing threat.

The Sunday Times quoted the Chinese embassy saying the allegation was “baseless” and said China condemned all forms of online crime.

[Simpleton]

Canada may not buy F-35 fighter jets, Ottawa admits
Published On Tue Mar 13 2012

Bruce Campion-Smith
Ottawa Bureau chief

OTTAWA—The Conservative government is admitting for the first time it might not buy the controversial F-35 fighter jet, a project bogged down in delays and spiralling costs.

Toronto-area MP Julian Fantino, Ottawa’s point man on the purchase, conceded Tuesday that the $9 billion purchase of the stealth jet for the Royal Canadian Air Force is far from a done deal.

After years of being touted as the replacement for Canada’s aging CF-18 jets the single-engine aircraft may prove to be too costly or arrive too late.

“The . . . decision has not been made as to whether or not we are actually going to purchase, buy, acquire the F-35,” said Fantino, associate defence minister.

“We have not as yet discounted, the possibility of course, of backing out of any of the program. None of the partners have. We are not,” he told the Commons defence committee Tuesday.

“We’ll just have to think it through further as time goes on, but we are confident that we will not leave Canada or our men and women in uniform in a lurch, but it’s hypothetical to go any further right now,” Fantino said.

Those comments are a marked change for a cabinet minister and his colleagues who, until recently, have been fierce advocates of the F-35, even to the point of accusing the program’s critics of not supporting the armed forces.

It’s also a turnaround from the 2010 decision to acquire 65 of the jets, with first deliveries expected in 2016. At the time, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said the F-35 was the “only” fighter that met the needs of the Canadian Forces.

But Ottawa’s unwavering support has been sorely tested as the F-35 program suffers setbacks and cost overruns. The cracks in the Conservative’ public stance began appearing last month when MacKay refused to confirm how many F-35s would be bought.

Now officials appear to have abandoned their gung-ho enthusiasm for the jet in favour of a more cautious approach while still affirming the F-35 as the best choice for the air force.

But the decision could come down to price, with Ottawa saying it doesn’t yet know how much it will have to pay for each aircraft.
“That decision will be made if and when those factors are known to us and the decision will be made as to whether or not Canada will actually enter into a contract to purchase the F-35,” Fantino said.

It appears, too, that the defence department is looking at a back-up plan if the F-35 purchase falls through.

“I’m waiting to hear back from the experts as to what options will ultimately be available to us. These things are in consideration. We’ll have to wait and see how things play out,” Fantino said.

The change in tone comes after Canada hosted a meeting at its embassy in Washington with the eight other partner nations involved in the F-35 program — the United States, Britain, Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Norway, Italy and the Netherlands.

NDP MP Matthew Kellway wondered whether Canadian officials got bad news at that meeting about the state of the project that is causing them to rethink their plans.

“It appears that Washington, the emergency meeting, was kind of a fig leaf on what appears to be a disastrous program. So I anticipate they’re looking for ways out of this thing now,” he told reporters.

Liberal interim leader Bob Rae said that given the troubles with the F-35 program, it’s time to launch a new search for a replacement jet.

“They’ve known for some time that you can’t square the circle they’ve tried to square. . . . So clearly there needs to be a new competition.”

[Dizasta]

BAE jet designs targeted by spies

By David Coates
Published on Sunday 11 March 2012 19:34
Top secret plans for a Lancashire-built fighter jet have been hacked by Chinese spies, it has been revealed.

A senior security figure has revealed computers used by workers at BAE Systems for its F-35 fighter jet programme were hacked to steal details about the design and systems of the aircraft.

The company’s base at Samlesbury, near Preston, is the major manufacturing hub for its part of the F-35 manufacturing, building the aft fuselage, vertical and horizontal tails for the jet, which is assembled in the United States.

BAE declined to comment on the attack which has sparked fears the radar developed for the jet could have been compromised.

In a statement, BAE said: “We do not comment on allegations of cyber attacks against the company. BAE Systems’ own cycber security capability can detect, prevent and rectify such attacks.”

A source told the Sunday Times that an unnamed senior BAE executive had spoken at a private dinner of security experts that its systems had come under attack from Chinese hackers for 18 months.

It is understood the attacks had taken place in recent years. A report by the UK Office of Cyber Crime and Detica, the security arm of BAE Systems, last year showed cyber crime cost the UK economy £27bn every year. Detica managing director Martin Sutherland said that business was bearing more than three-quarters of the cost.

He urged the Government to “mobilise” itself to tackle the growing threat.

The Sunday Times quoted the Chinese embassy saying the allegation was “baseless” and said China condemned all forms of online crime.

Is this suppose to be about a report on the American F-35 Lightning, or are the Brits supposedly developing a fighter-jet that we don't know of? Or, also, is Britain going to be license manufacturing the F-35?

[Dizasta]

If Canada opts out of the Joint Strike Fighter (F-35 Lightning II) program, then Lockheed Martin's deal with Japan would cancel out it's advantage to the defense corporation.

Many countries are alarmingly reacting to the growing costs of the Joint Strike Fighter program. Netherlands, Norway, Britain, Canada and Australia, are all showing increasing concerns on the costs pile-up and delays to the program. To date, Australia has purchased F/A-18 Super Hornets, as a stop gap measure, while it waits for the F-35 Lightning IIs to go into production. While Britain has opted out (and sensibly so), of the F-35B (VTOL) and instead gone for the F-35C (CV). Britain has also reduced the number of F-35s and plan to further evaluate reduction in the number of F-35s it will purchase from the US.

Japan, even though, has selected the F-35 Lightning IIs as its next generation fighter. Has shown a level of caution, whereby it will continuously monitor the F-35 program for any cost over-runs and delays. Based on it's findings, Japan would then determine whether or not it would go ahead with the purchase of the American stealth fighter-jet. In the event that Japan pulls out of the deal, Lockheed Martin would have a very difficult task of convincing it's committed customers, as well as, prospective customers, that F-35 is still a viable and prudent choice to meet their defense requirements.

[Simpleton]

Is this suppose to be about a report on the American F-35 Lightning, or are the Brits supposedly developing a fighter-jet that we don't know of? Or, also, is Britain going to be license manufacturing the F-35?

This is about the theft of data from BAE's contribution to the JSF project. Is BAE going to licence manufacture the JSF? Perhaps. As far as a hitherto unknown jet fighter, this report is not about it, but who knows if the Brits are working on some secret project or not.

[Simpleton]

Government sees lifetime cost of F-35 fighter at $1.51 trillion

April 02, 2012|Andrea Shalal-Esa | Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The government now projects that the total cost to develop, buy and operate the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will be $1.51 trillion over the next 50-plus years, according to a Pentagon document obtained by Reuters.

The Pentagon's latest, staggering estimate of the lifetime cost of the F-35 -- its most expensive weapons program -- is up from about $1.38 trillion a year ago, and includes inflation.

While inflation accounts for more than one-third of the projected F-35 operating costs, military officials and industry executives were quick to point out that it is nearly impossible to predict inflation over the next half-century.

They also argue that no other weapons program's costs have been calculated over such a long period, and that even shorter-term cost projections for other aircraft do not include the cost of modernization programs and upgrades.

The new cost estimate reflects the Pentagon's proposal to postpone orders for 179 planes for five years, a move that U.S. officials say will save $15.1 billion through 2017, and should avert costly retrofits if further problems arise during testing of the new fighter, which is only about 20 percent complete.

The Pentagon still plans to buy 2,443 of the new radar-evading, supersonic warplanes, plus 14 development aircraft, in the coming decades, although Air Force Secretary Michael Donley last week warned that further technical problems or cost increases could eat away at those numbers.

The new estimate, based on calculations made by the Cost Assessment Program Evaluation (CAPE) office, includes operating and maintenance costs of $1.11 trillion, including inflation, and development and procurement costs of $332 billion for the aircraft, plus $63.8 billion for the engine.

The Government Accountability Office last week projected it would cost $397 billion to develop and buy the planes, up from its earlier forecast of $382 billion.

The Pentagon office that runs the F-35 program office has a lower estimate for lifetime operating costs, although it is still around $1 trillion, according to two sources familiar with the estimates. Both industry and government have put a huge emphasis on reducing operating costs and keeping the plane affordable.

The new estimates are part of a revised F-35 baseline dated March 26 that will be sent to Congress on Thursday. The new baseline for the program put the total cost to develop, build and operate the F-35 aircraft at $1.45 trillion, but that figure did not include an additional $63.8 billion to develop and build the engine, which was reported separately. Together, that adds up to $1.51 trillion.

The comparison figure of $1.38 trillion includes a projected development and procurement cost of $379.4 billion, plus $1 trillion in projected operating and maintenance costs.

AVERAGE COST $135 MLN PER F-35

The new baseline forecasts the average cost of the F-35 fighter, including research and development (R&D) and inflation, at $135 million per plane, plus an additional $26 million for the F135 engine built by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp.

In 2012 dollars, the average cost of each single-seat, single-engine plane, including R&D, would be $112.5 million, plus $22 million for the engine.
This is the first year that the government has separated out the cost of the plane and the engine, and comparison figures were not immediately available. Lockheed Martin has said the average cost of the plane will be around $65 million to $70 million, based on 2010 dollars.

Lockheed Martin declined comment on the new estimate, saying it had not yet received the Pentagon's latest report.

Lockheed spokesman Joe LaMarca said the company still believed the new fighter jet would cost the same or less to operate and maintain than the seven legacy warplanes it will replace, while offering far greater capabilities.

INCREASES DUE TO GOVERNMENT CHANGES

Defense analyst Loren Thompson said three-quarters of the cost increases on the F-35 program were linked to government changes in the scope of the program, and the way it was estimating costs.

For instance, he said, the Pentagon initially planned to station the plane at 33 bases, but later changed the number to 49. It initially calculated operating costs over 30 years, but then chose a longer timeframe of 50 years, he said.

"The program costs appear to be rising much faster than they actually are because the government keeps changing how it calculates things," Thompson said.

The Pentagon's proposal to postpone buying 179 planes for five years added $60 billion to the operations and support cost of the program, since those planes will now be delivered in later years when inflation is higher. The push also added two years to the duration of the program, according to an internal Lockheed calculation obtained by Reuters.

But Winslow Wheeler, a critic of the program, predicts cost growth on the program will be even greater than estimated by the Pentagon, given the complexity of the F-35 fighter.

Lockheed is developing three variants of the new plane for the U.S. military and eight partner countries: Britain, Australia, Canada, Italy, Turkey, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands. They now plan to buy a combined total of 697 planes, down from 730 in the previous Pentagon estimate.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Anthony Boadle, Phil Berlowitz)

(The story that ran on March 28 has been corrected here to fix the total projected cost to $1.51 trillion (to include engine cost) instead of $1.45 trillion and also to fix the comparison figure from last year to $1.38 trillion (to include development and procurement cost) instead of $1 trillion.)

[Simpleton]

Canada’s Plan to Buy F-35 Jets Is in Doubt as Auditor General Cites ‘Significant Problems’

By IAN AUSTEN

Published: April 3, 2012

OTTAWA — Canada’s plan to buy 65 F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin grew less certain on Tuesday after a scathing report by the country’s auditor general.

While large military contracts are often politically contentious in Canada, the Conservative government’s decision in 2010 to join the United States in selecting the F-35 as the country’s next fighter aircraft has been particularly controversial.

Cost increases and delays in the F-35 program have caused headaches for both governments, and Canadian critics argue that the aircraft costs too much and is too sophisticated for the needs of the country’s air force.

Michael Ferguson, the auditor general, said on Tuesday that his staff had concluded that the F-35 was selected without a “fair competition” and that the Canadian military had underestimated the cost of the aircraft and overstated industrial spinoffs for Canadian manufacturers. He added that the government had not made sufficient provisions to handle increased costs.

“There were significant problems in the decision making process,” Mr. Ferguson told a news conference here. “For this kind of a purchase, a $25 billion purchase, they should have done a better job.”

The report does not deal with the role of politicians in the process. By law, the auditor general’s department may review only the work of public servants.

Initially, the Conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper vigorously defended the purchase of F-35s, at times suggesting that its critics did not have the safety and well-being of members of the military in mind.

But over the last several weeks, Mr. Harper and the cabinet minister responsible for military procurement have been distancing the government from the program.

“At some point we will have to make a final decision,” Mr. Harper said last month. “But obviously we have not signed a contract so that we can retain our flexibility in terms of ensuring the best deal for taxpayers.”

Shortly after the release of the auditor general’s report, and before members of opposition parties began their attacks, the government announced that it had frozen its budget for the direct purchase of the aircraft at 9 billion Canadian dollars. It also said that the purchase would be overseen by a wider variety of government departments.

The auditor general said that it was still unclear how much the aircraft would cost. But his auditors concluded that the government appeared to have both understated the likely purchase price — the 9 billion Canadian dollar estimate — and not included several substantial costs directly related to the program.

The country probably cannot stay within its budget by reducing the size of its order. The F-35s will replace a fleet of CF-18s, a variation of the F-18, which went into service during the 1980s and which will remain airworthy without further upgrades until the end of the decade. Sixty five, it is widely agreed, is the minimum number of replacements required.

Lockheed Martin did not respond to requests for comment. Two weeks ago in an e-mail, Keelan Green, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin Canada, wrote that “the government of Canada has not indicated to Lockheed Martin that it is changing its commitment to the F-35 program.”

[Simpleton]

Dutch Auditor Raises Concerns About F-35 As Well As The Country’s F-16s

April 4, 2012. 10:17 am


Posted by:

David Pugliese

This is from the Netherlands Court of Audit (an organization similar to Canada’s Auditor General):

The Netherlands Court of Audit has investigated the deployability of the F-16 and developments concerning the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). We investigated whether the House of Representatives had an insight into the costs of the F-16 and the JSF.

Provision of information on the F-16 and the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

The Ministry of Defence will continue to invest in two fighter aircraft – the F-16 and the JSF – in the years ahead. These two aircraft are related to each other both financially and operationally. Despite this relationship, comprehensive information on the F-16 and its replacement is still not provided. Owing to the different rules in place for the provision of information on the F-16 and the F-16 Replacement Programme, the information is currently spread across a variety of documents. In our opinion, the financial and operational relationship between the two fighter aircraft requires the minister to provide the House of Representatives with a comprehensive overview in addition to the separate documents.

Current deployability of the F-16
We concluded that there was an imbalance between the government’s ambitions, the budget for flying hours, the number of pilots and the number of aircraft. The Rutte/Verhagen government wants to have and maintain multi-role armed forces. Between 2011-2015, however, the Ministry of Defence must cut expenditure by €2.3 billion and make structural savings of €635 million in subsequent years. To reduce expenditure, it will sell 19 of its 87 F-16s. The number of pilots has already been reduced to 68 and the F-16s may fly fewer hours per annum.

The government wants the armed forces to protect Dutch air space permanently with the F-16s and be able to participate once a year in an international intervention operation or make a long-term contribution to a stabilisation operation. Training sufficient pilots, however, requires so many flying hours that participation in a mission, such as that above Libya, is no longer compatible with the budget available for F-16 flying hours. We also concluded that the Minister of Defence’s ability to provide an overview of the current F-16 operational costs was limited.

The 19 F-16s earmarked for disposal have not been immediately grounded. In consequence, fewer hours need to be flown per aircraft.

Deployability of the F-16: consequences of longer deployment
We concluded that a fixed plan to phase out the F-16 is missing an important ingredient to make a relevant calculation of the operational and financial consequences of the longer deployment of the F-16. The minister has informed the House of Representatives that he must invest an additional €300 million in the current F-16s. This figure does not include all additional expenditure, such as the increase in materiel operating costs, the replacement of wings, the cost of air safety, airworthiness and maintenance and operational self-protection as from 2021.

We also concluded that it is currently uncertain how the minister will allocate his materiel budget to the necessary number of new fighter aircraft and additional investments in the current aircraft. The operational deployability of the F-16 will decline further as the aircraft age in the years ahead. This will place additional pressure on the balance between ambitions, budget, materiel and personnel.

Replacement of the F-16: developments concerning the JSF
We concluded that the minister has not reviewed the programme to replace the F-16. The government has reserved €4.5 billion to replace the F-16. The minister will spend €0.5 billion of this amount before the end of 2015. We concluded that the involvement in and the possible cost of withdrawing from the JSF programme to replace the F-16 will increase further. The American Department of Defense’s failure to take a decision in 2011 has created extra uncertainty about the planning and the costs of the Dutch JSF programme and the consequences for Dutch industry.

We recommend that the ministers concerned and the House of Representatives together consider how they can provide comprehensive information on the F-16 and the JSF. The aim should be to provide more insight into the relationship within and between:
— the decisions to invest in the F-16 and its proposed successor;
— the operation of the F-16 and its proposed successor;
— the operational effectiveness of the air force and the ambitions for the armed forces.

In our opinion, the annual report prepared for the House of Representatives’ Large Projects Programme would be suitable to present such comprehensive information.

In response to our report, the minister undertook to study how he could provide comprehensive information of the investments in and deployment of the F-16 in relation to the F-16 Replacement Programme. He thought our approach to determine the balance between ambitions on the one hand and resources, people and budget on the other was in principle correct. Setting priorities for the deployment of the F-16, according to the minister, may temporarily be at the cost of pilot education and training.

The minister recognises that an accurate calculation of the operational and financial consequences of the longer deployment of the F-16 cannot be made until it is known when the aircraft will be taken out of operation. The lack of plans to phase out the F-16, he observes, is a political given. The minister would budget €300 million to ensure the technical deployability of the F-16 until 2026. He would improve the operational deployability of the F-16 by this amount until 2021.

The minister will inform the House in the near future about the relationship between the F-16s to be disposed of and those to be retained. The ministry was working hard on improving the information provided on the operating costs of weapons systems.

Court of Audit’s afterword
We appreciate the minister’s undertaking to investigate how he can prepare comprehensive information on the investments in and operation of the F-16 in relation to the F-16 Replacement Programme and the Ministry of Defence’s operational ambitions. Comprehensive information will reveal the relationship between the programmes to lengthen the life of the F-16 and to replace the F-16. We suggest that the minister consider which ambitions are realistic within the given budgetary frameworks.

[Simpleton]

Fighter jet debate so far missing the point

By Matthew Fisher, Postmedia News
May 4, 2012

The notion that Canada may one day need stealthy F-35 fighter jets to help counter a threat from China has hardly been discussed in the raucous, mostly uninformed debate over whether the federal government should acquire the fifth-generation warplanes.


The few times that the possibility has been raised that China and Canada might be at odds in 2030 or 2040 it has usually been ridiculed. After all, with so many shared economic interests, there is every reason for the two countries to be friends. It is why Prime Minister Stephen Harper finally went to Beijing in February.

But China is a potential adversary as well as an important trading partner and it is foolish to think otherwise. Cyber warfare has suddenly leaped to the top of Canada's security concerns. As somebody in the know in Ottawa told me a few days ago, this is because hackers from China are trying to invade Canadian military, government and business computers every day, although Beijing's economic heft is such that nobody in the government has yet been willing to state that China is regularly testing Canada's cyber defences.

In another act that was not so friendly, China sent an icebreaker - the red-hulled Xue Long, or Snow Dragon - into Canadian waters in the Arctic Ocean. Another of what are to soon be at least five of these specialized ships is to be operational in 2014.

The purpose of the Xue Long and its sister ships is ostensibly "research." But they are also meant to establish a capability in the Arctic, which China considers an "international lake" whose untapped resources belong to everyone. Meanwhile, Canada's own plans to build new icebreakers are as muddled and as uncertain as ever.

Canada may be a Pacific nation as well as an Arctic nation but the public is largely unaware of China's keen interest in our secrets or in the Far North. Nor do they know much about the huge increase in China's military spending or that it is developing its own fifth-generation stealth fighter - the Chengdu J-20 - which thanks, apparently, to the cyber-theft of blueprints, looks a fair bit like the F-35.

Others are not so naive. In a cover story last month, The Economist magazine calculated that from a very low base China's military has experienced double-digit growth for several decades and would likely overtake the U.S. in defence spending within 25 years. The push includes plans for a blue water navy with a fleet of aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines capable of roaming the Pacific.

As well as stealthy fighter jets, China is developing a potentially world class capability in cyber warfare and extra long-range anti-ship missiles. A Chinese warship has already sailed in the Mediterranean. Its first carrier began sea trials a few weeks ago in the South China Sea. A giant new Chinese missile launcher showed up in a military parade in Pyongyang recently.

Over the past few months. South Korea, Japan and the Philippines have had potentially lethal maritime disputes with China, which has multiple overlapping territorial claims involving six Pacific nations. The U.S. and China are now involved in a highly public spat over the future of a blind Chinese dissident.


None of this suggests that war between China and Canada or its Pacific allies is imminent. Far from it. But militaries must prepare for future contingencies. To do that, they need the best equipment that they can get. Until now, almost the entire focus of the current F-35 debate in Canada has been about what the Conservative government knew about long-term costs and whether it was truthful to Parliament and the public about this.

These are important questions. But they have totally obscured serious discussion about why Canada needs such a warplane. Part of that conversation has to be about what Canada's relationship may be with China and many other countries several decades hence. The answers to such questions may be as hypothetical as what the operating costs of the F-35 will be by then, but they must be posed.

When Canada decided 32 years ago to purchase about 138 then state-of-the-art F-18s, nobody guessed that they would be used in air campaigns over the Balkans, Iraq or Libya. Whatever Canada's new fighter is, it will inevitably be counted on for far more than sovereignty patrols and North American air defence until at least the middle of this century.

[Simpleton]

http://forum.pakista...1

ATTN MODS: now that the original thread is back up (partially), please merge these two threads, thanks.

[Simpleton]

Bouncing too much to find the enemy

Posted: 06/18/2012 9:49 am

By R. Jeffrey Smith

iWatch News


A host of problems plague the military's newest jet fighter, the F-35, but one of the simplest yet most troublesome is identified in a new government audit as unreadable "symbology."

The problem exists inside a small item at the heart of what makes the F-35 the world's most sophisticated aircraft -- if only it could be made to work. Namely, the pilot's helmet visor. On the world's most advanced, fifth-generation military aircraft, the visor is meant to be much more than a sun shield. It is supposed to do wondrous things.

Acting like a small, see-through movie screen, it is designed to display data showing how the plane is performing, where enemy targets are, and which weapons the pilot can use to handle them. As the pilot swivels his head, the display is meant to adapt, creating a direct link -- as in a science-fiction movie -- between the pilot and the aircraft's unprecedented computing power.

The visor is, according to the Government Accountability Office's latest annual report on the F-35's development, "integral to the mission systems architecture." In other words, the plane was more or less designed around the unique capabilities of that fancy helmet appendage.

Just one problem: It doesn't work. In flight tests, the visor's "symbology" has evidently been unreadable, because the plane itself has been bouncing up and down in the air more than expected. The effect is probably like trying to read an e-book while riding a bicycle along a boulder-strewn path.

"Display jitter," the GAO report says in a footnote, "is the undesired shaking of display, making symbology unreadable ... [due to] worse than expected vibrations, known as aircraft buffet."

Unfortunately for the plane's designers, jitter and buffeting are only part of the problems undermining the visor's use. The others are a persistent delay in displaying key sensor data -- making the visor symbols outdated as the aircraft streaks through the air at speeds up to 1,200 mph -- and an inability to show night vision readings properly.

So what's the big deal? It's just a visor. Well, the GAO report says "these shortfalls may lead to a helmet unable to fully meet warfighter requirements -- unsuitable for flight tasks and weapons delivery, as well as creating an unmanageable pilot workload, and may place limitations on the [F-35's] operational environment."

In short, if the visor doesn't work, the plane may not be able to do all the impressive things that the Pentagon is spending more than $1.5 trillion -- over the next 30 or so years -- to make it do. The GAO said this alarm was sounded by the program officials interviewed by its investigators.

A new visor is under development, at an estimated cost of just $80 million, so the Air Force may have a backup if the original visor's kinks cannot be worked out. But according to the GAO, the alternate visor won't be as capable. An Air Force spokesman did not respond to a request for comment, but DODBuzz.com quoted the F-35 program director in March as promising that the helmet troubles are "being addressed," partly through the backup visor.

The director, Vice Adm. David Venlet, told a defense conference that the plane was just having "normal teething problems."

A few things went well for the F-35 program last year. A version being made for the Marines, capable of short takeoffs and landings, "performed better than expected" in flight tests. And the Air Force was able to double the number of test flights it performed the previous year. The volume of changes made to engineering drawings of the plane's components every month -- even while the plane is in early production -- has started to decline.

But there wasn't a lot of other good news in the report. Although the program was extensively restructured by senior Pentagon officials last year, by adding many millions of dollars and stretching out key deadlines, it still managed to meet only six of its eleven objectives for the period. Many of these goals were administrative. Among the uncompleted tasks: an interim upgrade of the plane's software and a redesign of its tailhook.

The plane has had no difficulty being launched by catapults, a key prerequisite for its use by the Navy aboard aircraft carriers. But so far, it has not been able to use its tailhook to catch a cable and stop suddenly -- which is also, well, crucial for operations on an aircraft carrier. Generally speaking, Navy pilots need a place to land when their missions are complete.

Venlet has called the tailhook troubles "a damping-bouncing issue" that could not have been foreseen. It is being redesigned, but the GAO warns that "other aircraft structural modifications may also be required." The discovery of cracks in the plane's bulkhead, an upright wall in its fuselage, will require costly repairs, and other parts are showing unexpectedly early signs of wear. Flight tests so far have shown "different structural loads than predicted," the GAO disclosed, a sure sign that unplanned work lies ahead. "Aircraft reliability and parts shortages" contributed to testing shortfalls last year.

In an October report, a special testing team of Air Force, Navy, and British officers found shortcomings in "aircraft handling characteristics and shortfalls in maneuvering performance," according to a GAO summary of the officers' report. Besides flagging the troubled helmet, they complained about poor management of spare parts supplies, excessive repair time for the plane's delicate radar-absorbing skin, and "poor maintainability performance."

The Pentagon has increasingly been at loggerheads with the chief contractor, Lockheed Martin, over the work ahead. Already, cost overruns on four early production contracts have totaled $1 billion, with the government on the hook to pay just over two-thirds this amount. But Uncle Sam's ambition is still to buy 365 of the planes (out of 2,457) at a cost of $69 billion, before completing so-called developmental flight tests -- the spins in the sky that are needed to make sure everything is operating properly.

Until those tests are finished, the GAO said -- repeating a theme the government watchdog has sounded for the past seven years -- the F-35 program is "very susceptible to discovering costly design and technical problems after many aircraft have been fielded." The auditors expressed worry as a result that the Pentagon may not be able to afford the program in its current form and urged that it conduct a study now of the impact of future budget cuts.

In a written reply, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense David G. Ahern said the Pentagon conducts such studies all the time, but "does not believe there is value" in making them public. He also said that any such analysis would have to consider the impact of any cuts in a broad context, including the "industrial base," the size of the existing fighter fleet, and Washington's deals to sell the plane to foreign allies.

[Simpleton]

Navy admiral hints at jettisoning F-35 fighter

Questions value of stealth technology


By Rowan Scarborough
-
The Washington Times
Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The chief of naval operations has penned an opinion column that has military analysts buzzing over whether it signals the Navy may be the first military branch to jettison the costly F-35 stealth fighter jet.

Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert’s column in the current issue of Proceedings magazine questions the value of radar-evading technology, or stealth, in flying to a target and bombing it in a world of rapidly improving radars.

At the same time, the Navy’s top officer champions the future of unmanned planes and standoff weapons such as ship-fired cruise missiles. Adm. Greenert also mentions the ongoing budget-cutting environment in Washington.

The Navy has planned to buy about 480 of the aircraft-carrier version of the F-35, even as the stealth fighter jet’s costs have skyrocketed and the Navy prepares to shrink its fleet of ships for lack of money.

To military analysts, all of Adm. Greenert’s points add up to a conclusion that the Navy is having second thoughts about pouring billions of dollars into the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Not true, says the admiral’s spokesman.

“Those reports are wrong,” NavyLt. Nate Curtis said. “The CNO [chief of naval operations] has stated he is committed to the Joint Strike Fighter.

“The CNO was not talking about a commitment to the Joint Strike Fighter. That isn’t the issue. He was talking about stealth in the future and looking at the return on investment. That’s what he talks about in that article,” Lt. Curtis said.

That has not stopped analysts from conjecturing about the Pentagon’s most expensive acquisition program in an era of mounting federal debt.

“Adm. Greenert’s controversial — and, potentially, hugely consequential — article raises several interesting points, among which is the contention that advances in sensing capabilities and electronic and cyberwarfare will increasingly degrade America’s stealth arsenal,” wrote Mackenzie Eaglen, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “This is not news. What is news, however, is the head of the Navy signaling a tepid commitment to the military’s largest acquisition program.”

In his column, Adm. Greenert does not mention the fighter by name, but he does note the limits of stealth technology. And the Navy is buying only one stealth aircraft — the F-35.

“We appear to be reaching the limits of how much a platform’s inherent stealth can affordably get it close enough to survey or attack adversaries,” Adm. Greenert says in a magazine that serves as a sounding board for active and retired officers. “And our fiscal situation will continue to require difficult trade-offs, requiring us to look for new ways to control costs while remaining relevant.”

The admiral, a former submarine commander now in the first year of a four-year term, writes of advances in radars and computers that can detect even the best stealth planes as they near a target.

“The Navy has been sending signals for a long time,” said Winslow Wheeler, an analyst at the Center for Defense Information, a budget reform group. “The most recent Greenert comments in Proceedings shows that longstanding information, available for decades, about the vulnerability of stealth to long-wavelength radars is beginning to sink in as the realizations of the gigantic dollar, tactical and reliability costs escalate.”

Designed as a multipurpose fighter to replace the Air Force’s F-16 Falcons and the Navy’s F-18 Hornets, the F-35 now carries a price tag of $395.7 billion for 2,443 planes.

It has suffered technical failures and huge cost overruns, prompting Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, in December to call it “both a scandal and a tragedy.”

The Government Accountability Office reported in June that total acquisition costs in the past five years ballooned 42 percent, to $395 billion. Full-rate production now is not scheduled to begin until 2019, a six-year delay.

In the most recent Pentagon budget review, in which $487 billion was cut from the 10-year spending plan, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta opted to stretch out procurement but not terminate the program.

The services know, however, that another wave of budget cuts is looming — about $500 billion if Congress cannot agree on a deficit-reduction plan by January. In that case, analysts say, several procurement budget lines will be in jeopardy, including the F-35.

The GAO criticized the Pentagon for its big bet on “concurrency” — that is, developing and producing the plane at the same time. The Pentagon is buying 365 F-35s before developmental flight tests are completed.

Said the GAO: “Development of critical-mission systems providing core combat capabilities remains behind schedule and risky. To date, only 4 percent of the mission systems required for full capability have been verified. Deficiencies with the helmet-mounted display, integral to mission systems functionality and concepts of operation, are most problematic.”

[kmc]

what a waste of money

[Simpleton]

F-35 fighter drops first bomb, marking new test phase



Fri Aug 10, 2012 2:50am IST

* Bomb over Atlantic range tests release gear, not targeting

* F-35 is Pentagon's costliest weapons program

* Eight other countries are cost-sharing in the program

By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) - A Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft has dropped its first bomb in a new test stage of the Pentagon's costliest weapons purchase, officials said Thursday.

An inert 1,000-pound GBU-32 Joint Direct Attack Munition was released Wednesday by the short take-off and vertical landing F-35B version over a watery Atlantic range, the Naval Air Systems Command said in a statement.

The event, one of thousands of capabilities being tested this year, starts the "validation" of the ability to deploy precision weapons against foes on the ground and in the air, the command said.

Current Pentagon plans call for buying some 2,443 F-35s in three radar-evading models - for the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy - through the mid-2030s at a cost projected to top $396 billion.

Hundreds of additional F-35s are expected to be purchased by U.S. friends and allies, including eight co-development partners - Britain, Italy, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands.

In addition, Israel and Japan already have signed purchase agreements for the jet. F-35 sales competitors include Boeing Co 's F-18E/F, Saab's Gripen, France's Dassault Rafale, Russia's MiG-35 and Sukhoi Su-35, and the Eurofighter Typhoon made by a consortium of British, German, Italian and Spanish companies.

The F-35, also called the Lightning II, is designed to replace a range of fighter, strike and ground-attack aircraft, including Lockheed's F-16, the world's most widely used multirole fighter.

The test on Wednesday checked for a smooth release of the bomb from its carriage systems and path away from the aircraft, not for targeting.

"The targeting aspect will come further down the road," said Victor Chen, spokesman for the F-35 integrated test facility at Patuxent River, Maryland. He declined to project when.

The bomb release capped a series of ground fit checks, ground pit drops and aerial maneuvers to make sure everything was set for expanding the "test envelope" in the air, the Navy said.

The Pentagon this year postponed production of 179 F-35s until after 2017, stretching out development and testing to curb costly retrofits.

The latest restructuring, the third such major revamp, added 33 months and $7.9 billion to the development plan.

"While this weapons separation test is just one event in a series of hundreds of flights and thousands of test points that we are executing this year, it does represent a significant entry into a new phase of testing for the F-35 program," Captain Erik Etz, director of test for the naval versions, said in the statement.

Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier by sales, is developing the F-35 with Northrop Grumman Corp and Britain's BAE Systems PLC. United Technologies Corp 's Pratt & Whitney unit supplies the engine.

[Simpleton]

Pentagon tells Lockheed to shape up on F-35 fighter

[sobank]

oh for god sake............. give it to israelis already............they will get it to fly. Too many bs in US bullshitcracy.

[rungroot]

oh for god sake............. give it to israelis already............they will get it to fly. Too many bs in US bullshitcracy.

israelis purely feed on american money and technology, they have nothing of their own accept a conniving business mind. What wonders would they pull off??? NOTHING!!!

[Dizasta]

The Israelis can't do squat. The only thing those morons are good at, is developing very smart, effective UAVs, ECMs and EW Suites. They have not the first clue on how to design a fighter-jet or build one from scratch. The alterations they've made to the Mirage lll's and V's, and the failed attempt to alter the design of an F-16 with canards, is NOT designing, developing or pioneering fighter-jet technology. Also, the fact that they have a high kill-tally in air-to-air combat, is only because they went up against less experienced and inferior Arab air forces. Had the Israelis gone up against the USAF, RuAF, PLAAF, RAF, Luftwaffe or even Pakistan Air Force, they would've had their butts whooped.

Doesn't make these idiots the gods of air supremacy, they're just human and that too, very wicked and evil ones.

[PakShah]

So basically the F-35 is a failure.

Who cares about the F-35.

The Chinese J-20 would probably be better and actually make it affordable.

[Simpleton]

Lightning will ground F35 fighter jet known as the Lightning II

Britain’s £150 million new combat jet has been banned from flying in bad weather amid fears that it could explode.


By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
7:30AM GMT 20 Jan 2013


The production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter – the world’s most sophisticated and expensive combat aircraft – has been derailed after engineers discovered that the jet’s fuel tank could explode if struck by lightning.


The disclosure is a major setback for the aircraft, also known as the Lightning II, which is due to enter service with both the RAF and the Royal Navy by 2018.


Attempts to increase fuel efficiency by reducing the jet’s weight have also made it more vulnerable to enemy attack than the generation of aircraft it was supposed to replace.


The damaging findings were disclosed in a Pentagon document which revealed that a fault within the JSF’s fuel tank could potentially lead to catastrophic explosion if the aircraft was struck by lightning in a thunderstorm.


The report from the Pentagon’s Operational Test and Evaluation Office states that all test flying within 25 miles of thunderstorms is “not permitted” until a device in the fuel tank which maintains correct oxygen levels is redesigned.

The fear of an exploding fuel tank is just one of a series of problem to befall the F-35 programme. A design fault in the fuel tank has also prevented the JSF being able to rapidly descend to low altitude.

The Pentagon report describes both failings as “unacceptable for combat or combat training”.

Examinations by the United States Air Force and the Lockheed Martin, the aircraft’s manufacturer, also discovered a handful of cracks in the tested aircraft, including on the right wing and right engine of the F-35A variant, and on another part of the F-35B variant.

“All of these discoveries will require mitigation plans and may include redesigning parts and additional weight,” the report added.

Britain is buying the F-35B – the short take-off and vertical landing version – as a replacement for the Harrier. The “multirole” plane will be used for air defence, ground attack and reconnaissance missions.

The F-35 has a top speed of 1,300mph and a range of 1,450 miles, while the Harrier could reach a speed of 700mph and had a range of 350 miles. The older aircraft also had no radar transparency or stealth capabilities, while the F-35 has both.

However the version being ordered by Britain is the is the heaviest, least capable and most expensive of the three versions of the plane, as it carries a lift fan propulsion system for its “jump jet” capability, which it needs to land on the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carriers.

The F-35 is also designed to be practically invisible to radar. Its shape has no right angles, which reflect radar waves, and a special “fibre” coating make it difficult to detect on any enemy radar.

Low heat emissions and an ability to carry armaments in an internal weapons bay instead of mounted on wings and underneath the fuselage further enhances its stealth capabilities.

The aircraft will carry a range of weapons including air-to-air rockets and satellite guided bombs.

Pilots are fitted with helmets which allow them to see 360 degrees, and displays all the data they need inside the visor.

The cockpit also features an all-glass digital instrument panel and a speech recognition system. Each aircraft has more than 24 million lines of “software code”.

In theory the F-35 should be able to fly into the enemy’s air space, attack it’s target and return safely to friendly territory without ever being detected.

But the F-35 has been dogged by criticism since its inception in the 1990s, particularly in the United States where it has gained unwelcome notoriety as the most expensive equipment project ever undertaken by the Pentagon.

Estimates suggest that the total cost of buying, operating and maintaining the planes over the next 30 years will be £625 billion – or $1 trillion.

Winslow Wheeler, at the US Center for Defense Information described the F-35 programme as a “gigantic performance disappointment”, which was not even as stealthy as the F-22 Raptor.

He added: “It’s the counterintuitive problem of paying a huge amount of money thinking you’re getting a Lamborghini or Ferrari: You’re not, you’re getting a Yugo (the cheap, mass-produced cars made in the former Yugoslavia).”

Though British pilots have already been involved in the test flying programme, they will not be flying the plane off UK bases or the two new aircraft carriers until 2018.

The US is spending around £254 billion to buy 2,500 F-35s for its navy, air force and marine corps. The previous government said the UK would buy 138 planes but Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, has so far committed to purchasing only 48.

The fuel tank problems are the second major blow to hit the programme in recent weeks. Last month Canada pulled out of a deal to buy 65 F-35s over fears that the aircraft could be too expensive to run.

Canada is not the only country to get cold feet. Italy reduced its purchase to 90 F-35s instead of the initial 131, while the US has delayed some of its purchases and may still trim the programme given its difficult fiscal situation.

An audit of the programme by KPMG revealed aircraft running costs could reach £28.4 billion over the next 42-years.

The final decision on the number Britain buys will be dependent on the future role of the Royal Navy’s two carriers and whether, as is expected, the unit price of each aircraft falls.

The future of the aircraft is also key to Britain’s defence industry and will help to sustain over 20,000 jobs.

Although the plane is being manufactured by Lockheed Martin, Britain is a major partner in the programme, with both BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce playing key roles in the production and design of the jet.

A Lockheed Martin spokesman said: “The F-35 programme has yet to formally test for lightning protection. We still have 4 years of Developmental Test ahead of us, before we actually begin formal Operational Testing. There is a plan in place for lightning testing to be completed in the future test plan, and for the jet to be appropriately equipped to fly in all weather. The plan is to conduct lightning test towards the end of the flight test programme. Because the testing has not be completed to date, we therefore have a lightning restriction of 25 miles at present for flight operations – this is obviously the safe, and sensible way to do business and supported by all involved in the programme.”

[Jazba-e-Kashmir]

Pentagon grounds entire fleet of F-35 fighter jets after crack found in engine


The Pentagon yesterday grounded its fleet of F-35 fighter jets after discovering a cracked engine blade in one plane.

The problem was discovered during what the Pentagon called a routine inspection at Edwards Air Force Base, California, of an F-35A, the Air Force version of the sleek new plane. The Navy and the Marine Corps are buying other versions of the F-35, which is intended to replace older fighters like the Air Force F-16 and the Navy F/A-18.

All versions — a total of 51 planes — were grounded pending a more in-depth evaluation of the problem discovered at Edwards. None of the planes have been fielded for combat operations; all are undergoing testing.

In a brief written statement, the Pentagon said it is too early to know the full impact of the newly discovered problem.

A watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight, said the grounding is not likely to mean a significant delay in the effort to field the stealthy aircraft.

"The F-35 is a huge problem because of its growing, already unaffordable, cost and its gigantically disappointing performance," the group's Winslow Wheeler said. "That performance would be unacceptable even if the aircraft met its far-too-modest requirements, but it is not."

The F-35 is the Pentagon's most expensive weapons programme at a total estimated cost of nearly $400 billion. The Pentagon envisions buying more than 2,400 F-35s, but some members of Congress are balking at the price tag.

Friday's suspension of flight operations will remain in effect until an investigation of the problem's root cause is determined.

The Pentagon said the engine in which the problem was discovered is being shipped to a Pratt & Whitney facility in Connecticut for more thorough evaluation.


http://www.independe...ne-8507961.html

[kooldawghd2]

QUite the expensive lemon lol

[shabi1]

An F-16 Blk-60 would make a better induction choice than these JSFs

[Simpleton]

Grounding of world's two most advanced aircraft could spell trouble for Israeli aviation

Israel Air Force has ordered 20 F-35 Lightning II, which have now been grounded due to technical problems; meanwhile, the grounding of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner may cause El Al to prefer Airbuses for the first time. By Anshel Pfeffer | Feb.23, 2013 | 6:57 PM

The announcement Saturday by the Pentagon that it was grounding all F-35 fighter jets due to a crack found in one of the engine blades, has led to an unprecedented situation: The two central projects of the world's largest aircraft manufacturers, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, are suspended indefinitely.

The next strike aircraft to serve three branches of the U.S. military, the most ambitious and expensive weapons system in history and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner (the most advanced airliner of a generation) are now officially in crisis mode, and hemorrhaging hundreds of millions. A question mark now looms over aerospace innovation in the 21st century, which could also throw a spanner into the plans of Israel's Air Force and the national airliner, El Al.

The F-35 Lightning II is a stealth fighter designed to evade enemy radar, and which is built in three versions: A land-based aircraft for the U.S. Air Force, a carrier-based fighter for the U.S. Navy and a vertical take-off and landing tactical bomber for the smaller Marine Corps carriers. This is the first time that one platform has been developed for all three services - and in addition, the Pentagon has specified a wide range of operational requirements, including stealth and the ability to carry out strike and air-defense missions as well as electronic-warfare and intelligence-gathering.

This ambitious combination of capabilities in one aircraft of limited size - due to the constraints of the "stealthy" aerodynamic shape - has caused a series of significant delays in the development program and astronomic budget overruns. The F-35 is currently seven years overdue its original development goals, and the cost of 2,443 fighters needed by the U.S. armed forces to replace rapidly aging fighters it is now assessed to be nearly 400 billion dollars - 70 percent higher than the original budget.

Saturday's decision to ground the 64 F-35s that have already flown as part of the development and pilot-training programs is the fourth such grounding. The development of the plane, which first flew six years ago, has been fraught with major problems, including cracks in the bulkheads, software glitches and engine worries. It's already clear that whenever the F-35 enters operational service, it will still lack a significant portion of its electronic and weapons systems which will be installed over years.

The current obstacle - a cracked engine blade - puts into question one of the key decisions taken during the development program – to rely on only one engine manufacturer, Pratt and Whitney, instead of two alternative sources.

The decision to save funds may now cause a very expensive delay. The halt in flight-tests while new aircraft continue rolling off the mile-long assembly line in Fort Worth is also a serious worry for the Israeli Air Force, which has ordered twenty F-35s and plan to order an additional two squadrons. The IAF urgently needs these fighters to replace early-model F-16s that have to be withdrawn from service in the next few years and a further delay may leave a gap in its inventory.

Meanwhile, at another giant factory 3,500 kilometers away, north of Seattle, Lockheed Martin's competitor, Boeing, is seeking additional parking space around the assembly line of its newest airliner, the Boeing 787, which is also grounded until further notice.

In 2001, Boeing lost the competition to build the new strike fighter, but its core business has always been building civilian passenger jets. The Boeing 787 was going to be its new flagship, returning it to the position of global dominance lost in the last few years to the European Airbus, which has now surpassed Boeing in the number of planes ordered by airlines worldwide. The 787 can fly up to 290 passengers, travel at faster speeds than any of its competitors and uses 20 percent less fuel.

On the outside, the 787 doesn't seem different from other airliners, but its manufacturing is radically different. It is the first airliners constructed mainly from composite materials, rather than metal; many of the hydraulic systems have been replaced by electronic ones, making the plane lighter and more fuel-efficient. But the new methods have made Boeing reliant on thousands of suppliers, not all of which are used to complying with the stringent standards and timetables of the aerospace industry. Supply problems caused the first aircraft to be "overweight" and delayed supply to the first customer, Japanese airliner ANA, by three years.

Despite the delays, until a month ago, the 787 was still considered a success story and Boeing and already accumulated 844 orders as new airliners came out of the Seattle plant and were delivered to customers. The picture, however, changed as technical problems added up, well above the level acceptable for a new aircraft. The mishaps were mainly to do with the fuel and electrical systems, and despite Boeing executives' promises that these were merely "teething problems," two incidents of in-flight fire, occurring on consecutive says in Japanese 787s and forcing emergency evacuation lead to the decision to ground all fifty planes flying so far worldwide.

The fires were caused by new lithium-ion batteries which seem to be unexpectedly flammable, and Boeing engineers are scrambling to find solutions. Meanwhile, the planes are grounded and as another new 787 is rolled out each week, parking space around the Seattle field is growing scarce. The delays could also change El Al's fleet plans. So far, Israel's national airline was planning to acquire the 787 to replace its aging 747s and 767s though an order had yet to be placed. For over four decades, El Al has bought only Boeing planes, but the question mark now over the 787 may bring the company to order Airbuses for the first time.

These two ambitious projects, the F-35 and Boeing 787, are "too big to fail." The problems will eventually be solved, as alternatives are nowhere to be found and hundreds of billions have already been invested in both of them. But once they return to the skies, it is highly doubtful that airplane manufacturers will be brave enough to allow themselves such a technological gamble in the foreseeable future.

[Simpleton]

It seems LM has taken pages out of the LCA playbook.

[Simpleton]

Boeing touts fighter jet to rival F-35 — at half the price

Super Hornet less stealthy, but has lower sticker price and operational costs

By Terry Milewski, CBC News

Posted: Feb 27, 2013 8:54 PM ET


In a dogfight of defence contractors, the hunter can quickly become the hunted. It's happening now to the F-35.

The world's largest defence contractor, Lockheed Martin, is trying to convince wavering U.S. allies — including Canada — to stick with its high-tech, high-priced and unproven F-35 stealth fighter. But the F-35 is way behind schedule, way over budget and, now, it's grounded by a mysterious crack in a turbine fan.

After years of technical problems, it's a tempting target for Lockheed Martin's rivals.

It's no surprise, then, that the No. 2 defence contractor, Boeing, smells blood.

With Ottawa now reviewing its previous commitment to buy the F-35, Boeing is making an aggressive pitch to Canadian taxpayers, offering to save them billions of dollars if they buy Boeing's Super Hornets instead.

Boeing isn't pulling its punches. The Super Hornet, it says, is a proven fighter while the F-35 is just a concept — and an expensive one at that.


"We call it competing with a paper airplane," says Ricardo Traven, Boeing's chief test pilot for the Super Hornet. A Canadian who flew fighters for 15 years in the Canadian Air Force, Traven dismisses the F-35 as a "shiny brochure of promises," and contrasts it with "the real thing," which looms behind him in a top-secret hangar at Boeing's vast production line in St. Louis, Missouri.

All photographs and video are closely monitored by Boeing staff to ensure nothing classified leaks out. Many of the Super Hornet's best selling points, they say, are classified. The same goes for the F-35. The difference, says Traven, is that the Super Hornet is long since proven.

It has two engines to the F-35's one — and, unlike the F-35, it's ready now. Some 500 Super Hornets are already in service with the U.S. Navy. Dozens have already been sold to the Australian Air Force, which, like Canada, was once committed to the F-35 but gave up waiting for it to prove itself.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin both say their plane is superior in various ways. Lockheed Martin's headline feature is stealth. Boeing's is price. But with defence budgets shrinking everywhere, price is increasingly what governments want to hear about.

On that, Boeing thinks it has a compelling case — and not just because its plane is cheaper.

The Super Hornet currently sells for about $55 million US apiece; the Pentagon expects the F-35 to cost twice as much — about $110 million. But only 20 per cent of the cost of owning a fighter fleet is the actual sticker price of the planes. Eighty per cent is the operating cost — what it takes to keep them flying. That means everything from pilots and fuel to maintenance and spares.
Psst! Wanna save $23B?

And that's where the difference between the F-35 and the Super Hornet rockets into the stratosphere.

"The current actual costs to operate a Super Hornet are less than half the cost that the F-35 is projected to be once it's in operation, just to operate," says Mike Gibbons, vice-president in charge of the Super Hornet program.

Less than half? But how can he know that, since the F-35s are not yet in service?

Gibbons is ready for the question. "No one knows actually how costly that jet will actually be, once it's in operation. We do know how affordable the Super Hornet is currently because we have actual costs." The Super Hornet costs about $16,000 an hour to fly, he says — and the F-35 will be double that.

Really? That sounded too good to be true — so CBC News dug into Boeing's figures to see how credible they are.

Watch Mike Gibbons' response on operation costs

According to the GAO, the Super Hornet actually costs the U.S. Navy $15,346 an hour to fly. It sounds like a lot — until you see that the US Air Force's official "target" for operating the F-35 is $31,900 an hour. The GAO says it's a little more — closer to $32,500.

CBC also asked Lockheed Martin to say if it had any quarrel with these numbers — and it did not.

In a written response, a Lockheed spokesman declined to offer any different figures, but insisted the F-35's operating costs would be "comparable to or lower than" the "legacy platforms" — meaning, older jets — that it will replace. Those do not include the Super Hornets, which Boeing says are 25 per cent cheaper to run than Canada's "legacy" CF-18s.

Watch Ricardo Traven's response on costs

Lockheed also claimed the F-35 would "achieve cost advantages … by leveraging economies of scale" gained by selling one fighter, with one supply chain, to different countries. However, it remains to be seen whether those economies of scale are ever realized.

As it stands, the official estimate for a fleet of 65 F-35s is that they will cost $9 billion to buy and almost $37 billion to operate over the next 42 years. So, a total of just under $46 billion. If Boeing's figures hold up, the Super Hornets would cost about half that.

The math is easy, but the result is eye-popping nonetheless. It's a saving of up to $23 billion.

Numbers like that have a way of getting attention.
Sure, but what about stealth?

The next question is, though — is it a second-rate plane? Instead of the "Fifth Generation" stealth fighter that Lockheed Martin advertises, does Canada want to settle for a not-so-stealthy Generation 4.5?

Boeing is ready for that question, too. Mike Gibbons, the VP, phrases his answer carefully.

"We know that the Super Hornet has effective stealth, and that's really the key. In fact, we believe we have a more affordable stealth than many other platforms that are being designed specifically and touted as stealthy platforms."

Of course, he means the F-35 — and he's not claiming to have better stealth, just more affordable stealth. But his test pilot, Ricardo Traven, says that doesn't mean the Super Hornet is less likely to survive in combat.

As a pilot with experience in the North, says Traven, he'd rather fly with a little less stealth and little more agility. Lockheed Martin gave up agility, he argues, to gain the former.

On the Super Hornet, "sacrifices were not made for the purpose of stealth," he explains. After numerous winter landings on frozen Canadian runways, he says, "You want an airplane with large control surfaces, large flaps … these things give the airplane a lot of manoeuverability."

Watch Ricardo Traven's response to the stealth question

Proponents of stealth, though, want everything smaller so as to reduce the plane's visibility on radar.

"The stealth engineers don't want large flaps, they don't want large ailerons, they don`t want large wings, so everything is shrunk down on an airplane like that to be stealthy. And so the cost of stealth is not just the money. The cost is in capability and in performance …. Those capabilities and performance I do not believe are worth the sacrifice for stealth," says Traven.
'The goose that didn't get the memo'

These factors, Traven insists, make the Super Hornet more "survivable," even if it's less stealthy. Similarly, he touts the virtues of having twin engines. Sure, the F-35's single engine may be very reliable, he says — but what if a bird gets sucked in?

"It's the goose that didn't get the memo," he says, which could destroy a single-engined aircraft. With two engines, the pilot can still fly. Equally, Traven says, the Super Hornet's landing gear is more rugged and more suited to snowy or slushy northern runways.

"Twin engines, dual redundant hydraulics … I mean, I can go on and on," Traven enthuses. "Those are the things I don't want to give up in flying to remote places or even in combat, because those are the things that'll bring you home."

Watch Traven's response on flying in the North

Don't say Boeing doesn't know how to do a sales job. And Lockheed Martin's no slouch, either. In fact, Lockheed has a Canadian chief test pilot, too — Billie Flynn, who's doubly Canadian, if it comes to that, because he's married to Canadian astronaut Julie Payette.
Top that, Boeing!

Actually, Traven has some high-orbit Canadian connections, too. He's an old Air Force buddy of another well-known pilot: Gen. Tom Lawson, no less — who's now Canada's chief of defence staff.

Lawson has long been a fan of the F-35, but has recently begun to downplay the importance of stealth. He told CBC News that government decision-makers might do well to listen to his former comrade.

"Every aircraft brings a level of stealth," said Lawson — not just the F-35. The new secretariat that is looking at alternatives, he said, will have to see just how much stealth each plane offers.

Does the Super Hornet have what it takes? "I don't know," Lawson replied.

"We're going to leave that to the team to look at. We don't have Super Hornets. We have not, until recently, even considered purchasing them. So I think that Ricardo Traven, my good friend that you mentioned, might have something to say about that, that would interest the teams, the whole-of-government teams, that are together to consider it."
Start your engines

So, the contest is on — and, if it was once wired to make sure the F-35 won, it isn't now. The government insists it really is "hitting the reset button" and is serious about looking for alternatives.

CBC News contacted the European manufacturers of the Typhoon — also known as the Eurofighter — as well as Dassault, the French maker of the Rafale, and Sweden's Saab, which makes the Gripen. All said they've been contacted by the Canadian government and were ready to make their pitches.

But it's Boeing's entry that will grab most attention. It's the only American competitor for the F-35, and being "interoperable" with the U.S. is a big deal for Canada. Boeing is also offering to meet or beat the amount of contracts — known as "industrial benefits" — that Lockheed Martin would steer to Canadian companies.

With billions at stake, this battle of the giants will be worth watching.

[M_ZEE32]

Air Force Chief Says 70% of ALL Combat Aircraft 'Non Combat Capable By July

By Colin Clark

UPDATED: Added Capitol Hill Reaction
AFA Winter, Orlando: Imagine if someone told you 70 percent of all American combat aircraft would not be ready to fly in time of war by July. That's just what Air Force Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told some 600 people attending the Air Force Associations's annual winter conference this morning will happen should the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration occur.

[Click here for our coverage of sequestration and continuing resolution impacts on military readiness across all the services: theArmy, the Marines, the Navy, and further Air Force impacts.]

This means 70 percent of all fighters (and MAYBE Remotely Piloted Aircraft and bombers -- except those for nuclear missions and aircraft in ongoing operations --we're checking) will beunready to go to war.

Welsh was careful to note that the service would protect all "named operations," so this doesn't appear to mean that troops in Afghanistan will go without air cover, but it should send a very clear message to those in Congress who continue to cling to entrenched positions that they risk gutting the combat capability of the military we spend so much to build and maintain.

The degradation will begin May 1, when flying hours will begin to get chopped, Welsh said.

But a congressional aide noted that the Air Force has been on a downward readiness slide for years, taking money from operations and maintenance to pay for new weapons such as the F-35.

"I think if you ask the AF today, if normal funding were to be assumed through July, about 40-50% of American combat aircraft would only be capable of meeting wartime requirements. So no, it's not surprising that only 30% would be available in July with restricted funding," the aide said in an email. "Over the past 10 years, the AF has taken risk in its O&M accounts (flying hour program and depot maintenance activities) in order to pay for modernization (mainly F-35 which has been sapping their funding), and those incurred risks that Gen Welsh's predecessors thought were worth taking have now become issues current AF leadership has to address and fund now."

The Continuing Resolution -- a stopgap spending bill -- currently in force will mean the Air Force ends up short $12.4 billion in fiscal 2013 for the base budget, and $1.8 billion in the war operations budget, known as Overseas Contingency Operations, the Air Force chief said.

Welsh didn't stop there. He said the CR would mean that the Air Force would have to shell out an additional $1 billion to buy a second Space-based Infrared System satellite. Why? Satellites are much cheaper to buy in groups because of the cost of buying components in advance and because of the high cost of the very skilled labor. If Congress does not pass a defense appropriations bill for 2013 the service will have to delay the planned purchase of the second satellite and that will drive up the cost.

He noted the Air Force will also have to buy three fewer F-35s in fiscal 2013. And the CR and sequestration will also mean delays to the highly complex software that is key to the plane's combat capabilities. Those delays will put at risk the date for Initial Operating Capability, a politically sensitive milestone, Welsh said.

[kmc]

If USAF says its 70% of Combat Fighters and not capable then what will be the case of third worlds Air Forces ????????

[Simpleton]

If USAF says its 70% of Combat Fighters and not capable then what will be the case of third worlds Air Forces ????????

this is just to get more money before the upcoming yearly sequestration, that's all.