via Examiner.
The U.S.-led F-35 Lightning II program has achieved a milestone of 10,000 flight hours, prime contractorLockheed Martin announced Oct. 9.Interesting.
Through September, F-35s had flown 6,492 times for a total of 10,077 flight hours, the company said.
All three variants of the stealthy fighter jet contributed to the accomplishment: the conventional-takeoff-and-landing F-35A, the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing F-35B and the carrier variant F-35C. The F-35, also known as theJoint Strike Fighter, is being developed for the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corp and Navy and for international partners. The U.S. military plans to begin fielding the aircraft in late 2015.
Lockheed Martin’s announcement came less than two weeks after the Pentagon’s inspector general released a report identifying a series of “quality assurance” oversight problems that “could adversely affect aircraft performance, reliability, maintainability, and ultimately program cost.” The government F-35 program office and Lockheed Martin countered that they have already fixed most of the problems outlined in the report.
10,000 freaking flight hours and its not ready for prime time yet. Oh and consider this boys and girls. Think about other programs that were killed in the crib that failed less than the F-35....
* Comanche
* FCS
* EFV
* MPC
* F-22 (program was truncated at around 200 airplanes)
* B-2
And those are just off the top of the head without any real research.
You wonder why I hate this program?
Its simple.
It costs too much, has delivered too little, is way too late and won't effectively combat our peer competitor in aerial warfare.
We're paying for a Ferrari with a 10 horsepower engine, with cheap plastic seats that has an AM/FM radio for entertainment. Its weird, its obsolete and its not what we wanted.
Thanks for this link Don!
Check this out people. The Vanity Fair article was the program manager basically yelling, praying, begging for the program to be canceled and now this...
Chief tester Gilmore, Jun 19, 2013:
"Although mission systems testing has been able to keep pace with the program plans for generating sorties and accomplishing the test points, the program is falling behind in achieving progress in delivering capability. This lack of progress is caused in part by the need to add unplanned testing to evaluate problems, such as the 221 added points for dedicated testing of the helmet mounted display system, as well as for regression testing of new software loads delivered to flight test, where 366 test points have been added already in calendar year 2013 to evaluate four new software releases [now to be changed]. . .We haven’t actually tested any combat capability,” Gilmore told senators, adding that there may not be enough time or money for full testing of these crucial capabilities in 2018, as scheduled. . . .We need to have more rigorous developmental testing. We need to let that testing proceed before we make production decisions."Another official with the program saying for anyone to listen...stop this madness. Stop production until we can get this thing fixed!!!! If the Marine Corps had done the same thing with the EFV like the Pentagon is doing with the F-35 then we'd have all the vehicles bought and in the fleet before we had it working properly. But we didn't do that. So why are we doing it with a much more complex machine? It makes no sense.
http://tinyurl.com/k2cjj4c
The F-35 has achieved quantity of flight hours, but not quality of performance, and it won't do it in the next five years..
ReplyDeleteChief tester Gilmore, Jun 19, 2013:
"Although mission systems testing has been able to keep pace with the program plans for generating sorties and accomplishing the test points, the program is falling behind in achieving progress in delivering capability. This lack of progress is caused in part by the need to add unplanned testing to evaluate problems, such as the 221 added points for dedicated testing of the helmet mounted display system, as well as for regression testing of new software loads delivered to flight test, where 366 test points have been added already in calendar year 2013 to evaluate four new software releases [now to be changed]. . .We haven’t actually tested any combat capability,” Gilmore told senators, adding that there may not be enough time or money for full testing of these crucial capabilities in 2018, as scheduled. . . .We need to have more rigorous developmental testing. We need to let that testing proceed before we make production decisions."
http://tinyurl.com/k2cjj4c
The latest news is that the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) has decided to penalize Pratt & Whitney and withhold 5 percent of future billings on four F-35 fighter engine contracts and a Navy deal, because Pratt is not meeting required auditing standards.
ReplyDeleteThis is another example, like the recent DOD IG finding on the hundreds of LM deficiencies, that the JSF Project Manager is not doing his job and has instead delegated his responsibility to DOD inspectors.
We have no idea what the cost of the F-135 engine is! Pratt says that this information on an engine developed with US taxpayer dollars is proprietary and they won't divulge the engine cost!
No wonder the F-35 program is years behind schedule and hundreds of millions over cost, with no acceptable aircraft performance in sight while production quantities are being increased. Sen. John McCain has called the F-35 program “one of the great national scandals.” He's correct.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-unitedtechnologies-fighter-20131008,0,3099929.story
"Stop production until we can get this thing fixed!!!! "
ReplyDeleteI once served in a Project Manager's office when the PM stopped production on a tactical vehicle. Stopped it cold, shut it down -- because the company was producing a shoddy vehicle. That man went on to become the PM for the M-1 main battle tank, in large part (I believe) because he had the balls to do the right thing.
Just a little info on past aircraft that didn't meet the standards and costs necessary to carry out a successful build. The XB-70 Valkyrie, began in 1955, six years later President Kennedy declared that the program was to be scaled back and used as research only. At that time the cost per prototype was $700 million. To put that into today's dollars it is an amazing number, a little over 5 billion dollars. They had two aircraft built, so roughly 1.4 billion. Another factor in the cancellation of the XB was the introduction of ICBM's. I love this of President Eisenhower, " President Dwight Eisenhower came to the conclusion that the Valkyrie program made little military sense and would only enter service in 8 to 10 years time when missiles rather than bombers would be the primary threat deterrent. An economic recession put Eisenhower's administration under pressure to cut military costs".
ReplyDeleteThere are countless other aircraft in our not to distant past that didn't cut the mustard, we've let the defense contractors dictate to the government what we need. It needs to get back to the other way around, defense contractors building to what the military needs.
The contractors do build what we want. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Capabilities_Integration_Development_System
ReplyDeleteThis is the systems that weapons systems go through. Blame the customers not the contractors.
The reverse of the Canadian Avro CF-105 Arrow. The Arrow may have been killed because it performed TOO well. Seems the Avro company didn't play golf with the right folks. Nor, could the aerospace industry have the Canadians being in the technological lead. Well, we NEED an F35 that works. World Peace is a myth and it's mighty unfriendly just a few miles off the shores of the USA, which in spite of 20 years of bad management is still THE place in the world I prefer to call home.
ReplyDeleteAs for the XB-70, take a look at the flight records (public record). It was almost as fast as the SR-71, could have NEVER been shot down by a missile any more than an SR-71 ever was. Why we keep crappy favorite programs (the Osprey) and cancel decent ones will remain a mystery as long as politics dictates who gets the contracts and micromanages HOW the military should be equipped.