Friday, June 13, 2014

F-35 News. Reliability still sucks.

via Otawa Citizen.
Lockheed Martin’s F-35 aircraft has not yet demonstrated sufficient reliability improvements, the Bloomberg news service is reporting. That verdict comes from the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, Frank Kendall, who talked to reporters after an F-35 management conference.
In total 104 F-35s have been delivered for testing, flights and training.
In June 2014, Kendall told U.S. lawmakers that “we’re not where we need to be on reliability right now.” The F-35 program is “lagging our own goals by a significant margin.”
“I would probably pretty much make the same comment today,” Kendall said,
adding that there’s “some marginal evidence of improvement but it’s not enough.”
Nuff said.

And this plane is suppose to go into service with the Marine Corps next year?  In name only.  This turkey will be a hangar queen...not flying off the decks of amphibs! 

5 comments :

  1. The F-35 program is on oxygen.
    Frank Kendall, the top Pentagon acquisition guy, held a conference call (including General Bogdan, the project guy) yesterday with reporters where he mentioned the reliability problem, the software delay and operational deficiencies, the cost problems (manufacture and sustainment) and mainly problems with insufficient buyers.

    They badly want to "ramp up" production to reduce unit costs even though they are not legally in the production phase of the acquisition, but still deep in development with a production decision not scheduled until 2019.

    Lockheed Martin submitted its initial (low rate initial production) LRIP 8 proposal in December 2013 but after several postponements it's still not signed, and probably won't be soon. They are secretive about it, like most other aspects of this stealth program, but I think they're mainly waiting for UK and Canada.

    Three of the eight F-35 partners have not placed any orders to procure faulty prototypes yet, other partners have understandably been minimizing and delaying their purchases and Kendall doesn't like it. He even is looking at penalties to get overseas buyers to stick to their order commitments !

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    Replies
    1. you reminded me of something. remember back in March, the british minister of defense came over and everyone was talking about british orders? did that ever happen?

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    2. No. Not yet. Therefore the panic.
      UK initially planned 138, it became 48 because of cost, etc.
      The UK owns three F35Bs at present, $200m ea.
      UK has $2 billion in the program.
      UK has 8 F-35B total on contract.
      At 23 tonnes, the F35 is three times heavier than the legendary British jet it replaces.
      UK was due to order 14 more:
      --Jan 2014: UK poised to place order for F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets ...
      --Feb 2014: UK says close to placing order for F-35 jets | Reuters
      not yet

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    3. Lol 2 carriers, non-catobar (probably for political reasons, to kill any alternatives to f35, and penny pinching), one of which the MOD wants to pawn of, and no planes for it. Looking like an expensive conversion to catobar >.<, or really expensive helicopter destroyer...

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  2. It's difficult -- okay, impossible -- to see how this development program can hang on for a minimum of five more years until a production decision, even with its phony IOC's. That would be eighteen years since the first SDD development contract award including thirteen years of building crappy prototypes that they've tried to sell.

    ReplyDelete

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