Game over?

Ok, lets frame this up.

First we have this blurb on ARES by the Program Manager of the JSF project.

"The analyzed hot spots that have arisen in the last 12 months or so in the program have surprised us at the amount of change and at the cost," Vice Adm. David Venlet said in an interview at his office near the Pentagon. "Most of them are little ones, but when you bundle them all up and package them and look at where they are in the airplane and how hard they are to get at after you buy the jet, the cost burden of that is what sucks the wind out of your lungs."

"I believe it's wise to sort of temper production for a while here until we get some of these heavy years of learning under our belt and get that managed right. And then when we've got most of that known and we've got the management of the change activity better in hand, then we will be in a better position to ramp up production."

Take it in.

That's not Sweetman playing with words.

That's the fucking program manager.

But let's break it down a bit...

"Most of them are little ones, but when you bundle them all up and package them and look at where they are in the airplane and how hard they are to get at after you buy the jet, the cost burden of that is what sucks the wind out of your lungs."

Wow.

After all the fantastic performance that the F-35 has been having lately, I've been wondering why they haven't shoved it off probation.  I know this is part of the development track but dang.  You have this guy talking about "sucks the wind out of your lungs"....that's not good.

A story appeared on Aviation Week that stated that the unit cost of the F-35B was 111 million dollars.  Thats right where you want this bad boy to be and you can expect the cost to come down.  But the repair bill is looking like a monster.

If that isn't bad enough then we have this statement...

"I believe it's wise to sort of temper production for a while here until we get some of these heavy years of learning under our belt and get that managed right. And then when we've got most of that known and we've got the management of the change activity better in hand, then we will be in a better position to ramp up production."

Grunt translation.

We fucked this up.

This program is fucked up beyond recognition. 

We need to get our bearings, get ourselves sorted out and then we can continue to march.

I hope I'm wrong.

Geez I HOPE I'M WRONG.

But that's what I read this guy saying.  I've read Elements of Power's take on this but I keep coming back to the Admiral's words.

"...temper production for a while here until we get some of these heavy years of learning under our belt and get managed right..."

The F-35 appears to be fucked.  If you disagree (and on this one I'd love to be wrong) then hit me up.

Raid force fast-ropes aboard USS New Orleans

Photos by Lance Cpl. Claudia Palacios

American X - Planes...from X -1 to X -50.

From X-1 to X-50

David Cenciotti goes medieval on the F-22!

Medieval I tell ya!

Read the whole thing here but check out this tidbit...

Second, the US ACC decision can also be read as: “the F-22 is good for air shows. All the other combat planes are good for war.”

Typhoon, A400M and Tigre upgrade paths are a joke!

Anyone thinking that the Typhoon has a chance of winning future orders should be drug tested immediately.

While we've all been focused (on this side of the Atlantic) on issues ranging from the F-35, to the current wars, to the coming issues with China...Germany has begun a series of austerity measures that should shock defense analysts.

Check this out from SLD, but here's a juicy bit...

The main story broke that Germany wished to make significant cuts in a raft of aerospace programs. The proposed cuts were in Eurofighter (from 177 to 140), A400M  (from 53 to 40), Tiger attack helicopter (from 80 to 40), and NH-90 (from 122 to 80). Looking at all of these, the scale of the cuts ranges from a “mere” 20%, right up to 50% in the case of Tiger.
 An observation: is anyone really surprised about the Typhoon cuts? Isn’t this cut simply Germany doing what the UK (and Italy) had done, that is ordering Tranche 3A, but consigning Tranche 3B to the dustbin? As such, Defence Analysis cannot say that we are particularly  “surprised” by this. And on the same line, talk to practically anyone in France (let alone Italy or Spain), and they will state that Germany’s A400M offtake was originally a joke at close to 70, was a joke even when brought down to 60, and even at 40 looks excessive for a military that hardly leaves its own borders.

Wow.

The story's main line is that friction between Germany and France will be exacerbated with these types of cuts.

I'm taking another tact.

With cuts like this, the upgrade paths for all these aircraft will take a hit.

They will be extremely expensive.

They won't keep up with US advancements.

They will be seen as technologically stale by nations seeking to purchase new airplanes.

Sweetman worried that the design of the F-35 program was an attempt to take control of the Western fighter market...essentially freezing out Europe.

He was wrong.  The Europeans are doing it to themselves.

WEST PAC 11-2

A Marine with Company L, Battalion Landing Team 3/1, 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, fires at a target while wearing a gas mask during in a live-fire exercise aboard USS New Orleans here Dec. 1. The unit embarked USS New Orleans, USS Makin Island and USS Pearl Harbor in San Diego Nov. 14, beginning a seven-month deployment to the Western Pacific and Middle East regions.  Photo by Cpl. Chad Pulliam

A Marine with Company L, Battalion Landing Team 3/1, 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, wears a gas mask during a live-fire exercise aboard USS New Orleans here Dec. 1. The unit embarked USS New Orleans, USS Makin Island and USS Pearl Harbor in San Diego Nov. 14, beginning a seven-month deployment to the Western Pacific and Middle East regions.  Photo by Cpl. Chad Pulliam

A Marine with Company L, Battalion Landing Team 3/1, 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, participates in a live-fire exercise aboard USS New Orleans here Dec. 1. The unit embarked USS New Orleans, USS Makin Island and USS Pearl Harbor in San Diego Nov. 14, beginning a seven-month deployment to the Western Pacific and Middle East regions.  Photo by Cpl. Chad Pulliam

Marines bullish on F-35.

via WNEP.com from Reuters.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Marine Corps version of Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 fighter jet could soon be taken off a "probation" imposed by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a U.S. Marine Corps official said on Wednesday.

General Joseph Dunford, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, told an investment conference that he was "pretty bullish" on the F-35B, the short takeoff, vertical landing variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

He cited progress in fixing technical problems and said the fighter jet met 98 percent of its test points this year.
Gates put the F-35B on a two-year probation last January and threatened to cancel further work on it unless technical issues were resolved. But Dunford said he was optimistic about the plane's future after a year of solid progress.

"It's no longer ... in the cross hairs," Dunford told the conference hosted by Credit Suisse and Aviation Week, noting that an engineering solution had been identified for every challenge that had arisen.
Given the progress, the plane already was slowly coming off probation and could see that label removed wholly at the start of 2012, he said.

The F-35 program is the biggest U.S. weapons program, which has prompted speculation that the program may face big cuts as Pentagon budget officials struggle to cut over $450 billion from their plans for the next decade.

The F-35B, designed to take off from shorter runways and land vertically, like a helicopter, is seen as particularly vulnerable given a variety of technical issues.

But Dunford said the new fighter remained a top priority of the Marine Corps, and that its ability to land on shorter runways and twice as many U.S. warships was a critical capability that the military could not do without.
Dunford said the Marines would not accept a "hollow force", and would rather downsize the overall size of their force than send Marines into battle without the right equipment.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa)

Every time we get a "strange" bit of news that many of the military blogs pick up on the F-35 (mostly non-stories that are put forward as breaking news) I start looking around the web because I realize that it must be in reaction to something positive that's been said.

Which had me search out the above news story.  But why, you ask do I suspect a good news story about the F-35 occurred whenever I see a quasi bad news one?

Exhibit number one.

Dunford made these statements to a conference hosted by Credit Suisse and Aviation Week!  Yet we didn't read any of this on their blog!

Exhibit number two.

We have this story posted by a couple of Aviation Week journalist.  Read it here.

It might not be a conspiracy but it is definitely an effort by some to shape opinion about the F-35.

US Marines and US Air Force to begin pilot training in the F-35 in 2012.

via Defense News...

"Looks like training for STOVL students may go around August of this coming year," the official said. "Once student training starts, it will include all modes including STOVL."
Originally, the STOVL training was projected to start around April 2012. Air Force pilots will likely start training in the F-35A conventional-takeoff version months before the Marines, as previously planned.

Pics of the day. Nov 30, 2011.

The latest production F-35B (Navy Bureau Number 168059, called BF-8) was flown from NAS Fort Worth JRB on 29 November 2011.  Lockheed Martin test pilot Bill Gigliotti was the pilot for aircraft's first flight.

As the crew of Fat Albert, the support aircraft for the Blue Angels, the US Navy's Air Demonstration Squadron, brings their twenty-year-old C-130T in for a landing at NAS JRB Fort Worth, Texas, on 22 November 2011, the latest production F-35B Lightning II (Bureau Number 168059) can be seen in a flight line hangar at the adjoining Lockheed Martin facility. Fat Albert’s crew stopped in Fort Worth to pick up two pallets of toys for the Marine Corps Toys For Tots program

I don't know who "Farmer" is but he's one heck of a artist!