Japan Join JSF Ranks

The Japanese have decided on Lockheeds F-35 fighter as their new aerial toy.

Japan picked Lockheed Martin's F-35 jet as its next mainstay fighter Tuesday, choosing the aircraft over combat-proven but less stealthy rivals, as concern simmers over North Korea and as China introduces its own stealth fighters.
The decision came as Japan and the United States stressed that their security alliance was tight in the face of worry about an unstable North Korea after the death of its leader, Kim Jong-il.
Defense Minister Yasuo Ichikawa said the decision to buy 42 of the stealth aircraft, valued by analysts at more than $7 billion, would help Japan adjust to a changing security environment after Monday's announcement of the death of the 69-year-old North Korean leader.
"The security environment surrounding future fighter jets is transforming. The F-35 has capabilities that can firmly respond to the changes," Ichikawa told reporters.

By: Brant

JSF Briefing from Paris Air Show

Thanks to a link from DefenseTech... Here's the F35 briefing from the recent Paris Air Show.

01 Par is Brief 062011 Final

It's a lot of generic fluff:

Radar Cross Section Testing
Early Results Very Promising

with some nice generic photos...

There is, of course, no discussion of the cost over-runs, production delays, and other technical difficulties, as you would expect form a puff piece.

By: Brant

F35: Putting the "F" in "Bollocks" Again

It can't be a surprise that I don't like the JSF, but now that the price is over $100 million each why is anyone still throwing good lolly after bad?

The cost of building the F-35 fighter jet, set to replace a large part of the US warplane fleet, is "unaffordable" in its current version and must be reviewed, the Pentagon's top acquisition official said Thursday.
"Over the lifetime of this program, the decade or so, the per-aircraft cost of the 2,443 aircraft we want has doubled in real terms," said Ashton Carter, the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.
"That's our forecast for how much the aircraft's going to cost.
"Said differently, that's what it's going to cost if we keep doing what we're doing. And that's unacceptable. It's unaffordable at that rate."
The cost of the plane has jumped to $385 billion, about $103 million per plane in constant dollars or $113 million in fiscal year 2011 dollars, said Christine Fox, the Defense Department's director of cost assessment and program evaluation.
Republican Senator John McCain called the figure "truly troubling," considering the original price was $69 million per airplane.
"The facts regarding this program are truly troubling," said McCain. "No program should expect to be continued with that kind of track record, especially in our current fiscal climate," said McCain.
"It seems to me we have to start at least considering alternatives"
The F-35 or Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), made by Lockheed Martin, is the Pentagon's most costly weapons program.

By: Widow 6-7

Is Congress Really Killing Jobs the Alternate F35 Engine?

Hmmmm... Maybe the budget hawks are serious, and even though it will cost jobs in some districts, they're actually going to kill the GE/Rolls Royce alternate engine for the F-35 fighter.

The U.S. Defense Department ended a contract with General Electric Co and Rolls-Royce Group Plc on Monday for an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
The Pentagon for five years argued the second engine was an unnecessary expense while supporters in Congress kept funding the project, maintaining that competition with an engine built by United Technologies Corp unit Pratt & Whitney would ultimately produce savings for taxpayers.
But lawmakers earlier this month omitted funds for the alternative engine in an agreement on a budget to cover U.S. government spending for the remainder of fiscal 2011 that ends September 30.
GE and Rolls-Royce vowed to press for funding to be restored in fiscal 2012, so that the engine can be completed and compete for orders. They estimate taxpayers have spent roughly $3 billion on the project so far.
"I can assure you we are not giving up," GE Chief Executive Jeff Immelt said in a letter to employees released on Monday.

By: Brant

More Problems With F-35 Revealed

More bad news for the JSF program. The B variant is on probation and now it seems that the F-35A variant is not performing as expected. No news on the F-35C.

The F-35 Lightning II strike fighter has previously undisclosed problems with its handling, avionics, afterburner and helmet-mounted display, according to a report by the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation.

Both the Air Force F-35A variant and Marine Corps’ F-35B model experienced “transonic wing roll-off, [and] greater than expected sideslip during medium angle-of-attack testing,” the report said.

The report also says that various components are not as reliable as expected.

Additionally, the Pratt and Whitney F-135 engine has encountered an afterburner “screech,” in which airflow disruptions cause severe vibrations, preventing the engine from reaching maximum power. That problem has delayed some required testing.

According to the report, the program has already begun efforts to fix the problem. Pratt and Whitney officials were not immediately available for comment.

Further, the report indicates problems with the aircraft’s helmet-mounted display. Unlike many previous aircraft, the F-35 does not have a cockpit-mounted head-up display; the pilot instead views critical data projected on the helmet visor.

By: Shelldrake

GrogNews Daily Headlines

(running later so as not to interfere w/ our Veterans' Day articles)

Were Raytheon layoff announcements delayed until after the elections?

With budget cuts looming, the F-35 JSF is back in the crosshairs.

There's been a report commissioned that shows there would be little risk to the war effort if DADT is repealed.

The Iraqis might finally have a deal for their government, and it looks like the Kurds are on board.

The Russian media thinks they have identified the 'double-agent' that turned in the world's least-dangerous spy ring.

By: Brant

JSF Costs Finally Under Control?

I guess converting the contract to a firm fixed price deal is one way to gain some cost certainty.

The Pentagon on Thursday said it had reached a "fixed-price" deal with Lockheed Martin to provide more F-35 fighter jets in a bid to contain the cost of the country's most expensive weapons program.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates touted the contract for 30 aircraft signed with Lockheed Martin as part of a broader effort to rein in military spending and force industry to control the costs of weapons projects, which are often overbudget and behind schedule.

"This type of contract shares the costs of overruns between the government and industry up to a fixed ceiling," Gates told a news conference.

"It also shares the rewards when the programs come in under cost," he said.

The fixed-fee contract, worth an estimated five billion dollars, was 15 to 20 percent below an independent cost estimate prepared earlier this year, he said.

By: Brant

Faulty Parts Delay F-35B STOVL Flight Tests

Failed components and delayed follow-on maintenance are to blame for F-35B STOVL flight tests falling behind schedule.

On Lockheed Martin’s 2nd quarter conference call yesterday, CEO Bob Stevens told Wall Street analysts (transcript here) the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program was at a “critical juncture” as it transitions from development into production.

The systems development and demonstration phase is about 80 percent complete, he said. Of the 19 planned test aircraft, 15 have been delivered; only 13 will actually fly, the others are for structural tests. Nine of the “flyers” have so far completed a total of 136 test flights: the F-35A has flown 56 times; the F-35B short-takeoff and landing version has flown 74 times: and the carrier variant F-35C has flown six times.

"While the 74 test flights of the F-35B might look impressive, its actually behind schedule; it was supposed to have flown 95 times by now", Stevens said. “Higher than predicted” failure rates of component parts have grounded some F-35B test aircraft. Stevens described the failing parts as sub-components, not major parts such as the engine, which has been performing well.

“The components that are failing are more of the things that would appear either smaller or more ordinary like thermal cooling fans, door actuators, selected valves or switches or components of the power system.”

Yet, testers have had to pull the engines out to access those failed components and the follow-on maintenance has taken far longer than expected, Stevens said. Lockheed and its suppliers are trying to figure out whether the problems lie in botched manufacturing (Friday jobs), whether the design of the parts must be changed or whether the program needs to buy more spares. Stevens said the problem is fixable.

By: Shelldrake

Canada Confirming F35 Purchase

It's confirmed, Canada is going to pick up 65 of the new F35 JSF.

Canada on Friday unveiled its most expensive military purchase ever -- a multi-billion dollar deal to buy 65 Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter jets to replace its ageing squadron.

The Joint Strike Fighter jets, developed by Lockheed Martin in a multinational effort that included Canada, the United States and Britain, will cost nine billion Canadian dollars (8.5 billion US), Defense Minister Peter MacKay said.

The purchase will reportedly occur in tandem with plans by the US government to buy 2,443 Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II jets.

With delivery of the F-35s set to start in 2016, Mackay said Canada's next generation fighter jets needed to be "interoperable" with US and NATO aircraft to better fight "shoulder to shoulder with our allies."

The Netherlands, Italy, Turkey, Denmark, Norway, and Australia are also partners in the fifth generation F-35 program, and Mackay said: "A large number of our allies are moving to purchase this same aircraft."

By: Brant

F-35 Purchase An Economic Boon For Canada?

Controversy is growing in some political circles regarding Canada's planned purchase of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to replace the country's aging fleet of CF-18 Hornets. This article in Wings argues the advantages of the purchase for the Canadian aerospace industry.

Shortly after the din of the recent federal election had subsided there were discussions between Canadian military fighter aircraft experts and the US with regard to the production of the F-35, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter. This multi-purpose stealthy fighter aircraft has been designed for the US Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps as well as British RAF and Navy, and was first rolled out on Feb. 19, 2006. Currently, planned production figures will likely exceed 2,000 and, unless another more suitable plane comes on the horizon, the F-35A may well be chosen to replace the current Canadian Forces F-18s when they run out of airframe time, which is expected to be sometime in the next decade.

By: Shelldrake

Typhoon vs JSF

There's an interesting article comparing the Typhoon to the JSF, that repeats a lot of the Typhoon's propaganda. But the criticisms of the JSF are fair.

The Eurofighter Typhoon is much more of a 5th-Generation fighter than the Lockheed-Martin F-35 Lightning-II. That's the refrain of an article in the latest edition of Eurofighter's magazine Eurofighter World. Suggesting that the "generation sequence and headings used by Lockheed-Martin for fighters are generally shared by the defence community", the piece goes on to point out that "these classifications are truly too rigid and schematic to have any credibility, in the sense that a fighter such as the Eurofighter Typhoon exhibits all the qualities of a 5th generation fighter with the exception of full spectrum stealthiness (VLO) but is well above the legacy 4th generation platforms in all other measures of performance." Eurofighter says the US "uses and sometimes abuses" the generations issue.

By: Brant

Pentagon Budget Still Contains 6 High-Priced Systems

There are still a handful of pretty pricey systems that the Pentagon is buying.

The Pentagon told Congress on Tuesday the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter program and five other big weapons programs were vital to national security and should continue despite big cost overruns that triggered live-or-die reviews.

The U.S. Defense Department told lawmakers that all six programs met five conditions required to keep them going under the Nunn-McCurdy law which requires detailed reviews once a program's unit costs rise 50 percent above initial estimates.

The other systems?

-- the DDG-1000 destroyer built by General Dynamics Corp, where the unit cost jumped by 86.5 percent due to the Navy's decision to buy just three ships instead of the 10 planned. To cut costs, Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter ordered removal of a radar from the design, and a one-year delay in the initial use of the program to fiscal 2016.

-- Boeing Co's Apache Block III program to upgrade the AH-64 helicopter, which saw its unit costs increase by 25.5 percent due to the addition of 56 new aircraft to an existing program to upgrade 634 existing helicopters.

-- a remote mine-hunting system for use on a new class of coastal warships, which saw its unit cost increase by 79.5 percent after the Navy decided to buy 54 fewer systems.

-- Boeing's Wideband Global Satellite (WGS) program, whose unit cost rose by 27.2 percent due to a production break of three years and a decision to buy two more satellites.

-- a U.S. Army common missile warning program run by BAE Systems Plc, where unit costs nearly tripled after the Pentagon cut the quantity from 2,618 missiles to 208, spreading development costs over a much smaller overall number.

The Pentagon said the missile warning program was technologically immature and faced unrealistic performance expectations, but it needed to continue since the system was urgently needed in Afghanistan on CH-47 helicopters.

By: Brant

F35 Engine in the Crosshairs Again

Secretary Gates will recommend a veto if Congress tries to push thru another F35 engine.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday renewed threats of a presidential veto if Congress funds a second engine for the F-35 fighter jet or additional cargo aircraft.

The House Armed Services Committee defied the Pentagon this week, adding extra money in the 2011 defense budget for an alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).

Some Republican lawmakers have also called for adding funds for more C-17 planes, ignoring recommendations from Gates and Air Force commanders.

By: Brant

UK In Action: JSF Test Flight

First test flight of a Joint Strike Fighter by a Royal Air Force Pilot. A Royal Air Force officer became the first active-duty service pilot from the United Kingdom to take to the skies in a Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] F-35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). RAF Squadron Leader Steve Long piloted BF-2, the second short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) F-35B, over Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., logging the aircraft’s 18th mission. Long departed at 9:55 a.m. EST and flew the aircraft to 20,000 feet, before landing 1.3 hours later.Both the RAF and the Royal Navy plan to operate the F-35B. With the capability to operate from a variety of ships or austere runways, the F-35B can deploy closer to shore or near front lines, shrinking distance and time to the target, increasing sortie rates and greatly reducing the need for support assets. The Lightning II's sensor suite is the most powerful and comprehensive of any fighter in history, and will combine with an unprecedented networking capability to give unparalleled situational awareness.

Image: UK MoD

By: Widow 6-7

Military Makes JSF Case in Congress

The military is still pimping the JSF over other alternatives.

Top U.S. Air Force and Navy officials backed the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jet despite growing costs and delays in deliveries of test aircraft that prompted a major restructuring of the program earlier this year.

Officials from both services, grilled by members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday about massive projected cost growth in the program, said they believed the restructuring had put the program back on track for success, but stressed that they were monitoring the program carefully.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, who heads the committee's airland subcommittee, said he was troubled by news that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was facing projected cost increases of more than 50 percent and worried that delays on the program could widen projected shortfalls for both service's fighter forces.

"The JSF is the cornerstone of tactical aviation modernization for each of our services. Excessive cost growth in this program is bound to hurt American air power in the years ahead," Lieberman said.

Vice Admiral David Architzel, principal military deputy for acquisition for the Navy, told senators the military services had made an "unequivocal" commitment to the F-35 program and considered it essential for replacing aging fighters.

In prepared testimony for the hearing, Navy officials said they saw a looming tactical fighter aircraft shortfall as "manageable" and predicted the peak shortfall could be managed to about 100 aircraft in 2018 -- far below the 177 aircraft forecast as part of the fiscal 2011 budget process -- by doing service life extensions to existing planes.

The U.S. government's fiscal 2011 begins October 1.

Lieberman said the Navy fighter shortfall could be closer to 267 aircraft, but Navy officials felt they could cut the gap to around 150 planes by reducing squadron size, conducting service life extensions on some aircraft and cutting their time in maintenance depots.

By: Brant

JSF Now Being Built In UK. Hold a Parade? Or Public Flogging?

My disdain for the JSF is barely containable, and I've earlier questioned the wisdom of the UK involvement in the program. Now comes word that we're actually building the bloody things ourselves.

Aerospace giant BAE Systems has started manufacturing work at its East Lancashire site on the first world-leading fighter jet for the British government.

Engineers at the defence firm’s Samlesbury plant are working on the first F-36 Lightning II aircraft that will be delivered to the Ministry of Defence.

Defence Minister Quentin Davies visited Samlesbury to mark the occasion.

The MoD has ordered three F-35s, the world’s most advance military aircraft. BAE is building the aft fuselage, with other parts of the jet built by contractors including US company Lockheed Martin and Rolls-Royce.

Mick Ord, BAE’s F-35 managing director, said: “The F-35 programme is essential to the sustainment of the UK aerospace manufacturing industry, so it’s great to have such support from the UK government.”

Shit.

By: Widow 6-7

JSF Costs Death-Spiraling out of Control?

After almost doubling in cost, the future of the F35/JSF is still being kicked around.

The projected cost of Lockheed Martin’s new Joint Strike Fighter has increased 60 to 90 percent in real terms since 2001, blowing well past a level requiring the program to be revamped, Pentagon officials said Thursday.

And even though the military is trying to deal with the problems, Congressional auditors said the program — the Pentagon’s largest — was likely to continue to increase in cost and suffer more delays.

The assessments, released at a Senate hearing in Washington, provided a reminder of the extent of the cost overruns in major weapons programs and showed how hard they can be to resolve.

The latest estimates were embarrassing to Lockheed Martin, the largest military contractor, and to the defense secretary, Robert M. Gates.

Last summer, Mr. Gates promoted the new jet, called the F-35, when he urged Congress to halt production of the F-22 fighter plane. Some senators now say they might not have made that decision if they had known about the problems with the F-35.

Christine H. Fox, the Pentagon’s top cost evaluator, said at Thursday’s hearing that the estimated price of each F-35 had jumped to $80 million to $95 million, as measured in 2002 dollars, from $50 million when Lockheed Martin was awarded the contract in 2001.

She said her office was still refining the cost estimate, which equals $95 million to $113 million for each plane in current dollars.

Under a 15-year-old law, the Pentagon has to notify Congress when the cost of military equipment exceeds the original projection by more than 25 percent.

The boys at DefenseTech have a good discussion of the "death spiral".

It’s called the acquisition “death spiral”: as a program’s costs go up the unit numbers purchased drop, hence per unit costs climb even more, fewer bought, etc. etc.

We’ve raised this issue here before. If the price of a unit of goods doubles, economic theory, and Pentagon acquisition history, teaches us that the quantity bought drops. Yesterday, Pentagon cost assessment and program evaluation director Christine Fox told the SASC that each JSF will now cost at least $80-$95 million, compared to an estimated $50 million back in 2002.

By: Brant

More Follow-up On the JSF - Do We Kill It?

Blogger James Hasik asks some pointed questions about how to kill the JSF, and whether or not we should.

Let’s take this a stage further. Would it be possible not just to shoot a general or a program manager, but rather, the whole program? The challenges appear overwhelming huge. In the United States, the leadership of the USAF and the USMC see no clear alternative to simply continuing to pour whatever money they must into the program. (The Navy is an exception, and I’ll get to that below.) But the US has a further problem: the airplane is not just joint, it’s international. Like the International Space Station, the JSF is still stumbling along in part because it’s too international to deorbit.

Those partner countries that have signed up for the program do have alternatives, and that points to the list of parties with a commercial or political interest in termination. Even Lockheed Martin, though, should think long and hard about how its competitors might work this issue. Boeing could stand the most to gain, and has a particular interest in killing the F-35C, the tailhook version which competes for the Navy’s funding with the F/A-18E/F—an airplane for which the Navy has shown increased affection of late. Close behind though would stand Saab, Dassault, and EADS (as the one shareholder in Eurofighter GmbH with little interest in the JSF program). These three European companies have an interest in killing the F-35A, the conventional land-based version, as Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Turkey, and Australia would all open up as marketing targets (Belgium and even Portugal might eventually make that list as well). Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, and Alenia are perhaps of split opinions, in that all are major subcontractors to Lockheed Martin for the F-35, but that each has interests in the X-47B or Eurofighter programs, which would stand to gain from the F-35’s loss. In short, most of the combat aircraft industry would arguably like to kill this thing, and the rest is at best dispassionate.

By: Brant

Hey! The JSF is Delayed! In other news, gravity continues to hold people to the planet...

What? No way! There's been another delay in the JSF program?!
You can NOT be serious! {/McEnroe}

The US Air Force announced Tuesday a two-year delay in the production of its new F-35 stealth fighter, touted as the future of the American air fleet.
Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley, the civilian head of the department, told reporters that the Joint Strike Fighter, scheduled for use by 2013, would now not be ready until the end of 2015.
"I do think we're going to have a slip" in the schedule, Donley said, raising fresh questions about the F-35 project, involving nine other countries and portrayed as a model for a more efficient, streamlined weapons program.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates a month ago sacked the general in charge of the F-35 program and said he would withhold 614 million dollars in performance fees from contractor Lockheed Martin over a series of cost overruns and delays.

By: Brant

Still Haggling Over JSF Costs

The US hasn't yet decided what the F35 will cost. We're just asking everyone to help pay for whatever we come up with.

The massive Joint Strike Fighter project is going to be delayed and cost more, the US Deputy Secretary of Defence Bill Lynn says.

But Mr Lynn could not say by how much the cost overruns and delays would increase the price tag for the Australian government, which in November committed $3 billion to buy an initial batch of 14 yet-to-be-completed F-35 warplanes. Australia plans eventually to purchase 100 of the fifth-generation stealth warplanes at a cost of about $16 billion.

“The development was originally projected to last an additional 30 months, we think with the additional test aircraft it will be closer to a delay of about 12 or 13 months but I can't give you the cost numbers,” Mr Lynn said today during the official opening of a $300 million shipbuilding precinct in South Australia.

Earlier this month Defence Minister John Faulkner said he hoped a restructuring of the JSF program would “stabilise its schedule and cost”.

By: Brant