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The Military Government United States

Fifteen Percent of US Air Force F-35s Don't Have Working Engines (thedrive.com) 163

Areyoukiddingme shares a report from The Drive: Atotal of 46 F-35 stealth fighters are currently without functioning engines due to an ongoing problem with the heat-protective coating on their turbine rotor blades becoming worn out faster than was expected. With the engine maintenance center now facing a backlog on repair work, frontline F-35 fleets have been hit, with the U.S. Air Force's fleet facing the most significant availability shortfall. At a hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Armed Services' Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces yesterday, Air Force Lieutenant General Eric T. Fick, director of the F-35 Joint Program Office, confirmed that 41 U.S. Air Force F-35s, as well as one Joint Strike Fighter belonging to the U.S. Marine Corps, another from the U.S. Navy, and three that had been delivered to foreign air forces were grounded without engines. Those figures were as of July 8. The exact breakdown of how many of each F-35 variant lack engines is unclear. The Air Force and the Navy only fly the F-35A and F-35C, respectively, but the Marines operate both F-35Bs and F-35Cs and various models are in service with other military forces around the world. With regards to the Air Force specifically, as of May 8 this year, the service had received 283 F-35As, which means that around a little under 15 percent of the service's Joint Strike Fighters can't be flown due to this engine shortage.
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Fifteen Percent of US Air Force F-35s Don't Have Working Engines

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  • All normal then (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 )

    For the F35 this is just more business as usual.

    Shrug.

    • Re:All normal then (Score:5, Informative)

      by Admiral Krunch ( 6177530 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @04:53AM (#61587717)

      For the F35 this is just more business as usual.

      Shrug.

      Unsurprising. Half of the F22's are unavailable too [cnn.com]

      The US Air Force has around 180 F-22s in its fleet, although only about half are mission capable at any one time due to maintenance requirements, according to Air Force statistics.

      • Re:All normal then (Score:5, Informative)

        by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @05:27AM (#61587775)

        Half of the F22's are unavailable too [cnn.com]

        The US Air Force has around 180 F-22s in its fleet, although only about half are mission capable at any one time due to maintenance requirements, according to Air Force statistics.

        That is, more or less, the problem that F-35s were built to solve. They are supposed to be the cheaper, somewhat less capable, more attack oriented multi-role replacement for buying lots more F-22s and other bombers. If the F-35s have anything like the maintenance requirements of the F-22 then you might as well have built a load more F-22s and updated the existing ones with new electronics. Then you could buy something like a Saab JAS 39 Gripen [wikipedia.org] with updated electronics as the cheap, single engined update for the F-16 and probably saved trillions of dollars.

        • Re:All normal then (Score:5, Insightful)

          by The Real Dr John ( 716876 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @06:04AM (#61587835) Homepage

          Or you could spend the money on biomedical research instead, and actually save lives.

          • by BadDreamer ( 196188 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @06:38AM (#61587897) Homepage

            Stop making sense! It's unamerican!

          • Because it's an either or, right? That's why we always have a balanced budget every year.

            • Re:All normal then (Score:4, Insightful)

              by The Real Dr John ( 716876 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @10:16AM (#61588403) Homepage

              If 5% of the war budget was redirected to the NIH, it would effectively double (yes, double) the NIH budget, which would allow for much more research to be done. Our lab is currently between grants, and we are stuck waiting for funding to come through on cancer research. The granting process is slow, so grants we just submitted won't be scored for 6 months.

              • by mspohr ( 589790 )

                Get your priorities straight!
                Which is more important: Killing people or saving people?

              • by whitroth ( 9367 )

                Yep, Thank you.

                The entire NIH budget, as of 3-4 years ago, was $30B. Note that that money funds 60%? 80% of all the biomedical and biological research in the us - all the university grants, etc.

                No, phucking pharma did not do it, they take discoveries, larger tests, and monetize.

          • How do you expect anyone to argue with you if you're going to be so reasonable and logical?!

          • by mspohr ( 589790 )

            One would hope that this would reduce the chance of us starting another war but that is probably wishful thinking.

          • Or you could spend the money on biomedical research instead, and actually save lives.

            I agree with that, but there is the point that military hardware does not need to be so sophisticated and expensive that it sucks money from more worthy projects, such as health care. In WW2, the Russians won tank battles against the Nazis' superior (and presumably more expensive) technology. The AK-47 rifle is not at all sophisticated, but it is the weapon of choice in many conflicts, because it keeps going in the worst of conditions, and a village blacksmith can fix one if need be.

            I think you need to look

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Or you could spend the money on biomedical research instead, and actually save lives.

            Naa, acting ethical? We do not do that! Got to kill others we do not like first!

        • Gawd, to think that the cost of a Tigershark would have been $10M if the US government hadn't cut it off at the knees. That's what, the price of the landing gear on an F-35?
          • Re:All normal then (Score:4, Informative)

            by JeffOwl ( 2858633 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @09:17AM (#61588245)
            And the Tigershark would be just as outdated today as the F-18 A/B Hornet and the F-16 Block 25 that were built in that time frame.
            • That's assuming Northrop would have sat on their hands for the last 45 years and never updated it....

              Also, outdated compared to what? The Taliban air force? The Iraqi air force? The Grenada air force? The Somali air force? Which conflict the US has been involved in since the Tigershark was developed has needed anything more than a Tigershark or equivalent?

              • To your first point... The block 25 F-16 and F-18 A/B have all either been updated as much as it makes sense to do, or have timed out their air frames. And those still flying are very much out of date. Tigershark would have been in the same situation by this time. To your second point, it isn't just the enemy aircraft you need to worry about. All recent combat losses of US fighter aircraft have been due to SAMs. The Russians and the Chinese have not been sitting on their hands in that area and have no issue
                • Ah yeah, good point. For the Tigershark, I wasn't saying that as a Tigershark zombie but merely because it's a good example of a decent cheap fighter that was sunk by bureaucratic idiocy... and that leads to an interesting point, would it be better to deploy and potentially lose a few cheap second-tier jets at a tenth or less the cost of losing something like an F-35? It's an interesting question because you also need to factor in the potential loss of the pilot, and the last conflict big enough to produc
      • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @08:56AM (#61588197) Journal

        15% down for maintenance sounds pretty bad if you compare it to a commuter car. These aren't Camrys. For race cars it's not uncommon to rebuild the engine after each race. Fighter jets are more like race cars than F-150s.

        In fiscal 2019, the F-22 had a mission capable rate of 50.57 percent. The F-35A had a rate of 61.60 percent, F-15Cs at 70.05 percent, F-15Es at 71.29 percent, and F-16Cs at 72.97 percent. The A-10 attack jet had a rate of 71.20 percent.

        They do need to figure out how to make this coating more durable. It's something that wears out more quickly than other parts.

        On the other hand, the F-35 is designed to go 2,000 km/h without being spotted, it's not designed to be zero maintenance. Heck, even something like a Piper Cub (top speed 87 mph) gets a engine rebuild every 1,500 hours. You can read that as every 50,000 miles if hours are unnatural for you.

        • by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @11:19AM (#61588693)

          All those MC rates suck. Retired career fighter fixer here.

          The fleet has been insufficiently supported for years and fixing that is obviously not a priority. The F-35 rate is abysmal but the rest are poor. Engines are rather durable but lack of spares is what drives MC rates and the posted rates are the OVERALL aircraft rates driven by multiple systems. (I also had the joy of updating MC rate slides for the daily maintenance meetings of various fighter units.)

          The US is in its second Hollow Force era but this time procurement is utterly broken. We'll pay for it dearly in the next war. While we can afford to laugh off losing/Pyrrhic wins in constabulary wars of choice against opponents with no air force, the next war may not be a NeoCon hobby project. This time the military is beyond reform because reform requires an empowered autocrat to TELL people what to do, not ask them, and PUNISH fuckups. Accountability died many years ago. Fortunately we don't need our conventional military for national defense but to police the fading empire.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Cyberax ( 705495 )

            The US is in its second Hollow Force era but this time procurement is utterly broken. We'll pay for it dearly in the next war.

            In the recent history the US airforce has been used mostly to bomb weddings and destroy civilian infrastructure while holding total air superiority. It can do that just fine.

            And all the potential adversaries that can seriously try to contest the US for air superiority also have nuclear weapons.

            • > And all the potential adversaries that can seriously try to contest the US for air superiority also have nuclear weapons.

              While that's true, China and the US aren't going to Nike each over Taiwan, the Philippines, and all of these other areas.

              https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/13... [cnn.com]

              China starts pushing into these areas; the US Navy conducts Freedom of Navigation operations to let China know that the need to back off. Or, the US doesn't. How that plays out depends on the relative strengths of the two countries.

              • As another example, China is now the world's number one importer of crude oil. Meaning they are more dependent on Middle East oil than anyone else. Russia obviously also has a keen interest in the middle east. Either country would like more influence in the middle east.

                On the other hand, neither country is going to nuke the United States to get control of Kuwait. When there is turmoil in the middle east, whichever super power has the best air force will send their air force to control the skies over there.

          • While we can afford to laugh off losing/Pyrrhic wins in constabulary wars of choice against opponents with no air force, the next war may not be a NeoCon hobby project.

            I see the same facts but reach the opposite conclusion - why pay exponentially more for emergency fixes at a time when these high-end fighters really exist for a contingency that currently does not exist? We should sustain the fleet in the most economical way that meets peacetime requirements (training, mainly), with plans to ramp up prod

  • by Saffaya ( 702234 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @02:14AM (#61587507)

    The engines of a jet are a most critical component.

    The common wisdom for those is to diversify supplier, just as IBM wanted two suppliers for the CPU of their upcoming personal computer, the PC. IBM being no stranger to monopoly power and extorsion, they didn't want to be on the receiving end. Hence, AMD got to make and supply the CPU together with Intel.

    There was the same thing with the F-35 Engines, two competing suppliers were scheduled.
    But of course it ended being scrapped in the name of "saving money", and the same company got to hog on all the pork on the F-35 Engine.

    Quoting Wikipedia "An alternative engine, the General Electric/Rolls-Royce F136, was being developed in the 2000s; originally, F-35 engines from Lot 6 onward were competitively tendered. Using technology from the General Electric YF120, the F136 was claimed to have a greater temperature margin than the F135.[200] The F136 was canceled in December 2011 due to lack of funding"

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Resiliency and redundancy always cost more upfront than efficiency, but the benefits are almost always diffuse in space and in time. Sometimes they are not even noticeable. You don't really pay attention when the power stays on or the grocery store stays stocked with food.

      Our military is composed of men and women under 40 and lead by men and women under 60. They grew up in a rich country in a time of peace and prosperity. The costs and consequences of no redundancy or no resiliency are foreign abstractions

      • Sorry, what period of peace for the US military were you referring to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
        • The one that came after WW2 where there hasn't been an attack by a foreign military on American soil for the past 76 years.

          • I guess you have to pick your words carefully to come up with a definition of 'period of peace.' I mean, if you're talking invasions, you'd have to go all the way back to the wars with the British/Canada & Mexico. If you're talking about attacks on 'US soil,' since embassies & the 800-ish military bases technically count, you'd have to include some more recent events than WWII. The 'foreign military' part is also a bit slippery because no country would dare to openly attack the "greatest purveyor of

            • Pick every nit you want and split as many hairs as you can spare. You're still going to have to recognize the distinction between wars conducted entirely abroad and entirely at will and wars initiated by oh idunno a carrier task force sinking a good chunk of the Pacific Fleet anchored at a major naval base on incorporated American territory.

  • thank you (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @02:16AM (#61587511) Homepage
    On behalf of Australians everywhere, thank you USA and Lockheed Martin for refusing to share key information such as computer source code. Thanks for rushing to production before testing. Thanks for making a fighter slower and less manoeuvrable than Indonesian and Chinese fighters. Thanks for the pilot blackouts, premature part failures and software development disasters. Thanks for taking billions for 72 lemons that you call the JSF. Cunts.
    • Re:thank you (Score:5, Informative)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @03:19AM (#61587617) Homepage

      It is not like we can all see how really bad the F-35 is as in https://www.machinedesign.com/... [machinedesign.com]. Ohh look they are building old models to actually do the job. They are continuing to build F-15s because they have to and do not forget the Australian Government and the Australian Military, knew exactly how bad it was and did not care, it's called corruption. All the right bank accounts in the tax havens were created and filled to pay for luxury holidays in retirement.

      You seriously do not think the F35, got so bad by accident, now it took corruption to create a aircraft that bad on purpose, SO THEY CAN CHARGE FOR ITS REPLACEMENT, double plus profits. Corruption kept that whole process going.

    • We Canadians spent a small fortune between 1997 and 2011 only to scrap the project and look for something more functional.
    • Thank you for being dumb enough to buy them, I guess?

      I guess you should use that domestically-built Australian 5th generation air-superiority fighter instead, yeah?

      (Don't get me wrong; I think the F35 and the F22 and the LCS, the FCS, the Comanche, even something ostensibly as simple as the JTRS - have been pork-laden, political boondoggles sucking the lifeblood from NECESSARY military spending. I just think it's ridiculous that you're blaming us for being as stupid, in effect, as we were in investing in t

    • Remember the cunts that made the purchase too.

      • John Howard [michaelwest.com.au]. Same cunt that had the AWB bribing Iraq. Same cunt that got ethanol in our fuel for his mate in the business. Same cunt that lied about WMD. And children overboard. The corrupt cunt should be in jail but he's running around on taxpayer funded flight's. From the link: "... where does all this leave Australia and its purchase of the F-35, which has been plagued for decades by problems ever since then prime minister John Howard chose it in 2002 when it was just a sketch on paper. Howard locked

    • On behalf of Americans, thank you for buying weapons systems you didn't need before you knew whether they were worth a fuck, you've encouraged my government to build more of the same kind of shit you empty-headed numpties.

    • Why don't they just pull the plug? Maybe swipe China's stolen redesign of it back, and manufacture that one.

      It's like flying cars and cold-fusion, "Fixing" the '35 is perpetually "just around the corner". After enough corners, can't they get a fokking clue?

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Rushing into production before testing would have been an *improvement* to the program, which rushed into production before finishing the design. Something like 1/3 of the USAF's F35-As are "concurrency orphans" -- planes delivered before the fully operational design was complete. In theory design changes were supposed to be retrofitted to them, but given that the program is barely meeting it's probably more economical to scrap them.

    • The whole F-35 project reminds me of something I heard while working with surface effect ships [wikipedia.org]. Basically a combination catamaran-hovercraft. They're still the fastest ship made, holding the open ocean speed record at well over 100 mph. We had someone from the original US Navy program as an advisor. His story was that they built the SES-100 as a demonstrator and the SES-200 as test platforms to test different configurations. The ships are ridiculously fast and stable - provided you keep them lightweight. Bu
  • by dunkelfalke ( 91624 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @02:26AM (#61587525)

    Their engines have been problematic for years - uncontained engine failures on PW4000, a shitload of all kinds of problems on PW1000G, reliability issues with the JT9D that forced P&W to design the PW4000 from scratch instead of simply updating the JT9D design, low reliability of the TF30 engines that forced the DoD to replace them with GE engines on the F-14 and so on and so forth.

  • Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 )

    I think all their F-22 Raptors are working fine. If only they had more of them ... ;-)

  • by Hmmmmmm ( 6216892 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @02:45AM (#61587559)

    "Switzerland plans to spend up to 6 billion Swiss francs (U.S. $6.5 billion) to buy 36 F-35A conventional-takeoff-and-landing models to replace its aging Hornet fleet, the government announced Wednesday.

    In a news release announcing the decision, the Swiss Federal Council stated that the F-35 promised the highest performance for the lowest price, with Lockheed’s proposal coming in at $2.16 billion less than its nearest competition over a 30 year forecast.

    Meanwhile, the F-35 scored better in effectiveness, product support and cooperation than the Rafale, Super Hornet and Typhoon. The Federal Council pointed specifically to the Joint Strike Fighter’s survivability and situational awareness as selling points that were seen as advantageous for the Swiss Air Force’s air-policing mission."

    https://www.defensenews.com/ai... [defensenews.com]

    What do the Swiss know that everyone else seem to not know. The F-35 is considered by almost everyone as one of the greatest money pits ever created.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by N1AK ( 864906 )

      What do the Swiss know that everyone else seem to not know. The F-35 is considered by almost everyone as one of the greatest money pits ever created.

      For all the armchair commentators on here and other online forums there certainly isn't a consensus amongst defence staff and independent analysts that the JSF is a poor choice based on performance and capabilities. Certainly it has cost a fortune to develop, however given that this was funded by the US I doubt the Swiss particularly care about that. I've seen

      • by mridoni ( 228377 )

        To give some context an airline might expect to pay $60m or more (well below list price) for a relatively small passenger jet like the Airbus A320.

        Well, for starters an A320 generates revenue for its owner (or is supposed to) so regardless of how important you think the military is and how many resources you think a country should devote to it, you have to take that into account when looking at the price tag.

        The other thing is that Switzerland is a very small country: unless they are participating in some joint exercise, F-35s (but the same applies to every other fighter out there) just have the time to accelerate to supersonic speed before they have

        • by N1AK ( 864906 )
          I have no idea what point you are making. You can make an argument that the Swiss don't need fighter aircraft but that isn't relevant to whether the F35 was a good choice vs alternatives like the Super Hornet. Obviously the point of a commercial jet is different from a military fighter, but having comparitive figures can be helpful; if someone doesn't know enough to get some insight from that comparison, then they'd be even less able to judge the value for money of a fighter aircraft based on its cost alone
      • by tragedy ( 27079 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @04:10AM (#61587661)

        I think you're going to to provide a citation for that $15 million figure. I don't think anyone is getting them anywhere near that cheap. Most of the figures I can find are between $78 million and $120 million.

        • by N1AK ( 864906 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @04:55AM (#61587727) Homepage
          Just came back to correct this as it felt too low, and I should have rechecked my calculations more thoroughly, and thank you for highlighting it in case I hadn't. I made an error in splitting the cost of the programme I was looking at by the volume of aircraft. The real figure is significantly higher closer to $500m total cost over the lifetime of the aircraft.
          • by tragedy ( 27079 )

            That seems more like it since I'm seeing purchase prices of $78 million and up and per hour costs of around $36K. It's hard to say how many actual hours they will operate per year, but that should definitely be tens of millions of dollars per year just to operate. For aircraft, it is pretty typical for the operating costs to be higher than the purchase price over the lifetime, but it being more per year to operate isn't that typical. Of course, that's for commercial planes, military planes might be expected

            • Yep. The F-16, which is a very low cost fighter, already had a $20 million purchase price in the early nineties and its engine was nowhere near as expensive.

              • by sfcat ( 872532 )

                Yep. The F-16, which is a very low cost fighter, already had a $20 million purchase price in the early nineties and its engine was nowhere near as expensive.

                And as long as losing wars and dead pilots don't cost anything, then you save money. Brilliant. Or you could pay for better planes and then not have to replace them (or their pilots) every time shooting breaks out. The only thing more expensive than winning a war is losing a war.

                • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                  While there might be some reasons to complain about costs, you're on the wrong thread for that. A previous poster up the thread had placed the cost of the F35 at $15 million. That was clearly a mistake, so we were discussing what the actual cost is. The poster you were replying to was simply saying that the F15 was more than $15 million dollars over 20 years of inflation ago, so the the $15 million figure was highly unlikely. The original poster who stated $15 million has already provided a correction, so w

          • 15M to 500M ... what's couple of orders of magnitude between friends? In fact, I guess you did better than the people predicting the cost of the F-35 program.

      • by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @04:56AM (#61587729)

        This is the single most disgusting, intentionally misleading comparison I've seen being made by F-35 propaganda accounts so far, and I've seen a lot of their activity ever since Lockheed Martin spent north of a billion in PR on them after all the bad press.

        You're comparing a hangar queen that needs almost two full days of nonstop maintenance to stay an hour in the air (and that's when something isn't just broken, like in this case), and comparing it to a much larger aircraft capable of hauling almost 200 passengers and will spend most of its lifetime conducting flight operations.

        And then you're still giving a number that is utterly absurd, and in the base case scenario missing a zero at the end for lifetime costs of F-35. And so far, nothing has gone to the best case scenario with F-35 program.

        The aircraft is called "Fat Amy" by the actual pilots for a reason. It's of little value an air to air superiority aircraft as it carries almost no missiles in its stealth configuration and cannot perform high speed interceptions without literally blowing itself up by cooking its own ammunition. And its A model's gun is still useless, as attempting to fire it creates massive amount of drag on the gun's side of aircraft, pulling it off target. It's of low value as a strike craft because of its extremely poor air time to maintenance time ratio and extremely low payload capacity in stealth configuration. It's sole area of actual expertise is as stealthy heavy reconnaissance and light strike aircraft. And at that, it's actually very good. Just ask Israelis, who use it exclusively in this exact role. For heavy strike they use F-16 and for air to air work, they have F-15 which are far superior to F-35 in those niches.

        • I'm absolutely shocked that this level of false and misleading information has ben modded up to a 5.

          The F35 is not and has never been a dedicated air superiority fighter. The F22A is an air dominance designed to clear the skies of enemy aircraft. The F35 is called the Joint Strike Fighter. A strike fighter is multi-role aircraft for both air-to-air and ground attack.

          Sure the F35 can only currently carry 4 missiles, but when your opponents can't detect you and your first warning is a BVR in terminal acqui

          • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            Here you have a classic propaganda account/propaganda victim. Their post template is almost universally the same.

            First, they make a point you didn't make:

            >The F35 is not and has never been a dedicated air superiority fighter.

            Then they proceed to make a point you did make, as it's not your point, and you didn't address it above:

            >A strike fighter is multi-role aircraft for both air-to-air and ground attack.

            In this case, it's a "strike fighter" that as noted above cannot fight air superiority battles (co

      • For all the armchair commentators on here...

        Guilty as charged. I am engineer, not a soldier.

        I wonder if some actual expert on military strategy could tell us whether high technology hardware actually wins battles. I have my doubts. The military history I have read indicates that getting a good mass of forces in the right place at the right time is what wins battles. It does not matter how clever your guns are if you are simply swamped by your opponent.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      It's likely a case of horses for courses.

      One of the big problems with the F-35 is the complexity of sustainment in the field. This is particularly a problem for the Marine Corps, which plans to operate them from austere forward bases. The logistical burden of keeping F-35Bs flying is going to be a huge burden on those makeshift bases.

      Likewise, the limited range of Air Force F-35As mean they has to be refueled on long strike missions, and the lack of stealth *tankers* is a vulnerability.

      Switzerland, on the

  • I wonder if more air pollution is increasing the amount of particles in the air which is wearing down the coating faster. If so that could affect anything in the world that spins fast or moves a lot of air. Normal jet engines on airplanes, high speed blowers and fans, wind mills, paint finishes on vehicles, etc. Might be a regional effect since air particulates vary by region. Ordinary air will destroy an engine after a while if you take the air filter off. More and fiercer storms due to global warming
  • So what? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Friday July 16, 2021 @03:17AM (#61587609)

    When you have an air force that's ten times the size it needs to be, 15% not working is probably a saving since they're not flying around wasting fuel.

  • Canada spent large on these birds and not a single jet was acquired. I think we filled the slush fund from about 1997 to 2011.
    • Canada never purchased any F35s. You are probably thinking about the replacements for the Sea King [forces.gc.ca] helicopters. They were finally replaced with the Cyclone [forces.gc.ca]. It took a few decades to acquire the new helicopters. One government placed an order only to have the next government cancel the order. Then they realized they actually had to purchase new helicopters so they ordered them again. But they had to be unique so manufacturing delays alone added another decade or so. But looks like they have finally be
  • I'd say that the F35 is the product of a massive flow of money to contractors and the bureaucracy setup to manage them. Seems that easy money drives up prices and drives down quality. Get the project started, change the requirements a lot, demand everything be tested to the nth degree by 3rd parties in the name of quality, set unrealistic deadlines for all of that to happen. This is how we get parts installed on vehicles before they are tested and end up with a mess. And we let the contractors keep the

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      They designed a program that, if abandoned, would do catastrophic damage to three US military service branches, as well as to a number of key allies. The UK would end up with two aircraft carriers and no aircraft to fly from them.

      The consequence is inevitably a money black hole that eventually works to some degree.

  • There was a really good documentary produced by PBS Nova about the JSF selection process (Web Site [pbs.org], Video [youtu.be]). Another Canadian documentary exposes what a dog this fighter is (see what I did there?) and how the US State Department sabotaged the sales of other company's fighters to other countries (Video [youtube.com]).

    The first problem with the Lockheed plane is the concept that it is supposed to be able to do everything when there are no planes that can everything. But aside from that, it seems the Lockheed designed plane

  • The tendency here is to react by spending a billion dollars to shore up old technology.

    Do you think we could take a moment to notice that a billion spent on a new massive drone swarm technology would be more effective?
  • The F-35 program has been such a disaster; why has no one been held accountable for this mess?
    • by sfcat ( 872532 )

      The F-35 program has been such a disaster; why has no one been held accountable for this mess?

      Because it isn't actually a disaster. The F-35 is a highly effective plane for which there is currently is no counter-measure. The problem here is that the F-35 has become political and so facts have left the building. So let me explain some of what is happening here.

      A stealth aircraft can't carry external fuel tanks or missiles and still be stealthy. So the missiles are carried internally but that means it can't carry much. A F-15EX can carry up to 16 missiles, a F-35 can only carry 4. Now, this

  • So basically the Armed forces have to buy (and maintain) roughly 9 fighters for every 8 they need to have ready for combat, increasing the cost of this program another 15%.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • . . . .in my B-52 days . . . 30+ years ago. . . about 1 in 6 bombers was in maintenance and unflyable, generally due to parts shortages.

    Of course, the BUFFs had left the assembly lines 30+ years previous to **that**, and had been through a war. . . .

  • This is part of a general report on the poor quality of ALL aircraft maintenance. The F35 is not particularly worse than the others. https://www.thedrive.com/the-w... [thedrive.com]

    Of the approximate 50 aircraft, on two of them met their mainance goals more than 2/3 of the time (Good job EP3 Anti-submarine and UN1N Huey helicopter).

    Two of the met their goals more than 1/3 of the time.

    24 aircraft NEVER met their goals. Not one year.

    The other 20 odd aircraft met their goals at least one year, but not more than 1 out of ev

  • I've been trying to figure out the F-35 for years. I've read a lot about it.

    What seems clear to me is that the USA really needs the F-35 to work, and it basically does work, so the best thing we can do is order more F-35 planes and get a whole bunch of spare parts and training.

    Some people hate anything military; other people hate the F-35 specifically; and these people make a bunch of wild claims about how awful the F-35 is, how expensive it is, etc. However, from my reading, the people who actually fly t

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Shortest distance between two jokes = A straight line

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