F-35 Joint Strike Fighter News, Videos and pics Thread

[Jura The idiot]

it's quite interesting Navy Completes Developmental Test of JSOW on F-35C; Operational Test Later in Summer
Posted: April 10, 2018

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The Raytheon-built AGM-154C Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) has been integrated on the Navy’s F-35C Lightning II strike fighter, completing developmental testing for the weapon’s integration on the fighter, a company official said.

Mark “Smoke” Borup, Raytheon’s director of business development for Medium-Range Strike/Attack, Air Warfare Systems, told Seapower at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Exposition April 9 that the JSOW’s operational test (OT) will begin in the fourth quarter of this year.

The JSOW C and maritime strike C-1 variant have been fielded on the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.

Borup said the developmental test covered carriage of two JSOWs in the weapons bay of the F-35C. The aircraft later will be able to carry four more JSOWS on its wing stations.

“We’re ready for OT,” Borup said.

The JSOW-C and C-1 can be dropped at standoff ranges up to 70 nautical miles to avoid sophisticated multilayered air defense systems. The weapon can be programmed with waypoints and attack a target from a 180-degree aspect from the launch platform. The weapon can be programmed in three dimensions to attack a target at any angle between 23 and 74 degrees. This allows for the attack to be tailored against caves and any aspect of a building.

The JSOW is armed with a tandem warhead, an initial charge followed by a BROACH penetrating warhead. It has been tested to penetrate 5 feet of 5,000-Psi steel-reinforced concrete. It is equipped with an infrared seeker and can match a target with its programmed image and strike with an accuracy of 1 meter, even if the target is obscured by weather or smoke.

“Accuracy is fundamental to lethality,” Borup said, adding that the JSOW-C is “very capable against GPS anti-jam and a lot of other threats, decoys and the like.”

 

[Jura The idiot]

Apr 4, 2018

Pentagon formulating plan to move F-35 management from central office to services

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sounds revolutionary, transformational LOL

and
JPO to hand F-35 management to services

• 10 April, 2018

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The US Department of Defense plans to eventually divide management of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II programme between two offices: one managed by the US Navy and Marine Corps, and another led by the US Air Force. The Joint Programme Office, which currently handles the fighter programme, will ultimately be disbanded.

The plan was outlined in a letter sent to Congress in March from Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defence for acquisition and sustainment. The letter was first reported by Inside Defense. The DOD confirmed the letter and said it plans to develop a detailed implementation plan later this year.

The transition would be conditions-based and would be phased in three steps: a measured restructuring of the existing F-35 management, which would begin immediately; a subsequent transition to separate service-run F-35 programme offices reporting to a joint programme executive officer; and then a full transition to separate service-run F-35 programme offices reporting to service programme executive officers and service acquisition executives within each respective military department.

The Joint Programme Office confirmed the restructuring in an email.

“We are implementing improvements to increase transparency, and we'll continue to assess and evaluate the most efficient ways to support and manage this vital national defence program,” the Joint Program Office said. “It is important to highlight that there is no immediate timeline for this.”

International sales of the aircraft will be managed by the respective service offices: The US Air Force office will handle F-35A variant, and the US Navy and Marine Corps office will manage the F-35B and F-35C variants.

 

[Jura The idiot]

Yesterday at 4:53 PM

it's quite interesting Navy Completes Developmental Test of JSOW on F-35C; Operational Test Later in Summer
Posted: April 10, 2018

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related:
New Precision Weapon Allows F-35C to Destroy Targets in Stealth Mode

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Raytheon Co.'s Joint Standoff Weapon version C is nearly ready for the U.S.

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's

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.

The defense company recently integrated the 1,000-pound precision air-to-ground weapon, known as

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-C, during a developmental test in the fighter, said Mark Borup, of Raytheon's medium-range strike and attack air warfare systems division.

JSOW-C now must complete operational testing before it is declared combat ready, Borup said.

"This is absolutely a critical opportunity for the Navy because now this is their top-line, medium-range precision strike weapon that is capable now of being integrated and is being integrated internally on JSF," Borup said in an interview Tuesday. He spoke with Military.com during the annual Sea-Air-Space exposition here.

Borup said the F-35 is now able to penetrate targets in total stealth mode since JSOW-C -- carried internally in the weapons bay -- is also configured with low-observable technology.

"The great thing about JSOW is that mixed loads can be carried" in the aircraft, he said, noting this means the Joint Strike Fighter could carry air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons at the same time.

At maximum, two JSOW-Cs can be carried in the F-35C.

A live developmental test was completed earlier this year in the Western United States, Borup said. Operational testing is expected to be done by the end of 2018.

The F-35C -- designed to take off and land on aircraft carriers -- is not expected to reach initial operating capability until 2019. When asked how this affects JSOW incorporation, Borup said Raytheon is working with the service as the aircraft's own testing continues.

"Those are kind of going along in parallel steps and, as the aircraft is ready to accept certain capabilities, then we move forward," he said.

The weapon was tested with the aircraft's Block 3F configuration software.

"It's already to go in the next phases," he said.

JSOW-C, using a

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-navigation system and thermal imaging infrared seeker, is already used in the

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, which gave Raytheon additional test data and insights during F-35 configuration.

The missile uses a tandem warhead to blow through hardened surface targets like bunkers: The first compartment has a forward-shaped, 220-pound charge to penetrate, and a secondary compartment features a 320-pound follow-through bomb.

"It has a smart fuse, so you can pick the level of penetration desired," Borup said.

The missile can also be programmed to have different effects, such as waypoints or dive angles, he said.

"You want the flexibility to have one weapon that can meet a broad range of targets, whether it’s to penetrate a bunker or maybe its aircraft on a tarmac. … So it's optimized for a large number of targets," Borup said.

 

[Jura The idiot]

Today at 7:56 AM

Apr 4, 2018
and
JPO to hand F-35 management to services

• 
  
  
  • 10 April, 2018

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now
F-35 program head supportive of future transition to service-led offices

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The head of the F-35 program office acknowledged Wednesday that the program will eventually

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to separate offices led by the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps —

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by the Pentagon’s top acquisition official.

Speaking to a standing room only crowd on the final day of the Navy League’s Sea Air Space expo, Vice Adm. Mat Winter appeared to be broadly supportive of a memo issued by Ellen Lord,

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, which laid out near-term actions for the services and F-35 joint program office to prepare the way for a decentralized F-35 program.

“As we look forward, every weapon system in the United States at some point has changed its program office management structure to reflect the realities of the program phase,” Winter said.

“The migration of the program office, the appropriate skill sets, the organizational alignment and how we will execute that will continue to mature and be assessed every year. That’s the direction I’ve been given. That’s what the cover memo intent is and that’s what we’re executing today.”

The big outstanding question is when such a split will and should occur. While Lord’s March 27 letter to Congress doesn’t provide any specific information except to say that the “department will evaluate the right time to begin this transition,” the expectation within the Pentagon is that it could begin in a matter of years.

In his comments on Thursday, Winter struck a careful balance, saying that Lord “took the time to engage with the services and the JPO,” and that her guidance will ensure that “the JPO management will continue to be most efficient and effective to design, deliver, produce and sustain the F-35 air system into the future.”

However, he also noted that the F-35 program is unlike any other and hinted that it would be unwise to prematurely split the program.

“We will be in full sprint in development, production and sustainment for the next 20 years. Development will continue

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,” he said. “Production will eventually tail off some time, but we will

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until the last flight of an F-35 occurs.”

In her letter, Lord spelled out a list of actions that could impact the makeup of the JPO, including a Pentagon review of its charter and audit of its billet structure.

Winter on Wednesday said many of those directives are already in process.

“The infamous cover memo that has specific areas of direction and pursuit that the program and that the partnership and that the Department of Defense will pursue is underway,” he said. “The majority of those elements are either incorporated or being incorporated because they make sense.”

For example, the JPO has already named variant leads to ensure that engineering, testing and logistics for the the F-35A conventional takeoff and landing model, the F-35B short takeoff and landing variant, and the F-35C carrier version are all aligned.

It also has service-specific program deputies, another of Lord’s mandates, he said.

 

[Jura The idiot]

Nov 1, 2017

Oct 24, 2017

and Corrosion issue stops F-35 deliveries for a month
01 November, 2017

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now Defense Department halts F-35 deliveries amid repair bill disagreement with Lockheed

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The Pentagon has suspended acceptance of most F-35 deliveries as manufacturer Lockheed Martin and the F-35 program office debate who should be responsible for fixing jets after a

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last year.

“While all work in our factories remains active, the F-35 Joint Program Office has temporarily suspended accepting aircraft until we reach an agreement on a contractual issue and we expect this to be resolved soon,” a Lockheed spokeswoman confirmed in a statement, adding that the company remains confident that it can meet its delivery target of 91 aircraft for 2018.

News of the delivery pause was first reported by

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.

The dispute is rooted in a

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that caused F-35 deliveries to stop from Sept. 21 to Oct. 20. At the time, corrosion was found in fastener holes of F-35As being repaired at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.

Lockheed and the JPO were able to agree on a corrective action plan, one source said, and Lockheed was able to complete planned deliveries of the F-35 for 2017.

But sometime after that, a dispute over who should pay for the fix resurfaced and the Defense Department opted to take another production pause, a source said, declining to comment on how long deliveries have been suspended.

Production of the aircraft is ongoing at Lockheed’s line in Fort Worth, Texas, and at final assembly and check out facilities in Nagoya, Japan, and Cameri, Italy. A source noted that some customers have accepted planes due to warfighter demands.

According to Reuters, two aircraft have been delivered to the Defense Department since it imposed the suspension. Meanwhile, a repair bill for more than 200 jets is on the line.

The corrosion issue is

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of several

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that has plagued the F-35

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.

A spokesman for the F-35 Joint Program Office didn’t immediately respond for comment.

Vice Adm. Mat Winter, the F-35 joint program executive officer, spoke today at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space conference but did not disclose the fact that deliveries had stopped.

 

[Jura The idiot]

related to the above post, now I read the original Reuters Exclusive: Pentagon stops accepting Lockheed F-35 jets over repair cost dispute
Updated 6 hours ago

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The U.S. Department of Defense has stopped accepting most deliveries of F-35 jets from Lockheed Martin Corp (

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) because of a dispute over who will cover costs for fixing a production error, three people familiar with the matter said.

Lockheed confirmed on Wednesday that the Pentagon had halted deliveries of the jet over a contractual issue, but did not give further details.

Last year, the Pentagon stopped accepting F-35s for 30 days after discovering corrosion where panels were fastened to the airframe, an issue that affected more than 200 of the stealthy jets. Once a fix had been devised, the deliveries resumed, and Lockheed hit its target aircraft delivery numbers for 2017.

But deliveries were paused again over a dispute as to who will pay for what will likely be a complex logistical fix that could require technicians to travel widely to mend aircraft based around the world, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

When the Pentagon stops taking delivery of F-35s, foreign customers can also be affected. So far at least two foreign governments have stopped accepting F-35s as a result of this issue, two of the sources said.

A Lockheed spokeswoman said on Wednesday: “Production on the F-35 program continues and we are confident we will meet our delivery target of 91 aircraft for 2018. While all work in our factories remains active, the F-35 Joint Program Office has temporarily suspended accepting aircraft until we reach an agreement on a contractual issue and we expect this to be resolved soon.”

It was not clear when the suspension of deliveries began.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The fastening issue on the F-35 fleet was not affecting flights, nor was it a safety concern, the Pentagon said last year.

The delivery pause is the latest of several production issues that have arisen in the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program, and comes at a time when the administration of President Donald Trump has criticized the cost of the fighter.

In 2016, a fix for insulation problems in the fuel tanks and lines of the jets caused a slowdown in deliveries.

Shares of Lockheed erased a 2.7 percent gain on the day after Reuters reported the suspension. They closed flat at $339.44.

GOVERNMENT INSPECTION
At the heart of the dispute is the government’s inspection of the planes during Lockheed’s production, which failed to discover problems with the fastenings, the sources said. Because neither party caught the issue at the time each is pointing the finger at the other to pay for the fix.

Two jets were received by the Pentagon despite the suspension because of specific needs in the field, one of the people said.

During routine maintenance at Hill Air Force Base in Utah last year, the Air Force detected “corrosion exceeding technical limits,” where the carbon fiber exterior panel is fastened to the aluminum airframe.

A lack of protective coating at the fastening point that would have prevented corrosion was identified as the primary problem, the Pentagon said at the time.

The F-35 business accounts for about a quarter of Lockheed’s total revenue. During the third quarter, sales at Lockheed’s aeronautics business increased 14 percent to $4.7 billion, led by higher sales of the F-35 and highlighting the program’s importance to Lockheed’s profitability.

 

[Air Force Brat]

related to the above post, now I read the original Reuters Exclusive: Pentagon stops accepting Lockheed F-35 jets over repair cost dispute
Updated 6 hours ago

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Aluminum fasteners, underlying the carbon fiber skin hold access panels to the aircraft usually with stainless steel screws,,, the lack of coating, insulating the two materials from one another, allows "dissimilar metal corrosion" to form between the aluminum and carbon, causing the white chalky corrosive to spread outward from the joint! it is a serious issue.

The Trek 5200 in its early inception had aluminum drop-outs for the rear wheel, glued into to chain stays and seat stays, on a bicycle its ugly and could cause potential separation of the aluminum drops-outs due to failure of the glue joints.

Its not a huge deal, but it is a deal, and it costs good money to fix this,,, Lockheed will have to "eat this", and they should as its "on them", hence the delivery stoppage to send a message..

as I have reminded all, bicycle and aircraft construction materials are very similar, and structural issues can be very similar,, who would have thunk it???

 

[Jura The idiot]

Mar 1, 2018

inside
US military targets F-35 labour costs, repairs for savings

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:
"Only about 20 flight test points remain to complete testing of Block 3F software, marking the end of an 11-year flight test campaign during the system development and demonstration phase, Winter says."

now
F-35 program office wraps up final developmental flight test

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The F-35 joint strike fighter on Wednesday flew its final developmental flight test, effectively capping off the development phase of the program 11 years after the aircraft took its first flight in 2006.

The F-35, built by Lockheed Martin, will now move into operational test and evaluation conducted by the Pentagon’s independent testing office. Once finished, the systems development and demonstration (SDD) portion of the program will officially be complete and the F-35 will enter full rate production.

Vice Adm. Mat Winter, F-35 joint program executive officer, said Wednesday

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that he expected to finish the final SDD flight test this week “and potentially even today. … That is a significant milestone for this program.”

That test point — during which the Navy test aircraft CF-2 collected data while carrying 2,000-pound GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munitions and AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles as an external load — occurred on April 11 at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md.

Over the entire test program, the JPO was responsible for “conducting more than 9,200 sorties, accumulating over 17,000 flight hours, and executing more than 65,000 test points to verify the design, durability, software, sensors, weapons capability and performance for all three F-35 variants,” Winter said in a statement on Thursday.

During the SDD program, the program completed more than 1,500 vertical landing tests of the Marine Corps’ F-35B short takeoff and vertical landing variant, and conducted six periods of at-sea testing with the F-35B and F-35C carrier variant.

It also carried out 183 weapon separation tests and 46 weapons delivery accuracy tests, as well as 22 mission effectiveness tests that weigh the F-35’s abilitiy to stand up to advanced threats in multi-ship engagements of up to eight joint strike fighters, the JPO said in a statement.

Greg Ulmer, Lockheed Martin’s vice president and general manager of the F-35 program, called it the “most comprehensive, rigorous and the safest developmental flight test program in aviation history.”

However, it has not been without its roadbumps. Cost overruns led to a Nunn-McCurdy breach in 2010 that forced the Defense Department to assess whether it should continue on with the program.

And although the JPO has gained better control overall on development, production and sustainment costs, there were a couple high profile technical problems including engine issues that started a fire and kept planes from going to Farnborough Airshow 2014 and an

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that caused some jets to be grounded in 2016.

The

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, revolving around

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, has been resolved technically, but the JPO and Lockheed still are disputing who should pay for the fix. The Defense Department has stalled deliveries until then.

Although SDD flight tests have ended, F-35 flight testing will continue as part of follow-on modernization efforts called Continuous Capability Development and Delivery, or C2D2, the JPO stated in a news release.

However, that strategy has also been somewhat controversial.

When Winter

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during the Defense News conference in September, he said its use of agile software development would help the program continuously adopt new software updates and improvements.

But

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that C2D2 allows the JPO to claim they’ve delivered fully combat capable jets with 3F software and push fixing minor software deficiencies to later in the program.

 

[Jura The idiot]

Yesterday at 7:44 AM

Nov 1, 2017
now Defense Department halts F-35 deliveries amid repair bill disagreement with Lockheed

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and F-35 delivery pause indicative of more stringent Pentagon standards, Lord says

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Both the Defense Department and Lockheed Martin had become too relaxed in ensuring deliveries of new F-35s met requirements, but

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how the department will now hold Lockheed to stricter standards, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official said Friday.

On Wednesday, Lockheed Martin confirmed that the Pentagon had stopped accepting deliveries of some F-35s due to a disagreement over whether the government or the company should pay for repairs for more than 200 F-35As with fastener holes that were

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.

“The issue itself is well on its way to being resolved,”

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, told reporters during a roundtable.

However, the debacle establishes the “department’s point of view” that Lockheed had gotten sloppy in meeting the specified manufacturing requirements — and that the Pentagon got not been rigorous enough in enforcing them, she said.

“The department, in an effort to move forward with the program, has perhaps not been as thoughtful as we want to be from this point forward in terms of what we consider acceptable performance,” she said. “I think this corrosion issue is one example where we have expectations for workmanship, and at this point we’re not seeing those workmanship levels being achieved.”

Lockheed Martin officials understand that, Lord said, including its CEO Marillyn Hewson, who

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every month to talk about the Pentagon’s new expectations for the

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of the program.

“What we are in the process of doing is talking with a greater level of fidelity about our expectation for performance on each of the upcoming lots,” she said. “I know that there is a much higher level of fidelity around expectations and the details that we are discussing at all levels of management.”

Since the department partially suspended deliveries, it has accepted 14 F-35s, Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, the Air Force’s top uniformed acquisition official, said during a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on Thursday. Five aircraft—three U.S. Air Force F-35As, one for Norway and another for Australia — have been deferred.

The pause has been going on “for a few weeks,” he told reporters after the hearing. “Hopefully it will be done in a few more.”

Over the past several months, Pentagon leaders have come down on Lockheed for what they see as an

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.

Vice

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, told reporters in February that he was concerned that minor quality escapes were adding up, growing the cost of the aircraft and the time spent manufacturing it. As production ramps up, that could become even more of a problem.

“I don’t have concerns that we’ll be able to keep having aircraft coming down the line and putting them together and delivering them. We’ll be able to do that,” he said. “But I have concerns that we might not be able to do it at the rate that our war fighter has asked us to do it.”

 

[Jura The idiot]

F-35s hyped in this

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Losing US air superiority risks ground forces

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