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

Brumby

Major
Pratt & Whitney Defining F-35 Engine Upgrade Package

Pratt & Whitney is defining a new engine upgrade option for
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delivered starting after 2026, says Matthew Bromberg, president of Military Engines.

The upgrades, the details of which will be defined in about six months, are focused on improvements to the fan and the engine accessories, Bromberg told Aerospace DAILY during a Sept. 17 interview on the sidelines of the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference.

The intent is to deliver options for improving thrust by more than 10-12%, reducing fuel consumption by more than 5-6%, increasing vertical lift by about 2% and increasing overall power and thermal management capacity, Bromberg says.

Those targets are the proposed baseline improvements advertised for the Growth Option 2.0 upgrade, which remains in discussions for insertion beyond Block 4.2 aircraft delivered starting in 2026, he says.

P&W originally proposed a Growth Option 1.0 upgrade package that offered only thrust and fuel improvements, but no extra capacity for power generation and cooling.

“We found it didn’t resonate because it didn’t have power and thermal management,” Bromberg says.

The Growth Option (GO) and Engine Enhancement Package (EEP) upgrades all stem from technologies developed under the Adaptive Engine Technology Program, which is funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory to design a new engine core.

Pratt & Whitney completed the detailed design review of the XA101 demonstrator engine recently, Bromberg says.
Source : Aerospace Daily & Defense Report September 18, 2019 Aerospace Daily & Defense Report
 
I've now watched
Video: Sustainment for the 'app generation': State of ALIS

[
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]


(From the sponsor) Ten times more people touch the Autonomic Logistics Information System, or ALIS, than fly the F-35. As tech evolves, so must the software.


yeah and the goal of "the sponsor" is to get as much money as possible from the Pentagon, "as tech evolves" hahaha
 
Wednesday at 8:58 PM
wondering what's the catch as Extra-Long Sustainment Contracts Are Lockheed’s Latest Bid to Cut F-35 Costs
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:

as they say,
If Something Sounds Too Good To Be True, It Isn't
now
Pentagon Mulls F-35 Sustainment Proposal
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The Pentagon is assessing
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’s proposal to reduce Joint Strike Fighter sustainment pricing by 16% over five years through a performance based logistics (PBL) contract, but the largest
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customer, the U.S. Air Force, says there are several things that must be worked out before signing the dotted line.

The company delivered a white paper to Ellen Lord, under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, in August outlining how a five-year PBL contract could save the military money on F-35 sustainment, Ken Merchant, F-35 sustainment vice president for Lockheed Martin, told reporters last week at the Air Force Association’s annual conference in National Harbor, Maryland. Current F-35 sustainment contracts are annual and do not allow the Joint Strike Fighter’s supplier base to conduct forward planning, he said.

“What a PBL would do for us is give a five-year contract with [the] government and it would allow our suppliers to make those investments knowing that they have five years worth of business guaranteed,” Merchant said.

The F-35 program has delivered over 425 aircraft to the fleet and will continue to grow; in fact it will double over the next few years. This is something the Pentagon must consider before entering a PBL with Lockheed Martin, Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics, told Aerospace DAILY in an exclusive Sept. 18 interview.

“Normally a performance-based logistics contract makes sense when you have a majority of the fleet fielded, then you can start doing stable buys,” Roper said. “Those are the details that we’ll need to look at. It’s not just, would the performance-based logistics contract make sense if the fleet size were frozen? Does it make sense as the fleet size grows?”

The Pentagon also must consider supply chain issues and software for the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) as the fleet size grows, he said.

“Those problems might grow linearly as the fleet size grows [or] we might get a non-linear effect where they compound,” Roper said. “Those are the things we’ll need to think through.”

In a perfect world, Lockheed Martin would like to negotiate a multiyear sustainment contract for the F-35, but executives admit the construct would be hard to sell on Capitol Hill.

“Multiyear contracts that are performance based can be very successful because they invite industry to make the upfront investment so that they can recoup their investment in terms of profit at a predictable period without worrying about the variability and the vacillations of the budgeting cycle,” Roper said. “The theory is sound, it’s just the practice that has to be reviewed.”

Roper worries about F-35 software the most because it is not only needed to sustain the system but also is integral for modernization.

“Agile software development is so critical on our programs and I think it’s not going to be a ‘nice to have’ for the F-35, it’s going to be an absolute ‘must have,’” he said.

Under Roper’s direction the Air Force launched Mad Hatter, a software coding project tackling ALIS that has delivered initial applications to the flightline at Nellis AFB in Nevada.

“I’m really pleased that new [F-35 Joint Program Office] leadership under [Lt. Gen.] Eric Fick have viewed that as a very favorable direction for all of F-35 software that goes forward,” Roper said. “We’re making the results available to them—not just the results in the field, but the process that produced them.”

Lockheed Martin has pledged to migrate ALIS to the cloud by 2020 and Roper agrees this is paramount for the future of the program because the enterprise must use cloud-based development tools. This is the way the commercial industry is heading and it provides security benefits, he added.

“I’ve directed numerous programs in the Air Force to move to our cloud-based DevSecOps stack, which is called Cloud One.
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,
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, B-21, [Ground Based Strategic Deterrent]—these are programs that need to write a lot of cloud quickly and securely,” Roper said. “Cloud-based development, if done correctly … you can write secure code really quickly and get it accredited quickly, which we also want.”
 
inside
Will Turkey Return to the F-35 Program?
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:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has
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to pull Ankara back into the F-35 fold, met with Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan earlier in the week. “We’re trying to get them back in the F-35 program,” he
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on Sunday.

oh really
 
Aug 12, 2019
LOL exactly, what testing of hundreds-billion-worth program it would be if they were "in red" for about half of the time:
Clipboard528.jpg


should it be true, we'd at some point hear about such Pentagon's achievement, I guess

let's wait and see if I ever quote this post
now
F-35 Testing Delays Continue, Even as Aircraft Has Made Its Combat Debut
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The
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will not complete
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this fall because of a setback in the testing process, according to a source close to the program.

While the F-35 Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E) was supposed to be complete by late summer, a source with knowledge of its development said the testing is still incomplete due to an unfinished phase known as the Joint Simulation Environment.

The JSE simulations project characteristics such as weather, geography and range, allowing test pilots to prove the aircraft's "full capabilities against the full range of required threats and scenarios," according to a 2015 Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) report.

The F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO), in coordination with the Defense Department, confirmed that the Joint Simulation Environment testing phase is still being worked through, but could not provide a timeline for its completion.

"This final phase of IOT&E will occur when the JSE is ready to adequately complete the testing," DoD spokesman
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Lt. Col Mike Andrews said in a statement Wednesday. "The JSE is required to adequately perform F-35 IOT&E against modern adversary aircraft and dense ground threats in realistic scenarios."

The JPO and F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin announced Dec. 6 that all three F-35 variants belonging to the Air Force,
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and
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"for the purposes of determining the weapons systems' operational effectiveness and operational suitability for combat." IOT&E had originally been set to begin in September 2018.

The latest delay raises doubts about when the stealth jet will hit its next crucial benchmark: expanded production.

IOT&E paves the way for full-rate production of the Lightning II despite the fact three U.S. services and multiple partner nations already fly the aircraft. Some versions of the F-35 have
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. The Office of the Secretary of Defense will be the authority to sign off on the decision, moving the program out of its baseline low-rate initial production (LRIP) stage.

JPO spokeswoman Brandi Schiff said the JSE is in the process of integrating Lockheed's "'F-35 In-A-Box' (FIAB) model, which is the simulation of F-35 sensor systems and the overall aircraft integration." FIAB is the F-35 aircraft simulation that plugs into the JSE environment.

"This integration and the associated verification activities are lagging initial projections and delaying IOT&E entry into the JSE," Schiff said.

Lockheed Martin originally proposed a Virtual Simulator program for this testing. But in 2015, the government instead opted to transition the work -- which would become the JSE -- to Naval Air Systems Command at
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, Maryland.

The Pentagon is looking at other potential JSE environments at locations such as
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, California, according to
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. Another could be housed at
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, Nevada, the release said.

"DOT&E is not aware of any viable substitute for the JSE that would be ready sooner," Andrews said.

"Any substitute simulation would still require high-fidelity F-35, weapons, threat and environmental models to be able to provide the operationally representative scenarios and data required to complete IOT&E," he said.

Despite the testing delay, production continues, according to Lockheed.

"We have delivered on all requirements for this software to be integrated with NAVAIR's JSE and are providing our full support to ensure successful integration and testing as soon as possible," company spokesman Mike Friedman said Friday. "F-35 production continues to ramp up.

"We have delivered more than 425 aircraft to date, doubled production since 2016, met our annual delivery targets two years in a row and continue to increase production rates, improve efficiencies and reduce costs year-over-year," he said. "We are confident the enterprise is prepared for full-rate production and ready to meet growing customer demand."
May 19, 2018
..., it's all about Lockheed Martin (
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) stocks which are going to be the indicator (depending on what comes out of many things like the independent testing before a block buy; Italy coalition Mar 7, 2018

; Turkey situation Yesterday at 8:26 PM

and so on and so forth)
... and LockMart stocks do fine so who cares about the rest LOL
 
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noted
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·
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is deploying F-35 fighter aircraft to Iceland under
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’s peacetime Air Policing mission safeguarding Icelandic airspace. Italy is first Ally deploying modern fighter aircraft in a NATO mission. Upon certification for the mission by Combined Air Operations Centre Uedem, Germany, the Italian task force will execute the special mission out of Keflavik Air Base
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. For Italy it is the fifth time – and the second time in 2019 – to support this NATO mission that showcases Allied solidarity, readiness and cooperation.
Read more at
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Tetrach

Junior Member
Registered Member
Hey, got a quick question.

In the French Navy, the Rafale-M is only allowed to take one heavy cruise missile (SCALP-NG) at a time/mission, under it's belly, as a precaution: it can technically takes more SCALPs under its wings but if one fails to launch then it would make the aircraft instable and extremely difficult to land on the carrier.

Considering that this basic rule of gravity applies to the F-35B too and that security measures are the same for all western nations, it should also be able to take only one missile under its belly, but this hard-point only allows a 1000lb weapon and the LRASM is 2500lb.

Does it mean that the F-35B can't take any LRASM ? I know the missile is not even in active service but still, for the future it would really be a pain in the ass. It would only be able to take the JSM which is not that scary tbh.
 
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