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

[Jura The idiot]

noticed
Air Force Risks Losing Third of F-35s If Upkeep Costs Aren't Cut

Updated on March 28, 2018, 3:54 PM GMT+2

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• Operating costs may force cutting 590 fighters, analysis finds
• Half of support expenditures are spent on contractor support

The U.S. Air Force may have to cut its purchases of

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’s F-35 by a third if it can’t find ways to reduce operations and support costs by as much as 38 percent over a decade, according to an internal analysis.

The shortfall would force the service to subtract 590 of the fighter jets from the 1,763 it plans to order, the Air Force office charged with evaluating the F-35’s impact on operations and budgets, in an assessment obtained by Bloomberg News.

While the Defense Department has said it has gained control over costs for developing and producing a fleet of 2,456 F-35s for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps -- now projected at $406 billion -- the internal analysis underscores the current and looming challenges of maintaining and operating the warplanes.

It may cost as much as $1.1 trillion to keep the F-35s flying and maintained through 2070, according to the current estimate from the Pentagon’s independent cost unit.

A chart in the Air Force analysis, which was completed in December, said the service has “very limited visibility into how” increasing funds going to Lockheed for “contractor support” are spent.

First Disclosure
The analysis represents the first public disclosure of the potential impact if support costs aren’t reduced. Using figures developed in 2012, the Air Force faces an annual bill of about $3.8 billion a year that must be cut back over the coming decade.

The Air Force analysis doesn’t represent anything close to a final decision, according to spokeswoman Ann Stefanik. The potential reduction in aircraft was a “staff assessment on aircraft affordability. It’s premature for the Air Force to consider buying fewer aircraft at this time,” Stefanik said.

The Air Force is working with the Pentagon’s F-35 program office to reach the 38 percent reduction in operation and support costs through 2028 from the $38 billion calculated in 2012, she added.

The long-term support concerns are on top of current F-35 challenges including parts shortages, unavailable aircraft and technical issues that must be resolved as the program ends its 17-year development phase. In September, the F-35 is to begin as much as a year of rigorous combat testing that’s required by law. Successful testing would trigger full-rate production, the most profitable phase for Lockheed, as soon as late 2019.

The F-35 program is accelerating: Congress bankrolled 90 jets, or 20 more than requested, in the spending bill for the current fiscal year.

Lockheed’s Costs
Half of the operations and support expenditures are tied to Lockheed’s costs and include “program management, depot maintenance, part repair, software maintenance, engineering,” Stefanik said. Those costs “are growing with the increase in flight hours. The Air Force is working to gather visibility into cost data to better understand the rationale for the growth,” she said.

The remaining costs are managed by the Air Force, including military personnel and fuel, she said. Upkeep costs for the F-35 are also a challenge for allies buying the plane, including the U.K., Australia and Italy.

Stephen Lovegrove, the U.K.’s No. 2 civilian defense official, told reporters Tuesday at a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington that although the F-35 “is doing everything we hoped it would do,” his country also is grappling with the size and scope of the future support costs for a “very, very complicated platform.”

Lovegrove, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Defence, said he’d be discussing the “slightly unknown territory” of long-term costs in meetings with F-35 program officials. The U.K. is buying 138 of the Marine Corps version of the F-35 designed to be flown off aircraft carriers.

‘Bit Frustrated’
“I am constantly being asked by parliamentarians in the U.K. what the total cost is going to be and they are sometimes, understandably, a bit frustrated when I have to tell them, ‘At the moment nobody is entirely sure,’” Lovegrove said.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in an October report that “there is little doubt” the F-35 “brings unique capabilities to the American military, but without revising sustainment plans” the military “is at risk of being unable to leverage the capabilities of the aircraft it has recently purchased.”

It’s a sentiment shared by Undersecretary Ellen Lord, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, who told reporters in January that “right now, we can’t afford the sustainment costs we have on the F-35. And we’re committed to changing that.”

 

[Jura The idiot]

Today at 7:12 AM

noticed
Air Force Risks Losing Third of F-35s If Upkeep Costs Aren't Cut

Updated on March 28, 2018, 3:54 PM GMT+2

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• 
  
  
  • Operating costs may force cutting 590 fighters, analysis finds
  • Half of support expenditures are spent on contractor support

while
US Air Force aims to lower F-35 sustainment costs to that of an F-16

57 minutes ago

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The U.S. Air Force’s top general wants to see the

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fall to the same levels as current fourth-generation fighters like the F-16, he told reporters Thursday.

“Our initial target is to get them down to the equivalent or very close to what we’re currently spending to sustain fourth-generation fighters,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein said during a roundtable.

There could be dire consequences for the

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should operations and sustainment, or O&S, costs not go down as far as desired. On Wednesday,

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that the Air Force could trim its planned purchase of F-35As by a third unless O&S costs decrease by 38 percent over the next 10 years.

On Thursday, Goldfein downplayed speculation that the program could be cut, telling reporters that he continues to be committed to the

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.

“We’re going to be buying these aircraft for a number of years, so it’s way too early to be talking about any curtailment of any procurement or any buy,” he said, adding that any decision to decrease the program of record “is really well out into the future.”

The U.S. Government Accountability Office projected in 2017 that total sustainment costs over the life of the F-35 program could amount to more than $1 trillion during a 60-year life cycle.

Support costs have been increasing as the number of planes and flight hours grow, but the internal Defense Department analysis paper obtained by Bloomberg pointed out that the Pentagon has only “limited visibility” into how the F-35’s manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, spends that money as a contractor.

O&S costs are “absolutely” a major concern, Goldfein acknowledged, and part of the department’s strategy is to

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to lower personnel- and contractor-support costs.

However, “it’s just not true that’s there’s any intent on our part to go one aircraft below the program of record, because that’s what we require today to actually accomplish the [national defense] strategy as its currently written,” he said.

The Air Force is the single-largest customer of the F-35, and any decrease in its planned procurement could have a ripple effect that drives up the unit price or O&S costs for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, as well as international partners that plan to purchase the Joint Strike Fighter.

However, some of those international customers are also growing concerned about the price of sustaining the aircraft.

During a March 27 roundtable, Stephen Lovegrove, permanent secretary of the U.K. Ministry of Defence, told reporters that the government is pleased with the jet’s performance and is committed to a planned purchase of 138 F-35B short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing aircraft.

But he added that decreasing O&S costs is of “intense interest” to the Britain.

“This is a new platform, and I am constantly being asked by parliamentarians in the U.K. as to what the total cost is going to be, and they are sometimes, understandably, a bit frustrated when I have to turn around and say at the moment: ‘Nobody is entirely sure,’ ” Lovegrove acknowledged.

“But we must maintain an absolutely laser-like focus on keeping those costs down because historically this is the one area where we’ve been OK at buying stuff, but we’ve not been necessarily good at sustaining and operating it as cost effectively as we possibly can. We need to work very, very hard on that, and we are doing so.”

Goldfein is hopeful the Defense Department can drive down the O&S bill with the help of two key players:

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, the former Textron CEO who is now the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, and Deputy Defense Secretary

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, a former Boeing executive.

Both officials are “folks who have been out in industry for most of their careers who know how this business works at a level on the industry side and are now helping us wire brush down the cost of not only procurement but also sustainment,” he said. “It gives me a level of optimism in this program that we’re going to be able to get to a pretty good target.”

 

[Jura The idiot]

Today at 6:55 AM

Mar 20, 2018now US, South Korea celebrate first South Korean F-35A and ‘iron clad’ alliance

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and South Korean delegation presses for F-35 MRO&U contracts
28 March, 2018

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A South Korean official on 28 March pressed the US Department of Defense to grant maintenance, repair, overhaul and upgrade contracts for the Lockheed Martin F-35A Lighting II to Korean companies during a speech at a roll-out ceremony in Fort Worth, Texas.

A day before a factory ceremony to formally receive South Korea's first F-35A, the chairman of South Korean's parliamentary defence committee, Kim Hack-yong, asked US undersecretary of defence for acquisition Ellen Lord to consider South Korea's aerospace industry for the MRO&U programme in northern Asia. He mentioned the request during his speech at the delivery ceremony.

Hack-yong also said that he was concerned with the delays and slow pace of delivery of weapons systems ordered by South Korea. It was not clear from his speech specifically which weapons systems he was referring to.

South Korea's first F-35A was delivered about 3.5 years after the country ordered 40 aircraft in a deal worth $7 billion. When the deal was signed in September 2014, South Korea expected to take delivery of the first F-35A this year, suggesting the programme is on track.

South Korea is one of 11 countries buying the F-35. In the Pacific region, F-35 airframe MRO&U contracts are fulfilled by companies in Japan for the Northern Pacific and Australia for the Southern Pacific. As the number of fighters in the Pacific region continue to grow, it is expected that additional support contracts could be granted.

Lockheed Martin plans to deliver South Korea’s first aircraft to Luke Air Force Base, Arizona this spring where the country’s air force pilots and maintainers will begin training. The first F-35As are scheduled to arrive at South Korea’s main operational base at Cheong Ju in 2019.

 

[Jura The idiot]

Feb 25, 2017

well now using google I found

"The first F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter took off on its initial test flight from Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, Texas on 12:44 December 15, 2006 ..."

inside F-35 is Airborne!

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and as for 'full capability', as far as I understand, F-35 will first need to be independently tested with Block 3F software (only then 'block buy' and 'Block 4 with increased weapons enveloped ' contracts may be awarded), and now it seems such testing will happen in 2018

time will tell the rest

here's an interesting update:

“After eleven years and over 16,000 flight hours, the full Block 3F SDD (system development and demonstration) developmental test phase is quickly approaching an end,” Conn wrote.
“We estimate completion to be March/April 2018. The program can now proceed into IOT&E (initial operational test and evaluation). IOT&E is critical to the Navy because we have linked the successful demonstration of 3F capabilities in IOT&E to our IOC declaration for the F-35C. Our IOC criteria states that the aircraft will be in a 3F configuration with the ability to conduct assigned operational missions utilizing SDD program of record weapons, mission systems, sensors and performance envelopes. … IOC is capability and event driven, not calendar driven. The Navy understands that the threshold and objective dates, August 2018 and February 2019, are at risk due to a delay in the IOT&E schedule. Once full 3F capability has been demonstrated in IOT&E, and all other IOC criteria have been met, the Navy will declare that the F-35C has achieved Initial Operational Capability.”

etc. etc.: Schedule at Risk for Navy F-35C Fighters to be Combat Ready by End of Year

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[Jura The idiot]

Mar 17, 2017

according to FlighGlobal F-35 firing boosts ASRAAM sales prospects

source:

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posted kinda update in
UK Military News, Reports, Data, etc. 10 minutes ago

can't be! inside
Brimstone deal to support MBDA sales offensive

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:
Speaking during an annual results briefing in London on 27 March, Bouvier said that while the company had perceived Brimstone to be an ideal "gap-filler" for the US military, "for a number of reasons our solutions have proved to be wrong".

anyway, the full article:

 

[bd popeye]

PACIFIC OCEAN (March 28, 2018) F-35B Lightning II aircraft attached to the "Avengers" of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 211 sit on the flight deck of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2) during an amphibious squadron and Marine expeditionary unit (MEU) integration (PMINT) exercise. (U.S. Navy photos by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Jacob Owen/Released)

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[Jura The idiot]

PACIFIC OCEAN (March 28, 2018) F-35B Lightning II aircraft attached to the "Avengers" of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 211 sit on the flight deck of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2) during an amphibious squadron and Marine expeditionary unit (MEU) integration (PMINT) exercise. (U.S. Navy photos by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Jacob Owen/Released)

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I liked this one (also recent; source is

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):

 

[bd popeye]

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PACIFIC OCEAN (March 28, 2018) An F-35B Lightning II aircraft attached to the "Avengers" of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 211 takes off from the flight deck of Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2) during an amphibious squadron and Marine expeditionary unit (MEU) integration (PMINT) exercise. PMINT is a training evolution between Essex Amphibious Ready Group and 13th MEU, which allows Sailors and Marines to train as a cohesive unit in preparation for their upcoming deployment. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Irwin D. Sampaga/Released)

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PACIFIC OCEAN (March 28, 2018) An F-35C Lightning II aircraft attached to the "Vampires" of Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 9 flies over Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2) during an amphibious squadron and Marine expeditionary unit (MEU) integration (PMINT) exercise.(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Irwin D. Sampaga/Released)

PACIFIC OCEAN (March 28, 2018) F-35B Lightning II aircraft attached to the "Avengers" of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 211 sit on the flight deck of Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2) during an amphibious squadron and Marine expeditionary unit (MEU) integration (PMINT) exercise. PMINT is a training evolution between Essex Amphibious Ready Group and 13th MEU, which allows Sailors and Marines to train as a cohesive unit in preparation for their upcoming deployment. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Irwin D. Sampaga/Released)

PACIFIC OCEAN (March 28, 2018) An F-35B Lightning II aircraft attached to the "Avengers" of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 211 sits on the flight deck of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2) during an amphibious squadron and Marine expeditionary unit (MEU) integration (PMINT) exercise. PMINT is a training evolution between Essex Amphibious Ready Group and 13th MEU, which allows Sailors and Marines to train as a cohesive unit in preparation for their upcoming deployment. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Irwin D. Sampaga/Released)

PACIFIC OCEAN (March 28, 2018) An F-35B Lightning II aircraft attached to the "Avengers" of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 211 sit on the flight deck of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2) during an amphibious squadron and Marine expeditionary unit (MEU) integration (PMINT) exercise. PMINT is a training evolution between Essex Amphibious Ready Group and 13th MEU, which allows Sailors and Marines to train as a cohesive unit in preparation for their upcoming deployment. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Jacob Owen/Released)

 

[Jura The idiot]

(while referring to the Wasp deployment) Mar 7, 2018

can't see any weapons

so I now watched all of this:

Marines with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 121 mount 1,000 pound Guided Bomb Units onto an F-35B Lightning IIs on the flight deck of the USS Wasp (LHD-1) while underway in the Philippine Sea, March 24, 2018. This event marked the first time an F-35 has been loaded with live ordnance at sea during an operational deployment. GBU-32s are GPS guided joint direct attack munitions that attach to VMFA 121’s F-35Bs.

 

[Jura The idiot]

now noticed the tweet

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First F-35s in Latin America arrived yesterday in

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in readiness for

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but not before a nice formation flight over the Andes. Images from

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