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

Nov 5, 2016
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F-35 Program Office Seeking an Extra $530M to Wrap Up Development
related: Extended F-35 Flight Testing Could Eat Into Follow-On Upgrades
The Pentagon’s head of acquisition is preparing to alert lawmakers that F-35 developmental flight tests, originally slated to end in October 2017, could extend as long as May 2018. Should more money be needed to fund those activities, the F-35 joint program office plans to seize it from the follow-on modernization account, which would defer those activities by proxy, the head of the F-35 joint program office acknowledged on Monday.

Since the F-35 program was re-baselined in 2011, the F-35 joint program office has used Oct. 31, 2017, as its target date to end System Development and Demonstration flight testing. The JPO will probably miss that date by a couple months, and now projects that it will complete flight tests by the end of February 2018, said Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan.

A letter from Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain — expected to be sent to Capitol Hill either today or tomorrow — goes a few months further. According to Bogdan, the letter states that the JPO has been directed to prepare to add funds that would prolong flight testing to May 2018 if necessary.

If the Defense Department needs more money to carry flight tests beyond February 2018, the JPO will dig into funding from the F-35 Block 4 follow-on modernization (FOM) program, Bogdan told reporters on Dec.19.

“I estimate that the extended flight test period, if needed, will not exceed $100 million. However, if I have to take money out of FOM, depending on how much money I would have to take out of it, there is a chance that the follow-on modernization program may be delayed,” he said.

A $100 million debit from that account would amount to at least a six-month delay to the program, Bogdan said.

“That only makes sense, because if you haven’t finished SDD, the development program—which is our number one priority—you probably wouldn’t want to start FOM any sooner anyway,” he said. However, Bogdan acknowledged a delay to the modernization program is not ideal.

"That would not make our partners and that will not make our services happy because they are banking on us improving the airplane and getting their unique weapons on there, so that's why we're trying to do everything we can not to have that happen.”

The JPO estimates it will need an additional $532 million to completely wrap up SDD. About $265 million of that sum is money the department cut from the SDD budget in 2014 as well as additional requirements that the Pentagon added, such as cybersecurity upgrades and a modification to the plane’s logistics system to make it deployable, Bogdan said.

The remaining $267 million could fairly be designated a cost overrun, Bogdan said. That additional funding was needed to pay for redesigning the F-35 helmet and the C-model’s landing hook, to retrofit aircraft after a problem revealed problems with the F-35 engine, and to solve software stability problems.

Although schedule delays and cost overruns are never the optimal outcome, Bogdan stressed that the program had made significant progress since 2011 and that current problems are much more minimal in scope. For example, a May 2018 conclusion of flight testing would only put the program seven months behind schedule. An additional $532 million bill would bring the development program up to $14.2 billion, still below the $15.1 billion threshold level set in 2011, he said.

“From 2001 to 2011, this program underwent a six year delay and a $13.5 billion overrun,” Bogdan said. “If anybody would have told us in 2011 that we would be within a few months and a couple hundred million dollars of a $13 billion re-baseline, we’d all slap the table and say, 'We’d take it!'”

The program office is also within range of its target dates to deliver full warfighting capability, which is tied to the aircraft’s 3F software, Bogdan said. Both the A and C models are slated to get 3F software before the February 2018 threshold date. The Marine Corps’ B variant will obtain the 3F software in two stages, with its final update in May 2018.
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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
I'm guessing your line hasn't been in use when Boeing, Lockheed CEOs Meet with Trump Over F-35, Air Force One
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Trump is playing hardball in negotiations. basically he right now is trying to tell the guys at the head of Boeing, Lockmart and others, "Look trim back the estimates and price to make it more palatable down the line."
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Jeff Head

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Popular Mechanics said:
over Utah. The missile is designed to be carried internally by the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, preserving its stealthy profile for high-risk missions.

The Joint Strike Missile (JSM) is a new long range anti-ship and anti-surface missile. Derived from Norwegian defense contractor Kongsberg's Naval Strike Missile, JSM is capable of being carried in the internal weapons bays of the F-35 fighter. This helps preserve the F-35's carefully designed stealth characteristics for dangerous missions against advanced enemy air defenses. It can also fit on the external launch rails of existing aircraft—in the test over Utah, the JSM was launched from an F-16 fighter.

The test, carried out over the Utah Test and Training Range, involved a safe separation of missile from aircraft, long range flight, and alternating speed and altitude. JSM is a highly maneuverable missile that conducts high-g maneuvers to avoid anti-missile systems such as the
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.

The JSM is a subsonic missile driven by a turbojet engine. It uses an imaging infrared sensor to identify its target, and carries a 276 pound blast fragmentation warhead. JSM isn't just useful against land targets. Over the ocean it can fly low over the wavetops in order to stay off enemy radars as long as possible. The missile is capable of picking out specific targets—such as an aircraft carrier—from a battle group and then targeting specific features, such as the ship's bridge.

Another plus for Joint Strike Missile—designing it to fit inside the F-35 also made it compatible with the Mk.41 vertical launch missile silo built into American and allied warships. This ability to integrate with an existing launcher—and not bolting a new one onto a ship's superstructure—makes it a lot easier to adopt with a minimum of difficulties than some alternatives.

The Joint Strike Missile comes at a time when Russia and China's aggressive use of naval power has the U.S., NATO, and other allied navies are looking to upgrade their anti-ship missile arsenals. The ability of the missile to fit inside the F-35 and Mk. 41 makes it a pretty compelling choice.
Another good milestone for the JSM.

As I have said, I hope it finds its way into the US arsenal.

Internal mount for F-35, potential quad and/or VLS mounts on certain US ships.

If Kongsberg works out a deal to ave the manufactured in the US for US use, this could fly...so to speak.

The US then could have everything from the Griffin and Longbow Hellfire on Cyclone class and LCS, to the, to the Harpoon, and the JSM on the LCS and FF, to the LR-ASM, and the Tomahawk available for DDG and CG...and some mixing of them among various classes, this will give the US all sorts of different ASM missions.

The beat goes on![/url]
 
History of the F35, Every Time the pilot has tripped over his own bootlaces it's brought outcry from the critics. can you imagine the hell in a handbasket if a female pilot broke a nail or a maintainer forgot to perfectly polish the canopy. Calls for a Congressional hearing if a pilot dropped his sandwich in flight. Everest over an Ant hill.
that's what you say, and here is
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[/URL]
Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!
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^^^
Trump Tells Twitter He Wants A Super Hornet With F-35 Capabilities
President-elect Donald Trump may have had his meetings with the Lockheed Martin chief executive officer, but he’s not ready to play nice, tweeting on Thursday evening that he could look to Boeing’s Super Hornet as an alternative to the F-35.

“Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!” he tweeted at 5:26 p.m. EST.

Lockheed Martin stock, which had closed at $252.80 a share, tumbled down to $247.75 at about 7 p.m. EST, a 2 percent decline. At the same time, Boeing stock shot up by about 1.49 percent, increasing from $157.46 to $158.95 a share.

What this means for Lockheed Martin and its top competitor Boeing in the long term is not exactly clear. Although the F-35 has been plagued with its share of cost overruns and technical issues, the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet is a fourth-generation plane that lacks many of the capabilities that define a fifth-generation plane, such as stealth and sensor fusion. Redesigning a Super Hornet that meets the same requirements as the F-35 would require years of development and engineering time and probably billions of dollars.

“We have committed to working with the president-elect and his administration to provide the best capability, deliverability and affordability across all Boeing products and services to meet our national security needs,” said Boeing spokesman Todd Blecher.

Speaking to Defense News at the Reagan National Defense Conference on Dec. 3, Boeing Defense head Leanne Caret expressed confidence that the F/A-18 line would expand out “well into the mid-2020s and beyond. ... I feel very comfortable with where we are with this line.”

A spokesman for Lockheed Martin declined to comment on the tweet, as did a spokesman for F-35 engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney.

Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with the Teal Group, said Trump’s tweet reflects “an interesting debate,” albeit one from years ago.

“For the Navy, at least, he’s not wrong about the plan,” he said. That service has limited its F-35C buys while continuously adding money into its budget for Super Hornets and its electronic warfare-capable brother, the E/A-18 Growler, which is manufactured on the same production line.

But “eventually somewhere towards the tail end of this administration, the Navy will have to shift to the C,” he said.

Aboulafia also acknowledged the difficulty of transforming an aircraft like an F/A-18 into a fifth-generation fighter. Super Hornets “are strike aircraft for a carrier deck. It’s a useful strike fighter for a large carrier, but its fundamentally a different aircraft. You can’t just make it stealthy," he said.

Earlier this week, Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, the F-35 joint program office chief, charted the progress of the program since it hit a Nunn McCurdy breach and was rebaselined in 2011. Since then, Bogdan said Monday, the F-35 program had operated mostly on schedule and mostly on cost, although he acknowledged that the end of developmental flight tests could be delayed by as much as seven months. The program also will likely need $532 million to finish development.

“If anybody would have told us in 2011 that we would be within a few months and a couple hundred million dollars of a $13 billion re-baseline, we’d all slap the table and say, 'We’d take it!'” he said.

“This program is not ‘out of control,’” he added, referencing an infamous Trump tweet from earlier this month that claimed just that.

Bogdan then met with Trump on Wednesday to talk over the F-35 program. Boeing head Dennis Muilenburg and Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson also had their own meetings with the president-elect.

Muilenburg framed the conversation as favorable, saying that they were “very productive” and that he was “really encouraged” by the “good, open discussion,” according to pool reports.

Hewson declined to give a statement, but Trump offered his own take:

“We’re just beginning, it’s a dance. It’s a little bit of a dance. But we’re going to get the costs down and we’re going to get it done beautifully.”
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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Citing F-35 Cost, Trump Asks Boeing for F-18 Quote
Dec 22, 2016by in
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  • By Lara Seligman

    A day after meeting with the heads of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, President-elect Donald Trump has asked Boeing to price out the cost of an F/A-18 Super Hornet to potentially compete with the F-35.

    Trump has dragged Lockheed’s F-35 into the spotlight in recent weeks, slamming the program for “out of control” costs. Now, he is calling in the big guns, asking Boeing to give him a price estimate for what it would take to build a “comparable” Super Hornet.

    “Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!” he tweeted late Dec. 22.

    "We have committed to working with the president elect and his administration to provide the best capability, deliverability and affordability across all Boeing products and services to meet our national security needs," Boeing spokesman Todd Blecher told Aviation Week after the tweet.

    It is unclear what exactly Trump intends to do next. Does he want a competition between the multi-service F-35 and Boeing’s Super Hornet, the backbone of the U.S. Navy’s carrier air wing, and actually slated to be replaced with the F-35C carrier variant starting in 2018? A president can’t single-handedly cancel one military aircraft and replace it with another. Notably, the U.S. Air Force does not even currently operate the Super Hornet.

    It’s also worthwhile to note that comparing the F-35 to a Super Hornet is comparing apples to oranges. The F-35 is a fifth-generation stealth aircraft that is almost invisible to enemy radar, equipped with sophisticated electronics and sensor suites. The venerable F/A-18, while also an advanced fighter, is not a stealth aircraft.

    The tweet also comes a day after the president-elect met with top Pentagon brass, including the head of the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan. Bogdan presumably defended the program during the meeting, telling reporters earlier in the week that, if given a chance to discuss the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) with the Trump team, he would
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    that the program has turned itself around since a critical cost breach in 2010.

    “Given the opportunity, I would like to try to explain to the new administration that this is a vastly different program from 2011 on,” Bogdan said Dec. 19 at the JPO offices in Arlington. “I will just lay the facts out on the table and then let them make their own judgements, because I don’t think the program cost-wise is out of control, nor do I think it’s out of control schedule-wise.”

    Bogdan also noted that unit costs have come down year after year for the JSF, with the price of a single U.S. Air Force F-35A variant dropping by 5.5%, to $102.1 million, in the latest contract.

    Clearly, Trump is not buying Bogdan’s argument. Even before the Dec. 22 tweet, Trump vowed Dec. 21 after
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    with Lockheed CEO Marilyn Hewson to get prices down.

    “It’s a dance, it’s a little bit of a dance,” he said, adding that negotiations are just beginning. “But we’re going to get the costs down and we’re going to get it done beautifully.”

    Spokesmen from Lockheed and engine-maker Pratt & Whitney declined to comment on Trump’s latest tweet.
“It’s a dance, it’s a little bit of a dance,” he said, adding that negotiations are just beginning. “But we’re going to get the costs down and we’re going to get it done beautifully.”

Like I said He's playing a game. He know's he can't cancel F35 and that even if Boeing offered up a Hyper Hornet it would not be in the same class so he's playing a game. He wants to look like he is reigning in programs even before he is in office.
 
“It’s a dance, it’s a little bit of a dance,” he said, adding that negotiations are just beginning. “But we’re going to get the costs down and we’re going to get it done beautifully.”

Like I said He's playing a game. He know's he can't cancel F35 and that even if Boeing offered up a Hyper Hornet it would not be in the same class so he's playing a game. He wants to look like he is reigning in programs even before he is in office.
I'm picking this quote: "Lockheed had no comment."
Turning Up Heat on F-35, Trump Hints at F/A-18E/F Buy
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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Even if they did go forward with a FA18H/I that would at best only cover the Navy mission of the F35C. The Marines (F35B) and Air Force (F35A) mission would still be unresolved.
 
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