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

Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
A string of articles have hit the news wire over at Defense News reporting on a bunch of problems with the F-35, some of which have never been reported before.

There are too many articles to post individually.

Link attached.
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Yep, Blah, Blah, Blah, ba Blah, defensenews, another attempt by the "twitter people" to gain some relevance in the real world, some legitimate and being addressed, some just rehashing old "juicy stories".....
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
@Air Force Brat
I wouldn’t dismiss them out of hand, these are real issues.
However many if not all have either fixes on the way or in the works or are not considered serious enough to be considered a absolute game stopper.
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Tyler and Joseph at the Drive go line by line through and point out the problems and fixes.

So pilot of B and C Models have to be careful when in reheat past Mach1.2 if they push it past that for about half a minute continuously they risk damage and need a 3 minute cool down.
Apparently the issues are that the stealthy coatings around the vertical stabilizer are sensitive to heat.
Not a game stopper just annoying. If the stick jokey did push it beyond the limits, the bird wouldn’t be scraped but would need repair at a depot.

Issues like the helmet are well known and the gen 3 is to fix that.

A blown tire landing could cut hydraulic lines on A and B.

C and B have issues beyond 20 Alpha. A Software patch for the FBW.
In fact much of it is software issues. Only a few are hard wear.

Even the DefenseNews article I linked to takes the time to look at it from two points of view interviewing a retired Naval Aviator and an Active one. The two come to different conclusions but fair.
 

Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
@Air Force Brat
I wouldn’t dismiss them out of hand, these are real issues.
However many if not all have either fixes on the way or in the works or are not considered serious enough to be considered a absolute game stopper.
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Tyler and Joseph at the Drive go line by line through and point out the problems and fixes.

So pilot of B and C Models have to be careful when in reheat past Mach1.2 if they push it past that for about half a minute continuously they risk damage and need a 3 minute cool down.
Apparently the issues are that the stealthy coatings around the vertical stabilizer are sensitive to heat.
Not a game stopper just annoying. If the stick jokey did push it beyond the limits, the bird wouldn’t be scraped but would need repair at a depot.

Issues like the helmet are well known and the gen 3 is to fix that.

A blown tire landing could cut hydraulic lines on A and B.

C and B have issues beyond 20 Alpha. A Software patch for the FBW.
In fact much of it is software issues. Only a few are hard wear.

Even the DefenseNews article I linked to takes the time to look at it from two points of view interviewing a retired Naval Aviator and an Active one. The two come to different conclusions but fair.

I'm not denying the F-35 has some serious issues, I must say I'm surprised to hear about the high alpha issues as the A model was flown to 73 degrees angle of attack, and later flown past 105 degrees angle of attack.....

this particular issue just lends further credence to my constant reminder that FCS issues are extremely complex, likely the reason we have not seen the J-20 pushed too hard, that little roll-over break-out at Zhuhai was probably around 6 or 7 G's at around 400knts, but we haven't seen them do any slow flight similar to what the F-22 and F-35A have performed in their very public and up front demo's..

That F-135 makes a lot a thrust and a lot of heat, its a little "blow-torch, melting tail feathers are by no means a new issue, seems most of these problems are on the B and C, the C model has much larger horizontal stabs, so that's likely part of the issue..
if you will notice the A and B models horizontal stabilizers angle sharply away from the nozzle, while the larger horizontal stab on the B flows straight back, and is definitely in the "line of fire", so to speak.
 
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there's a strange point which inside
F-35 Hit With Cluster Bomb Of Damning Reports As Pentagon Eyes Full Rate Production
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is worded
"The F-35's cloud-based Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) presents
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for foreign Joint Strike Fighter operators.
  • A firewall called the ALIS Sovereign Data Management system has been available since earlier this year."
I mean why would some US ally want 'a little victorious bombing' without the Pentagon knowing?
and even if some US ally wanted 'a little victorious bombing' without the Pentagon knowing, I'd assume that ALIS Sovereign Data Management system just, oops, malfunctioned

no need to spend money on an illusion of privacy, LOL!
 

Tetrach

Junior Member
Registered Member
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>"Here are some of the more important details from today’s announcement. Top of the list is the fact that the flyaway price of the F-35A
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in Low Rate of Initial Production (LRIP) Lot 13. Lord said in the statement that the Pentagon will reap an estimated 8.8 percent in savings from Lot 11 to Lot 12 for F-35A’s, and an average of 15 percent reduction “across all variants from Lot 11 to Lot 14.”


Do you think the price will go that low ? For such plane it would be incredible.
 
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>"Here are some of the more important details from today’s announcement. Top of the list is the fact that the flyaway price of the F-35A
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in Low Rate of Initial Production (LRIP) Lot 13. Lord said in the statement that the Pentagon will reap an estimated 8.8 percent in savings from Lot 11 to Lot 12 for F-35A’s, and an average of 15 percent reduction “across all variants from Lot 11 to Lot 14.”


Do you think the price will go that low ? For such plane it would be incredible.
yeah the gullible public is supposed to cheer, but if I were you, I'd now wait for press-releases like the one inside
May 5, 2018
Tuesday at 8:54 AM
and it's actually interesting to read the official (I know there's a summary Tuesday at 8:57 AM) ... what one bil and almost a half buys you, for less than three-hundred aircraft, until April of next year:

Contracts
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Press Operations

Release No: CR-080-18
April 30, 2018

NAVY
Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas, is awarded a $1,421,735,530 cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for recurring logistics services for delivered F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter air systems in support of the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, non-Department of Defense (DoD) participants, and foreign military sales (FMS) customers. Services to be provided include ground maintenance activities; action request resolution; depot activation activities; Automatic Logistics Information System operations and maintenance; reliability, maintainability and health management implementation and support; supply chain management; and activities to provide and support pilot and maintainer initial training. Work will be performed in Fort Worth, Texas (62 percent); Orlando, Florida (22 percent); Greenville, South Carolina (7 percent); Warton, United Kingdom (5 percent); and Redondo Beach, California (4 percent), and is expected to be completed in April 2019. Fiscal 2018 operations and maintenance (Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy); fiscal 2018 aircraft procurement (Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy); non-DoD participant; and FMS funds in the amount of $1,403,206,015 will be obligated at time of award; $845,359,517 of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract combines purchases for the Air Force ($598,147,885; 42.07 percent); Marine Corps ($261,767,508; 18.41 percent); Navy ($174,668,435; 12.29 percent); non-DoD participants ($284,481,973; 20.01 percent); and FMS customers ($102,669,729, 7.22 percent). This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to 10 U.S. Code 2304(c)(1). The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity.
 

Brumby

Major
Lockheed Martin Proposes 40% Fuel Capacity Upgrade for F-35A

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has started engineering studies focused on substantially extending the range of the
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by increasing the total onboard fuel capacity by 40% and improving the aircraft’s fuel efficiency, Aviation Week has learned.

The studies would resurrect a long-abandoned plan to install external fuel tanks under the wings of the conventional takeoff-and-landing variant. The range-extension study also could benefit from proposed propulsion improvements, such as Pratt & Whitney’s Growth Option upgrade offer for the
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engine.

“We have had early discussions with various F-35 customers regarding extended-range opportunities,” a Lockheed spokesman says.
Source AWST June 13, 2019
 

Brumby

Major
yeah the gullible public is supposed to cheer, but if I were you, I'd now wait for press-releases like the one inside
May 5, 2018

I would like to see an explanation on how you actually reconcile the two different articles to justify the "gullible" statement. I don't see any nexus between the two but then you might see stuff that I don't.
 
I would like to see an explanation on how you actually reconcile the two different articles to justify the "gullible" statement. I don't see any nexus between the two but then you might see stuff that I don't.
my conjecture is the more they lower the F-35 flyaway cost (as they recently said they would Tuesday at 8:40 AM),

the more they'll spend on contracts of the type May 5, 2018
Apr 30, 2019

I mean disproportionately more = a piecemeal approach
 

dtulsa

Junior Member
@Air Force Brat
I wouldn’t dismiss them out of hand, these are real issues.
However many if not all have either fixes on the way or in the works or are not considered serious enough to be considered a absolute game stopper.
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Tyler and Joseph at the Drive go line by line through and point out the problems and fixes.

So pilot of B and C Models have to be careful when in reheat past Mach1.2 if they push it past that for about half a minute continuously they risk damage and need a 3 minute cool down.
Apparently the issues are that the stealthy coatings around the vertical stabilizer are sensitive to heat.
Not a game stopper just annoying. If the stick jokey did push it beyond the limits, the bird wouldn’t be scraped but would need repair at a depot.

Issues like the helmet are well known and the gen 3 is to fix that.

A blown tire landing could cut hydraulic lines on A and B.

C and B have issues beyond 20 Alpha. A Software patch for the FBW.
In fact much of it is software issues. Only a few are hard wear.

Even the DefenseNews article I linked to takes the time to look at it from two points of view interviewing a retired Naval Aviator and an Active one. The two come to different conclusions but fair.
Perhaps Fixes are on the way like maybe just maybe increased maneuverability so it can turn with the Su35 or later birds increased engine performance to provide a increased thrust to weight ratio so it will have that maneuverability and simplify the thing in other Cancellation of further purchases till these things are fixed once and for all, Geez for a program that started sucking money in the 90s it's time to say Enough is Enough
 
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