That’s the verdict of the DoD’s director of Operational Test and Evaluation:
Michael Gilmore wrote in the report that the three versions of the aircraft in 2011 matched or exceeded the program’s restructured plan for tests designed to evaluate flying qualities. The jet in 2010 met most test goals after falling behind in 2009.
Flights designed to accomplish discrete events to demonstrate the aircraft’s war-fighting systems, such as navigation, enemy identification and targeting, fell behind 11 percent for the Air Force and 9 percent for the Marine Corps versions. The Navy’s aircraft carrier version is 32 percent ahead of schedule, the tester says.
“Development, integration and flight testing of the most complex elements of mission systems lie ahead,” Gilmore wrote.
After falling significantly behind schedule in 2009, the various aircraft types have set a blistering pace knocking out test points in 2010-2011, but the mission systems maturity has not kept pace:
The three variants exceeded by 105 the 812 test flights planned for last year. The flight program exceeded by 570 the number of planned test “points,” or planned flying events. It exceeded by 56 the 133 flights devoted to testing mission systems. Gilmore wrote.
“Overall, the program has demonstrated very little missions systems capability thus far in flight test,” Gilmore wrote. “In fact, the program has not delivered some of its intended initial training capability, such as effective and consistent radar performance.”
Gilmore said the 63 aircraft produced under Lockheed’s first four initial production contracts “will require significant numbers of structural modifications and upgrades to attain the planned service life” and full combat capability.
Rein said “the individual technical issues cited in the report are known issues that have engineering solutions either identified, in work or are currently in flight test.”
From my limited access viewpoint, the issues for the aircraft at this stage of maturity seem less technical than political. Which is too bad, because the latter are always more daunting.
The political danger is probably the greatest. I have no doubt that given enough time the Engineers can make it work. I have serious doubts that they are going to be given the time to make it work. Weapons under development tend to get it in the teeth when cuts come.
This POS is eating up money better used for other areas of Defense.
This was one of many damning quotes from the report.
—”Operational Assessment
The JSF Operational Test Team completed an operational assessment of the F-35 program and determined that it is not on track to meet operational effectiveness or operational suitability requirements. The JSF Operational Test Team assessed the program based on measured and predicted performance against requirements from the JSF Operational Requirements Document, which was re-validated in 2009.”—
And, even if it were to work, the very JORD that is its goal, makes it obsolete.
The funny one is the engine being located too far forward in all the designs. Reason for that is the other two variants are subservient to the STOVL. COG and all that. If too much burner is used you cook off pieces of the horizontal stabs.
Real smart.
The reason the F-35C will never trap is to yes: being subservient to the STOVL design. How much of a redesign will be needed to put the tail hook in the right place? Answer; more than what can be expected from the existing design. Reshaping of the hook is an exercise in self-delusion by the senior leadership.
Failure is not a matter of “if” but “when”. The talent involved in all this is building the wrong jet. We need to turn that around to have these resources build the right jet. The Just So Failed is not the right jet.
The shame of the F35 and so many other programs, LCS, etc all to many senior program managers are sprung launched to agree with the happy juice. That was happy juice for a weapon that will never ever serve as a weapon system.
Didn’t we learn anything from the F-111 program?
No. History isn’t a strong suit of our political class.
History, learning from and passing alond (remembering and learning from) those lessons learned, is not a strong suit of our species -period. Not limited to the pols.
ELP it would be interesting to me how you know this: “…Reshaping of the hook is an exercise in self-delusion by the senior leadership.”
The issue is getting the tailhook to engage the arresting wire. Which requires a certain distance between the MLG and the hook. F-35C is very short-coupled, and there’s no place further aft to put it.
Mike M. (of the UAVs) a potential fix {probably not yet implemented nor tested – however I note that there have been 3 successful arrests recorded [of something]) is outlined in Dec 2011 ‘DOD F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Concurrency Quick Look Review’ ~18Mb PDF: http://www.aviationweek.com/media/pdf/awst_pdf/JSF_dod-quick-look-ahern-report.pdf
Hang the schedule! Is it satisfactory for the strike fighter mission? THAT is the question – not nonsensical test completion metrics (you don’t want to know how much it costs to generate that garbage).
I’ll point out that having to refit 63 aircraft is NOT acceptable. Not when the non-TACAIR side of the house would consider 63 aircraft half or more of the production run.
I’ll add that VADM Venlet is not to blame. He was called in to troubleshoot this disaster. And I have NO idea of what counsel he’s provided OSD in confidence.
Aircraft design is a series of tradeoffs. The more mission requirements the more tradeoffs to be made. Hence the lower probability of being great at anything while trying to be “good enough” at a lot of things.
When politicians design requirements you end up with a cluster. Whether aircraft or health care system.
An old fart such as I looking in must believe that a wasteful mistake by the US military will shortly become evident. Earlier we became aware of wasteful errors in the Navy’s surface ship/weapons plans. Now there seems to be the possibility of an equally serious situation in aviation planning/development. I am particulary struck hard by the observations re the distance of tailhook from landing gear. My, my. God Save Us All if the submariners have troubles adapting ships for the females!
Even giving credit for determination and overall operator smartz one must conclude there are rough seas just ahead. Better start to light some candles in the local cathedral.
There’s barely enough room for the men on board one of those sinking culverts. The mods required to make allowances for the wimynz will require a yard period, and then they’ll probably end up like that bomb of movie Starship Troopers.
Would be more practical to stock up on .22 and 12 gauge ammo.
How the Navy cuts costs and save fuel?
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/387713_173699502729674_141292242637067_216650_1177392927_n.jpg
The 4th gen fighters are old and busted. Sadly, the DoD bean counters, the media, defense “pundits” and three presidents are the fathers of this goat rope.
The press hounded the F-22 over it’s cost. As fighters had wings fall off, as China and Russia developed newer and more deadly SAMs. Yes the F-22 did not fly in Iraq or the ‘Stan. Both countries are stone age. We won’t have that advantage next time.
The DoD tired to save money because of the above^^ and pushed “joint-ness” above all. So what if the VTOL parts pushed the joint-ness to >30% (and falling). So what if Lockheed botched parts? So what if our allies were screaming for the F-22? So what if Su-27 clones are for sale?
The pundits are eating this up. POGO, the NYT, most of the “experts” got Bush to kill the F-22. Now they want to kill the F-35. Most of them just stick their heads in the sand and assume that our current fleet will keep flying (I’m looking at you Fred Kaplan of Slate.com). Others simply assume that we can shove new systems into the ‘teen series. Sure, and if you put a sign on a cat that says “this is a horse” it can win the triple crown.
Have to deal with this mess. Either we fix and accept the F-35 or cede the skies to Russia, China and their clients.
Either we fix and accept the F-35 or cede the skies to Russia, China and their clients.
That simply isn’t true. Neither Russia nor China has a real 5th gen program anywhere near real production, and there’s a lot of evidence that the so-caled PAK-FA is a Potemkin fighter with all the necessary guts yet to be developed, and that the Chicom stealth fighter isn’t a fighter at all but a kind of heavy strike aircraft… an attempt at a stealthy F-111.
Neither country is building 4.5 fighters in really threatening quantities either. Thankfully, the Navy has an affordable 4.5 fighter in the Super Hornet in sucessful mass productions. If USAF would get off its rear and forgo the stealth-only approach, they too could have a bunch of new build F-16′s produced in quantities sufficient to deter Russia or China from getting too frisky with us. That in a nutshell is USAF’s… and thus America’s… core airpower program. They’ve put their foot down and demanded a Cadillac only force when right now we have a budget path for a Chevy force. And the Chevys would do fine.
Direct hit, Douglas.
If the PAK-FA is built in any numbers it’ll be very few, given the state of the Russian military finances, not to mention the pilots are still getting perhaps 40 hours of flight time a year.
It’s past time the US military settled for “good enough”, as in Super Hornets and Silent Eagles, and worked out a restart of the F-22 line. Otherwise the force will be composed of very small numbers of gold-plated aircraft that no one will want to risk losing.
While I’m not as pessimistic as many here -I read history too, and I remember how the M-1 Abrams and M-2 Bradley were mercilessly flogged as gold-plated junk; the latter a deathtrap in the bargain- I agree with your main point. Super Hornets & Silent Eagles are at the least good enough. We might even look at some of the “custom” version of the F-16s we’ve produced for other countries.
Restarting the F-22 would be good for the Air Force, and good for the country. Barry likes to talk up “stimulus,” but finks out when it doesn’t line the pockets of his fellow travelers.
why would you think that. What historically gave rise to such an utterly ridiculous notion?
You saw that far into the future with what? Nozzles? Your squeezed fist very very small held against your wee little eye, a microscope, telescope?
yeah yeah, scary is where exactly do we build ipods, iphones, ipads, hi tech. But still. For some reason…
A lot more than the usual leftist-broken-rifle-all-defense-is-bad-loons.
The F-35 program has serious trouble.
The F-35 was never capable of advanced air supremacy by virtue of the JORD in 2001. So the idea that the F-35 is some kind of solution is erroneous. Even if it was to work now (fat chance) as delivered it would be obsolete vs. emerging threats.
The F-35 was to do work after the F-22 did its work.
The C is in severe risk of never trapping
The B is in severe risk of never performing STOVL in a real world environment. (Real weapons, real mission systems, and not running off to PAX from the boat).
All variants have severe trouble in large quantity. This is not teething trouble. It is incompetent project management trouble.
If current 4-gens are no good as you think, then so is the F-35 as both are second-tier strike fighters. Just that the current 4-gens work and are operationally useful for a wide variety of missions (not every mission is anti-access). The F-35 on the other hand, is a 5th-generation failure.
I weep for the carrier air wing if this is all the chair-warming brigade can give them. The F-35 program leadership and their proponents aimed for mediocrity and missed the mark.
I fault the political leadership more.
Remember, the JSF was a mix of three requirements. The USAF wanted a stealthy F-16 to use as an attack aircraft. The Marines wanted a STOVL Hornet to replace the Harrier in the CAS role. And the Navy wanted a high-end strike fighter. You might have been able to cover two of those with one design…all three was a Mission Too Far.
The problem was that the Clinton administration told DOD they were only getting one new-start TACAIR program, the technical issues be damned. So we wound up with this.
I think F-35A will be overpriced, but technically successful. I have serious doubts about the other two.
Mike, I think we’ll build just enough of them to declare the program a “success”, then kill the program and go elsewhere. But we’ll build nowhere near the 2500+ originally envisioned. Simply can’t afford ‘em at those prices, unless we suddenly inflate our currency to worthlessness, and then the fighter gap is the least of our problems.
MikeM/
Lay this all at the feet of the USMC and its obsession to somehow escape the clutches of the USAF and the “single-manager” TACC system. STOVAL in high wing-loading ac has NO practical utility in combat. Hell, all the Harriers we had in GULF I used 11,000′ runways in Kuwait.
We have plenty of smart engineers. We can adjust the schedul to have plenty of time.
What we do not have enough of is money. This compromised program will simply fail from the sheer cost, and the inability to perform any of its desired missions well.
Even if Obama is replaced, the spending realities will force massive DOD cuts, and this is a target too big to miss.
If we are lucky, we might get some more F-16s, FA-18s and F-22s. If less lucky, only one of the three, and if truly screwed, none of the above.
I predict screwed.
I forget where I saw it, but some pundit graphed aircraft costs against time and concluded that in 2054 the entire defense budget would buy one (1) aircraft, which would be shared between Air Force and Navy at 3.5 days per week except in leap years, when the Marines would use it on Feb. 29th.
The F-35 falls right on that curve.
Regards,
Ric
That is a very, very old joke allegedly first told by “Kelly” Johnson, with some extra trimmings.
Best someone locate the original Skunk Works folk and their Grumman Bethpqage pals. Where are such people when you really need them ?
They quit in disgust at the amount of overhead paperwork. Engineers want to design things, not be accountants.
The F-35 is a bad repeat of the F-111, with a STOVL variant thrown in for kicks. This dog ain’t gonna hunt and there isn’t a Grumman F-14 waiting in the wings to replace the F-111B. With that guy in the White House about to win a 2nd term, he’ll find his own Duncan Sandys, declare manned aircraft obsolete and watch the whole TACAIR fleet fall apart. And he won’t care.
“…he’ll find his own Duncan Sandys, declare manned aircraft obsolete and watch the whole TACAIR fleet fall apart. And he won’t care.”
EXACTLY! Remember when the British “we didn’t want those grapes any way” Labor govt maintained that they could downsize the RN fleet as there was no need to keep a fleet “East of Suez” because all those F-111s they were going to buy would fill the bill? Now they have no F-111s AND no fleet! (to speak of–they have ONE! (1) DD on stand-by for home defense when the fleet is deployed as it is now.) UAVs are the new F-111s–the ans to ALL budget problems..
**”…RN fleet in the early 70s..”
I see LOTS of SLEP programs in the future for F-16, F-18, and F-15E fleets.
Via Navy Times LM gets a word in:
Design blamed for F-35C tailhook issues:
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/01/dn-design-blamed-for-f35c-tailhook-issues-011712/