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Air Force Grounds $400 Billion F-35s Because of 'Peeling and Crumbling' Insulation (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the Washington Post:
Less than two months after declaring the controversial F-35 Joint Strike Fighter ready for combat, the Air Force on Friday announced that it was temporarily grounding 15 of the jets after it discovered that insulation was "peeling and crumbling" inside the fuel tanks. The setback is the latest for the $400 billion system, the most expensive in the history of the Pentagon. The problem comes as the program, which for years faced billions of dollars in cost overruns and significant schedule delays, had begun to make strides.
The insulation problem affects a total of 57 aircraft, the Air Force said, 42 of which are still in production... In a statement, Lockheed Martin said that "the issue is confined to one supplier source and one batch of parts." It emphasized that "this is not a technical or design issue; it is a supply chain manufacturing quality issue..." It is unclear how long the aircraft would be grounded, how long the problem would take to fix or what the larger affect on the program would be.
âoeWhile nearing completion, the F-35 is still in development, and challenges are to be expected," said an Air Force spokeswoman, adding "The F-35 program has a proven track record of solving issues as they arise, and we're confident we'll continue to do so."
The insulation problem affects a total of 57 aircraft, the Air Force said, 42 of which are still in production... In a statement, Lockheed Martin said that "the issue is confined to one supplier source and one batch of parts." It emphasized that "this is not a technical or design issue; it is a supply chain manufacturing quality issue..." It is unclear how long the aircraft would be grounded, how long the problem would take to fix or what the larger affect on the program would be.
âoeWhile nearing completion, the F-35 is still in development, and challenges are to be expected," said an Air Force spokeswoman, adding "The F-35 program has a proven track record of solving issues as they arise, and we're confident we'll continue to do so."
This is a piece from CBS
Lt. Col. David Berke says there's no comparison between the F-35 and today's jet fighters.
David Berke: I'm telling you, having flown those other airplanes it's not even close at how good this airplane is and what this airplane will do for us.
David Martin: We have planes that are as fast as this.
David Berke: You bet.
David Martin: And can maneuver just as sharply as this one.
David Berke: Sure.
The Russians must be laughing!
The F-35's radars, cameras and antennas would scan for 360 degrees around the plane searching for threats and projecting, for example, the altitude and speed of an enemy aircraft, onto the visor of a helmet custom-fitted to each pilot's head.
They have had this technology in their SU-30s for at leat 4 years!
I worked on A-10s back in the early 80s. What a gorgeous, well-designed bird. Almost no real flaws. The old aviation companies were actually better. Republic, Fairchild, McDonnell Douglas, you name it. There is a reason why the F-16s and F-15s are still the backbone of the Air Force. Nothing else comes close. Likewise, nothing touches the A-10 for its intended role, and the Air Force cannot wait to get rid of it. Yes, the air frames are old, but the avionics packages are updated constantly, as are the engine parts and other critical pieces like stabilizers, etc., are fabricated in shops on various bases. The A-10 is the king at ground support.
Methinks the military is trying so hard to design and develop a do-it-all bird they are not seeing the forest for the trees. The US military has the unfortunate habit of using birds designed for one thing try and fulfill other or all roles. They want this bird to DO IT ALL. This rarely, if ever, works. Hence the F-16 and F-15 are still kings of the sky.
Case in point is the Republic F-105, likely the best light bomber the Air Force ever had. It was developed in the 1950s to quickly run nukes into and out of Europe. Had an internal bomb bay. It was the largest and fastest jet of its type when it went live in the inventory. Vietnam came around and they used it for bombing runs and dogfighting (something it was not designed to do). The F-105 carried more than a WWII B-17. They ended up using them as Wild Weasels, a role for which they excelled. Still my favorite AF bird ever.
See subject: While working @ Lockheed Martin coding. Each day I had to pass thru a hangar (accompanied by a Colonel, who by now must be retired) where they were working on all types of planes (some in 'clean room' type settings) - he noticed I'd look over @ the far end of the hangar each time we passed. He inquired why. I told him I was looking @ a sign there that said:
"Do your best work: Our young men & women's lives ride on it".
This affected me personally since my brother is an officer in the military (about to retire though). I don't want him to die, let alone due to shoddy workmanship!
He then said "Look kid, get used to one thing - the ONLY reason we got this contract was because we're the lowest bidder & build crap - that's how the REAL WORLD really works - so do NOT believe that sign!"
To which I was astounded (especially considering how much money they had available considering it's nigh limitless from taxpayers - you'd think they'd have Quality Control assuring that wouldn't happen... they don't).
So he took me into a troop carrier type plane & showed me the stud metal frames that were supposed to have iirc, 16 rivets each & instead, only used like 8. This was how they were able to do it, pinching pennies cutting corners.
* I was NEVER the same after that & it was in 1996 - very VERY early in my career professionally in computers.
I took off after that job was done & instead decided to work for things other than the military industrial complex (i.e. - I jumped to Bell South to work on the 1996 Atlanta Olympics project to allow their workers to do what is common place now via remote desktop (except we used Windows NT & Citrix (Pentium I 133mhz laptops & 32mb of RAM each, powerful machine then) via IBM Thinkpads into an Ascend Gateway via 56k dialup modems (they said it couldn't be done but myself & some DEC engineers made it work so they could work from home during the traffic jams to go into downtown Atlanta to work) - this was a better more noble effort than building war machines imo, especially ones built VERY subpar)...
APK
P.S.=> Money truly is the root of evil in this world - so much so, they don't give a flying "f" (pun intended) if our soldiers ride on junk... apk
Insulation on the inside of the fuel tanks? Who puts insulation on the inside of a fuel tank?
Reading between the lines, it is probably an anti-corrosion coating, not some foam or fiberglass.
There's really only one product on the market for this, from ATFI, and the company relies upon knowingly upon falsified data-analysis to make the sale. ATFI bragged about their contract as a subcontractor to the F-35 in a press release a year or two ago . . .
Looking today, I see that ATFI has disabled their RSS scroller, and has disabled their previously-functioning link NEWS menu-link at the top of their website.
Huh. No better way to show that they are the guilty party, eh?
All the base level Fab shops are shutdown, manpower cuts. Fab work is done at depot or outsourced to contractor facilities. Sucks when you are in-country.
The A-10 is a simple, single purpose bird. Really good at one job, destroying ground vehicles. The Army tries to tell us that the choppers are just as good until you tell them they aren't getting any A-10 air support. The USAF has never been fond of the close air support mission, not very glamorous.
The bean counters always think a multi-purpose bird makes fiscal sense, that is until you actually try to build one. It works better to build a single purpose aircraft, the F-15 comes to mind then modify the basic airframe for other missions. AKA the F-15E.
Worked at the 682 ASOC supporting ROMAD/TACP and ALOs.
I hear this often as a complaint against cost plus contracts but I believe that people do not understand why such contracts are necessary.
The US government, or any government really, needs stuff that simply cannot be obtained on the open market. This is especially true if you want to keep things secret, companies that go bankrupt tend to not keep things secret for many reasons. If the government makes a contract at a set price then no company in their right mind would sign off, it would simply be too much risk.
A lot of companies will sign a contract for a product knowing it will be a loss because they are gambling that the product can be sold at a profit to subsequent customers. This is often how new passenger aircraft will get built. The first person to buy such an aircraft will get a deep discount knowing that they are experimenting. They hope the costs of working out the bugs will be offset by their discount. Later customers for the aircraft will pay a higher price, and do so willingly, because they are getting an aircraft that is proven to be of value.
This also works for passenger aircraft because there is a larger number of airframes to spread development cost over. There were about 1500 F-15 fighters built but over 9000 Boeing 737 passenger and freight airframes built.
When building a military aircraft you have only one customer, and no means to make a profit if that customer backs out. If the government wants someone to build anything for them, and only for them, then they will have to make a promise of a profit for that company.
I know someone is just waiting to point out that the F-35 has a dozen "customers" but that is a moot point here. Of the approximately 2000 F-35 airframes ordered the US government will buy 1800 of them, this is effectively no different than if the US was the only customer.
I'm sure Lockheed just loves these "setbacks" because it makes them a profit. Forget the fact that setbacks make it that much more difficult to get future contracts. Forget the fact that setbacks distract from other potentially money making efforts. Forget the fact that even a big "evil" corporation that builds "killing machines" has people that work for them and people don't like to see other people die because the product they produced failed to protect their lives.
I really need to stop replying to anonymous cowards but I could not let this go by for some reason.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
A modern Tomahawk cruise missile has an inventory cost of around $750,000. Once you use it, you have to replace it at full cost.
An F-35A's flight cost is around $40,000 per flight hour (google exactly what a flight hour is) and is expected to fall to around $30,000/fh in due course.
A 5 hour mission designed to hit 5 targets means 5 Tomahawk missiles expended, at a cost of $3.75million for the mission.
The same mission for the F-35A would cost, currently, $200,000 in flight hours, and $135,000 for 5 Mk.82 bombs with JDAM kits - a total mission cost of $335,000.
The mission cost difference is a saving of about $3.4Million, give or take.
So, with a current purchase cost of $98Million for a LRIP (low rate initial production) F-35A, it would only need to fly 30 or so missions to be worth while, over the cost of continually buying expendable cruise missiles to carry out the same missions.
How does that work out in real life?
During the second Gulf War air campaign, there were 20,753 combat sorties by coalition aircraft, during which they used 18,467 smart bombs and 9,251 dumb bombs.
That war, if fought by using cruise missiles solely, would set you back $20.8Billion just to replace your expended ordnance.
Take the aircraft costs out of the equation for a moment - replacing all those expended munitions with JDAMs would cost $748Million, leaving a balance of more than $20Billion to cover the operating costs of the aircraft...
You could buy a fleet of 100 F-35s and operate them for just under half their entire projected life on the balance alone...