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F-35s Continue to Have Problems, Acquisition Costs Increase

posted by Fnord666 on Monday January 29 2018, @01:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the flying-money-pit dept.

takyon writes:

Testing Director says the expensive F-35s are not combat-ready, unreliable, and components need redesign

Overall fleet-wide monthly availability rates remain around 50 percent, a condition that has existed with no significant improvement since October 2014, despite the increasing number of new aircraft. One notable trend is an increase in the percentage of the fleet that cannot fly while awaiting replacement parts – indicated by the Not Mission Capable due to Supply rate.

[...] Total acquisition costs for Lockheed Martin Corp.'s next-generation fighter may rise about 7 percent to $406.5 billion, according to figures in a document known as a Selected Acquisition Report. That's a reversal after several years of estimates that had declined to $379 billion recently from a previous high of $398.5 billion in early 2014.

$122 billion has been spent on the F35 program up until the end of 2017. $10-15 billion will be spent each year through 2022. This is detailed in a 100 page F-35 spending summary report.

FY17 DOD PROGRAMS: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

Related: The F-35 Fighter Plane Is Even More of a Mess Than You Thought
The F-35: A Gold-Plated Turkey
Flawed and Potentially Deadly F-35 Fighters Won't be Ready Before 2019
Lockheed Martin Negotiating $37 Billion F-35 Deal
Does China's J-20 Rival Other Stealth Fighters?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @03:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @03:49AM (#630167)

    We often fail at secrecy. Consider what the Soviets did with tanks. Crews trained with older tanks. The newer ones were secret. When it came time for combat, the crews were given the new tanks and a day to familiarize themselves with the differences.

    The F-22 wasn't sold outside the USA. That needs to be the standard for our best equipment.

    It is foolish to risk losing our best equipment over enemy territory. In the conflict in the remains of Yugoslavia, we lost an F-117. It was promptly sold to China. The same happened with a stealth helicopter in the Osama raid.

    Stealth is not a boolean. Everybody can see through stealth if they have a huge high-power antenna running at a relatively low frequency, but that kind of equipment doesn't fit in a small-diameter missile seeker. Getting a brief detection is not the same as continuous tracking.

    Kuwait was done with the high-end technology of the day. The F-16 and F-15 used in that war can be considered equal to the F-35 and F-22 in a war that happens within the next decade or two. We didn't fight Kuwait with the P-51. We need to prepare for wars of the future. If we stick with the F-16 and F-15, it'd be like bringing a P-51 to the fight in Iraq.

    You say "The F-22 was designed for a dogfighting war that's not about to happen." Why? Is such a war unthinkable, maybe like WWII was unthinkable in the 1930s? (it being so terrible that we can't consider the possibility) Failure to prepare for wars of the future means you lose. Note that you can sometimes win or lose without fighting; the behavior of nations is affected by perceived ability to fight a war.