Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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

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?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @03:17PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @03:17PM (#629829)

    Inverse aerial defense plot:

    1. Create cool looking but crippled stealth fighter
    2. Demonstrate maximum commitment to your new fighter investing shitloads of cash in it
    3. Wait for enemies to copy your crap
    4. ...
    5. Profit Win
    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Funny=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Funny' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by AndyTheAbsurd on Monday January 29 2018, @04:01PM

    by AndyTheAbsurd (3958) on Monday January 29 2018, @04:01PM (#629843) Journal

    Step 4, in this case, is to keep the fleets of F-15s, F-16s, A-10s, and various late-20th-century bombers whose designations I don't remember functional.

    --
    Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday January 29 2018, @04:46PM (3 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday January 29 2018, @04:46PM (#629868)

    It won't work.

    As I understand it, this stealth fighter isn't "crippled" at all, at least not in its basic design, and when it's working, it works well. (I could be wrong, so correct me if I am.) The problem is in production and reliability.

    So in theory, someone else could copy the thing, but do their own design (basically copying the basics of the design but doing the detailed engineering on their own from scratch) for better reliability and do a much better job with production (i.e., make enough parts, and make them cheaply instead of absurdly expensively and make them quickly), and get all the benefits we thought we had, without all the problems we do have, including massive cost overruns.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 29 2018, @06:40PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 29 2018, @06:40PM (#629932) Journal
      Spending hundreds of billions USD to enable Chinese military R&D is a brilliant strategic maneuver.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @08:27PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @08:27PM (#630008)

      China couldn't make jet engines for fighter planes.

      China got the right to build Russian planes. They built just a few, then ended the contract and started building their own. Russia was pissed.

      Since the engines had been made in Russia, China didn't have the factory design for that. The copies were unreliable. Oh well... they worked and performed well. When life is cheap, engine failures aren't such a big deal. Somebody dies, and you build a new plane.

      We're wimpy about that. We get one little problem, and we ground our planes.

      BTW, the reliability problem is getting fixed. Fucking traitors at GE are building commercial passenger engines in China. Those are extremely reliable. That understanding will be applied to military engines.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @01:45AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @01:45AM (#630136)

        We're wimpy about that

        Clearly, you don't understand the time and expense involved in turning a college graduate into a finely-honed warrior.

        Now, if you want to point to something the other side did that was smart, that was designing Soviet aircraft so that they could operate from unimproved airfields (dirt strips).

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]