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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?


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  • (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.

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  • (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]