F-35 news roundup

[Ken Cartwright]

For everyone's viewing pleasure, and what might seem like a bit of nostalgia given the recent successes, here is a highly critical article about the F-35 program:

 

http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2018/f-35-still-no-finish-line-in-sight.html

 

The F-35 has now entered an unprecedented seventeenth year of continuing redesign, test deficiencies, fixes, schedule slippages, and cost overruns. And it’s still not at the finish line. Numerous missteps along the way—from the fact that the two competing contractors, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, submitted “flyoff” planes that were crude and undeveloped “technology demonstrators” rather than following the better practice of submitting fully functional prototypes, to concurrent acquisition malpractice that has prevented design flaws from being discovered until after production models were built—have led to where we are now.

 

The author, Dan Grazier, seems to have no shortage of negative F-35 articles

[Jonathan_Lotton]

Seems to me the YF-16 and YF-17 were very much basically technology demonstrators. 

Then again that was before I was even born so I may be wrong/ 

[TaiidanTomcat]

5 hours ago, Jonathan_Lotton said:

Seems to me the YF-16 and YF-17 were very much basically technology demonstrators. 

Then again that was before I was even born so I may be wrong/ 

 

 

same with YF-22/23 I would think. 

 

I don't know where the classification of tech demo and functional prototype and production standard are exactly. Even block I super hornets were never going to be the standard. 

[habu2]

The Lockheed and Boeing "flyoff" planes were technically X-planes (X-32 and X-35) and were meant as technology demonstrators and proof of concept vehicles.  They were never intended to be, nor were they asked to be, fully functional prototypes.

 

"Fully functional + prototypes" is an oxymoron.  Not acknowledging that makes the author - well, just a moron.

[82Whitey51]

Just read a great article in AW&ST...

 

Only 51% of F-35s can fly on any given day.

Aircraft unavailability rate 22% of the time (Jan-Aug 2017) because awaiting parts.

Depot Maintenance facilities, 6 years behind schedule (no one to fix parts turned in).

ALIS (1995 computer architecture??), needs humans to step in and correct what ALIS effs up.

Article opens with a pilot unable to fly because the O2 mask clip on his helmet breaks but they aren't allowed to rob one from another helmet because the logistics system tells them they can't. He literally has to go all the way up the chain to the Joint Program Office to get approval to swap out the part. This stuff happens when people who design software have never wore the green zipper suit or opened a tool box. They aren't putting themselves in the field of ops.

 

Logistics is a becoming a four letter word out there.

[Chris L]

22 minutes ago, 82Whitey51 said:

Just read a great article in AW&ST...

 

Only 51% of F-35s can fly on any given day.

Aircraft unavailability rate 22% of the time (Jan-Aug 2017) because awaiting parts.

Depot Maintenance facilities, 6 years behind schedule (no one to fix parts turned in).

ALIS (1995 computer architecture??), needs humans to step in and correct what ALIS effs up.

Article opens with a pilot unable to fly because the O2 mask clip on his helmet breaks but they aren't allowed to rob one from another helmet because the logistics system tells them they can't. He literally has to go all the way up the chain to the Joint Program Office to get approval to swap out the part. This stuff happens when people who design software have never wore the green zipper suit or opened a tool box. They aren't putting themselves in the field of ops.

 

Logistics is a becoming a four letter word out there.

 

 As far as I understood it from the people that were in the F-16 program . The airplane was such a success from early on, was because there were a lot of crew chiefs involved in the process of keeping a bird flying .

Cheers, Christian 

 

[TaiidanTomcat]

27 minutes ago, 82Whitey51 said:

Just read a great article in AW&ST...

 

Only 51% of F-35s can fly on any given day.

Aircraft unavailability rate 22% of the time (Jan-Aug 2017) because awaiting parts.

Depot Maintenance facilities, 6 years behind schedule (no one to fix parts turned in).

ALIS (1995 computer architecture??), needs humans to step in and correct what ALIS effs up.

Article opens with a pilot unable to fly because the O2 mask clip on his helmet breaks but they aren't allowed to rob one from another helmet because the logistics system tells them they can't. He literally has to go all the way up the chain to the Joint Program Office to get approval to swap out the part. This stuff happens when people who design software have never wore the green zipper suit or opened a tool box. They aren't putting themselves in the field of ops.

 

Logistics is a becoming a four letter word out there.

 

 

Quote

Flush with cash, the Navy bores in on aviation readiness amid a crisis [Lots of detail missed - read at URL]
08 Apr 2018 David B. Larter

"...Today only one in three of the Navy’s F/A-18 Hornets are fully mission capable and ready to fly in combat. Naval aviation is either at or close to its readiness nadir....

...“I think for all of us it’s more up jets,” Moran [Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. Bill Moran] said in a later interview. “We’ve got to have more up jets....

...In brief but stunning testimony, Shoemaker [Then-air boss Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker] offered a clear view of the readiness ditch that naval aviation had been driven into by incessant demand, budget cuts and backlogs at the aircraft repair depots. “We are meeting the combatant commanders’ requirements for ready, lethal carriers and air wings forward, but at a tremendous cost to the readiness of our forces at home,” Shoemaker told the committee.

“For example, to get Carl Vinson, Nimitz and Theodore Roosevelt ready to deploy in January, June and October of this year, and equip their embarked air wings with the required number of mission capable jets, 94 strike fighters had to be transferred to and from the maintenance depots or between F-18 squadrons on both coasts.”

Shoemaker went on to say that, to get the fighters out the door, he had to poach 300 sailors from other squadrons to fill out critical billets in the air wings and cannibalize hundreds of parts from other jets, which further reduced the number of jets the home squadrons had to fly and train on. It’s a shell game, Shoemaker said, and it was degrading the naval aviation’s overall readiness.

The numbers told much of the story. Of the Navy’s 542 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, only 170 were deemed mission capable, or able to be deployed. That number has remained largely static since Shoemaker’s testimony, said Lt. Lauren Chatmas, a Navy spokeswoman....

...The Navy has also made the decision to strike nearly 140 of the legacy one-seater Hornets that have been creating backlogs in the maintenance depots. The aircraft will be harvested for parts and the best of the aircraft will be transferred to the Marine Corps, which has been suffering from readiness problems in its legacy aircraft as it transitions to the F-35B.

The cut aircraft will be offset by an influx of new F/A-18s the Navy has purchased over the last few years, including 24 new Super Hornets funded in the 2018 Ominibus spending bill: double what the service requested. The move is combined with the acceleration of the transition of the last two squadrons flying legacy Hornets to the Super Hornets. Those two squadrons will transition by the end of 2019...."

 

 

 

[TaiidanTomcat]

Its not all doom and gloom:

 

Out of the SHADOWS 
May 2018 Frank Crébas

"...New jet, new missions
While technicians have gained valuable experience of turning spanners on the F-35, the four Dutch Lightning II pilots have striven to understand the aircraft from a tactical perspective. ‘We worked on getting a better understanding of how we can execute the D-SEAD [destructive suppression of enemy air defenses] mission — it’s a new mission set the F-35 brings to the RNLAF,’ adds De Smit. ‘Additionally, we have been looking at how we can execute mission concepts that are very familiar to us like close air support [CAS]. The new variable message format [VMF] is the new datalink protocol that we use to talk to ground forces. VMF is fully digital and enables us to send, in addition to voice commands, imagery back and forth to the JTACs [joint terminal attack controllers]. In addition, the synthetic aperture radar can make images from a long distance through the weather. This is a whole new aspect in the CAS mission and will be a game-changer in the dialogue between JTAC and pilot because it offers a new way of finding and verifying targets.’

Within the detachment, the 323rd Test and Evaluation Squadron (TES) commander Lt Col Ian ‘Gladys’ Knight is leading the way when it comes to Dutch experience with the F-35. ‘In CAS’, he says, ‘VMF gives us options for supporting ground forces in a way we never had in the F-16. Instead of using voice radios and getting eyes on the target using a targeting pod close-in, we’re able to use the SAR to make images of the target area and generate very accurate target co-ordinates. We pass these to the ground forces and confirm a target location using VMF from beyond visual range, assuring that enemy forces are not alerted to our air presence. All the while we can be flying in pretty bad weather with long on-station times. This would have been impossible to do with our F-16s.’..."
&
"...While a lot of missions are conducted with the JOTT partners, the Dutch F-35s periodically fly with the 148th Fighter Squadron ‘Kickin’ a$$’, the RNLAF’s F-16 training unit in Tucson, Arizona, to evaluate and validate new tactics. ‘The first time we got to test all these advanced capabilities to their fullest potential was about a year ago, with and against our F-16s in Tucson,’ says Knight. 

‘The initial scenario was that our two F-35s would escort a four-ship of F-16s across a notional border and protect them against another eight-ship of F-16s simulating a modern adversary. A relatively inexperienced flight leader was in charge of the F-16s on our side and Lt Col Joost ‘Niki’ Luijsterburg, the Tucson detachment commander, was responsible for the adversaries. Up to this point we had only practised these scenarios in the simulators and while we had a decent game-plan, we were all anxious to see how the F-35 would perform in real life. We figured that the F-35’s stealth would keep us out of harm’s way for most of the fight, but that we also need to protect the friendly F-16s, maximize the lethality of their missiles and get them to the target. 

To make this happen, we planned to initially use electronic attack against the adversary F-16s, see if we could avoid having them detect friendly fighters and datalink the location of the hostile aircraft to our F-16s. This way we could use the F-16s on our side to shoot down the initial wave of enemy fighters and keep our own missiles available once the ‘Blue Air’ F-16s had to focus on their target attack. The plan worked flawlessly.

‘In the debrief ‘Niki’ told us it was one of the most memorable sorties he had ever flown. Having previously worked in the F-35 program office he was elated to find out how effective the F-35 was, but at the same time he was frustrated by not getting a single shot off the rail against us, while getting killed multiple times. After that sortie it really hit us that the F-35 was going to make a big difference in how we operate fighters and other assets in the Royal Netherlands Air Force.’...
&
"...Dogfighting in the F-35...
...‘The F-35 is a very different aircraft, and it took pilots a while to adjust and figure out how to max-perform it. What didn’t help is that until about 18 months ago we were restricted in envelope, which meant we couldn’t pull as much g as we wanted to, nor fly with high-alpha. It was an eye-opener for all of us when those restrictions were lifted and we finally got to see the full potential. Actually, it was an eye-opener for a lot of adversary pilots as well.’

The F-35 is far larger than the F-16, and it carries twice as much fuel and three times the payload. ‘Consequently, the F-35 loses energy a bit faster than the F-16 at higher speeds,’ continues Knight. ‘But the slow-speed handling is amazing. The F-35 pilot has the option to continuously point the nose at the adversary, even at ridiculously slow speeds, which is a great capability to have in combination with high off-boresight missiles and a helmet-mounted sight. You need to be careful maneuvering the aircraft at higher speeds, because if you keep pulling back on the stick the aircraft will give you as much alpha as it can, but it will bleed a lot of energy in the process. It’s up to the pilot to recognize when to try to maintain airspeed and energy and when to give that away to prosecute with missiles or guns. I typically tell new pilots that the F-35 sits somewhere in between the F-16 and F/A-18 when it comes to within visual range maneuvering.’

Knight divulged a little more information about flying basic fighter maneuvers (BFM) in an F-35. ‘When our envelope was cleared to practise BFM we got the opportunity to fight some fourth-generation fighters. Remember, back then the rumors were that the F-35 was a pig. The first time the opponents showed up [in the training area] they had wing tanks along with a bunch of missiles. I guess they figured that being in a dirty configuration wouldn’t really matter and that they would still easily outmaneuver us. By the end of the week, though, they had dropped their wing tanks, transitioned to a single centerline fuel tank and were still doing everything they could not to get gunned by us. A week later they stripped the jets clean of all external stores, which made the BFM fights interesting, to say the least…

‘High-g maneuvering is fun, but having high fuel capacity and the ability to carry lots of stores is great too. During the weeks when we were flying BFM we also needed to drop a GBU-12 [laser-guided bomb] on the China Lake weapons range. Back in our F-16 days we’d have had to choose, since there is no way you can BFM with a bomb on your wing, let alone having the fuel to fly both missions in a single sortie. With the F-35, however, this isn’t much of an issue. On one of the sorties, my colleague, Maj Pascal ‘Smiley’ Smaal, decided he would fly BFM and still have enough fuel to go to the range afterwards and drop his weapon. During the debrief, the adversary pilot told us he was confused as to why we went to the range after the fight. When ‘Smiley’ told him that he was carrying an inert GBU-12 the entire time and that he then dropped it afterwards during a test event, the silence on the other end of the line was golden.’..."
 

[82Whitey51]

4 minutes ago, TaiidanTomcat said:

 

 

 

 

 

Neither of these is good news.  The guys in the greens get hosed over because someone back here thought something was a good idea.

Edited April 10, 2018 by 82Whitey51

[82Whitey51]

2 minutes ago, TaiidanTomcat said:

Its not all doom and gloom:

 

Out of the SHADOWS 
May 2018 Frank Crébas

"...New jet, new missions
While technicians have gained valuable experience of turning spanners on the F-35, the four Dutch Lightning II pilots have striven to understand the aircraft from a tactical perspective. ‘We worked on getting a better understanding of how we can execute the D-SEAD [destructive suppression of enemy air defenses] mission — it’s a new mission set the F-35 brings to the RNLAF,’ adds De Smit. ‘Additionally, we have been looking at how we can execute mission concepts that are very familiar to us like close air support [CAS]. The new variable message format [VMF] is the new datalink protocol that we use to talk to ground forces. VMF is fully digital and enables us to send, in addition to voice commands, imagery back and forth to the JTACs [joint terminal attack controllers]. In addition, the synthetic aperture radar can make images from a long distance through the weather. This is a whole new aspect in the CAS mission and will be a game-changer in the dialogue between JTAC and pilot because it offers a new way of finding and verifying targets.’

Within the detachment, the 323rd Test and Evaluation Squadron (TES) commander Lt Col Ian ‘Gladys’ Knight is leading the way when it comes to Dutch experience with the F-35. ‘In CAS’, he says, ‘VMF gives us options for supporting ground forces in a way we never had in the F-16. Instead of using voice radios and getting eyes on the target using a targeting pod close-in, we’re able to use the SAR to make images of the target area and generate very accurate target co-ordinates. We pass these to the ground forces and confirm a target location using VMF from beyond visual range, assuring that enemy forces are not alerted to our air presence. All the while we can be flying in pretty bad weather with long on-station times. This would have been impossible to do with our F-16s.’..."
&
"...While a lot of missions are conducted with the JOTT partners, the Dutch F-35s periodically fly with the 148th Fighter Squadron ‘Kickin’ a$$’, the RNLAF’s F-16 training unit in Tucson, Arizona, to evaluate and validate new tactics. ‘The first time we got to test all these advanced capabilities to their fullest potential was about a year ago, with and against our F-16s in Tucson,’ says Knight. 

‘The initial scenario was that our two F-35s would escort a four-ship of F-16s across a notional border and protect them against another eight-ship of F-16s simulating a modern adversary. A relatively inexperienced flight leader was in charge of the F-16s on our side and Lt Col Joost ‘Niki’ Luijsterburg, the Tucson detachment commander, was responsible for the adversaries. Up to this point we had only practised these scenarios in the simulators and while we had a decent game-plan, we were all anxious to see how the F-35 would perform in real life. We figured that the F-35’s stealth would keep us out of harm’s way for most of the fight, but that we also need to protect the friendly F-16s, maximize the lethality of their missiles and get them to the target. 

To make this happen, we planned to initially use electronic attack against the adversary F-16s, see if we could avoid having them detect friendly fighters and datalink the location of the hostile aircraft to our F-16s. This way we could use the F-16s on our side to shoot down the initial wave of enemy fighters and keep our own missiles available once the ‘Blue Air’ F-16s had to focus on their target attack. The plan worked flawlessly.

‘In the debrief ‘Niki’ told us it was one of the most memorable sorties he had ever flown. Having previously worked in the F-35 program office he was elated to find out how effective the F-35 was, but at the same time he was frustrated by not getting a single shot off the rail against us, while getting killed multiple times. After that sortie it really hit us that the F-35 was going to make a big difference in how we operate fighters and other assets in the Royal Netherlands Air Force.’...
&
"...Dogfighting in the F-35...
...‘The F-35 is a very different aircraft, and it took pilots a while to adjust and figure out how to max-perform it. What didn’t help is that until about 18 months ago we were restricted in envelope, which meant we couldn’t pull as much g as we wanted to, nor fly with high-alpha. It was an eye-opener for all of us when those restrictions were lifted and we finally got to see the full potential. Actually, it was an eye-opener for a lot of adversary pilots as well.’

The F-35 is far larger than the F-16, and it carries twice as much fuel and three times the payload. ‘Consequently, the F-35 loses energy a bit faster than the F-16 at higher speeds,’ continues Knight. ‘But the slow-speed handling is amazing. The F-35 pilot has the option to continuously point the nose at the adversary, even at ridiculously slow speeds, which is a great capability to have in combination with high off-boresight missiles and a helmet-mounted sight. You need to be careful maneuvering the aircraft at higher speeds, because if you keep pulling back on the stick the aircraft will give you as much alpha as it can, but it will bleed a lot of energy in the process. It’s up to the pilot to recognize when to try to maintain airspeed and energy and when to give that away to prosecute with missiles or guns. I typically tell new pilots that the F-35 sits somewhere in between the F-16 and F/A-18 when it comes to within visual range maneuvering.’

Knight divulged a little more information about flying basic fighter maneuvers (BFM) in an F-35. ‘When our envelope was cleared to practise BFM we got the opportunity to fight some fourth-generation fighters. Remember, back then the rumors were that the F-35 was a pig. The first time the opponents showed up [in the training area] they had wing tanks along with a bunch of missiles. I guess they figured that being in a dirty configuration wouldn’t really matter and that they would still easily outmaneuver us. By the end of the week, though, they had dropped their wing tanks, transitioned to a single centerline fuel tank and were still doing everything they could not to get gunned by us. A week later they stripped the jets clean of all external stores, which made the BFM fights interesting, to say the least…

‘High-g maneuvering is fun, but having high fuel capacity and the ability to carry lots of stores is great too. During the weeks when we were flying BFM we also needed to drop a GBU-12 [laser-guided bomb] on the China Lake weapons range. Back in our F-16 days we’d have had to choose, since there is no way you can BFM with a bomb on your wing, let alone having the fuel to fly both missions in a single sortie. With the F-35, however, this isn’t much of an issue. On one of the sorties, my colleague, Maj Pascal ‘Smiley’ Smaal, decided he would fly BFM and still have enough fuel to go to the range afterwards and drop his weapon. During the debrief, the adversary pilot told us he was confused as to why we went to the range after the fight. When ‘Smiley’ told him that he was carrying an inert GBU-12 the entire time and that he then dropped it afterwards during a test event, the silence on the other end of the line was golden.’..."
 

Yup, it works when it works.

Now go  interview my maintainer buddies out in Yuma...

[TaiidanTomcat]

Just now, 82Whitey51 said:

Yup, it works when it works.

Now go  interview my maintainer buddies out in Yuma...

 

just glad to hear it works. 

[82Whitey51]

5 minutes ago, TaiidanTomcat said:

 

just glad to hear it works. 

 

 

"when it works"...

 

Again, from your chair and job that sounds great. But to a squadron sucking up sand in some far off land, these sustainability issues are gonna be killers, and even more so to a grunt on the ground relying on it for support. Gotta put yourself in the green suit mindset. I know you've been there, too.

Edited April 10, 2018 by 82Whitey51

[TaiidanTomcat]

28 minutes ago, 82Whitey51 said:

 

 

"when it works"...

 

Again, from your chair and job that sounds great. But to a squadron sucking up sand in some far off land, these sustainability issues are gonna be killers, and even more so to a grunt on the ground relying on it for support. Gotta put yourself in the green suit mindset. I know you've been there, too.

 

I was simply trying to bow out gracefully, I understand whats at stake. The worlds largest defense program can get a little complicated. We had to pull some good NCOs to the hornet units because they're bleeding out now too. Plus some impromptu movements to Japan thanks to rocket man. 

 

The whole thing is a fire brigade sprinting between whichever building is burning the worst at the moment. And I don't see that getting better anytime soon anywhere and I don't just mean with the F-35. One day someone will explain to me how 20 percent of the military does 80 percent of the work. 

Edited April 10, 2018 by TaiidanTomcat

[11bee]

20 hours ago, 82Whitey51 said:

Just read a great article in AW&ST...

 

Only 51% of F-35s can fly on any given day.

Aircraft unavailability rate 22% of the time (Jan-Aug 2017) because awaiting parts.

Depot Maintenance facilities, 6 years behind schedule (no one to fix parts turned in).

ALIS (1995 computer architecture??), needs humans to step in and correct what ALIS effs up.

Article opens with a pilot unable to fly because the O2 mask clip on his helmet breaks but they aren't allowed to rob one from another helmet because the logistics system tells them they can't. He literally has to go all the way up the chain to the Joint Program Office to get approval to swap out the part. This stuff happens when people who design software have never wore the green zipper suit or opened a tool box. They aren't putting themselves in the field of ops.

 

Logistics is a becoming a four letter word out there.

 

51% of Marine F-35's can fly?  Sounds great compared to their other aircraft. 

 

Whilst on the subject of maintenance issue - Interesting perspective of what life in the trenches is like for a Marine Hornet maintainer. 

 

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/20019/life-on-the-flight-line-confessions-of-a-u-s-marine-f-a-18-hornet-maintainer 

 

Two of his comments are noteworthy:   I know it's easy to Monday morning quarterback the poor decision making of the Marine brass but the fact of the matter is that they failed the Marine Corps and should've procured Super Hornets to provide a bridge of transition to the F-35.

 

How can Marine aviators do their job with a clear focus and sound mind if they have something like worrying about the quality of their aircraft in the back of their mind? Their job has enough risks and hazards without it compounded by the poor state of the platform they are flying. 

 

 

 

[TaiidanTomcat]

14 minutes ago, 11bee said:

 

51% of Marine F-35's can fly?  Sounds great compared to their other aircraft. 

 

Whilst on the subject of maintenance issue - Interesting perspective of what life in the trenches is like for a Marine Hornet maintainer. 

 

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/20019/life-on-the-flight-line-confessions-of-a-u-s-marine-f-a-18-hornet-maintainer 

 

Two of his comments are noteworthy:   I know it's easy to Monday morning quarterback the poor decision making of the Marine brass but the fact of the matter is that they failed the Marine Corps and should've procured Super Hornets to provide a bridge of transition to the F-35.

 

How can Marine aviators do their job with a clear focus and sound mind if they have something like worrying about the quality of their aircraft in the back of their mind? Their job has enough risks and hazards without it compounded by the poor state of the platform they are flying. 

 

 

 

 

 

If the Corps bought super hornets the F-35 would be dead. I understand that we want to live in a world where the military and congress and everyone comes to intelligent and logical conclusions, that the Marines could have Super Hornets, and then get F-35s later too. But thats not how any of this works. You simply can't tell congress "its this or nothing" and then suddenly go "well, or this"  because then thats it. And its not just the USMC that has to play those games. In order to get a program from idea to the field you have to convince congress that it can't be done without. Because even the stuff we need gets cut, so if there is stuff you "dont need" then bye bye. We saw the Corps go through this with the Osprey. Sikorsky was hot on their heels the entire time and every setback the Marines had to resist sikorsky proposing alternatives. Give em an inch, theyll take a mile. 

 

 

Whatever you pull the trigger on you are committed and stuck with for better or worse and that works with both platforms. The Super Hornets days are already numbered in terms of long term effectiveness, and of course could not operate from Amphibs, which makes a big difference. It was made much much worse by sequestration that utterly annihilated the maintenance schedule, The retirement of the S-3 which put even more hours on fighter airframes, and these big/yet small wars we can't seem to get out of. Even the "Marine brass" have only so much control.

 

The only way to get the F-35 was to commit to it, and it only. Convincing congress to buy Super Hornet in the meantime to the tune of billions of dollars would be like trying to convince your fiance to allow you to have a girlfriend on the side since you are going through a dry spell...

 

 

 

 

 

[82Whitey51]

1 hour ago, 11bee said:

 

51% of Marine F-35's can fly?  Sounds great compared to their other aircraft.

 51% of all model types. The Marine Corp squadron operating out of Japan reported a 50% rate for their unit.

[TaiidanTomcat]

16 minutes ago, 82Whitey51 said:

 51% of all model types. The Marine Corp squadron operating out of Japan reported a 50% rate for their unit.

 

 

Much better than the hornet units this is from last year:

 

 only 72 of the Marine Corps' 280 F/A-18 Hornets were flyable as of Dec. 31, officials said. This is just a quarter of the Corps' Hornets, and down from September, when 90 Hornets could fly. 

 

 

The depot system is so messed up the Navy is just trying to buy new. Everyone holds their breath when the Navy wants more super hornets, since its treated as a "hit" against the F-35. its not the case. The depots are a mess. 

Edited April 11, 2018 by TaiidanTomcat

[habu2]

3 hours ago, TaiidanTomcat said:

 

The depot system is so messed up ......

 

Isn’t this basically the justification for ALIS ???

[MarkW]

And oh by the way...the main problems with ALIS are NOT due to a lack of "zipper suits".  Zippers suits would be pilots, not wrench turners...

 

The real issue is they had a great idea, but nobody has implemented anything like this before.  The ALIS development would have been an ACAT 1D all by itself, a MAIS.  When the program ran into issues with the whole flying and blowing up crap part of the program, ALIS development suffered.  I guess they figured a plane that could fight and fly some of the time was better than a fully developed logistics system for a static display.

 

That was a decision made by...wait for it...zipper suits.  Star wearing zipper suits, at that.

[MarkW]

And now this:

 https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2018/04/11/defense-department-halts-f-35-deliveries-amid-repair-bill-disagreement-with-lockheed/

 

[Spook498]

I would also like to point out that I currently have a VMFA unit visiting my location. They have been here 3 weeks, and even though they only brought 10 jets, half of them have been down for the last week for fuel cell issues. Its not fun when you are TAD to a Master Jet Base and cant get parts right away because the Navy doesn't have Legacy jets here anymore.

[TaiidanTomcat]

12 hours ago, MarkW said:

And now this:

 https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2018/04/11/defense-department-halts-f-35-deliveries-amid-repair-bill-disagreement-with-lockheed/

 

 

 

Do we know anyone that wrote a book on the art of making a deal?

[TaiidanTomcat]

13 hours ago, MarkW said:

And oh by the way...the main problems with ALIS are NOT due to a lack of "zipper suits".  Zippers suits would be pilots, not wrench turners...

 

The real issue is they had a great idea, but nobody has implemented anything like this before.  The ALIS development would have been an ACAT 1D all by itself, a MAIS.  When the program ran into issues with the whole flying and blowing up crap part of the program, ALIS development suffered.  I guess they figured a plane that could fight and fly some of the time was better than a fully developed logistics system for a static display.

 

That was a decision made by...wait for it...zipper suits.  Star wearing zipper suits, at that.

 

 

I must really be losing it, in that I forgot to say something like this. 

 

 

 

[82Whitey51]

14 hours ago, MarkW said:

And oh by the way...the main problems with ALIS are NOT due to a lack of "zipper suits".  Zippers suits would be pilots, not wrench turners...

 

 

"...never wore the green zipper suit or opened a tool box "

 

^ All inclusive. I was an enlisted crewman so did both simultaneously.

[MarkW]

 Yeah, so… Not too many enlisted crewmen flying in the singleseat fighter community...

 

 Doesn't change the fact that this program is literally the hardest thing ever done in military acquisition, and there are plenty of areas where mistakes can be and have been made.