Video - Israeli Air Force F-35 'Adir' Maiden Flight [long version]

Hmmmm.....Can't help wondering if the Gun code finally works?

Related: Air Force's F-35 "White Elephant" Has No Code to Shoot Its Gun......in the next four years.

'Vorsprung durch Technik' Israel's 'Custom' F-35 Stealth Fighter.

Israel's 'Custom' F-35 Stealth Fighter: A Lethal, High-Tech Wonder Weapon? (nationalinterest).

Israel is practically a launch customer for the American-designed F-35 stealth fighter. The Jewish state plans on declaring its first squadron of the radar-evading jet combat-ready by the end of 2017.

And Israel’s F-35s will be unique. While most foreign customers of the stealth fighter plan to operate fairly standard F-35s, Tel Aviv is heaping its own special tech onto the airframe.

And that’s not the only way in which Israel’s F-35s will be unique. The country should also possess a regional F-35 monopoly for at least a decade after bringing the stealth fighters into service.

With U.S. approval, the Israeli F-35I will possess a locally-designed command-and-control system that adds to the plane’s existing capabilities. On April 3, Israel Aerospace Industries announced that it had completed testing of the new add-on, which amounts to a software-driven radio interface that Benni Cohen, an IAI manager, described as being similar to a smartphone app.

“It’s open architecture, which sits on the F-35’s central system, much like an application on your iPhone,” Cohen told Defense News. “It paves the way for additional advanced capabilities to be embedded in the F-35I in the future.”

Moreover, Israel’s F-35s will not be wedded to the Autonomic Logistics Information System, a global network of data-sharing that F-35-builder Lockheed Martin is developing in order to coordinate maintenance and upgrades for most of the world’s F-35s.

Instead, the United States is considering authorizing Israel to repair its F-35s and their engines at its own depots.

Israel has ordered 33 F-35Is, Washington has approved Tel Aviv to acquire up to 75 F-35s.

Israeli defense minister Moshe Ya’alon plans to be in Texas in late June in order to formally accept the first F-35I as it rolls out of Lockheed’s Fort Worth factory. Hmmm......Only HUGE Mistake is to sell the F-35 to Islamist Dictatorship Turkey. Read the full story here.

Israel seeks Greater Autonomy for it's F-35 Fighter Force.

Israel seeks Greater Autonomy for F-35 Fighter Force. (IMRA).

Israel Seeks Greater Autonomy for F-35 Fighter Force. Barbara Opall-Rome, Defense News 3:05 p.m. EDT April 4, 2016. http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/2016/04/04/israel-seeks-greater-autonomy-f-35-fighter-force/82619792/

HERZLIYA, Israel — Israel is working with Lockheed Martin and the F-35 Joint Program Office to maximize autonomy of its planned stealth fighter force, including its own command, control, communications and computing (C4) system, indigenous weaponry and the ability to perform heavy maintenance in country rather than at predetermined regional overhaul facilities.

Once the first F-35Is arrive here in December, state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) will begin installing a tailor-made C4 system on top of the central avionics embedded in the joint strike fighter.

“It’s open architecture, which sits on the F-35’s central system, much like an application on your iPhone. So it doesn’t change anything in the aircraft itself, but it gives the Israel Air Force (IAF) the most advanced and adaptable processing capabilities with relative independence of the aircraft manufacturer,” said Benni Cohen, general manager of IAI’s Lahav Division.

In an interview Monday, Cohen said IAI is already producing the C4 system for installation in the first planes due here in December. “It introduces a new level of freedom for the IAF, as it paves the way for additional advanced capabilities to be embedded in the F-35I in the future,” he said.

As for weaponry, the Israel Air Force and state-owned Rafael Advanced Systems Ltd. have been working with Lockheed Martin to adapt the Israeli Spice 1000 electro-optic standoff precision strike system for internal carriage on the F-35.

“We’re still in the developmental process to make sure the weapon fits the airplane and the airplane fits the weapon,” said Mike Howe, Lockheed’s F-35 director of business development for Israel.

Similarly, Lockheed Martin is engaged with Cyclone Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Elbit Systems, on external fuel tanks to augment range beyond the 18,500 pounds of fuel carried internally by the F-35. At a later phase, Israeli defense and industry sources say they hope to develop with Lockheed Martin — and with the consent of JSF partner nations — conformal fuel tanks to significantly extend the range while in stealth mode.

As for maintaining, repairing and overhauling airframes and engines of Israel’s planned F-35 force, Air Force officers expect a formal exemption from the Pentagon’s Joint Program Office (JPO) to perform work in country, rather than at predetermined Lockheed Martin-established logistics centers.

Brig. Gen. Tal Kalman, IAF chief of staff, told an audience in Tel Aviv that Israel’s “unique requirements” demand independence in maintaining the stealth fighters. 

Speaking on Sunday at a conference of Israel Defense and the Fisher Institute for Strategic Air and Space Studies, Kalman said the IAF is going for a “phased and coordinated process” to establish an F-35 logistics center at squadron headquarters at Nevatim Air Base in southern Israel.

“The program was built under a certain concept and the IAF wants to maximize its independence in maintaining these planes,” Kalman said.

In an earlier interview, an IAF program official said the service expected to have full access to Lockheed Martin’s Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), a worldwide sustainment network that gives operators the ability to plan, maintain and support the aircraft through their projected 55-year lifespan.

But in wartime, when Israeli airports and seaports may be compromised due to missile strikes, the IAF wants an indigenous capability to keep its F-35s operational.

“The ingenious, automated ALIS system that Lockheed Martin has built will be very efficient and cost-effective, but the only downfall is that it was built for countries that don’t have missiles falling on them,” an IAF program officer told Defense News.

The issue, however, is not yet fully resolved.

Lockheed executives noted that heavy maintenance must be performed under strict security, with program-mandated oversight measures. “When you tear an airplane down, you expose its magic. So that type of work was intended to be performed in designated places,” a Lockheed executive told Defense News.

In an interview Monday, Jack Crisler, Lockheed Martin vice president for F-35 business development and strategic integration, said the JPO and partner nations “deliberately went through a selection process to identify maintenance repair and overhaul facilities in North America, in Europe and in Asia for the airframe and the engines with the expectation that that’s where you would go for depot-level capabilities.”

But that said, “We recognized that Israel is also going to have sovereign sustainability requirements. They want to be able to do as much maintenance of the aircraft and engines as they can. … So we and the Joint Program Office are working through that now to see how this will be done.”

Meanwhile, Lockheed executives here said IAF logisticians are training at an F-35 logistics center at the US Air Force's Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and that the IAF is about to send its first cadre of fighter pilots to train at the Air Force’s Luke Air Force Base, Arizona.

In his Sunday conference address, Kalman, the IAF chief of staff, said unique IAF requirements and the high operational tempo projected for the stealth fighters could provide opportunities for Israel to influence the F-35 program writ large.

“I’m sure this aircraft will bring excellent capabilities and there are opportunities for the IAF to influence the project,” Kalman said.

“From my knowledge of the Middle East, I’m sure this aircraft will accrue very vast operational experience very quickly here. The lessons and the understandings from our operational activities will be adapted in the developmental process of the project,” he said.

Israel has signed on for 33 of the 75 aircraft approved by Washington; a first batch of 19 in 2010 and another 14 in February. A follow-on order for another 17 planes is expected once Israel and the US conclude a new 10-year aid package, sources here say.

Israel is on track to declare an initial operational capability (IOC) of its F-35 force at the end of 2017, Kalman said.

“We’re building a plan that within a year of those planes touching down here, we’ll build up to IOC. They’ll be the first outside the US to be operational. This is a huge privilege and responsibility. The year building up to this will be very intensive, and we are prepared.”

Hmmmm.....For sure Israel can't give the maintenance of it's fighters to Islamist Turkey. 

Sounds like Israel is planning to 'rebuild' the flying White Elephant' "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability."

'White Elephant' F-35 has now a radar problem, needs sometimes reboot mid flight.

'White Elephant' F-35 has now a radar problem, needs sometimes reboot mid flight. (RT).

Plans to have the Air Force’s version of the F-35 Lightning II operational sometime this year have hit yet another snag: A software glitch bedeviling the fighter’s active radar system, requiring the pilots to restart it – sometimes even mid-flight.

Defense analysis publication IHS Jane’s reported on the issue last week, though it first cropped up in tests in late 2015. The AN/APG-81 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar system, built by Northrop Grumman, is simply unable to stay up and running in flight on board the F-35A fighters, according to Air Force officials.

“What would happen is they'd get a signal that says either a radar degrade or a radar fail – something that would force us to restart the radar,” Major General Jeffrey Harrigian, director of the USAF’s F-35 integration office at the Pentagon, told Jane’s. He described the problem as “radar stability.”

Lockheed Martin, the principal contractor on the F-35 and Northrop’s rival in the field of aerospace technology, has identified the glitch in the i3 software and is working to fix it by the end of March, Harrigian added.

Though the futuristic fighter is suffering from an entire laundry list of defects, the US military has already sunk hundreds of billions of dollars into its development and, as such, is adamantly refusing any suggestion that the program ought to be scrapped.

“As a reminder, the F-35 program is still in its developmental phase. This is the time when issues are expected to be discovered and solutions are implemented to maximize the F-35’s capability for the warfighter,” USAF Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan, the officer overseeing the F-35 program, said last month. 

However, a recent survey of defense spending conducted by the University of Maryland found that 54 percent of Americans favored getting rid of the F-35. Democrats and independents were overwhelmingly against the fighter, while Republicans narrowly supported it.

Israel Quietly Debates Flying the flawed 'White Elephant' F-35.

Israel Quietly Debates Flying the flawed'White Elephant' F-35. (IMRA).

Israel has been quietly debating the feasibility of the Joint Strike Fighter.

Israeli sources said the military and government were discussing the future of the F-35 project. They said members of the Cabinet of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu have been warning that Israel could become increasingly dependent on a flawed fighter-jet rejected by most NATO air forces.

"JSF could be a great aircraft, but it will take years to reach that level," a source close to the debate said.

"Meanwhile, we will have dozens of very expensive aircraft with limited capabilities." The sources said the Defense Ministry, responsible for procurement, shares the concerns over JSF. The ministry ordered 33 F-35As in two batches, with the first aircraft expected to arrive by 2017.

So far, a Cabinet panel stopped a recommendation by the Israel Air Force to acquire up to 23 JSF aircraft from prime contractor Lockheed Martin in 2015. The panel, then headed by Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, cut the order to 14.

Still, the air force has lobbied for a third order of JSF -- this time for 17 aircraft. The sources said the air force wanted a fleet of two squadrons or 50 F-35s by 2020.

The Cabinet panel has been briefed by aerospace specialists on the flaws of JSF, including inadequate range, weapons payload and stealth capability.

The panel was also warned that the United States would not share the source code of JSF, thereby preventing the air force from modifying the fifth-generation platform. Under the project, Israel must send JSF engines to either Turkey or the United States for repairs.

The sources said the Netanyahu government has urged Washington to sell Israel the advanced F-15 fighter-jet approved for Saudi Arabia. But the administration of President Barack Obama has presented JSF as the only platform available for use with U.S. military aid to Israel of more than $3 billion a year.

"The overall feeling is that Israel can't continue on this path and needs proven combat platforms," another source said. "The price that Israel would pay for procuring and operating and training for 50 inadequate aircraft would be strategic."

So far, the Israel Air Force has sought to reassure the Cabinet that JSF was far more reliable than portrayed by investigations by the U.S. Defense Department and JSF office. The sources cited U.S. restrictions on initial purchases of such aircraft as the F-15 and F-16 in the 1980s and 1990s, later lifted by Washington.

"There is a subtext to the air force argument that we've gone too far and can't start all over again," the second source said. "That would mean a delay of a decade." Hmmm......The only good thing is that Turkey would be flying these 'Death traps'.

'Flying White Elephant' - Still huge problems with F-35 program - details and Joint Program Office statement.

'Flying White Elephant' - Still huge problems with F-35 program - details and Joint Program Office statement.  (IMRA). By Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan.
(defense-aerospace).

IMRA EDITOR’S NOTE: Interestingly, the Joint Program Office has this year released its response before the OTE report is made public, instead of ignoring it for weeks as in previous years.
It also is worth noting that this year’s report includes 48 pages on the F-35, over one-third more than the previous year’s 34 pages and more than double of the 2013 report’s 20 pages, the clear implication being that each year there are more issues to cover than previously.

While Lt Gen Bogdan claims “There were no surprises in the report,” this is not factually true, as it contains many new issues that are not yet in the public domain. These include:

-- continuing issues with the ejection seat: -- problems with heat management of the weapons bays; -- vibrations, stresses and other bomb bay problems are out of the flight parameters of the AIM-120 missile and Small Diameter Bombs; 

-- Mechanical rubbing between the gun motor drive and wall of the gun bay require structural modifications to the bay; 

-- Fleet aircraft are limited to 3 Gs when fully fueled -- Under certain flight conditions, air enters the siphon fuel transfer line and causes the pressure in the siphon fuel tank to exceed allowable limits in all variants; 

-- The program completed the final weight assessment of the air vehicles for contract specification compliance; all versions are within a few hundred pounds of contractual not-to-exceed limits; 

-- Refueling from tanker wing pods was prohibited due to response anomalies from the hose and reel assemblies and the F-35B aircraft with the air refueling receptacle deployed; 

-- For the F-35A, the airspeed at which the weapons bay doors can be open in flight (550 knots or 1.2 Mach) is less than the maximum aircraft speed allowable (700 knots or 1.6 Mach). 

-- For the F-35A, the airspeed at which countermeasures can be used is also less than the maximum speed allowable, again restricting tactical options in scenarios where F-35A pilots are conducting defensive maneuvers; 

-- Although over three years have already been lost to inaction, the Program Office still does not plan to put Block 3F upgrades to the USRL on contract until late in 2016. 

-- New cracks were discovered in various components of all versions; 

-- Verification, Validation, and Accreditation (VV&A) activity completely stalled in 2015 and did not come close to making the necessary progress towards even the reduced set of Block 2B requirements. 

-- Low availability rates are preventing the fleet of fielded operational F-35 aircraft from achieving planned, Service-funded flying hour goals. 

-- A deficiency in the air vehicle’s maintenance vehicle interface (MVI)—the hardware used to upload aircraft data files—corrupted the aircraft software files during the upload process.) Read the full report here (PDF).

"The Flying White Elephant" - Yet Another Costly & long to fix F-35 Glitch: Ejection Seat Could Kill Pilots.

"The Flying White Elephant" - Yet Another Costly & long to fix F-35 Glitch: Ejection Seat Could Kill Pilots. (Yahoo).

The Defense Department’s multi-billion dollar F-35 Joint Strike Fighter effort has hit a new snag, and it’s one that could take anywhere from a year to 18 months to fix, according to the program’s chief.

Earlier this month Defense News reported the Pentagon had learned the fifth-generation airplane’s ejection seat could cause fatal whiplash for pilots weighing under 136, despite the fact that the seat was designed to handle any pilot weighing between 103 and 245 pounds.

The discovery prompted the Pentagon to restrict any pilot that weighs less than 136 pounds from flying the aircraft until a solution was found.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, the head of the F-35 program office, told House lawmakers on Wednesday that officials are using “known fixes” to remedy the problem, though they’ll take some time to implement.

With a price tag of around $400 billion, the F-35 is the costliest weapon in U.S. history; the idea that the severely delayed procurement effort suffered another technical glitch on a support system many believed was safe set off alarm bells on Capitol Hill, even among the fighter’s supporters. Hmmmm.......I hate to say it but it seems that Justine Trudeau will have done at least one good things as PM, altough not really intentional. Read the full story here.

Related! 

Air Force's F-35 "White Elephant" Has No Code to Shoot Its Gun......in the next four years.

U.S. Analyst: 'Thunder without lightning: high cost and limited benefit development program of F-35'.

U.S. Analyst: 'Thunder without lightning: high cost and limited benefit development program of F-35'. (Sputnik).

In light of that, analyst Bill French wrote a report titled “Thunder without lightning: high cost and limited benefit development program of F-35,” reviewing the new aircraft.

The document states that according to the technical parameters the F-35 is “losing to the fourth-generation fighter MiG-29 and Su-27, developed by the Russian Air Force and used around the world.”

The Soviet MiG-29 and Su-27 fighter aircraft are superior in technical performance than the new US fighter aircraft F-35. The conclusion was reached by the American analyst Bill French, working for a non-profit organization National Security Network.

“The F-35 is significantly inferior to the Russian Su-27 and MiG-29 in regard to wing loading (exception — F35C), acceleration and thrust-weight ratio (the ratio of thrust to weight of the aircraft),” said the analyst.

Besides, all of the F-35s have significantly lower maximum speed as compared to the Soviet Union aircrafts.

Mr. French also deliberated that in a simulation of air combat, the results draw even “grimmer picture.”

According to him, in 2009 the analysts of US Air Force Intelligence and the Lockheed Martin Company, which developed the new American fighter, noted that despite the superiority of the F-35 in regard to stealth technology and avionics, if compared to the Su-27 and MiG —29 the loss ratio is to be expected 3: 1. That is, for each destroyed Su-27 or MiG-29 there would be three F-35 destroyed.

Also, in a real educational dogfight, a veteran in a US Air Force F-16 easily won over the F-35. Hmmmm.....The only good news is that 'Sometimes NATO Ally' Turkey will buy 100 of these white elephants. Read the full story here.

Video - F-35 'White elephant' - Here’s what it looks like when a $134-million jet goes off a ski jump

.

Video - F-35 'White elephant'  -  Here’s what it looks like when a $134-million jet goes off a ski jump.(Popsci).

Let’s take a look again, from the side.
  Card

And from the back. At this angle, it’s easy to see the back thruster bending down.Read the full story here. Card

'White Elephant' F-35 Maintenance Software Comes Under Fire - high frequency of false alarms, not User friendly.

'White Elephant' F-35 Maintenance Software Comes Under Fire - high frequency of false alarms, not User friendly. (IMRA).

By Sandra I. Erwin 4/24/2015 http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=1815

The subpar performance of the F-35 logistics information system has been a concern for years. But it has now drawn the attention of key lawmakers who got an earful from Joint Strike Fighter maintenance crews during a recent visit to Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.

“The committee received numerous complaints and concerns by F-35 maintenance and operational personnel regarding the limitations, poor performance, poor design, and overall unsuitability of the ALIS software in its current form,” said the House Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on tactical air and land forces in its markup of the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act.

ALIS is the autonomic logistics information system that is hooked up to each F-35 to monitor every component of the aircraft and to alert operators of any breakdowns. The complaints heard by members of Congress range from the user-unfriendliness of the software and how slowly it responds to queries, to the high frequency of false alarms.

Military aviation experts said some of these issues are temporary and should be expected in new programs. Glitches like too many false alarms should be solved over time as the technology matures. Other shortcomings of the system appear to be more substantial and might take years to fix.

The F-35 program office and prime contractor Lockheed Martin assert that many of the current deficiencies will be plugged in future software releases. Program Executive Officer Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan traveled to Eglin this week to personally investigate the issues raised by the committee. “A lot of attention is being paid to ALIS,” said F-35 spokesman Joe DellaVedova.

By Bogdan’s own account, the system will have to dig itself out of a deep hole. “ALIS has a long way to go,” he told subcommittee Chairman Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio. “It is a complicated, five million lines of code piece of equipment that we started treating like a piece of support equipment. It's not. It's an integral part of the weapon system.”

A major effort began two years to “change fundamentally the way we develop ALIS,” Bogdan said. “We've applied the same techniques we used in developing software on the airplane to now developing software in ALIS. It's just going to take us some time to realize those results.”

One of ALIS’ most vaunted features — the ability to predict when a component will fail and will need to be replaced — appears to be nowhere close to coming to fruition. According to sources close to the program, ALIS doesn’t have enough of the data that would allow maintainers to forecast part failures based on how components are used and how they perform in flight. It is not clear when the prognostics capability will work.

A significant concern for the Marine Corps — the first service scheduled to deploy the F-35 — is that ALIS is too incomplete for operational use, which means that a lot of the information crews will need to fix and maintain the aircraft will not be available so they will depend on remote tech support from Lockheed Martin technicians in Fort Worth, Texas. Experts said that process could end up being time consuming and increase aircraft downtime.

ALIS was conceived so that when maintainers have to remove an aircraft part and replace it, they would have easy and instant access to instructions and drawings. ALIS also would help them interpret any failure codes that come off the aircraft and determine what procedures to employ.

The Marine Corps will be the first service to deploy the short-takeoff vertical landing version of the F-35 later this year, and it has chosen to declare the airplane operational even with a less-than-optimal ALIS system. Maintenance crews aboard big-deck amphibious ships will be dependent on technical support from Texas if ALIS is unable to provide the information they need.

Software engineers at Lockheed Martin are rushing to deliver ALIS upgrades to the F-35 fleet, said Sharon Parsley, spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training.

“The F-35 military services understand that ALIS will continue to gain capability along with each release of block software on our newest aircraft,” she told National Defense in a statement.

Parsley said the Eglin maintainers who gave ALIS bad reviews were using the earliest versions, known as Block 1B and 2A. The jets that are now flying at two bases in Arizona — Luke Air Force Base and Marine Corps Air Station Yuma — have the latest version of software called 2B.

A new update, ALIS 2.0.0, was delivered to F-35 locations, including Eglin in March, she said. “We expect many of the issues the airmen there are experiencing to improve.” Two other releases currently are in development, ALIS 2.0.1 and 2.0.2. The full ALIS capability is due in 2017, said Parsley, “in line with the conclusion of the F-35 system development and demonstration program phase.”

An underlying question is whether the Marines will be able to get by with the 2.0.1 version of ALIS that still lacks the capability to manage life-limited parts. That feature is expected in ALIS 2.0.2, which is the version that the Air Force needs in order to declare its F-35A operational next year.

The software eventually will have to undergo rigorous tests in combat-like conditions by the Pentagon’s independent test and evaluation office. Operational tests of the Marine Corps’ Block 2B mission software, along with ALIS, were supposed to take place a year ago but were delayed. Testers still do not believe the system is ready, and Pentagon procurement officials agreed.

Turner’s language in the NDAA, meanwhile, could mean yet another probe of ALIS, this one by the Government Accountability Office. The scrutiny will persist, especially in light of the feedback lawmakers got at Eglin. The frustration that members saw in F-35 maintainers is likely to stick with them as such interactions tend to be rare.

During an April 14 subcommittee hearing, Turner said he was “taken aback” by the operators’ critiques of ALIS. “I was also shocked that there's no spell check,” he said. That means users have to manually identify misspelling and correct errors, which causes delays and potentially could put lives at risk. Crews also were unhappy with the reporting system for the availability of parts or status of the inventory.

Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., a former military aviator, said she, too, was alarmed by what she heard. Her impression was that the system is very labor intensive, slow to respond, and too bulky for use on ships. Duckworth said it was “troubling” that aircraft crews aboard ships at sea will have to reach back to Fort Worth for logistical support.

Bogdan agreed that the transportability of ALIS is a major issue. “Today ALIS sits in a squadron and it's a rack of computers that weighs probably 800 to 1,000 pounds,” he told Duckworth. “We recognized a year-and-a-half ago that was not going to work for deploying forces.” Lockheed is designing a deployable version that will be ready for the Marine Corps in July, he said. It is a two-man portable system made up of three or four different racks.

In the future, Bogdan said, ALIS will be made in a deployable configuration. “We will get rid of the old thousand-pound racks that we have at the squadrons now.”

ALIS is now deployed with more than a hundred operational F-35s from the Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, United Kingdom, Australia and the Netherlands. Hmmmm.......All that comes out of the F-35 story is from bad to worse.

Related:  Air Force's F-35 "White Elephant" Has No Code to Shoot Its Gun......in the next four years.

USAF Plans for Radical 'White Elephant' F-35 Upgrade Reveal Obsolescence.

USAF Plans for Radical 'White Elephant' F-35 Upgrade Reveal Obsolescence. (IMRA).

Critics will no doubt question the wisdom of spending nearly $400 billion to develop and produce an aircraft that, years before it enters service, already needs an upgrade to all of its major components and systems. 

(Source: DefenseAerospace.com; published April 8, 2015) By Giovanni de Briganti http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/feature/5/162520/usaf-plans-for-radical-upgrade-reveal-f_35-obsolescence.html

PARIS --- US Air Force plans to replace the F-35 fighter’s avionics, radar and engines are an implicit admission that the current aircraft is already obsolete and that, despite a unit cost of over $250 million, it cannot match the latest foreign fighters coming into service.

This is the first time a customer acknowledges that the obsolescence of the F-35’s sensors has degraded the aircraft’s still unproven nominal capabilities to the point that a radical upgrade is necessary, more than a year before it enters service.

The upgrade plans were revealed by Major General Jeffrey Harrigian, the USAF’s F-35 program chief, in an April 7 Reuters interview.

"We are already considering and thinking through what are some of the technologies that will be part of the F-35," Reuters reported Harrigian as saying. "This is not the time to rest on your laurels." Reuters added that “Harrigian gave few details but said potential upgrades could include new avionics systems, radar, laser weapons and a new more fuel-efficient engine,” and quoted him as saying "I don't think we would take anything off the table at this point."

$400 billion and still needs upgrades

In reality, Harrigian’s statements mean there will be little left of the F-35 that is now being procured under Low-Rate Initial Production contracts once its engine, avionics and radar are replaced by new systems.

Critics will no doubt question the wisdom of spending nearly $400 billion to develop and produce an aircraft that, years before it enters service, already needs an upgrade to all of its major components and systems.

The need for upgrades at this early stage completely also undermines the many claims of the F-35’s alleged across-the-board superiority made by the US military services, by foreign governments justifying their purchase, by manufacturer Lockheed Martin and by program officials at the F-35 Joint Program Office.

These are now shown to be little more than an officially-sanctioned marketing spiel, intended to cover up the aircraft’s well-documented deficiencies, which its backers nonetheless steadfastly continue to deny.

What do foreign buyers know?

It is debatable whether foreign partners and customers, for example, would have committed to spending billions of dollars on the F-35 if they had known they would have to pay for a costly upgrade to achieve the capabilities they were promised.

It also raises the issue of who will pay for the upgrades, given that the aircraft’s engine costs about $15 million, and that new avionics and radar are likely to add as much again, plus their development and installation costs.

The F-35 -- and its components -- was designed in the 1990s, its development contract was awarded in 2001 and it is due to reach Initial Operational Capability (IOC) with the US Air Force in mid-2016 – 15 years after contract award. USAF plans call for the F-35 to reach Full Operational Capability (FOC) around 2021 or 2022 – 20 years after award of the development contract.

No deviation from current plans

The most remarkable aspect of this interview is that, despite conceding that “the Air Force was already looking at follow-on capabilities for the F-35, given rapid technology development by potential adversaries,” Harrigian remains unperturbed, and confirms that the F-35’s Initial Operational Capability is still planned for August or September 2016.

However, he is “keeping close tabs on key items required to meet the target date,” Reuters reported, adding that “Those issues include software development, modification of existing jets to incorporate design changes, further work on a complex automated logistics system called ALIS and ensuring a sufficient number of technicians are trained to service the jet.”

"There's a lot of work to be done,” Harrigian said “but from where we sit, we're on the right glide path to IOC.” Hmmm.....The only great thing is that the Turkish air force bought 100 of these :) 

Related: Air Force's F-35 "White Elephant" Has No Code to Shoot Its Gun......in the next four years.

The 'White elephant' Fighter, the F-35.

The 'White elephant' Fighter, the F-35. Via: John Q Public:

As Air Force senior officials prepare for posture hearings this week with the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, the subject of modernization promises to be front and center. Core to that discussion will almost certainly be the limping, $1.4 trillion F-35 program.

Belying the conventional wisdom, which touts the Joint Strike Fighter as something of a futuristic aerial Swiss army knife, the F-35 is proving to be little more than a dull, bent, and unwieldy butter knife — a jack of no trades, master of only one: burning through taxpayer dollars at a rate that would embarrass Croesus.

The bloat of the program is now placing increasingly excruciating pressure on the entire Air Force budget, this despite the F-35 being years from genuine operational capability. The pressure it is exerting is leading to a parade of rhetorical and actual absurdity of the variety that should, under normal circumstances, alarm Congress and anyone else concerned about the future of American defense.

Take, for example, a recent account filed by the nonprofit Project On Government Oversight (POGO), which exposes damning conclusions in the latest F-35 report from the Defense Department’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E).

Among the crippling problems highlighted in the DOT and E report:

• Software glitches disrupting enemy identification and weapon employment.
• A redesigned fuel tank that continues to demonstrate unacceptable vulnerability to explosion from lightning or enemy fire.
• Departures from controlled flight during high-speed maneuvering, a six-year-old problem that apparently will not be solved without sacrificing stealth or combat capability.
• Helmet issues fundamentally degrading pilot situational awareness.
• Engine problems so severe they’re limiting sortie rates, impeding the test schedule, and generating risky operational decisions.
• Nightmarish maintainability issues leading to over-reliance on contractor support.

As these and other issues mount, the F-35 Joint Program Office, led by Air Force Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, is apparently employing categorization and accounting schemes that overstate reliability and maintenance rates, masking the true nature of the crisis gripping the program. Hmmmm......And last but not least:  Air Force's F-35 "White Elephant" Has No Code to Shoot Its Gun......in the next four years. Only good news is that the Turkish Airforce bought 100 of these 'beauties'

Air Force's F-35 "White Elephant" Has No Code to Shoot Its Gun......in the next four years.

Air Force's F-35 "White Elephant" Has No Code to Shoot Its Gun......in the next four years. (DailyTech).

Armed w/ only 2-10 missiles, the F-35 will be deemed "combat ready" in 2015, but won't have gun code till 2019, despite 20 million LOC

After burning through hundreds of billions in expenditures (over $300B USD to date) along its much-delayed development arc, the "joint strike fighter" (JSF) -- also known as the F-35 Lightning II -- has earned the dubious distinction of being the most expensive combat aircraft in history.  But according to a new report by The Daily Beast, the spoiled self-proclaimed "superjet" can't even fire its gun.  

I. Duck Hunt: Lack of Gun Leaves  JSF A Pricy Flying Duck

Yes, according to the report, which cites a number of Air Force pilots and senior officials as sources, the JSF -- with an estimated lifetime cost in the trillions -- after a decade of development the pampered project sports a gun that is currently little more than a decoration hanging as dead weight.

Notably, the report cites roughly half a dozen USAF sources as confirming that the JSF has been banned from using its machine gun in combat until it receives a software update.  And that update isn't expected to arrive until 2019.  Until then the JSF isn't quite a sitting (or flying, more aptly) duck, but it's close to it.

The gun is dead rate because after roughly 25 million lines of code it's written (code, incidentally, China might have stolen for free), Lockheed Martin apparently couldn't be bothered to write in code to connect the JSF's trigger to its gun.  Air Force officials say that Lockheed Martin is telling them that it's going to take another four full years -- until 2019 -- to integrate the seemingly simple code into its web.

In the meantime the "operational" jet will be a bit lame, officials warn.  But, it's a moot point many pilots say, as the craft's engine is too slow and clumsy for dogfights anyhow.

Bugs aside, it also appears Lockheed Martin has lost touch of the fighter's combat needs, in terms of prioritizing features.  According to the report, even with its well over 20 million lines of code, there's no code yet to connect the pilot's trigger to the rotary cannon, so the cannon is essentially dead weight.

The report  states that the short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) F-35B variant (targeted at the U.S. Marines) and the carrier-based F-35C variant (targeted at the U.S. Navy) also have crippled guns.  And like the USAF codebase, it sounds as if the fixes for the variants are rather far away:

So the F-35 has at best, at present ten shots.  If the enemy is able to field more than ten fighters per F-35, the best outcome the F-35 can hope for is a hit-and-run.  That's a major concern, given that lifetime costs per jet are over $600M USD at current estimates.  Of that, about $170M USD is currently in the up-front purchase cost.  By contrast, Russia's Mikoyan MiG-29 has a per-unit cost of around $28M USD, based on recent purchases.

So you can buy six MiG-29s for the up front costs of one JSF.  Or if you prefer something a bit more modern you can get Russian Sukhoi Su-35 jets for around $40M USD (which would buy you roughly four per JSF).

The only problem?  Americans have to pay the bill for a supposed superfighter.  

Enter the JSF, the spoiled superfighter du jour. Hmmm.....The only great thing is that the Turkish air force bought 100 of these :) Read the full nightmare story here.

'White Elephant' F-35 fleet grounded for the eighth time over unknown engine issue.

'White Elephant' F-35 fleet grounded for the eighth time over unknown engine issue. (RT).

The decision comes as the Pentagon struggles to find the source of yet another problem with the $398.6 billion program. 

On June 23, an F-35 caught fire as the pilot attempted to take off at a Florida air base. According to Reuters, one unidentified source described the incident by saying, "The engine ripped through the top of the plane.”

In the most recent Reuters report, the military said it still had not highlighted the cause of that fire, and that new inspections are being put in place in order to assess the capability of the entire fleet.
"Additional inspections of F-35 engines have been ordered, and return to flight will be determined based on inspection results and analysis of engineering data," the Defense Department said in a statement to the news service on Thursday.

According to the Burlington Free Press, the incident is also under review by the Air Force Safety Investigation Board. That overview could take up to a month to finish.

"The flights have paused while we figure out what went wrong," 1st Lt. Hope Cronin, a spokeswoman at Eglin for the Air Force's 33rd Fighter Wing, told the Free Press.

As noted by Gizmodo, this marks the eighth time the entire F-35 fleet has been grounded.


As RT has reported in the past, the problematic F-35 program has run into numerous costly and embarrassing problems over the years. In March, the US Government Accountability Office found that persistent software problems could delay the program for more than a year. The auditors even questioned whether the US could still afford the 2,457 planes that are slated for purchase. They could cost $400 billion – a 68 percent increase over original projections in 2001 – and keeping the program on schedule for 2037 could cost $12.6 billion per year.


Prior to that report, the Navy cut its order of F-35 jets almost in half, while the Air Force delayed its purchase of four jets for another year. At the time, defense officials said they were still confident in the program and that the decision was based on budgetary considerations. Hmmm....the only consolation i have is to know that Turkey actually bought these 'White Elephants'.......hahahaha.

Top Official Admits F-35 Stealth Fighter Secrets Stolen.

Top Official Admits F-35 Stealth Fighter Secrets Stolen.HT: BreakingDefence.

Yesterday, at a subcommittee hearing attended by just half a dozen Senators, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer made a blunt admission: The military’s most expensive program, the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has been hacked and the stolen data used by America’s adversaries.

Under Secretary Frank Kendall didn’t say by whom, but the answer is almost certainly China, a cyber superpower whose People’s Liberation Army Air Force has recently rolled out some suspiciously sophisticated stealth fighter prototypes of its own. The Russians also have skilled hackers and “5th Generation” stealth jet programs, but they’re not suspected of such direct copying, at least not yet.
“I’m confident the classified material is well protected, but I’m not at all confident that our unclassified information is as well-protected,” said Kendall, the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. “It’s a major problem for us…. What it does is reduce the costs and lead time of our adversaries to doing their own designs, so it gives away a substantial advantage.”

The bad news isn’t new news: That someone had hacked F-35 subcontractor BAE Systems was first reported six years ago, and just this February Washington Post reporter Ellen Nakashima obtained leaked information naming the Chinese as having compromised not just the F-35 but two dozen other weapons program. Administration officials have been publicly pressuring China to rein in its hacking. 
But it’s still remarkable that such a senior official would so bluntly admit that US interests have been so directly harmed.
So what does this mean for a future conflict? 

The nightmare — raised by a recent Defense Science Board report – is what you might call the Battlestar Galactica scenario: Our fighters close in on the enemy, the bad guys push a button, and all our systems shut down, crippled by cyber-attacks via “back doors” previous hacks created in the security software. In this case, thankfully, that seems unlikely. 
Kendall made clear that classified data has remained secure (so far, we think): It’s unclassified data in contractors’ computers that has been stolen, not the military’s secret codes.And in some ways what they’ve stolen is worse than stealing “secret plans”: They’ve stolen data on how US and allied arms manufacturers make advanced weapons systems. So instead of having to just copy our stuff, they have a leg up on learning how to design equivalent systems on their own.

"Vorsprung durch technik" - Israel to be the first country to receive the F-35 stealth jet fighter.

"Vorsprung durch technik" - Israel to be the first country to receive the F-35 stealth jet fighter.HT: Israelhayom.

State-of-the-art fighter aircraft, the first of which are scheduled to be delivered to Israel at the end of 2016, are also expected to be fitted with an Israeli "twist" 

Israel's Air Force can start preparing the runways after the vice president of Lockheed Martin, Steve O'Bryan, announced on Tuesday at the Paris Air Show that Israel will be the first country to receive the F-35 American-made stealth fighter jet.

The state-of-the-art fighter aircraft, the first of which are scheduled to be delivered to Israel at the end of 2016, are also expected to be fitted with an Israeli "twist."

O'Bryan said Lockheed Martin was examining the feasibility of adding detachable fuselages to the plane, manufactured by the Israeli company Cyclone, a subsidiary of Elbit Systems, mainly because the fuselages would not be detrimental to the plane's stealth capabilities. In practical terms, this means that the plane would have a longer flight range while still remaining invisible to enemy radar.

The first of 20 versatile, single-engine F-35s, ordered by Israel in October 2010 at a cost of $2.75 billion, are scheduled to arrive in 2016 at the earliest, but the Air Force is already setting up a new infrastructure to absorb the stealth jets.Read the full story here.