"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

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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'

China Flies The 'Divine Eagle' it's largest 'Stealth Bombers' hunting drone.

China Flies The 'Divine Eagle' it's largest 'Stealth Bombers' hunting drone. (Popsci).

New images of testing materials have emerged of China's largest ever UAV, the secretive Divine Eagle.

Compared to other Chinese aviation projects like the J-20 stealth fighter and Y-20 heavy transport aircraft, the lack of publicly available photos of the Divine Eagle suggests that like the American RQ-180, this giant drone is a strategic and sensitive asset. 

Given the presence of official diagrams and wind tunnel testing, the Divine Eagle is likely to be a real Chinese project, built by the "black project" division of the venerable Shenyang Aircraft Corporation.

Reliable Internet sources also indicate that the Divine Eagle conducted its first flight in December 2014 or early 2015. Hmmm.......The U.S. has the 'White Elephant' a.k.a. F-35 , perhaps they should rename it to the 'Dodo bird'?Read and see the full story here.

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.

Israel Cuts 'White Elephant' F-35 Purchase from 31 to 14 Jets.

Israel Cuts 'White Elephant' F-35 Purchase from 31 to 14 Jets. (INN).

Intelligence Minister says other jets have much better maneuverability, weapons carrying capabilities.

The Ministerial Committee of Acquisitions decided Sunday to approve the purchase of 14 US-made F-35 stealth jets, instead of the 31 jets that the Defense Ministry and IDF wanted to buy. Israel will reserve the option tobuy additional F-35 jets at a later date.

The 14 jets are in addition to the 19 jets Israel has already committed to buying.

Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz (Likud) showed other ministers a presentation that cast doubt on the plane's true value, in comparison with other models of fighter jets in which Israeli technology can be fitted, which have better maneuverability and which have a far better capacity for carrying weapons than the stealth F-35.

"Since the plane is not yet operational in the US,” added Steinitz, “I suggested that we make do with the purchase of less than half the amount, and wait with decisions on purchasing additional jets, as several other countries – like Australia, Italy, Canada and Holland – have done.”

The favorable decision by a majority of the ministers, Steinitz noted, proves that the government does not have to be a rubber stamp of the defense establishment and can make decisions democratically.

The decision is seen by some pundits as a blow to Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon (Likud), who announced the deal following a visit to the US this year. Hmmm....the 'Good news' is that Turkey will end up with them :)

Related: The U.S.'s F- 35 (White Elephant) Stealth Fighter Is Too Heavy and Slow, So the Pentagon Made Its Performance Tests Easier.

'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.

Boeing touts Super hornet fighter jet to rival F-35 — at half the price.

Boeing touts Super hornet fighter jet to rival F-35 — at half the price.(CBC).In a dogfight of defence contractors, the hunter can quickly become the hunted. It's happening now to the F-35.

The world's largest defence contractor, Lockheed Martin, is trying to convince wavering U.S. allies — including Canada — to stick with its high-tech, high-priced and unproven F-35 stealth fighter. But the F-35 is way behind schedule, way over budget and, now, it's grounded by a mysterious crack in a turbine fan.

After years of technical problems, it's a tempting target for Lockheed Martin's rivals.

It's no surprise, then, that the No. 2 defence contractor, Boeing, smells blood.

With Ottawa now reviewing its previous commitment to buy the F-35, Boeing is making an aggressive pitch to Canadian taxpayers, offering to save them billions of dollars if they buy Boeing's Super Hornets instead.

Boeing isn't pulling its punches. The Super Hornet, it says, is a proven fighter while the F-35 is just a concept — and an expensive one at that.

"We call it competing with a paper airplane," says Ricardo Traven, Boeing's chief test pilot for the Super Hornet. A Canadian who flew fighters for 15 years in the Canadian air force, Traven dismisses the F-35 as a "shiny brochure of promises," and contrasts it with "the real thing," which looms behind him in a top-secret hangar at Boeing's vast production line in St. Louis, Missouri. It has two engines to the F-35's one — and, unlike the F-35, it's ready now. Some 500 Super Hornets are already in service with the U.S. Navy. Dozens have already been sold to the Australian air force, which, like Canada, was once committed to the F-35 but gave up waiting for it to prove itself.Hmmmm.....Psst! Wanna save $23B?Read the full story here.

Related: The Super Hornet Would Out Perform The F-35 In Any Canadian Arctic Operation, Says CF-18 Pilot

The U.S.'s F- 35 (White Elephant) Stealth Fighter Is Too Heavy and Slow, So the Pentagon Made Its Performance Tests Easier.

The U.S.'s F- 35 (White Elephant) Stealth Fighter Is Too Heavy and Slow, So the Pentagon Made Its Performance Tests Easier.(Motherboard- Vice).The Pentagon's pursuit of the Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter jet has been a heartbreaking one. If you're a tax payer, the program's estimated $1 trillion price tag probably breaks your heart a little bit. If you're an aviation enthusiast, the constant whittling away of the do-it-all aircraft's features, which in many cases actually amounts to adding weight and taking away maneuverability, must hurt a little bit, too.
If you're just an everyday American, though, you should be downright shattered that after a decade and a fortune spent, the F-35 will actually be more vulnerable than the aircraft it's replacing. At this point, the Pentagon is literally rewriting its rulebook so that the dumbed-down super jet will pass muster.
The Defense Department's annual weapons testing report reveals that the military actually adjusted the performance specifications for the consistently-underperforming line of F-35 fighter jets. In other words, they couldn't get the jets to do what they were supposed to do, so they just changed what they were supposed to do.
"The program announced an intention to change performance specifications for the F-35A, reducing turn performance from 5.3 to 4.6 sustained g’s and extending the time for acceleration from 0.8 Mach to 1.2 Mach by eight seconds," reads the report drafted under J. Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation. (The F-35A is the standard model, so to speak, that the Air Force will use. The line also includes the F-35B, the Harrier-like vertical landing version built for the Marines, and the F-35C, a Navy version that's optimized for aircraft carrier takeoffs and landings.)Hmmm.....As everything else with the Obama 'admin' lets lower the bar.Read the full story here

New $237 million F35 combat jet is banned from flying in bad weather because it could EXPLODE.

New $237 million F35 combat jet is banned from flying in bad weather because it could EXPLODE.(DM).

Not mentioning the Navy’s $670 Million Fighting Ship that Is ‘Not Expected to Be Survivable.’

It's considered to be the world's most sophisticated superfighter jet, but Britain's new £150million combat aircraft has been banned from flying in bad weather for fears it could explode.
Engineers working on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter have found the jet's fuel tank could explode if hit by lightning.
According to reports, the aircraft, which is hoped to enter service for both the RAF and the Royal Navy in five years' time, has also been made more vulnerable to enemy attack than the aircraft it is set to replace, after its weight was reduced in an attempt to increase fuel efficiency.
The Telegraph has reported the revelations were disclosed in a leaked report from the Pentagon's operational test and evaluation office, which states that, until a device in the fuel tank is redesigned, test-flying within 25 miles of thunderstorms is 'not permitted'.
Several other problems have been identified with the plane, including a fault in the design of the fuel tank which means it is unable to rapidly descend to low altitude.
A handful of cracks were also discovered in the tested aircraft during examinations by the United States Air Force and the aircraft's manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
The latest revelation is the second blow to the programme in recent weeks, after Canada pulled out of a deal to buy 65 of the aircraft last month.
And while the US is buying 2,500 F-35s for £254bn, Britain is committed to buying only 48, although the final decision will depend on the role of the Royal Navy's two new carriers in the future and whether the price of the aircraft falls, as is expected.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: 'All variants of F-35 are currently within the Development Test phase and minor issues like this are common during this early stage of the overall programme.'Hmmmm.....Obama: "We do big things."Read the full story here.