More problems for F35......
Early fatigue crack found ......
Maybe there is a case for having mixed fleets after all, avoids having all of one's eggs in the same basket. Remember the days of A4's, F4's, A6's, F14's in service at the same time. Or UK equivalents of Harriers, Buccs, Tooms and Jags........
MB
The fatigue crack turned up in the aluminum-alloy bulkhead after just 1,500 hours of testing. The F-35 airframe is designed to last at least 8,000 hours and the intent of the testing was to push it to twice that figure.
How serious a problem the bulkhead crack is remains to be seen. It came in an F-35B model, in which the titanium bulkheads were swapped for aluminum to save weight. If it turns out to be a manufacturing error, that's one set of problems. If it's a design error, that's another.
There are already four F-35B flight test planes flying at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, with another built and ready to follow fairly soon. Based on a previously scheduled walking tour of the Lockheed Martin assembly line this morning, at least five more B-models are in some stages of the final assembly process and another four or five have to fairly far along.
The timing of the discovery isn't good. The Pentagon for weeks has been trying to decide how to proceed with the F-35 program which continues to fall farther behind schedule and over budget, in large part due to problems with the F-35B. It has been widely reported that the Navy made have made another attempt to convince Defense Secretary Gates to drop the Marines short-takeoff-vertical-landing model.
A Defense Acquisition Board will be held Monday to advise and rule on the DoD's plans for continuing with the F-35 program.
Read more: http://blogs.star-telegram.com/sky_talk/2010/11/cracked-f-35-missing-f-22.html#ixzz15jS19lJB