F-35 Cancelled, then what ?
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
And the Japanese can't build motorcars - or so Fors and GM chortled and sneered back in the 70s. And all the Chinese build are sheep watches - but now they make electronic innards of just about everything we use.
Never rest on your laurels, and never underestimate your potential enemy.
Never rest on your laurels, and never underestimate your potential enemy.
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one wonders why the Indians aren't inquiring about the F-35?
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However given that the likely arms sellers to our possible opponents are already developing aircraft with similar stealth to F-35/F-22, then when you can "see" him, he can "see" you too. Doesn't that sort of cancel out?
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
AW&ST: DOD Authorizes More Funds To Cover Stalled F-35 Contract
Sep 7, 2016
Almost two years after the Pentagon awarded Lockheed Martin the latest F-35 contract, the company is still waiting on the funds needed to build the next batch of fighter jets.
Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, said Sept. 7 that the department is still negotiating deals for the ninth and 10th batches of Lockheed’s F-35, valued at about $16 billion total for more than 140 aircraft for the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and international partners.
As negotiations drag on, Lockheed is being forced to pay suppliers out-of-pocket for long-lead work on the next batch of aircraft. But the Pentagon is at last providing some relief. The department recently authorized additional funding to reimburse the company for costs incurred on an anticipated 10th batch of F-35s, Kendall said. The latest agreement, officially called an undefinitized contract action (UCA), comes on top of a similar deal to refund Lockheed for costs associated with the ninth lot of aircraft, Kendall said.
The Pentagon has been promising that a contract award to Lockheed for the combined ninth and 10th F-35 Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) lots is just on the horizon for almost a year now. The Joint Program Office had hoped to announce an agreement at the Farnborough International Airshow in the UK in July, but no such deal emerged. The last F-35 contract, valued at $4.7 billion for 43 jets, was signed in November 2014.........
Sep 7, 2016
Almost two years after the Pentagon awarded Lockheed Martin the latest F-35 contract, the company is still waiting on the funds needed to build the next batch of fighter jets.
Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, said Sept. 7 that the department is still negotiating deals for the ninth and 10th batches of Lockheed’s F-35, valued at about $16 billion total for more than 140 aircraft for the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and international partners.
As negotiations drag on, Lockheed is being forced to pay suppliers out-of-pocket for long-lead work on the next batch of aircraft. But the Pentagon is at last providing some relief. The department recently authorized additional funding to reimburse the company for costs incurred on an anticipated 10th batch of F-35s, Kendall said. The latest agreement, officially called an undefinitized contract action (UCA), comes on top of a similar deal to refund Lockheed for costs associated with the ninth lot of aircraft, Kendall said.
The Pentagon has been promising that a contract award to Lockheed for the combined ninth and 10th F-35 Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) lots is just on the horizon for almost a year now. The Joint Program Office had hoped to announce an agreement at the Farnborough International Airshow in the UK in July, but no such deal emerged. The last F-35 contract, valued at $4.7 billion for 43 jets, was signed in November 2014.........
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LM F-35 GM Weekly Update 01 Sep 2016 Jeff Babione
https://a855196877272cb14560-2a4fa81...ate_9_1_16.pdf (0.7Mb)
"Two F-35Cs from the ITF at Pax River recently completed ship trials while operating from USS George Washington (CVN 73) off the Atlantic Coast. The ITF flew nearly 40 hours and checked off 613 unique test points that further validated the carrier suitability of the F-35C. The jets accrued 121 catapult launches and arrested landings, 70 touch-and-goes and 125 wave-offs, with only one bolter or missed arrestment. The team once again understood their mission and went out in one of the harshest working environments anywhere, and flawlessly executed the final F-35C ship trial for SDD. The launch of CF-3 and CF-5 for their return flight to Pax River signified the completion of five years’ worth of carrier suitability testing.”...
...Northern Lightning Exercise
As the F-35Cs returned to Pax River, 14 F-35As from Eglin were executing a two-week deployment as part of the Northern Lightning exercise in Wisconsin. The F-35As from the 58th Fighter Squadrons flew 102 out of 104 scheduled sorties with aircraft availability averaging 80 percent for the duration of the deployment. All 14 F-35As are operating with older 2B software, making these sortie and availability rates even more impressive.”..."
...Northern Lightning Exercise
As the F-35Cs returned to Pax River, 14 F-35As from Eglin were executing a two-week deployment as part of the Northern Lightning exercise in Wisconsin. The F-35As from the 58th Fighter Squadrons flew 102 out of 104 scheduled sorties with aircraft availability averaging 80 percent for the duration of the deployment. All 14 F-35As are operating with older 2B software, making these sortie and availability rates even more impressive.”..."
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
The software problems concern me because the fact that things don't work properly at this stage suggests that their development process is not a good one and even perhaps that the design is not that great. A "good" process doesn't release features until they "add value" - i.e. they may not be everything you wanted them to be but they have to be good enough to be useful before you impose them upon your users.
With the wrong design some tasks become Sisyphean - possible enough in theory to keep your masters cracking the whip (no we can't change direction now - just work smarter!) but so hard as to slow your work down to a crawl. One does make bad designs - I certainly have. It's not so common to recognise that and even less common to be allowed to fix it.
With the wrong design some tasks become Sisyphean - possible enough in theory to keep your masters cracking the whip (no we can't change direction now - just work smarter!) but so hard as to slow your work down to a crawl. One does make bad designs - I certainly have. It's not so common to recognise that and even less common to be allowed to fix it.
Last edited by t43562; 12th Sep 2016 at 12:41.
You have continuously deleted anything negative to the "program"
As to Spaz and his never ending enthusiasm / shilling for the program -- I am pretty sure that most participants in this thread do what I do: consider the source.
(PS: as to your film clip, I want one, but the Missus has told me that she wants the roof replaced and the kitchen redone first, so my budget seems to be unable to allow it. Rats).For ORAC: at the risk of sounding like a parochial rotary wing shill, this bit in the linked article annoys me.
Air support for friendly troops fighting the enemy is exactly where the lack of a usable cannon is most distinctly felt—and the F-35 won’t have a usable and test-proven cannon until 2019 at best. Cannons are the most effective weapon in far more CAS situations than rockets (which the F-35A currently does not carry) or a couple of guided bombs (which it does). This is true especially when the plane needs to engage a target in a “danger close” situation, with the enemy in very close proximity to friendly troops.
1. That's what attack helicopters are for.
2. The last ten years 2.75 inch rocket improvement program gives the attack helicopter even more options to offer to the ground commander.
3. They weren't trying to replace the A-10's amazing gun/plane suite. Nothing can, nothing will.
4. The author seems to not know how "danger close" you can get with current LGB's.
5. All that said, it is troubling to see that the software world is the long pole in this circus tent, and apparently getting longer.
Last edited by Lonewolf_50; 12th Sep 2016 at 13:53. Reason: not just two points
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5. All that said, it is troubling to see that the software world is the long pole in this circus tent, and apparently getting longer.
In 2016 hardware is nothing without the software that controls it. Unfortunately 'soft' is the optimum word in this equation.
Maybe they just need to hire some 20 year old MIT geniuses to sort this out on a good seven figure sum, because at the moment the cart is dragging the horse.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Lonewolf
It was an observation given to me over 20 years ago that the MOD still spent 90% of the upfront money derisking airframe and electronic issues, at a time when software had already assumed most of the complexity and accounted for 90% of the slippages in such programmes (this was in the particular example of IUKADGE.
I then encountered exactly the same problem on NATO ACCS, where they thought they could reuse 20 year old flat files for 90% of the software, and ended up replacing all of it with nearly a 10 year slippage.
I find little difficulty in finding the same issue occuring again - and am amused, but hardly surprised, when even a 4 star suggests that he'd like, at this stage, changing the entire softwRe over to a new open-architecture, in the expectation it can be done in 5 years - and will save money.....
It was an observation given to me over 20 years ago that the MOD still spent 90% of the upfront money derisking airframe and electronic issues, at a time when software had already assumed most of the complexity and accounted for 90% of the slippages in such programmes (this was in the particular example of IUKADGE.
I then encountered exactly the same problem on NATO ACCS, where they thought they could reuse 20 year old flat files for 90% of the software, and ended up replacing all of it with nearly a 10 year slippage.
I find little difficulty in finding the same issue occuring again - and am amused, but hardly surprised, when even a 4 star suggests that he'd like, at this stage, changing the entire softwRe over to a new open-architecture, in the expectation it can be done in 5 years - and will save money.....
The software in your phone is really very old - not obsolete but parts of it have a very long development time and have appeared in many products before they even appeared in a phone.
The problem for the old phone makers is that their software was designed for very inadequate hardware. It was full of clever tricks to make the most of what it was running on but all of this became irrelevant when new chips came out with enough power to run the operating system from a desktop computer. Then all the trade-offs were worthless and the desktop operating systems wiped out the specialist phone ones. So now you're using Linux on an Android phone and Apples' Darwin (also a unix) on an iPhone.
Desktop operating systems were what America was good at and they neatly turned the tables on everyone.
So I personally hope that "someone" is writing general purpose software for aircraft right now that assumes the wonderful hardware that aircraft will have in the future rather than trying to do clever tricks with what can be fitted and powered within current aircraft.
To me it seems like it's risky to hope that one company can do it properly to order because I'm not really sure that an effort that big has ever really been successful entirely by design.
The problem for the old phone makers is that their software was designed for very inadequate hardware. It was full of clever tricks to make the most of what it was running on but all of this became irrelevant when new chips came out with enough power to run the operating system from a desktop computer. Then all the trade-offs were worthless and the desktop operating systems wiped out the specialist phone ones. So now you're using Linux on an Android phone and Apples' Darwin (also a unix) on an iPhone.
Desktop operating systems were what America was good at and they neatly turned the tables on everyone.
So I personally hope that "someone" is writing general purpose software for aircraft right now that assumes the wonderful hardware that aircraft will have in the future rather than trying to do clever tricks with what can be fitted and powered within current aircraft.
To me it seems like it's risky to hope that one company can do it properly to order because I'm not really sure that an effort that big has ever really been successful entirely by design.
ACCS: arrgh. I was involved in two related NATO programs (via Capability Packages) about 20 years ago that tied into ACCS. arrrrrgh. I may not feel the pain as deeply as you do, but it was painful enough.
This makes interesting reading.
http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2016/f-35-may-never-be-ready-for-combat.html
http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2016/f-35-may-never-be-ready-for-combat.html
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There is a very short video and a long article here: [UK F-35Bs mentioned elsewhere - to follow]
Video: Successful F-35, SM-6 Live Fire Test Points to Expansion in Networked Naval Warfare
https://news.usni.org/2016/09/13/vid...are#more-21593
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http://www.sldinfo.com/captain-nick-...r-sea-seminar/
Video: Successful F-35, SM-6 Live Fire Test Points to Expansion in Networked Naval Warfare
"...The MADL linkage to Aegis and potentially other ground stations opens up the potential for a greater networked battlespace for U.S. forces and potentially U.S. allies...."
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http://www.sldinfo.com/captain-nick-...r-sea-seminar/