Dimitri wrote:

Don't forget limited ability to actually land vertically, Lockheed already admitted that pure vertical landings on the F-35B should be limited due to air frame and engine stresses.

Dimitri, you need to provide a reference for that. I've never heard that mentioned in any of our engineering reviews and I know where all the weak points our in the airplane.

The F-35B recently passed is sea trials with excellent performance and numerous short take-offs and vertical landings (STOVL). It exceeded the expectations of the optimists. However, the US Gov is being quiet about the results.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki86x1WKPmE

slimjim wrote:

Dimitri, you need to provide a reference for that. I've never heard that mentioned in any of our engineering reviews and I know where all the weak points our in the airplane.

November 2010 was when Lockheed publicly announced that their F-35B was showing cracks after 1,500 hours.

Back in July 2011 ... you know when the F-35B was in a one year review process due to the cost overruns, and issues, that Gates called in January 2011.

Quote::

“I don’t want to speak for the Marine Corps, but as we do analysis for the STOVL variant, [we think] most of the landings will be conventional landings — you can come back and land on a normal 8,000-foot airstrip without stressing all those components,” Lockheed Martin vice president Steve O’Bryan said. “Of course it’s up to the operational units, but why would I stress those if I don’t have to? … That is an option that’s not available on the current generation of STOVL airplanes.”

He does the typical Lockheed Martin double speak, claims "oh that is alright because other planes can't even ... blah blah", but the fact is, planes like the Harrier didn't need to land conventionally to not stress themselves.

They actually worked as intended, mind you there are variants of the Harrier (including the AV-8B) that were perfectly capable in conventional landings as well, even according to the US Navy ( info.publicintelligenc...8B-000.pdf ).

Dimitri

The current failure rate is every half a hour on the F-35B, the F-35A is sitting at every 3.7 hours.

The F/A-18E has a estimated failure rate of every 9.3 hours currently in operations (demonstrated to go to 10 hours between failures), its design goal was only >=3.2 hours.

Dimitri

Dimitri, the first STOVL F-35B now has 300 vertical landings on it with no issue.

Doing a conventional landing in a Harrier is an emergency situation. Its a normal situation for an F-35B.

Your comparing the failure rate of a fielded aircraft to one that is in flight test/early development. That's apples and oranges.

slimjim wrote:

Doing a conventional landing in a Harrier is an emergency situation. Its a normal situation for an F-35B.

The US Navy's operation manual for the AV-8B lists conventional landing as a standard procedure, it just cautions that landing distance is greatly increased, and that Power Nozzle Breaking should be used instead of the standard brakes. But still as part of the standard procedures.

As for the comparison of failure rates, the way I see it, I'm comparing one operational aircraft, to a aircraft that was supposed to be operational already.

Also note, that the design goals of the F-35 program so far have yet to be met in any department, so their goal of 4 hours between failures for the F-35B/C and the Hornets current 9.3 hours, is still not all that great.

Mind you, it is not like anything on the F-35 JSF is on time. By the time it get's IOC'ed so far its looking like its going to cost $20-30 million more then the goal of the JSF program (which is a lot considering it was supposed to be a $60 to 70 million dollar fighter), a decade late, and a fighter who's goals in terms of specifications keeps getting scaled back to fit what was built instead of what was wanted.

Dimitri

Whats failing?
Something ALWAYS fails on every aircraft on every flight, from a light bulb through to important systems and the more complex the aircraft the greater the number of failures.
Yes its late, yes its over budget, yes it still over weight, yes its only got ONE engine, we are now so far down the development path its uneconomical to stop until we get an operational aircraft.
The F18 is as mature as its going to get, from here on it just gets "old" its already outclassed in many areas by the opposition, so what choice do we have?

At this point in F-18s development they were working on its third wing design to prevent wing oscillations, stronger tails to prevent cracking, and they were still working out software errors that caused air-to-missiles to hang up on the wing after motor initiations, bomb racks to drop instead of the bombs that were on them, and weapon strings to hit the target with the first or last bomb instead of the middle one. Wow, does that bring back memories.

The top issues we are working on the F-35 are the carrier tailhook system is being redesigned and symbology jitter on the helmet mounted display. Yep, software is behind schedule. Its amazing how long it takes to update sofware. Some of the simple changes we asked on the F-18 took 10 years to be fielded.

dhc4ever wrote:

The F18 is as mature as its going to get, from here on it just gets "old" its already outclassed in many areas by the opposition, so what choice do we have?

The airframe sure is old, not much though, first flight was only in 1995, the X-35 first flew a mere 5 years later. But the US Navy has no intention to replace the F/A-18E's with the F-35, that is the job of the F/A-XX. Actually the opposite it has cut back F-35C orders and continues to order more F/A-18E's (Navy's order for the F-35C went from a 480 fighter order to a mere 260).

Instead, including the 24 you down under bought, already have things such as APG-79 AESA Radar, Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System, which are in the Block II upgrades the US Navy designed for the Super Hornet to keep it relevant during the F-35's operation. Followed by the Sensor Fusion platform for the F/A-18E which is in testing already, just like the F-35 has (the second most "special" thing everyone mentions after Stealth) for the entire F/A-18E and EA-18G fleets the US Navy is developing with Boeing.

Since sensor fusion is always point #2 out of a F-35's supporters mouth up here, lets talk about point #1 too ... "Stealth" ...

Just two points of thought, one is that the F-117 has only double the RCS of the F-35, giving the "enemy" 50 years of RADAR development (the SA-3 was fielded in 1961) to close that gap, including the last 10 years where longer wavelength RADAR's have started to proliferate due to what was learned in Kosovo.

Followed by point two, a US Navy EA-18G, managed to effectively jam and "shoot down" a F-22 in exercises, which might not seem like much since the F-22 is a older craft, but by the USAF's own admission it's RCS is 7 times smaller then the F-35 making it just that much more stealthy.

So, call me skeptical, but with the high costs of the F-35 both in initial purchase and O&M costs, it doesn't two major selling points seem less like a big deal then they are made out to be.

After all the Canadian government had to cut out conversion to the refuelling system from the Navy that Canada uses ($420 million), cutting the ammunition purchased by $218 million, and cutting infrastructural changes to bases by $156 million. That is $794 million dollars (9%) worth of cuts to keep the initial sticker price to $9 billion after a independent audit of the program.

Dimitri

slimjim wrote:

At this point in F-18s development they were working on its third wing design

Considering the F/A-18 Hornet project was started in 1975, and fielded in 1983 (8 years), and F/A-18E Super Hornets was started in 1992 and fielded in 1999 (7 years).

While the F-35 has had since 2001, or a full 11 years, both Hornets were already long done their development by "this point".

Dimitri

Comparing the F/A 18 to the F35 is virtually impossible to do. The F35 is capable of super sonic speeds without an after-burner - this alone is a monumental undertaking requiring new nozzle geometry and technology that didn't exist before. The F/A18 is, from a military standpoint, another conventional airplane in a long line of conventional planes. The F35 is all new in its construction and operation.
I am not defending the cost overruns or the time overruns but the initial plane that was accepted was way over budget while the one that lost to it (Boeing's version) was on budget and worked other than having to shed some protective sheet metal to make the VTOL practically functional. That fix was already in the works and would have added nothing to the cost of future aircraft.
Congress was used to the overruns from Lockheed and I think there is a reason the Lockheed was chosen over Boeing - and it wasn't "the best plane won".