F-35 Lightning II: News thread

The Pentagon will have to live with limits on F-35’s supersonic flights

WASHINGTON — An issue that risks damage to the F-35’s tail section if the aircraft needs to maintain supersonic speeds is not worth fixing and will instead be addressed by changing the operating parameters    , the F-35 Joint Program Office told Defense News in a statement Friday.

The deficiency, first reported by Defense News in 2019, means that at extremely high altitudes, the U.S. Navy’s and Marine Corps’ versions of the F-35 jet can only fly at supersonic speeds for short bursts of time before there is a risk of structural damage and loss of stealth capability.

The problem may make it impossible for the Navy’s F-35C to conduct supersonic intercepts.

“This issue was closed on December 17, 2019 with no further actions and concurrence from the U.S. services,” the F-35 JPO statement read. “The [deficiency report] was closed under the category of ‘no plan to correct,’ which is used by the F-35 team when the operator value provided by a complete fix does not justify the estimated cost of that fix.

“In this case, the solution would require a lengthy development and flight testing of a material coating that can tolerate the flight environment for unlimited time while satisfying the weight and other requirements of a control surface. Instead, the issue is being addressed procedurally by imposing a time limit on high-speed flight.”

The carrier-launched "C" variant and the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing "B" version will both be able to carry out all their missions without correcting the deficiency, the JPO said.

The potential damage from sustained high speeds would influence not only the F-35’s airframe and the low-observable coating that keeps it stealthy, but also the myriad antennas located on the back of the plane that are currently vulnerable to damage, according to documents exclusively obtained by Defense News.

The JPO had classified the issues for the "B" and "C" models as separate category 1 deficiencies, indicating in one document that the problem presents a challenge to accomplishing one of the key missions of the fighter jet. In this scale, category 1 represents the most serious type of deficiency.

While it may seem dire that an aircraft procured for flying at supersonic speeds will be unable to do so for extended periods, the F-35 may not need to do it that often.

For the F-35, as opposed to the F-22 where supersonic flight is baked into its tactics, the ability to fly supersonic is more of a “break glass in case of emergency” feature, said Bryan Clark, an analyst with the Hudson Institute and a retired naval officer.

“Supersonic flight is not a big feature of the F-35,” Clark said. “It’s capable of it, but when you talk to F-35 pilots, they’ll say they’d fly supersonic in such limited times and cases that — while having the ability is nice because you never know when you are going to need to run away from something very fast — it’s just not a main feature for their tactics.”

In fact, going supersonic obviates the main advantages of the F-35, Clark said. “It sort of defeats all the main advantages of the F-35,” he explained. “It takes you out of stealthiness, it burns gas like crazy so you lose the range benefits of a single engine and larger fuel tank. When you go into afterburner, you are heating up the outside of your aircraft.”

That creates all kinds of signatures that can be detected by an adversary, Clark said.

What if?

But a retired naval aviator told Defense News last year that the limitations on the afterburner could prove deadly in close-combat scenarios.

The concept of operations for the F-35 is to kill an enemy aircraft before it can detect the fighter jet, but relying on long-range kills is a perspective that, for historical and cultural reasons, naval aviation distrusts. In the Vietnam War, when air warfare began heavily relying on missiles and moved away from the forward gun, it caused a spike in air-to-air combat deaths.

The lesson naval aviation took away was to prevent the latest and greatest technology from offsetting the learning of fundamentals, and it was the impetus behind the formation of Top Gun 50 years ago, a naval strike fighter course for training and tactics development.

“The solution is: ‘Hey, we’ll just limit the afterburner to less than a minute at a time,’ ” a retired naval aviator said when told of the issue. “Which, with what the aircraft is supposed to do and be capable of, that’s a pretty significant limitation.”

Primarily it would be an issue if the aircraft had to maneuver at high speeds to avoid a missile or survive a dogfight.

The issue is compounded for the Navy, which must operate forward for months at a time, because any significant issues with coatings or the structure of aircraft would require a depot-level repair. And so a damaged aircraft would remain damaged until its host ship returns to home port, reducing the combat effectiveness of the air wing.

“We might have to be operating at sea for eight months, so if you damage something on week one, guess what? It’s damaged for the rest of the deployment,” the aviator said. “And it affects your ability to evade detection by the enemy — you just degraded that asset permanently until you can get it somewhere where it can be fixed, at great expense and time.”

Other deficiencies

Three other category 1 deficiencies have also been officially designated as “closed," meaning they have either been fixed or the performance of the aircraft is being accepted as is, the JPO reported.

The so-called green glow deficiency has been closed out as of last July. Green glow refers to a green light emitted by the helmet-mounted display’s LED lights. That glow obstructs a pilot’s view of an aircraft carrier’s deck lights during landing operations at sea in very low light, such as that experienced at night.

The issue was closed “as a result of incorporating an improved Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) Helmet Mounted Display (HMD),” the JPO told Defense News.

“The Generation III F-35 OLED Helmet Display Unit (HDU) significantly reduced the ‘green glow’ experienced by pilots during night operations. The F-35 JPO has taken delivery of the first order of F-35 OLED HDUs to support the U.S. Navy (USN) and U.S. Marine Corps (USMC), and a second order of OLED HDUs has been placed,” the office’s statement read.

An issue created when the F-35A and F-35B blow a tire, which can result in a severed hydraulic line, will remain uncorrected, the JPO statement said, but it has not come up again since the program switched tires.

“The DR [deficiency report] was closed under the category of ‘no plan to correct’ based on the fact that the landing gear system design meets all F-35 safety standards,” the statement read. “Issues related to premature bursting of tires were resolved by tire design changes during early F-35 development and no instances of dual hydraulic system loss caused by a tire burst have ever been observed on an F-35.”
And an issue that forced the F-35 to land in cold weather because of battery trouble has been fixed, the JPO said. The issue was caused by extreme cold entering the plane when the doors to the jet’s nose landing gear were open, setting off alarm bells, according to “for official use only” documents exclusively obtained by Defense News.

The cold would enter the plane and overwhelm the battery heater blanket, which is installed to keep a 28-volt battery running at peak condition. The battery would not shut down, but because of the cold, the blanket could not heat the battery as quickly as intended, triggering warning lights in the cockpit that the battery was going to fail.

A software upgrade fixed the problem, the JPO said.

“This issue was resolved on July 22, 2019 due to improvements in the battery charger’s firmware,” the statement read. “The firmware changes were developed by the battery charger supplier, and integrated and tested by Lockheed Martin and the F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office.”

Five F-35 issues have been downgraded, but they remain unsolved

kvs wrote:No problem, the NATzO fake stream media will ignore these problems when compared to its rabid libel and smear of anything from Russia.
And I am sure they will pay off some Russian losers here and there to "corroborate" their propaganda such as we had with the WADA
farce.

GarryB wrote:So they are saying with its limitations that instead of using it as a fighter that they are going to use F-16s and F-15s as fighters and the F-35 as some sort of mini JSTARS type platform???

First of all that means the naval F-35 will rely on the F-18 remaining the fighter... so the F/A-18 which is a fighter and a strike aircraft will become a fighter and the F-35 will be a stealthy JSTARS?

So why would they need 3,500 F-35 JSTARS?

Next step would be to cut numbers of F-35s to probably 1,500 or perhaps even 750, and to put the F-15 and F-16 back in to production again... hahahaha

Next step would be to cut numbers of F-35s to probably 1,500 or perhaps even 750, and to put the F-15 and F-16 back in to production again... hahahaha

kvs wrote:Amazing corruption in the US MIC.   So the F-35 cannot fly at supersonic speeds.   What!?  It is not even about it flying at over
Mach 2.  It can't even exceed Mach 1 without damage and there apparently is no fix.   Thus, this is not a technical hangup but
a gross design flaw.

Uncle Scumbag waving his stick now looks like the meaty sort of stick.

F-35 Faces Parts Problems After Turks Expulsion

Trump On F-35: ‘We Should Make Everything’ In US

ahmedfire wrote:

Trump On F-35: ‘We Should Make Everything’ In US

More bugs

Swiss Internal Report Flags F-35 Afterburner Issue

A department in the Swiss government tasked with defense procurements has flagged a problem with the F-35 jet - the engine’s afterburner causes overheating at the aircraft’s rear.

The Military Intelligence Service (SRM) reported what it calls a “serious” problem with the F-35B and F-35 jets, to the Swiss Federal Department of Defense (DDPS) which compiled an internal report.

“The F-35B and F-35C jets suffer from serious problems when using afterburning. Post combustion, an excessive increase in heat at the rear of the aircraft has been observed,” wrote PageSuite, citing the DDPS document.

A jet engine’s afterburner component provides an increase in thrust for supersonic flight, take-off and in combat situations.

The heat from afterburner exhaust causes the F-35 B/C jets to experience “bubbling and blistering” of its radar-absorbent material (RAM) and of horizontal tail surfaces and boom.

Sensitive sensors buried inside the skin of the rear tail surfaces are also susceptible to damage.

The US military reportedly faced the same problem in 2011: F-35B and F-35C flying near their maximum service ceiling of 50,000 feet damaged themselves using their afterburners to attain speeds of Mach 1.3 and 1.4.

Following the incident, the Marines instituted a policy requiring F-35B pilots not to engage afterburners for more than 80 seconds cumulatively at Mach 1.3, or 40 seconds at Mach 1.4. Navy F-35C pilots have 50 seconds at Mach 1.3 to ration. Three minutes of non-afterburning flight to cool down the tail area was suggested to “reset” the afterburner allowance.

While Switzerland is not looking at the “troubled” versions of the jet under its $8 billion procurement project, it is unsure whether the F-35A, is free from the problem. The F-35A is pitted against Eurofighter Typhoon, Dassault Rafale, Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and Saab's JAS-39E/F Gripen to replace the Swiss Air Force’s ageing Northrop F-5 Tiger IIs.

“Are these difficulties known by B and C also present in model A, which the Swiss army could buy? We are entitled to question the supersonic capabilities of the F-35A, the version intended for the US Air Force and most export customers,” the SRM questioned in the internal report.

When asked about the problem, manufacturer Lockheed Martin said: “The heat emitted by the afterburner does not present any problem for the F-35A, whose afterburner does not have the same characteristics as the models B and C. The capacity of the F-35A in afterburner or in supersonic flight is therefore not questioned.”

USAF abandons 80% mission capability rate goal after F-22, F-35 and F-16 fail to hit target

USAF abandons 80% mission capability rate goal after F-22, F-35 and F-16 fail to hit target
The US Air Force (USAF) has abandoned mission capability rate goals for its Lockheed Martin F-22s, F-35s and F-16s, after none of the fighters hit the target.

In September 2018, former US secretary of defense James Mattis ordered the USAF and US Navy (USN) to increase mission capable rates for those aircraft and Boeing F/A-18s to more than 80% by the end of September 2019. The mission capability rate is the percentage of aircraft that are able to perform at least one mission over a period of time.

USAF chief of staff nominee General Charles Brown says the service has dropped that readiness goal.

“The Office of the Secretary of Defense determined the fiscal year 2019 80% mission capable rate initiative is not an FY2020 requirement,” he said in written testimony sent to the US Armed Services Committee and released on 7 May. “As a result, the air force returned to allowing lead commands to determine the required [mission capability] rates to meet readiness objectives.”

After initially making rosy projections about the F-35 reaching 80% mission capability, the Department of Defense (DoD) gradually walked back its forecast. In July 2019, it said F-35s and F-22s would fail to meet the goal. Nevertheless, F-16s were supposed to hit 80% mission capability by September 2019. In the end, not one of the USAF’s fighters achieved the mark.

The F-16’s mission capable reached a high of 75% in June 2019, F-22s reached a high of 68% in April 2019 and F-35s hit a high of 74% in September 2019, says Brown in his testimony. The USN reported in September 2019 that its fleet of F/A-18s surpassed the 80% mark.

“From April 2018 to February 2020, overall readiness increased 16%, and pacing-unit readiness – those units required in the first 30 days of Combatant Command war plans – increased 35%,” he adds.

Despite improvements, the end goal was not reached for a variety of reasons, says Brown.

“Maintaining ageing aircraft is an extremely difficult and expensive task, while new, technologically advanced weapons systems present their own challenges,” he says. “We developed and are now implementing a Strategic Sustainment Framework that will both improve materiel readiness and set the conditions for long-term cost reduction by developing multiple sources of supply, enhancing our repair network capabilities and capitalising on conditions-based maintenance, plus other commercial best practices.”

Details of the new Strategic Sustainment Framework were not disclosed.

F-35s and F-22s are notoriously difficult to maintain because of complex designs and stealth body coatings, which must be periodically preserved by hand. In particular, the relatively new F-35 remains plagued with design and production problems resulting in some 873 deficiencies, according to the DoD’s most-recent Office of the Director of Operational Test & Evaluation report, released to the US Congress on 30 January.

ahmedfire wrote:

USAF abandons 80% mission capability rate goal after F-22, F-35 and F-16 fail to hit target

USAF abandons 80% mission capability rate goal after F-22, F-35 and F-16 fail to hit target
The US Air Force (USAF) has abandoned mission capability rate goals for its Lockheed Martin F-22s, F-35s and F-16s, after none of the fighters hit the target.

In September 2018, former US secretary of defense James Mattis ordered the USAF and US Navy (USN) to increase mission capable rates for those aircraft and Boeing F/A-18s to more than 80% by the end of September 2019. The mission capability rate is the percentage of aircraft that are able to perform at least one mission over a period of time.

USAF chief of staff nominee General Charles Brown says the service has dropped that readiness goal.

“The Office of the Secretary of Defense determined the fiscal year 2019 80% mission capable rate initiative is not an FY2020 requirement,” he said in written testimony sent to the US Armed Services Committee and released on 7 May. “As a result, the air force returned to allowing lead commands to determine the required [mission capability] rates to meet readiness objectives.”

After initially making rosy projections about the F-35 reaching 80% mission capability, the Department of Defense (DoD) gradually walked back its forecast. In July 2019, it said F-35s and F-22s would fail to meet the goal. Nevertheless, F-16s were supposed to hit 80% mission capability by September 2019. In the end, not one of the USAF’s fighters achieved the mark.

The F-16’s mission capable reached a high of 75% in June 2019, F-22s reached a high of 68% in April 2019 and F-35s hit a high of 74% in September 2019, says Brown in his testimony. The USN reported in September 2019 that its fleet of F/A-18s surpassed the 80% mark.

“From April 2018 to February 2020, overall readiness increased 16%, and pacing-unit readiness – those units required in the first 30 days of Combatant Command war plans – increased 35%,” he adds.

Despite improvements, the end goal was not reached for a variety of reasons, says Brown.

“Maintaining ageing aircraft is an extremely difficult and expensive task, while new, technologically advanced weapons systems present their own challenges,” he says. “We developed and are now implementing a Strategic Sustainment Framework that will both improve materiel readiness and set the conditions for long-term cost reduction by developing multiple sources of supply, enhancing our repair network capabilities and capitalising on conditions-based maintenance, plus other commercial best practices.”

Details of the new Strategic Sustainment Framework were not disclosed.

F-35s and F-22s are notoriously difficult to maintain because of complex designs and stealth body coatings, which must be periodically preserved by hand. In particular, the relatively new F-35 remains plagued with design and production problems resulting in some 873 deficiencies, according to the DoD’s most-recent Office of the Director of Operational Test & Evaluation report, released to the US Congress on 30 January.

F-35 crashes at Eglin AFB, pilot successfully ejected and in stable condition. 2nd crash at base in four days

ahmedfire wrote:This is about half billion loss in one week !