back to article US military F-35 readiness problems highlighted in aptly timed report

The reason a US Marine Corps pilot ejected from his F-35B stealth fighter jet last weekend remains unknown, but a government agency report on the dismal state of the F-35 fleet's maintenance provides a few clues. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which coincidentally released its report the same week the …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Optional Extras Not Included.......

    F-35 Pricelist -- It's 85 million dollars with no engine.....Yup.....engine is extra!!

    Then there's the wings, the tailfin, the wheels, the software.......and so on.......

    .....maybe 500 million dollars for a COMPLETE aeroplane............

    .....which (occasionally) falls out of the sky.................

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge
      Black Helicopters

      Re: Optional Extras Not Included.......

      Engines are usually an optional extra when buying an airframe.

      The manual lists the ones that are officially supported, just like server hard disks. Though it's somewhat more risky to fit an engine that's not on the list.

    2. Andy Non Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Optional Extras Not Included.......

      Do the pilots have to pay extra for heated seats?

      1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: Optional Extras Not Included.......

        Heated-seat activation is subscription-fee based ... the F-35 is the BMW of jets.

    3. teknopaul

      Re: Optional Extras Not Included.......

      The F35 is just a way to spend poor people's tax dòlars on rich people's bonuses. It doesn't matter if it flys. No one is going to attack the US. Nobody wants all it's problems.

      usa has 11 carrier groups. That makes no sense. Only ever used in offense. Imagine how space age the US would be if they didn't do this, and invested in local infrastructure.

      1. werdsmith Silver badge

        Re: Optional Extras Not Included.......

        US operates a global hegemony, it requires the rest of the planet to act in the interests on the US at all times and needs a very large stick to ensure this happens.

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "we stand ready to partner with the government"

    Also known as : we want to keep our snout in the trough.

    And, since Lockheed is the one making the planes, it's rather easy to stay put. The trough is now an Olympic swimming pool, and Lockheed is on a floating long chair, dipping in as it pleases.

    And since Russia is no longer a military threat, and China is way off, the situation really is a day at the beach for Lockheed.

    A loooong day.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "we stand ready to partner with the government"

      Those conflicts are neither over or far off, and this farce should have been canceled years ago when it became clear the airframe would never meet it's design criteria.

      For all they have moved the goal posts, it will never meet the reduced project requirements. It was literally designed to fail. The reformers within the DOD tried to force the defense contractors to adopt modular design and modern engineering practices to reduce costs, patted themselves on the back, and then signed a bunch of contracts that ensured exactly the opposite happened.

      The fatal flaw was thinking they didn't need to pay for in house expertise to run the design phase of the program. So the whole project was stocked by the worst of the self serving industry it was supposed to reform. Now they are still paying billions because the vendor runs the whole show, and has little incentive to play nice with the idiots it helped install as "oversight".

      Now we are entering into an era of direct conflict with major powers and we are flushing most of out R&D into a money pit that will never deliver. They are to slow, to unreliable, too expensive, and their stealth technology was designed to counter air defense systems from the 1990's. Due to the project delays and overruns, they were obsolete before they could field the first test squadron. (That block couldn't even fly combat missions, and couldn't even be upgraded to one's that could. We have and continue to buy whole new airframes to replace the defective ones, which themselves would never fly a combat mission, or even finish the first pass of the acceptance test plan).

      Forget retaking control of the servicing program. Spike this POS. Build three functional air-frame lines for the same price. Instead we can't even procure a helicopter or an transport plane that isn't markedly worse than what it is replacing by every performance metric. We are still using helicopters from the 1960s because they have better in-service metrics, heavier lift capability, and can operate in hotter and higher conditions than "modern" airframes that were supposed to replace them. The C-130 is still flying instead of three tenders that replaced it, and that's with a 1990s facelift that also induced software problems, stalling issues, and icing problems that the original didn't suffer from.

      Losing control of a project during the design phase almost guarantees failure. Once you have failed at that, even pouring 3-5x the money on top of that failure won't automatically yield success.

      10 years ago, in these very forums I said we needed to kill off this turkey and start over or in 10 years we'd still be complaining an no closer to a working air frame. Here we are, and a working F-35 is still decades away, and the latest block aircraft that haven't even shipped yet still can meet full combat requirements as outlined in the tender, and will be solidly spanked in the air by 35 year old aircraft as long as they get an upgrade to 15 year old radar technology. The F-35 is still in the falling out of the sky phase. Just one more in a long line of aircraft that the press call a flying coffin.

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      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "we stand ready to partner with the government"

        Have you been watching Pierre Sprey on RT again?

      4. cyberdemon Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: "we stand ready to partner with the government"

        > The fatal flaw was thinking they didn't need to pay for in house expertise to run the design phase of the program. So the whole project was stocked by the worst of the self serving industry it was supposed to reform.

        Argh. Now where have I heard that one before..

        Ah yes, every major engineering project the UK has undertaken since the days of David Cameron..

        Have the UK government somehow infiltrated the USA?

        What IS "call me Dave" doing these days? He's not working in the DOD is he?

      5. Neoc

        Never understood that decision

        I remember watching a documentary, ages back now, about the development of the next fighter craft. When the X-35 won the contract, I was stunned - on all counts the X-35 appeared to be the lesser contender. Then I heard who was building it and it made sense.

  3. Tron Silver badge

    At least the ejector seat worked.

    So, 'sustainment' is American for maintenance then.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: At least the ejector seat worked.

      As they say in Asia, same same, but different.

      To use a simile, it is to maintenance, as the poets courtly love is to fornication in the back of a cortina.

  4. abend0c4 Silver badge

    Not just the planes...

    Seems in the UK the aircraft carriers are also a maintenance nightmare.

    So the ongoing argument about whether or not there is a shortage of F35s to go on them would appear to be moot.

    Perhaps in about 18 months time we'll be "generously" sending them to Ukraine.

  5. bofh1961

    Too many cooks spoil the broth

    Multinational designs usually fail. The Panavia Tornado being a good example*. The F-14 or F-15 could have performed the same missions just as well, at a lower cost and an earlier arrival in service. However, those US aircraft wouldn't have provided much profit or employment to the aerospace industries of Britain, Germany and Italy.

    * Early variants of the Tornado were vulnerable to ground fire when attacking at low level - ancient Blackburn Buccaneers had to be hurriedly taken out of retirement and sent to the gulf to mark targets so the Tornadoes could bomb from altitude.

    There have been projects where two nations have cooperated that have been successful, notably the P-51, the Alpha Jet and the Jaguar.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Too many cooks spoil the broth

      >> Multinational designs usually fail.

      Nonsense.

      >>The Panavia Tornado being a good example*. * Early variants of the Tornado were vulnerable to ground fire when attacking at low level - ancient Blackburn Buccaneers had to be hurriedly taken out of retirement and sent to the gulf to mark targets so the Tornadoes could bomb from altitude.

      *Any* aircraft is vulnerable to ground fire when flying low level, and I wait for you to explain how you think that being designed by an international team makes the airframe more susceptible to it. Buccaneers temporary returns had more to do with it having the equipment while Tornado's still wasn't ready at the time.

      As for Tornado, it was quite a success. The platform served four nations, all with different priorities, over nearly four decades, which isn't bad for a platform that was one of the first to be designed for multi-role capabilities. When it came out, it repeatedly beat American platforms like the F-111 in bombing competitions.

      >> The F-14 or F-15 could have performed the same missions just as well

      The F-14 was a single role aircraft, it was highly expensive to run and was a true a maintenance nightmare which suffered from a number of design problems (for example, the wing sweep mechanism was so poorly designed that it often failed in a way that one wing was stuck in a different position than the other, something was physically impossible with Tornado's wing sweep system). The engines were prone to in-flight flame/outs/engine stalls, and the whole aircraft had a tendency to flat-spin. It was designed around excess power and the needs of carrier operations, but based on technology from the early 50's. It wasn't able to match Tornado's precision, couldn't do most of Tornado's roles, couldn't do low-level penetration, nor could the F-14 offer any of Tornado's other advantages (such like it's short takeoff and landing capability, thanks to reverse thrusters, or a terrain following capable RADAR for computer-controlled low level flying).

      The F-15 would have been a closer match, and overall it has shown to be a very good weapon platform. But as with the F-14, the F-15 offered older tech (mechanical flight controls and simpler avionics, Tornado had FBW and much more capable computers), and The F-15 also lacked the low level capabilities or the short takeoff/landing abilities of Tornado. Like many American aircraft types, the F-15, too, was a maintenance nightmare, mostly because it wasn't designed for easy access (ask the Saudis, which have been operating both Tornado and F-15; Tornado spent more time in the air while F-15's were often sitting on the ground because maintenance was much more time consuming than on Tornado, where easy maintenance has been part of the design).

      Needless to say that F-15 also wasn't any cheaper.

      Then there is the other fact that using American hardware means giving up on a country's own abilities to develop advanced defense tech. Western Europe (including Germany, the country from which the USA exfiltrated military tech and engineers after WW2 to prop up its own defense base) is actually very good at defense tech, often much better than their American counterparts, but also has to fight with constant underfunding.

      >> However, those US aircraft wouldn't have provided much profit or employment to the aerospace industries of Britain, Germany and Italy.

      Wrong. Germany's aerospace firms did very well from building F-104's in license from Lockheed. They were even able to improve the type with new capabilities, something Italy continued to do when they got theirs from Germany.

      What it doesn't do is give those countries control over the technology, and especially with American military kit there always are strings attached. When Lockheed bribed the German government to decide for the F-104 instead of a German designed plane, they already had more advanced designs in the works (and would have competed against American tech), which after the decision were all quickly terminated. The same happened later when Germany developed its own stealth aircraft (MBB Lampyridae), which was also quickly terminated after it was shown to American officials during a factory tour.

      It's important for Europe to develop its own defense technology, and unless you want to see further reduction in social services, health care and other government expenditure in a shift to more defense spending then multi-national programs are the way to go.

    2. EvilDrSmith Silver badge

      Re: Too many cooks spoil the broth

      "Multinational designs usually fail. The Panavia Tornado being a good example*. "

      Um, apart from the fact that Tornado was a success, not a failure.

      Designed primarily to carry out interdiction missions at high speed / very low level in the European theatre at night / poor weather, it was fully capable of doing that (more so than any other aircraft at the time). It also provided (depending on exact variant) a very good recce capability, anti-shipping role and ECR variant (electronic warfare). A more significant variant produced the air defence version which while not a brilliant dog-fighter, was very well suited to the role it was designed for: stooging around for hours on end (specifically over the North Sea, being the expected environment), and intercepting fast, low-level aircraft.

      The buccaneers were brought in since they had a laser designator capability in 1990; the Tornado's was still in development: from memory, a couple of TIALD were put together from development bits and pieces and deployed on the Tornados, too.

      The Germans have just (about) retired the last of their Tornados - so that's 40+ years of service. RAF retired theirs about 5 years back, I think. Hardly a failure.

      As for other multinational designs, well Jaguar (Anglo-French) was successful, and would have likely sold more were it not for Dassault taking over the French company involved in it and trying to kill the sales since it competed with Mirage F1.

      Alpha Jet (German-French) has has a very long and successful service life as an advanced trainer / light attack aircraft.

      Harrier could be viewed as multinational, since the upgrade from Harrier GR3 (AV-8A) to GR5 and onwards (AV-8B, Harrier II) was driven by USMC requirements, such that Harrier went from a UK design to an Anglo-American design.

      Typhoon (Eurofighter: Anglo/Italian/German/Spanish) had some programme / cost issues (French walked out of project; in early 1990's the Germans tried to massively down-scope capability), but has delivered an excellent multirole (true swing capability) combat aircraft, with a clear life/development path set down (Contrary to what some people still insist on saying, Typhoon was designed always to have extensive air-to-ground capability; initial entry into service with much of this capability not 'enabled' reflected the needs of the partner nations - 3 of the 4 of which were operating Tornado for the air-to ground role at the time).

      A400 (Airbus) transport had some early issues, but is fundamentally an effective air-transport, and most definitely is not a failure.

      Obviously, any multi-national attempts that failed would, logically, not end up in service, but I can't think of any multi-national military aircraft design projects that have failed, while there are plenty of national projects that have (e.g. TSR2, Avro Arrow, A-12, B-70 Valkyrie)

      1. druck Silver badge

        Re: Too many cooks spoil the broth

        The engines were prone to in-flight flame/outs/engine stalls, and the whole aircraft had a tendency to flat-spin.

        Wow, you've watched Top Gun, and that is pretty much the only fact we can draw from your post.

        1. werdsmith Silver badge

          Re: Too many cooks spoil the broth

          Pub talk debates about military hardware capabilities are hilarious.

        2. SCP

          Re: Too many cooks spoil the broth

          The F-14 Digital Flight Control System upgrade of the 1990's in part addressed issues such as flat spin departures and carrier operation challenges.

          It is fair to say that the F-14 at the time of MRCA/Tornado inception did have issues, so saying it would have been a better choice is a debatable matter. Subsequent Tornado operational use was generally favourable so it can be considered a successful aircraft design.

  6. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    Isn't the F35 supposed to be

    a plane capable of managing its own maintenance schedule? To the extent of ringing up Digikey or Pratt and Whitney and placing the order itself?

  7. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
    Joke

    I have a solution

    Just solve the engine problems by equipping the F-35 with nuclear fusion engines, which I believe are also just around the corner, thus killing two birds with one stone!

  8. Neoc
    Trollface

    "The DoD originally designed the F-35 program with management of sustainment operations placed squarely in the hands of contractors"

    Des that mean the DoD will push for a new Federal "Right to Repair" bill?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If you don't assign the budget, personnel, facilities, tooling and time to do the maintenance, low and behold, the maintenance is not done.

    This is a lesson aptly demonstrated by Thames Water. Take the money and do less-than-the-bare minimum to maintain the system, with inevitable outcomes.

    Does saving a couple mil here and there on the maintenance line stack up to the capex hit? There have been what, 5 F35 crashes globally, at least two of which are maintenance failings related (maybe more, but I don't have the stats to hand.)

  10. silent_count
    Holmes

    Nobody is going to invade the US - they are a nuclear power. The US is not going to invade another a nuclear power - surely even they can't be arrogant enough to think that's going to end well.

    For the kind of air defence fielded by countries which the US does find some moral imperative to invade, F18s do the job plenty well enough. Hell! A few Spitfires from your nearest RAF museum would probably get the job done.

    Me thinks the whole F35 program is about funnelling money to defence contractors who will have an open spot on the board for good little politicians who give them piles of taxpayer dollars.

  11. HammerOn1024

    And This is What Happens

    As usual, the DoD can't make up its mind. One reason for this is CYA, the other Congress, and is 30%/70%. Congress is great at mandates but not funding them initially nor sustainably. I remember when the F-35 maintenance was contracted to be maintained by LMT and thought "Yeah, that's a bad idea." for a multitude of reasons. But no one listens to the "Evil Contractor" (Fuck you Obama), even when they are the "Disinterested 3rd Party" who's job it is to give good advice to the government given the information available at the time.

    The classic example of Congress falling flat is GPS M-Code: All DoD systems were to be able to receive M-Code in 2017... it still hasn't happened and it will be at least another decade and a half. The reason is pure cost: Cost of creating the new chipset production line to the complete boxes. Even with modifying existing systems, instead of wholesale replacement, it costs in the area of $40,000 - $60,000 per RECEIVER, to do the upgrade. And these upgrades can't be done in the field. New box's are in the $80,000 - $100,000 range. Now throw in the downtime for the item the box is pulled from, sent back to the OEM for re-manufacture - pulling a card out and replacing it with a new one - ATP'ing at the OEM, retesting at the Program Office to re-certify the modification, and one gets to understanding the costs involved with 10's of thousands of devices: missiles to nuclear powered ships, subs, aircraft, HUMVEEs, tanks, radio's, etc.

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