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Enthusiast Joined: Mar 13, 2007 Posts: 98 Status: Offline

I'm rather tired of reading all the usual cheerleader's "Rah-rah!" on the end-all-be-all-fighter plane ever designed, so this is rather refreshing and casts a little light on why its been over 6 months since the wonder-jet has last flown.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f-35-jsf-hit-by-serious-design-problems-04311/#more

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fox100 wrote:

I'm rather tired of reading all the usual cheerleader's "Rah-rah!" on the end-all-be-all-fighter plane ever designed, so this is rather refreshing and casts a little light on why its been over 6 months since the wonder-jet has last flown.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f-35-jsf-hit-by-serious-design-problems-04311/#more

Fox100, Johan Boeder is a "journalist" who has never said anything good about USA aviation or aircraft, he works as the director of systems design and integration for BEVER Automatic a software systems integrator in Holland. He made his "journalism" mark with a factually innaccurate article about a Dutch Lockheed Hercules incident.

The web site is at: http://www.beveraut.nl

F-16.net Editor Joined: Sep 23, 2003 Posts: 2862

Unfortunately, just about everything in that article is a pretty fair time-line of JSF.

Nothing new and the electrical problem is fixable....................as a matter of fact its not uncommon to have development issues and even crash from time to time. Really, the F-35 is doing much better than many famous jets of the past. (i.e. F-14, F-111, etc. etc.) Remember, the F-22 had its fair share of problems and even crashed at one point. As a whole the JSF is doing very well.

fox100 wrote:

I'm rather tired of reading all the usual cheerleader's "Rah-rah!"

Funny because all I hear is people whining about. Research the F-14 test phase and you'll see how bad programs used to be.

I read the first three paragraphs, laughed my A$$ and stopped reading, how much misinformation could this guy possibly spew? I don't know how anyone could call that "A very good F-35 article" by any stretch of the imagination
He clearly doesn't have a clue not only about how fast the jet was going at the time but what the root problem even was, right wing FLAPERON'S, as if there is more than one on the right wing, what a bunch of crap. I saw the video from the chase jet and it's pretty amazing how it handled during landing.
THE JET IS FREAKING AWESOME and the next one is even more bad A$$.

Happy_Gilmore wrote:

I read the first three paragraphs, laughed my A$$ and stopped reading...

That's about how far I got. I could spend hours dissecting all the misinformation and flat out mistakes, but here are a couple that jumped out:

After a series of 7 quite successful flights, the test flight program stops in February 2007 to fix some minor problems in the JSF flight control software. Just wrong.

In March 2007, the JSF returns to flight status and takes off for the first supersonic flight. Huh? AA1 went supersonic? I must have been home sick that day.

But then, destiny strikes. Are you kidding me? 'destiny strikes'??? That alone reveals his clearly biased and slanted view.

In an emergency procedure, power is restored and Jeff Knowles regains control of the plane. Misleading, at best. The power was "restored" automatically by the system (within milliseconds), not by any 'procedure'. Also, Knowles was never out of control of the plane, so he didn't have to 'regain' control.

Due to control problems with right wing flaperons, the JSF has to make that landing at an exceptional high speed of 220 knots (350 km/hr). Wrong in multiple ways. The flaperons (both of them - one on the left and one on the right) were functioning - it was one stab that was locked. And while the landing did wind up happening at a high speed, the fact is that a normal-speed landing would have been possible, so the phrase "has to make" is just wrong.

And finally: After several weeks of evaluations, the engineers learn that there are serious design problems in this new electrical system. Expensive redesign will be necessary. Gross overexageration at best. The actual scope of the necessary redesign was limited to a small fraction of the total system.

I agree that all new planes have had issues and even accidents. I remnber also how early F-18's had turbine (or was it compressor?) blowouts that caused accidents more than once. But then there was no iternet back then to speculate the program is about to hit rock bottom either.
The capability upgrades mentioned in the article are not news either. Everybody knows the F-35 wont have all its AA bells and whistles ready in early blocks. ANother fact the article forgets is that the transition will be gradual and thus there will be no shortage of AA aircraft whatsoever, geesh. THe UK will be well served with the typhoon before and after any F-35 upgrades.
Theres no reason for doom and gloom here.

Newbie Joined: Nov 07, 2007 Posts: 11 Status: Offline

To me, this author makes a few good points, even if the story of the last test flight is a bit dramatic. Here is my take:

1. The JSF budget is tight. Because of the costs associated with design changes, the contractors want to cut testing now, which will only stretch the length of time for full capacity as more updates will have to come after the planes are manufactured.

2. The JSF may end up being similar in price to the F-22 once feature creap and development costs are accounted for. We saw a similar issue in the Navy, where the inexpensive Virginia class submarine was supposed to be cheaper than the Cold War era Seawolf class that was stopped after three boats. But in reality the Virginia class is almost the same price.

3. Air superiority is not the primary role of the "strike fighter" for US planners, but it is perhaps the main role among European buyers. See how the Eurofighter and Rafale are designed for air-to-air first and only now are strike-capable versions coming being assembled. The recent and previous articles on Defense Industry Daily about Australia's debate about the F-35 have a similar tone: Australia is worried about high end Sukhois in their region. Is a "strike fighter" the right bet for Australia?

4. Most modern European countries spend a pitiful amount of money per-capita, and even more so in total, on defense. The CIA factbook says the US spends 4% of GDP, while the France spends 2.6%, UK spends 2.4%, Italy 1.8%, the Netherlands 1.6%, Belgium 1.3%, etc. With this tiny level of expenditure, I suspect 5th generation fighters might be too pricy for these countries. I suspect these countries will focus increasing on regional defense through air superiority and much less on penetrating the modern air defenses of a country like Iran, which will be a US and Israeli thing to do. Stealth is helpful in all roles, but only required for sure in the strike role.

5. Keep in mind that the US defense procurement budget is constrained because all services are wanting new expensive weapons at about the same time over the next twenty years. After the Cold War there was a drop off in procurement spending and now all four services want to replace that gear. See the interesting article that was also recently posted on Defense Industry Daily about Army helicopter programs. The Army has some unrealistic spending plans for new helicopters. The JSF is the budget buster of them all, the largest dollar value weapons program.

I suspect the US unit buy of the JSF will be hugely scaled back once the procurement budget crunch hits. Then the unit cost will be too high and they delay in air superiority performance will be too much for many foreign buyers.

If I was operating the F-16A today, I would open a fighter competition for the three newer European fighters, as well as newer versions of the F-15, F-16 and F/A-18. I would invest in AESA radar and air-to-air missiles and leave and delay stealth to mature versions of the JSF in the 2020's. Even the US buy of the JSF will stretch up to 2035, I believe.

Defense expenses canot be directly compared percapita because the economic level of those countries vary to that of the US thus, 1% in the US is not the same as 1% in europe. You would have to take in accound each of the countries internal product income. Europes is still smaller but not as small as it seems.

Europes problem does not lie in capability of projection or deep strike capability, we lack little, and less when the F-35 arrives. Its rather the political will for it.

Newbie Joined: Nov 07, 2007 Posts: 11 Status: Offline

The per-capita GDP of European countries is smaller, so a smaller percentage of a smaller number is also smaller.

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Forum: F-35 Lightning II

A very good F-35 article in Defense Industry Daily