1st Italian-Built F-35B ‘Rolls Out’ Cameri Productn Facility

[spazsinbad]

OLD News but shows what will be built at Cameri in near future - from:
viewtopic.php?f=58&t=24829&p=293226&hilit=Cameri+SLDinfo#p293226
&
viewtopic.php?f=60&t=24729&p=261596&hilit=Cameri+SLDinfo#p261596

"...The Italian FACO at Cameri will deliver one plane this year [2015], and one each in 2016 and 2017 with 3 delivered in 2018 followed by 5 in 2019 and 5 in 2020."

Source: http://www.sldinfo.com/an-update-on-italian-f-35s/

&

"...The development of these potentialities “depends on our capability to use the infrastructure which have been created to build components and to provide maintenance related to avionics and electronics both for the European aircraft and the US aircraft based in Europe. There’s no other European plant with the same requisites as our plant in Cameri.”

Source: http://www.sldinfo.com/cameri-and-the-f ... -facility/

Then there is the three month in USofA E3 testing of the first builds:

viewtopic.php?f=57&t=28948&p=314958&hilit=Cameri+check#p314958

"...The event marks two firsts for the program – AL-1 is not only the first F-35 ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean, but it is also the first F-35 built overseas, at the Cameri Final Assembly and Check-Out facility. Gianmarco expressed pride that the first-ever F-35 to cross the pond is an Italian aircraft, flown by an Italian pilot....

...the plane that crossed the ocean Friday will now spend three months here undergoing what is called “electromagnetic environmental effects” (E3) testing, which evaluates the effects electrostatic events such as high-powered radars, communications systems, and lightning have on the aircraft. The goal is to enable the jet to survive the range of electromagnetic threats, from radio interference to weather.

After finishing E3 evaluation and certification, AL-1 will join the F-35 international pilot training center at Luke, according to William Couch, spokesman for Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division...."

Source: http://www.defensenews.com/story/breaki ... /79901306/

[hornetfinn]

"In the Netherlands some concerns were raised over the fact that a 90 million USD aircraft designed and ordered in the US, is to be manufactured in an Italian factory"

Touchè.

The bad taste Dutch people got from Italian manufacturing peaked after the delivery of new trains for the Dutch railways build by the Italian company AnsaldoBreda.

...

I understand the "twice burned" cautious attitudes, however, it is important to keep apples with the apples and oranges with the oranges.

Denver's light rail (Siemens) has been a nightmare getting going, and it has that "fine German engineering" etc... The Eurofighters (apples to apples in this case) in Germany have been a train wreck of reliability ...
http://www.defensenews.com/articles/ger ... y-problems

To the best of my knowledge (limited) Italy and Finmeccanica have provided quality reliability and availability.
https://www.eurofighter.com/news-and-ev ... ailability

Just saying ... not all oranges are apples .... well actually, none of them are.
BP

Exactly. There have been quite a lot of cases where high-end Porsches and Audi R8s have burned to the ground. Mercedes Benz just couple of months ago recalled a million models because so many of them burned down in short amount of time. Nobody seems to question the German production quality and quality control even though there has been a lot of cases where they have failed. Nobody definitely questions the quality of Airbus or Eurofighter GMBH products because of it. Btw, I think German companies produce very high quality products in general, including those I mentioned.

When it comes to Italian aircraft industry, they have very respectable one. They have or have had rather big involvement in many international aircraft programs. Eurofighter Typhoon, Panavia Tornado, AMX, M-346 and Boeing 787 come to mind. ATR-series and C-27 Spartan are used by a lot of countries. That would not happen if built quality and quality control was poor.

[botsing]

I understand the "twice burned" cautious attitudes, however, it is important to keep apples with the apples and oranges with the oranges.

I'm not seeing many references to the procedures in the F-35 program for the "First of Type" validation of the Cameri F-35B at Pax River....so regardless of what type Dutch, German, Italian lawnmower you last bought, the program will test and validate regardless of your "lawnmower" comments.

When it comes to Italian aircraft industry, they have very respectable one. They have or have had rather big involvement in many international aircraft programs. Eurofighter Typhoon, Panavia Tornado, AMX, M-346 and Boeing 787 come to mind. ATR-series and C-27 Spartan are used by a lot of countries. That would not happen if built quality and quality control was poor.

All true, I was mainly trying to explain why the Netherlands would voice such a concern, and where the current Dutch public opinion about Italian manufacturing comes from.

I can pretty much guarantee that if Italian made F-35's ever have an issue that the Dutch media will have a field day, deserved or not.

[nutshell]

Hold on; that field day would be totally disrespectful and quite short sighted. Moreover that would be really uncalled for.

They should remember what happend in Rome an year ago.

Trevi might have a net worth superior to their whole fleet of fighters and thats the tip od the iceberg.

Besides, prejudice among european people in 2017 is quite a disgrace.

[hornetfinn]

I agree with both of you. When Finland bought some Pendolino trains from Fiat Ferroviaria (now Alstom), they got pretty bad reputation for being useless in winter. "Why buy trains from Italy, they know nothing about snow and ice..." was pretty common feeling in press and between people. Some of that was justified but it was mostly because they were under microscope because they were new, shiny and cost a lot of money. They were actually not much worse than older trains and after some improvements, they have been pretty good and reliable trains even in Finnish winter. Too bad our railroads were not improved as was supposed when those trains were bought and thus their full potential can not be used. Some reliability problems also originated from the railroad system itself and not Pendolino trains. Also being Italian product had no effect on reliability even in winter.

I also agree that those perceptions are disrespectful and short sighted.

[botsing]

Hold on; that field day would be totally disrespectful and quite short sighted. Moreover that would be really uncalled for.

I also agree that those perceptions are disrespectful and short sighted.

I'm trying really hard to remember the last time when the media was not disrespectful and shortsighted about an issue, polarized views and dirty headlines just sell better I guess.

[rheonomic]

Italy's anti-establishment Five Star party would scrap F-35 program

“The central idea is the possibility to shift most of the public investment today used for traditional armament programs into development and research into more modern programs like cyber defense and intelligence,” the party’s new defense manifesto stated.

To paraphrase the old joke, two Russian tank commanders are sitting in a cafe in Rome. "By the way," one asks, "who won the cyber war?"