Marine In The F-35 Test Force Shares His Experiences

Design and construction
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by spazsinbad » 10 Jul 2015, 20:41

A long article with the beginning bits left out about the recruitment and training and early HORNET years.
'Absolute Youngest' Marine In The F-35 Test Force Shares His Experiences
10 Jul 2015 Tyler Rogoway

"One of our readers, Dustin Gulley, was a U.S. Marine Corps Hornet airframe mechanic who made his way into the F-35 Integrated Test Force at the astonishingly young age of 20. He’s here to share his experiences wrenching on Hornets around the globe and getting up-close and personal with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as a young Marine with Foxtrot Alpha:...

...Coming from the Hornet, which was designed in the 1970s, what was it like working on the state-of-the-art and stealthy F-35, the most advanced fighter in the world?
“Next-generation is an understatement when applied to F-35. Keep in mind that this is the perspective of a maintainer, because they never would let me fly the darn thing. There was not a moment when I wasn’t infatuated with some detail of its construction, mission, or engineering. The maintainability factor is absolutely huge in comparison to platforms such as the F/A-18 or the AV-8B. In many cases, the aircraft seems as though it was designed with end-user practicality in mind, as opposed to the Hornet’s “need to replace a hydraulic pump? Great, remove all other things first” and the Harrier’s “engine replacement? That’s two wings coming off, baby!” Gone are the days of awful hi-torque fasteners that strip themselves out every time you look at them wrong. Behold, hex tips!

The Short Takeoff and Vertical Landing (STOVL) variant, the F-35B, is just ridiculously cool, and even more so in person. The sheer amount of power provided by the nozzle and lift fan boggles the mind, and I might argue that short takeoff ops are even more fun to watch than vertical takeoffs. The thing finds its way off the ground in a shorter distance than I would have ever believed if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. During the low-power built-in tests, the nozzle will rotate down and if you’re standing anywhere inside the vicinity of the wing tips when it drops, you’re probably going to get very intimate with the pavement very quickly.

Maintainability is just a huge improvement, hands down, and its going to offset the cost in a way that some may have not yet considered. Now I’m a totally biased party, I can’t really think of many drawbacks in the design, at least none that are immediately evident to me as a mechanic. Sure, we had a few issues, but all were resolved without major incident during my tenure. There was a concern at one point regarding the C variant’s arresting gear possibly over-stressing the airframe during a carrier landing or field arrestment, but that’s been cleared up to my knowledge.

It may also be worth noting that in a traditional fleet squadron, all personnel find themselves working on all of the aircraft at once. At the Integrated Task Force, each individual aircraft had its own maintenance team, generally consisting of a Supervisor and at least one specialized individual per system. I preferred that maintenance paradigm, as it allowed me to get to know each aircraft individually. Knowing what sort of mission testing each one is doing at a given time makes it so much easier to fill in on other maintenance teams when you run out of work or are down a man. We had a total of five aircraft during my tenure, four STOVL (B model) and one CV (C model carrier variant).

ALIS, the Automatic Logistics Information System, is an amazing concept that has the potential to drastically reduce administrative time, as well as improve troubleshooting accuracy, but it wasn’t complete during my time at the ITF. What I do know of it however, is that it is a great improvement upon NALCOMIS, which is the fleet’s current maintenance tracking system.”

Do you see the F-35 meeting the expectations of the USMC?
“Only time will tell, but at the present juncture, I feel as though the Navy and Marine Corps will be absolutely justified in their decision to move forward with this platform. I’m very impressed with the aircraft from my own perspective, but it helps to remember that I wasn’t doing the same type of maintenance as I was on Hornets due to F-35 being entirely new. Things just weren’t breaking like they do on legacy platforms.

Folks look at the word ‘affordable’ on the official patch and laugh, but they fail to see what I see. Lightning II shares part of its cost with the F-22, as many systems are either similar or direct carryover. The aircraft stands to replace multiple legacy platforms in the Department of the Navy alone.

I can possibly see the LO coating being a maintenance time-sink and squadrons could respond to that by applying it on a per-mission basis to save on costs. I don’t see where its absolutely necessary during training sorties, so on and so forth, except perhaps in air-to-air training. This aircraft was already a flier the day I first laid my hands on it. We just worked kinks out, and begun adding things to the package.

With F-35 reaching operational capability this summer, we’ve got a lot to look forward to and even more to learn. I can only hope that the world will begin to accept it as I do. This is a flexible aircraft that can be exactly what we need it to be at a given time and that’s part of the problem in the public’s perception. We think we need it to be everything all at once. The truth is that we don’t.

Don’t dismiss it, as much as you may want to- this is the world’s most advanced aerial weapons system, and it still has plenty of tricks up its sleeve.”

What was being part of the elite flight test community like?
“I found the environment to be the complete opposite of what I was used to in the fleet. I had to remind myself more than a few times to dial my temper back and hold onto my cool. The aircrew are some of the ballsiest guys I’ve ever met and some of the friendliest too. I’d never before had a Colonel come out to shoot the breeze with me (a Corporal) while I was smoking a cigarette (I’ve since quit. Don’t smoke, mmkay?) and then tell me to “relax” and “have a seat.” There’s a mutual respect among all parties that I’ve never seen matched anywhere, ever. It wasn’t always about what you were wearing on your collar. Sometimes it was enough just being there.

I’ve noticed that when I mention to folks that I worked in F-35 Flight Test, one of two things happen: They either look at me with a blank stare because to them, an F-35 could just have easily been a food processor, or they assume that I’m some kind of crazy airplane Wizard of Oz and start asking me questions about what goes on “behind the curtain.” The fact is, I don’t think its that interesting. Sure, the men and women there are some of the best mechanics and troubleshooters that the world has to offer, but to me, the experience is kind of sterile. Most of what we’re up to back there is the post-flight, pre-flight and turnaround inspections that you would expect, except the Flight Test community pays so much extra attention to the minute details.

An incredible amount of time is spent doing regression testing so we can be absolutely sure of what to expect of the aircraft when in operation. We also pay special attention to what I refer to as ‘fleet maintainability.’ To provide an example, I was once removing the panel for the nose Distributed Aperture camera and noticed that the rigid coolant line only allowed the panel to travel an inch or so, which didn’t allow me to get my hand inside to operate the disconnects. It did end up taking something like 5 hours to remove, which is absolutely unheard of. We wrote that up and took a change request to engineering. I believe that line is now flexible.”

What was the culture like inside the integrated test team during what was one of the most tumultuous periods of any defense program ever?
“Believe it or not, everyone remained cool and completely centered on the task at hand. We were (and are) dead set on proving the media wrong, and our work reflected that. There was absolutely no question inside that facility that we and our aircraft would be just fine and every single individual supported that. That’s what you need on a project of this magnitude and that’s exactly what we had. Lockheed Martin actually ran the facility and we as military were treated as if we were part of the family. Never alienated or left out. We worked together, and we succeeded together.”..."

Source: http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/absolu ... 1716981177


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by Dragon029 » 10 Jul 2015, 21:06

Well whaddaya know; Tyler is capable of being impartial; I don't expect this to be the beginning a trend, but it's a nice article.


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by XanderCrews » 10 Jul 2015, 21:24

Dragon029 wrote:Well whaddaya know; Tyler is capable of being impartial; I don't expect this to be the beginning a trend, but it's a nice article.



Tyler method is to throw everything at the wall and see what's sticks. People often come in to refute his bull pucky and when he finds out they have credentials and tries to get info out of them for actual credible knowledge from professionals and not Internet journo hack frauds

Having said that the best thing for JSF PR is having people like this explain exactly why they like it based on their experience. It quickly ends the he said she said journalist vs journalist garbage

It's really hard for bloggers to refute enlisted guys speaking their minds than it is for them to whine about bribed generals etc
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by bring_it_on » 10 Jul 2015, 21:32

XanderCrews wrote:
Dragon029 wrote:Well whaddaya know; Tyler is capable of being impartial; I don't expect this to be the beginning a trend, but it's a nice article.



Tyler method is to throw everything at the wall and see what's sticks. People often come in to refute his bull pucky and when he finds out they have credentials and tries to get info out of them for actual credible knowledge from professionals and not Internet journo hack frauds

Having said that the best thing for JSF PR is having people like this explain exactly why they like it based on their experience. It quickly ends the he said she said journalist vs journalist garbage

It's really hard for bloggers to refute enlisted guys speaking their minds than it is for them to whine about bribed generals etc


9 of my 10 posts on his website are still pending approval :)


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by lookieloo » 10 Jul 2015, 22:15

Foxtrot Alpha? The Hell?


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by blindpilot » 10 Jul 2015, 23:00

I couldn't help but chuckle when the kid talked about having a smoke with the Colonel. Probably at least half if not more of my career success was due to smoking out at the loading dock. Virtually every major decision I had input on, was as a junior officer/contractor, immediately following five minutes one on one time with the 4-star/CEO. We'd put the butts in the can and go back to the meeting to tell them what they would be deciding .... Smoking at least a few years back was a positive career move. I guess now that the 4 stars/CEOs chew Nicorette , .. not so much these days.

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by count_to_10 » 11 Jul 2015, 02:37

That's encouraging. In a lot of ways, how the maintainers see the aircraft is at least as important as how the pilots see it, in terms of it's success.
Einstein got it backward: one cannot prevent a war without preparing for it.

Uncertainty: Learn it, love it, live it.


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by KamenRiderBlade » 11 Jul 2015, 06:26

I'm glad the designers / engineers at Lockheed Martin had more common sense when designing the construction of the F-35.

Hex wrenches FTW


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by playloud » 12 Jul 2015, 15:43

I can possibly see the LO coating being a maintenance time-sink and squadrons could respond to that by applying it on a per-mission basis to save on costs. I don’t see where its absolutely necessary during training sorties, so on and so forth, except perhaps in air-to-air training. This aircraft was already a flier the day I first laid my hands on it. We just worked kinks out, and begun adding things to the package.

Isn't the F-35's stealth coating built into the skin?


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by count_to_10 » 12 Jul 2015, 17:15

playloud wrote:
I can possibly see the LO coating being a maintenance time-sink and squadrons could respond to that by applying it on a per-mission basis to save on costs. I don’t see where its absolutely necessary during training sorties, so on and so forth, except perhaps in air-to-air training. This aircraft was already a flier the day I first laid my hands on it. We just worked kinks out, and begun adding things to the package.

Isn't the F-35's stealth coating built into the skin?

That was my understanding. I think there are some appliques, but the RAM isn't supposed to be in any kind of "coating".
Einstein got it backward: one cannot prevent a war without preparing for it.

Uncertainty: Learn it, love it, live it.


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by XanderCrews » 12 Jul 2015, 18:00

playloud wrote:
I can possibly see the LO coating being a maintenance time-sink and squadrons could respond to that by applying it on a per-mission basis to save on costs. I don’t see where its absolutely necessary during training sorties, so on and so forth, except perhaps in air-to-air training. This aircraft was already a flier the day I first laid my hands on it. We just worked kinks out, and begun adding things to the package.

Isn't the F-35's stealth coating built into the skin?



It is. I believe he is referencing the compounds that are used to seal things
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