Forum: Program and politics

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This is preparation before public release of the bottom up review. A lot of people had faith that Adm Vinlet, former head of NAVAIR, would get to the bottom of things regarding F-35 and when the results of the review are made public this view will probably be vindicated. It seem clear that Vinlet is preparing everyone for a significant slow down in the program and also increased costs.

According to many, including Vinlet and Dr Carter in direct Congressional testimony some months ago, the program has flaws in conceptualization and management. Some tried pointing out for some years that the information coming out of JPO was mendacious. One thing worth thinking about is that LM and JPO were pretty much on the same page for years and it turns out JPO didn't really have a clue. Today we've got the head of the program saying things rather at odds with LM; moreover, Vinlet is stating the program must and will be slowed down vs LM continuing to state the program needs to be accelerated.

For some people this will cast further doubt on the veracity of LM regarding F-35. At the very least nobody should be accepting every forecast and press release by LM as factual till proven. There will be more information released soon regarding costs and schedule based on the bottom up review. It will be instructional to see where this diverges from what LM has been saying to this point.

wrightwing wrote:

This is the key takeaway-

Quote:

"The question for me is not: 'F-35 or not?'" Venlet said. "The question is, how many and how fast? I'm not questioning the ultimate inventory numbers, I'm questioning the pace that we ramp up production for us and the partners, and can we afford it?"

Yep, hit the nail on the head. What I've been thinking is would in be cheaper to by them now well they're cheap and fix them later or wait and bay planes after the fix. Thing are always cheaper now than later, but are they enough cheaper to make up for the fixes? I guess Venlet would know better than us.

lb wrote:

This is preparation before public release of the bottom up review.........

The O&M report was to generate historical costs for legacy a/c for reference to cost projections for the JSF. It will be eye opening for not only LM but also for the legacy a/c owners. These "my bicycle is cheaper than your bicycle" propoents should have a field day trying to spin the reports documents. Anxiously awaiting the "furball!!" Laughing

.

The truth be told if your airplane is not cracking during fatigue testing then you over built the airplane and you carrying unnecessary weight. You want to be finding hot spots and beefing these areas up as you go. This trial and error process is a very tedious way to do it but the only one that will deliever the lightest structural airframe possible. Since Lockheed Maritn is designing and building jet fighter here and not sherman tanks this is the way it has to be.

Here is a good article on the sturcutral testing of the F-35 from Composites World.

http://www.compositesworld.com/news/f-35-program-completes-static-structural-testing

Then the $100 million dollar question is, How do aircraft manufacturers normally handle static testing WRT to production? Is it normally complete before deliverable aircraft are produced? Or is retrofitting and modifying production aircraft the way it's always been done?

C'mon guys. Have any of you ever flown military jets? As the Admiral says in the article, this is not unusual stuff. What is unusual is the degree of concurrency and the bills they can afford to pay or not pay in this budget climate.

Every U.S. TACAIR asset flying today has had structural issues -- ALL of them. Ever notice those plates bolted on the LEX of F-18s? They reduce the adverse effect that LEX-generated vortices have on the verticals. How long ago were those installed? Ever notice the plates of metal bolted on the bases of the verticals on F-18s? Whaddaya think those are for? Ask older F-18 maintainers about center barrel replacements. Ask about life-limited E/Fs. Are these jets dead? No, they just have to go to a depot or drive-in mod for replacement or modification of some structural stuff. Can be expensive and time consuming. Seems that the Admiral wants to avoid as much of that as possible given the budget climate.

Ever notice the square/rectangular pieces of tape in the intakes of AV-8B? Keeps the rivets in that section of the intake from from popping out and being ingested by the engine. How come that's an issue? Because the stiffeners put in the fuselage to stop cracks after the jet was in service caused a load transfer into the intake just in front of the engine -- causes rivets to pop out and feed the engine. Tape prevents that.

Ask experienced F-16 maintainers about the structural load transfers (and resulting unexpected cracks) they've chased around the Viper for a couple decades. What ever happened to those F-16Ns that Top Gun flew?

I highly recommend you read the whole article and the Admiral's quotes -- not just the snippets above.

lb wrote:

This is preparation before public release of the bottom up review. A lot of people had faith that Adm Vinlet, former head of NAVAIR, would get to the bottom of things regarding F-35 and when the results of the review are made public this view will probably be vindicated. It seem clear that Vinlet is preparing everyone for a significant slow down in the program and also increased costs.

According to many, including Vinlet and Dr Carter in direct Congressional testimony some months ago, the program has flaws in conceptualization and management. Some tried pointing out for some years that the information coming out of JPO was mendacious. One thing worth thinking about is that LM and JPO were pretty much on the same page for years and it turns out JPO didn't really have a clue. Today we've got the head of the program saying things rather at odds with LM; moreover, Vinlet is stating the program must and will be slowed down vs LM continuing to state the program needs to be accelerated.

For some people this will cast further doubt on the veracity of LM regarding F-35. At the very least nobody should be accepting every forecast and press release by LM as factual till proven. There will be more information released soon regarding costs and schedule based on the bottom up review. It will be instructional to see where this diverges from what LM has been saying to this point.

It's Venlet.

thestealthfighterguy wrote:

wrightwing wrote:

This is the key takeaway-

Quote:

"The question for me is not: 'F-35 or not?'" Venlet said. "The question is, how many and how fast? I'm not questioning the ultimate inventory numbers, I'm questioning the pace that we ramp up production for us and the partners, and can we afford it?"

Yep, hit the nail on the head. What I've been thinking is would in be cheaper to by them now well they're cheap and fix them later or wait and bay planes after the fix. Thing are always cheaper now than later, but are they enough cheaper to make up for the fixes? I guess Venlet would know better than us.

? They are expensive now, possibly less expensive later.

alloycowboy wrote:

The truth be told if your airplane is not cracking during fatigue testing then you over built the airplane and you carrying unnecessary weight.

Where have I seen this quote before....

@ stereospace.... That is a fair question. Just recently Boeing ran into structural problems on it's 787 program when they went to do the wing bending test. So they are now forced to modify 49 aircraft with a difficult side of body modification in order to ensure the wings will have adequate strength. Here is an article on it from Flightblogger.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/boeing-to-incorporate-side-of-body-mod-into-787-production-336828/

Needless to say this cost the 787 program a lot of time and money.

@Quicksilver.... Your right aircraft do crack in normal operation that is why they come with an aircraft structural repair manuals. But the idea of static and dynamic structural testing is to try to prevent as many cracks as you can espically in difficult to repair forgings and castings. That is or was the problem with the F-35B is cracks in the forgings. Here is an aricle by Bill Sweetman did on it the LRIP-2 crack problem. Note in the last line that F-35A and F-35C still use the titanium forgings.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post:7d1f2ccf-6f75-4c62-a78c-d57c7a6537e6

maus92 wrote:

alloycowboy wrote:

The truth be told if your airplane is not cracking during fatigue testing then you over built the airplane and you carrying unnecessary weight.

Where have I seen this quote before....

If you have the feeling of déjà vu it’s because I left a similar quote on Stephen Trimble's Dew Line when he brought the issue of the F-35 cracking problems. In order to get the weight out of the F-35B the engineers really took the scaple to it. So now they have to slowly and strategically put the weight back in as structural hot spots appear. The process is actually very similar to how ultra-lite road bikes are made. The designers pushed the weight of the frames down to ~ 700 grams and kept beefing up the structure until they got an acceptable fatigue life and stifness ou of the frame.

A little of topic, but check out Cervelo's project California:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ly6Kk_Iv2s

'Cowboy, you assume facts not in evidence in the current matter (that this has something to do with type of material or that the matter is simply about STOVL). Note that the AOL Defense/Whittle article centers the discussion on hot spots they've identified by 'analysis' not actual testing since, as they also point out, durability testing has not resumed on the STOVL test article. Each of the JSF variants successfully completed static testing some time ago.

The cracks we're talking about with legacy jets (take your pick) are not something the airframes shop fixes at the 'O' level. We're talking depot level mods/repairs.

Respects to VADM Venlent. Finally, a policymaker who has given an honest and fair assessment of things to date.

It must also be noted that while the Program executive has claimed his main objective is to ensure the F-35 Program navigates it's way through SDD phase as best as possible, he also leaves open the door to evaluate whether or not the future Program acquisition will be 'affordable' or not.

Any sensible and reasonable Congress member will see these prospects as mutually exclusive and can justifiably look towards FY13 as an absolute 4.5 supplement procurement year. Taking VADM Venlet's calls for further reduced procurement to issue, the immediate reaction becomes: how to best offset the unexpected lost F-35 procurement in the near-term.

Time for Congress to intervene. The call for help has effectively been put out by the executive manager and any true analyst will see the well-intended Program as being completely unrealistic and unsustainable is now ready for a supplemental Plan B stopgap, for sake of national defense.

God speed...

Two points:

#1 Isn't Venlet just stating the obvious? Congress has been witholding funding for LRIP lots for the past three FYs... and it didn't seem as if they would be changing that policy for LRIP5. If anything its just an admission of whats been going on.

#2 Canada: the Government revealed last month that most of the buys will occur after 2020...over 40 of the 65 total aircraft. The RCAF says that production schedule is fine for them. This is also another great example of shoddy Canadian reporting. Basically nobody realized that Congress's LRIP cuts could have driven up Canada's costs based on the preliminary delivery schedule that had most of the deliveries before 2020.Then they release a new delivery schedule, which is far less influenced by concurrency cuts... aaaaand then someone reports that concurrency cuts could affect the aircraft's costs.

Forum: Program and politics

F-35 production must slow - 'Miscalculation' Adm Venlet Says