82 F-16Ds grounded

a reply to: Zaphod58

Zaph, Didn't the BUFF have crack problem and some bright young man develop a computer program to track the cracks..lol. Maybe this would be the answer with this problem.

We are using our combat aircraft longer than we use to. IIRC, the P51 was built to last only 2000 hours...that's only about 2 or 3 years at today's rate.

a reply to: buddah6

The BUFF had horrible problems, especially with the skin. You could feel it crinkle under your feet when you walked on the back of it. Every one of them, even after reskin, has wrinkles from the frame being bent and warped.

Yeah, the answer now, when a plane nears the end of the life cycle, seems to be to extend it to double what it was originally.

The Air Force has the ASIP program to track issues with the airframes. Every 75 flight hours, a CSFDR download is done on F-16s and is sent to Tinker AFB for the engineers to study.

originally posted by: cardinalfan0596
a reply to: thebozeian

Way back, when my unit was still going to have a manned mission, we were listed as one of the Guard units that was going to get F-35s. Our 21 F-16s, were going to be replaced by FOUR F-35s.

Surely this example you quote was based Purely on a financial comparison and NOT on an effectiveness comparison.?

PDUK

a reply to: PurpleDog UK

It is an idea of how few they were going to buy. A fighter wing with only 4 jets isn't effective.

a reply to: cardinalfan0596
Its an example of how much this program has blown out. If you thought the F-22 was expensive you ain't seen nothing yet. There will never be 3000+ F-35's built and we will never see the $40 odd million per copy jets promised by officials. Try quadrupling that number for the A model alone., and possibly 6 times for the B and up to 8 times for the C model. This thing will sink the budget, especially given what is happening with sequestration. The Navy will have to park carriers to do it and the US air force retire everything but the F-22, and even then when things get desperate you wait and see the excuses roll out towards the end of this decade to also early retire the Raptor, citing corrosion problems and the claim the F-35 can now do the Raptors job along with some drones. This thing is a money sucking beast that can devour money like never before, how will something like this tackle problems like ISIS?

LEE.

a reply to: thebozeian

Yeah, you and everyone else is right. Let's just kill it, spend more than the current program cost in penalties, and take another 15 years designing something new so we can have the required tech that we need on a platform.