LO coatings responsible for half of F-35 defects

a reply to: face23785

that was the point, jeez sarcasm is a little lost on the net. i highly doubt there are iron sites on those missiles(let alone getting burned to death)



but it is possible they got a little to close and got a partial lock and the ECM''s on the the 35 were adequate to take care of the missile



i dont know how Syria works but if i were a missile commander and got a lock on a confirmed enemy aircraft id shoot on lock. or if i thought the missile could track i'd shoot as well. at the point it might be use it or lose it, never know if a HARM might be running into your know know missile site.

originally posted by: penroc3
a reply to: face23785

that was the point, jeez sarcasm is a little lost on the net. i highly doubt there are iron sites on those missiles(let alone getting burned to death)

I was aware of that. I was saying it was funny you had to explain that to him and that he really thought you could effectively shoot down an F-35 with a missile launcher firing from the hip.

a reply to: face23785

now im the ass lol, seems to happen more as i get older.

originally posted by: penroc3
a reply to: face23785

now im the ass lol, seems to happen more as i get older.

I could have been more clear. I'll split the assery down the middle with ya.

a reply to: C0bzz

Thanks for your detailed reply.. The major or maybe the only source I can find for the first report of the Israeli F-35 being damaged by the S-200 is from South Front.org which is certainly bias, but occasionally does some note worthy reporting on stuff out of Syria IMO . I like both sides of a story whether I agree with either side or not. Syria and Libya have left a bad taste in my mouth with regards to anything either side says about anything. Is the USA, Saudi, Israeli side more trust worthy than the Russian, Iranian, Syrian side..? Not to me for we have NO business trying to overthrow another mid east country... Way above my pay grade but.... The whole mid-east operation starting with Iraq and the lies told to start the war has made a permanent long lasting bad taste for me..

I looked for the source that said 7 SU-57 can be made for the cost of one F-35 but was unable to remember where I found the figure.. Sounds pretty unbelievable to me too. Still does not change the fact the F-35 is over budget and behind schedule and has been since its inception. Yes the program has been changed and made bigger and better and we finally have a 51% availability out of the current 280 aircraft . Oh but it is getting better !! what a crock..

Now if some of the numbers on the SU-57 are to be believed especially with their longer range air to air missiles than we currently field then only a fool would under estimate the aircraft's potential if they are produced in numbers.

Yes fit and finish on Russian or USSR aircraft has always been Terrible... Just go to any Russian aviation museum and in the old days it would not be hard to imagine the birds being put together with a hammer and a dull knife... yet some of them preformed surprisingly well... This has mostly been fixed with the new generation of aircraft... Up close "Looks" have certainly improved..

Now: www.military.com...

Of the 280 operational F-35s purchased to date by U.S. and international partners, only 51 percent are currently available for flight, Vice Adm. Mat Winter, director of the F-35 Joint Program Office, told reporters Wednesday at a round-table event.

Winter added that availability rates are lowest for aircraft purchased in early lots, which were beset with a number of hardware and software issues that later production lots addressed. Low-rate initial production lots 2 through 4 have availability rates between 40 and 50 percent, Winter said. The most recent LRIP lots, 9 and 10, which include aircraft that are still rolling off the production line, have the highest availability rates, 70 to 75 percent, he said.

Like I said just a few more years and a few more millions of dollars and wallah, "We gonna have us one fine aircraft". Even at a 75% availability rate I would hang my head in shame...but that is just me..

a reply to: C0bzz

Thanks for your detailed reply.. The major or maybe the only source I can find for the first report of the Israeli F-35 being damaged by the S-200 is from South Front.org which is certainly bias, but occasionally does some note worthy reporting on stuff out of Syria IMO . I like both sides of a story whether I agree with either side or not. Syria and Libya have left a bad taste in my mouth with regards to anything either side says about anything. Is the USA, Saudi, Israeli side more trust worthy than the Russian, Iranian, Syrian side..? Not to me for we have NO business trying to overthrow another mid east country... Way above my pay grade but.... The whole mid-east operation starting with Iraq and the lies told to start the war has made a permanent long lasting bad taste for me..

I looked for the source that said 7 SU-57 can be made for the cost of one F-35 but was unable to remember where I found the figure.. Sounds pretty unbelievable to me too. Still does not change the fact the F-35 is over budget and behind schedule and has been since its inception. Yes the program has been changed and made bigger and better and we finally have a 51% availability out of the current 280 aircraft . Oh but it is getting better !! what a crock..

Now if some of the numbers on the SU-57 are to be believed especially with their longer range air to air missiles than we currently field then only a fool would under estimate the aircraft's potential if they are produced in numbers.

Yes fit and finish on Russian or USSR aircraft has always been Terrible... Just go to any Russian aviation museum and in the old days it would not be hard to imagine the birds being put together with a hammer and a dull knife... yet some of them preformed surprisingly well... This has mostly been fixed with the new generation of aircraft... Up close "Looks" have certainly improved..

Now: www.military.com...

Of the 280 operational F-35s purchased to date by U.S. and international partners, only 51 percent are currently available for flight, Vice Adm. Mat Winter, director of the F-35 Joint Program Office, told reporters Wednesday at a round-table event.

Winter added that availability rates are lowest for aircraft purchased in early lots, which were beset with a number of hardware and software issues that later production lots addressed. Low-rate initial production lots 2 through 4 have availability rates between 40 and 50 percent, Winter said. The most recent LRIP lots, 9 and 10, which include aircraft that are still rolling off the production line, have the highest availability rates, 70 to 75 percent, he said.

Like I said just a few more years and a few more millions of dollars and wallah, "We gonna have us one fine aircraft". Even at a 75% availability rate I would hang my head in shame...but that is just me..
www.military.com...

The director of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program gave aircraft maker Lockheed Martin Corp. a public slap on the wrist Wednesday, saying the defense company is moving too slow in production, lacks transparency on costs and isn't streamlining production effectively.

"I am not satisfied in the following areas: the price is coming down, but it's not coming down fast enough; we don't know, to the level of granularity that I want to know, what it actually costs to produce an aircraft, and the number of quality escapes and what we call production line defects needs to get better," Vice Adm. Mat Winter told reporters at the F-35 Joint Program Office headquarters near Washington, D.C.

originally posted by: face23785

originally posted by: Blackfinger
When the F117 was doing its radar tests they could get the radar return down to the size of a ball bearing..One time it came back with a barn door return....Three screws came loose about an 1/8"..Yes tiny bits of damage cause huge radar returns.

Is this because it alters the shape/angle of the panels slightly or because it exposes areas that aren't coated?

90 degree angles are bad. If the edge of a panel pops out, then you get a slight groove that will reflect the light and radar signals. If you look at pictures of vinyl records, that's the same effect.

a reply to: 727Sky

The F-22 and B-2, both of which have gone through multiple upgrades, have a full up supply chain in place, and have been operational for many years average somewhere between 57% and about 65% on average. For the F-35 to already be at 51% is actually a good sign for the program.

The only way to get 7 Su-57s to 1 F-35 is to twist the numbers into pretzels and throw them out the window. The given price of the Su-57 is $50M.

a reply to: Zaphod58

50mil ill take 3 1 to fly 2 others for parts

Problem is you need about 4 for parts. And the SU 57 has a major problem with its airframe. They tend to crack grounding the aircraft. As of yet still only have forward radar. Side scan still hasn't been a complished because of the air frame. They just changed out the engine in December on 1 aircraft for the new engine but won't be combat ready for years. Amd then Moscow will only buy 12 Su-57 aircraft, which are expected to be delivered in 2019. Most of the prototypes have been grounded for air frame and engine failure.

So bottom line comparing an su 57 to an F35 is like comparing a bycicle to a harley.

a reply to: 727Sky

Of the 280 operational F-35s purchased to date by U.S. and international partners, only 51 percent are currently available for flight,

Upgrades and training ground crew and aircraft engineers. One of the first Eurofighter Typhoon we delivered to Germany was stripped by their ground crew for training but they stripped too far and it couldn't be put back together, they then gave parts they didnt buy as spares to the production aircraft, AFAIK its never flown again!

If you deliver this aircraft during development, then aircraft will be grounded for upgrades thanks to the amount of data these aircraft are gathering, whilst it might seem a lot of aircraft, if you tried to do this 5th Generation with 9 development aircraft and then 7 production aircraft like the EFA project then you would be in development for 20 years.

Dont think that the Russians or Chinese can do things better than Europe or the Americans. Those aircraft they are flying are useless as anything other than development aircraft.

Also funny how all of a sudden the quantity vs quality conversation seems to be changing from Russian quantity vs American quality to F-35 quantity to SU-57 quality....

The F-35 program has indeed had plenty of management issues, clearly the program should have been ran much better, and a different concept should have been created entirely.

However, ramping production up to full-rate of any product doesn't happen overnight and is never planned to. The reason is that early units will typically have production and/or quality challenges (to be fair, a production issue is a quality issue and vice versa) so only a small number of units should be produced initially so that learning can occur to fix these production and quality issues, with minimal waste. While these learning and quality issues can be resolved after the first batch, new issues will be introduced as rate is increased. Usually the notion that "mass production" means low quality, but this is not the case, it's the opposite. Mass production requires very high quality.

By the way, "Quality" does not mean "compliance with specifications". A better definition is: "on-target performance with as little variation and waste as possible". And, you cannot produce stealth with variation (this is also related to why the Japanese are so good at building cars, but that's another story) because even the tolerances are extremely thin.

The past and future (LM Aero projection) for production quantity per year is as follows:

2011 --- 9 aircraft
2012 --- 29 aircraft
2013 --- 35 aircraft
2014 --- 36 aircraft
2015 --- 45 aircraft
2016 --- 46 aircraft
2017 --- 66 aircraft --- Block 3F (initial) introduced
2018 --- 90 aircraft --- We are at the start of here. Block 3F "Final" just introduced.
2019 --- 130 aircraft
2020 --- 145 aircraft
2021 --- 150 aircraft
2022 --- 160 aircraft
2023 --- more than 160 aircraft

They are still at the stage where most aircraft have not been built, so changes to the aircraft itself or production line are cheap, compared to building the planes and upgrading them later or changing the production line in the future. For example you'll notice that new F-35s look slightly different than the old ones, they changed the LO spray process, to require less steps, so it's cheaper and will have higher quality. The point is lots of small changes are being made as they ramp up production, try to make things more efficient, and improve quality. Sometimes changes can also introduce issues, even if it will be better in the long run.

Do you know why the Su-57 may not have this issue? Because the Russian government isn't going to tell you about it. And they're LO not VLO. And then they're not gearing up to build >160 aircraft per year.

If it were easy everyone would do it.

The last time F-16 fighter production in the US was sustained at levels around 160 aircraft per year was pre-1993. I don't know about you guys but looking at how dated the USMC, USAF, USN (and RAAF for that matter) are terrifies me. That we are getting headlines like "LO coatings responsible for half of F-35 defects" is simply a reminder that production is ramping up, people are learning how to recapitalize the fleet, this time with a 5th generation fighter. In other words, it's a challenge related to a very good thing. One year till 130 aircraft per year.

My expectation is quality issues will keep occurring until around 2021.

My understanding is also that sections of the F-35 fleet use and require obsolete parts which may not be produced in large quantities anymore. So if something breaks (and they are more likely to break since the aircraft are both immature yet obsolete) they can't get the parts to fix them. And even the new parts that are produced will tend to go to new aircraft, as opposed to fixing broken aircraft. The depots to fix damaged or upgrade new aircraft are late, so aircraft cannot be repaired and/or upgraded to the latest configuration. The false alarm rate for broken parts is also way too high.

Bear in mind the majority of the USAF F-35 fleet is Block 3i, which has minimal changes needed to bring it to 3F configuration. I think the 2B jets might be left at 2B for training, but that's TBD.

In the 2018 SAR, it is indicated that the threshold (minimum acceptable) requirement for the "Mission Reliability" is 93%, the objective is 98%, and the demonstrated performance is 93%. This is for the "A" Model. I do not know how "Mission Reliability" is defined. The sortie generation rate is: 4.0/3.0/2.0 2.5 ASD (objective), 3.0/2.0/1.0 2.5 ASD (threshold), 3.4/3.0/2.0 2.5 (demonstrated). The first number is initial surge (sorties per day), second number is sustained surge (sorties per day), third number is wartime sustained (sorties per day), fourth number is average sortie duration.

It would appear if there are parts avaialbe and there is a desire to surge, the mission capable rate of the F-35 is quiet good.

F-35A At Red Flag: 90% Mission Capable; Key Systems Up Every Flight

(snip DOT&E)

The view from Red Flag was quite different. The 13 F-35As maintained a 90 percent mission capable rate during the three-week exercise, respectable for any combat aircraft. Planes did have problems, including one that lost a generator, but every issue was dealt with inside of 24 hours, according to two Air Force officers talking to reporters today at the end of the exercises.

“We flew these jets hard. We flew a ton of missions in Red Flag during those four weeks. I would strongly disagree (with the proposition) that the jets are not ready. We are ready to take these jets on the road whenever we’re asked to,” Lt. Col. George Watkins, 34th Fighter Squadron commander, told us. And he said the 3i software that controls the plane, its weapons, and sensors performed extremely well.

And the mission systems, which enable most of the plane’s combat capabilities, performed beyond pilots’ expectations. “All our mission systems were up every time,” Watkins said, noting that he would often fly his F-16 with one or more of its mission systems down and just have to find work-arounds. “For the F-35 at this Red Flag, every mission system was up every time.”

breakingdefense.com...

Those were 3i jets, they have probably been upgraded to 3F at this stage and a few upgrades to ALIS since then, and the systems are more mature.

At the very least, there is no reason why the F-35 mission capable rate will not massively exceed those of the F-22 in the coming years and meet or exceed values that were made in the F-15s and F-16s heyday. Su-57 is a more complex, larger aircraft than the F-35, without the global support system, and without huge numbers, so it's unlikely that it will be as maintenance friendly as the F-35.

Lastly, F-35 HAS REACHED INITIAL OPERATIONAL CAPABILITY WITH ITALY.


a reply to: dragonridr

And the SU 57 has a major problem with its airframe. They tend to crack grounding the aircraft.

Citation needed.

Also this isn't the first time the US Air Force has had problems introducing a new platform due to a lack of spare parts and other teething issues, despite the issue not being with the platform itself. This is a fantastic resource called THE REVOLT OF THE MAJORS: HOW THE AIR FORCE CHANGED AFTER VIETNAM

Note that TAC is the predecessor to ACC.

In 1978, the new commander of TAC, General Wilbur Creech, began to push for very expensive, high technology weapons as well as continuing the emphasis on realistic training. These weapons were intended to give the Air Force a long range, all weather strike capability. But the new weapons were expensive and, since the Air Force chose to buy systems instead of spare parts because of limited budgets, the new systems were often grounded. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Air Force was pressured a group of Critics who claimed the Air Force was poorly led and pressed to eliminate high-technology weapons.

(snip)

In 1978, Creech's first year in command, TAC cannibalized F-15 parts over 15,000 times because of lack of spares. The result was an increase of flying time, but cannibalization showed up in a different statistic, known as the fully mission capable (FMC) rate. These were the number of aircraft that were ready to fly the next day at end of each flying day, and even though cannibalization allowed more aircraft to fly during the day, at the end of the day the FMC numbers only showed aircraft that had all their parts; cannibalization had no effect on that number. In 1978, the TAC FMC average for its F-15s was at an all time low of 35 percent, and by 1980, despite some budget increases and Creech's manipulation of the supply situation, the average F-15 FMC rate was still only 56 percent

While this might seem a considerable improvement, it still meant that, at the beginning of a normal day, only a little more than half of TACís F-15s were flyable.

(snip)

Creech knew the nuances of TAC's supply system and so he sent a squadron of the much-maligned F- 111Fs to their wartime base in England with a full complement of supplies taken from War Reserve Supply Kits (WRSK). In England, under combat conditions, the F-111s flew twice their wartime scheduled sortie rates and had a 150 percent increase in their fully mission capable (FMC) rates, that is, the number of aircraft that were ready to fly the next dayís missions after a day's flying. A few months later, in the fall of 1980 and just before the election, in an exercise called Combat Eagle, Creech sent a squadron of F-15s from its home base at Eglin AFB, Florida, to its wartime base at Bremgarten AFB, Germany, this time with its normal (but full) complement of supplies. There all the F-15s flew three sorties a day, twice their wartime sortie rates, and had a higher mission capable (MC) rate at the end of the day than at their home base in the United States. The message Creech was sending was clear. The Air Force's high-tech systems worked fine if they had enough parts, but that required more money.

Sound familiar? We even have a defense build-up... and a guy from a TV show was just elected as President.

This would also (comparing to the F-35 2018 SAR) indicate that the F-35 has similar, perhaps better, sortie rates than the F-15.

They also had issues with pilot retention just before this period as well, which is a problem today.

Creech had an AFB named after him. Yes, that Creech.

Lastly regarding Syria versus Israel. If you have two liars, do you treat the first claim either of them make as being 50% true? Of course not. And the Syrian claim was ridiculous. So it's not like I am believing Israel over Syria.

a reply to: C0bzz

This is a lot of great info. I used to be in the "What the hell are they doing with this F-35?" camp, admittedly I wasn't seeing the whole picture. The more I learn from folks more knowledgeable, the more I change my tune.

a reply to: C0bzz

Correction to this post.

Bear in mind the majority of the USAF F-35 fleet is Block 3i, which has minimal changes needed to bring it to 3F configuration. I think the 2B jets might be left at 2B for training, but that's TBD.

Wrong, dumbass.

The majority of USAF F-35s are Block 2B, which means they do require hardware modifications to bring them up to Block 3F standard. This is much more intensive than merely upgrading a 3i jet to 3F, which is mainly a software update. This is one of the reasons why things like availability and cost will continue to have issues.

originally posted by: BrianFlanders
That's a pretty sad state of things when you consider that for a long time, military and aviation engineering has been the pinnacle of human achievement. In the past if you wanted to see engineering done right, you just had to look at military aircraft. Particularly American ones.

British SPITFIRE looks right to me. English Electric LIGHTNING. Tiny little country that builds superb aircraft.

a reply to: C0bzz

Between 2018 and 2024 another 16 billion dollars will be needed for software development and installation on the F-35... Nothing new about this mismanaged over budget, behind schedule program... But hey it is a great plane and we need it..it will do everything except turn and burn in dog fight (not designed to be a fighter yet the sales pitch was it would be 4 times better in air to air than anything we had except the F-22), will give close air support to the ground troops (sales pitch was the F-35 would be 8 times more effect in the air to ground combat roll) I would hope it can put ordnance on target....close air support kinda like and A-10 only better ( I am willing to bet the A-10 will be around for longer than many want to guess because the F-35 is not gonna get down and dirty), It is a stealth aircraft that can survive in a high threat environment... With the changes in radar frequencies there may be a very ugly surprise waiting for those who put all their eggs in the stealth basket...maybe not ?
youtu.be...


A hit piece on the F-35 program youtu.be...


Anyway I am not flying or going to war in one.. My opinion of the aircraft is the Air force, Navy, and the Marines would have been way ahead and less money spent if they would have had designed an aircraft for their individual mission rolls..

There should have been serious eyeball to eyeball discussions between government procurement and all the subcontractors before this program got so far out of hand... There were plenty of warning signs over the years but hey it is only government money

I still can't get over they were paying 500,000USD for each helmet which is custom fit to each pilot.... Yes I know it is a great helmet once the bugs get worked out of all the software and sensors; just wait, a few more billions of dollars and we gonna have something to strike fear in those pesky Russians and Chinese wanna be fighter jocks....

a reply to: 727Sky

I will respond to this in several days.

I will add JHMCS in legacy fighter aircraft is also very expensive and approaches the cost of the F-35 HMDS. On aircraft such as the F-15E or F/A-18F, the cost of the both HMDS will massively exceed the cost of a single HMDS in the F-35. Your cost figure is also incorrect.

Most issues with the Gen3 helmet have already been resolved.

Only the padding is custom designed, not the entire helmet. The helmet is standardized.

F-35 certainly is greater than 4x more effective A2A and 8x more effective A2G than any legacy fighter. "Dog fight" is only a small part of A2A combat. CAS can be conducted from medium altitude. CAS is only a small aspect of A2G. Other parts of A2G include strike and maritime strike.

It is hypocrisy to point at all these features that the F-35 lacks and then call it a "jack of all trades", that multiple aircraft would be better, and then state it's too expensive. The F-35 has its own concept to be very capable in the A2A and A2G regimes, and it does this via stealth, sensors, sensor fusion, and datalinks with average speed and maneuverability. If you don't want a "jack of all trades" then why are you focusing in on specific ways the F-35 is not designed to fight?

It's not supposed to go low and slow and it's not supposed to get into dog fights.

I would agree that a different fighter for each of the services would be a good idea. However, multirole aircraft are here to stay. The F-22 was a single role aircraft and is >70% more expensive than the F-35. If you had multiple aircraft how would you react to the pilot shortage for example?

A-10 needs to be replaced with a Super Tucano. A-10 was designed for Fulda Gap scenario, which hasn't existed in several decades. It's not survivable in the high end fight. Kill it or cut it.

Counter-stealth radars have always existed. They have not been used because they have disadvantages. A resurgence in these will therefore impose a cost on the adversary. By comparison, the counter to a faster more maneuverable plane is to build a bigger missile. Propaganda about counter-stealth radar, is basically saying that, if they had instead build a faster and more maneuverable fighter instead, all they would need to do is build a better missile.

C2D2 is about upgrading the aircraft over time as the threat evolves. This isn't the early 90s where we could sit still. Besides which, if you're building >160 aircraft per year do you want to make them ready for the fight as the roll off the production line or upgrade them later? Production costs are already on the order of $10-$15 billion per year.

2nd video is based off an article which has been dismantled already. Also cites Pierre Sprey who is a broken clock. There's basically not a sentence which isn't dead wrong.

I really think you need to do some more research, and by research I don't mean looking at youtube videos. Actually scratch that, if you enjoy youtube videos, dragon029 makes many extremely high quality videos on the F-35. The newer F-35 busting myth videos are also better.





















All of these channels have plenty of additional content.

a reply to: C0bzz

Very good. Hopefully you can understand why there is so much doubt about the F-35 with us lay people who are out of the loop and are only able to observe from a far.

For ever good report there seems to be another quite negative.. Like I said I just try and read or watch both.

Again thank you for taking the time to reply

a reply to: 727Sky

Here are some other information regarding the F-35:

F-35 "Wiki" by Dragon029. Huge amount of information here.

ElementsOfPower Blogspot. Lots of arguments defending the F-35 from someone who (I think) works for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics.

F-35 Compendium

F-35 Wikipedia

F-35 Selective Acquisition Report for 2018. This is basically a report on the entire program including cost and performance.

THE REVOLT OF THE MAJORS: HOW THE AIR FORCE
CHANGED AFTER VIETNAM.

F -35 Blog by Norwegian Air Force. Use Google translate.

Australia Parliament Hearings on the F-35 Report

Here's a couple of interviews with people involved with the program that Vago Muradian from Defense & Aerospace Report has done. He is probably the best defense journalist out there and always asks the best questions. Defense & Aerospace Report has plenty of really high quality interviews with people involved in defense.



Here he interviews the former head of the F-35 program (US Government side) from 2011 (I think) to 2017. Note that the relationship between Lockheed and the Joint Program Office was often poor, so it's not as if he is just going to talk pro F-35 BS.




Other videos:









Some videos on the F-35s sensors:









F-35 test pilot Jon Beesley talking about the F-35.









F-35A Paris Airshow:



Newest F-35 House Armed Services Committee (HASC) hearing video.



Here's also a documentary on the F-16 being sold to Europe in the late 1970s. Many of the struggles the F-35 has are similar to those the F-16 had. This documentary makes it obvious.



Hope this helps.