Leaked Pentagon documents claim a design flaw in the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) has caused eight simulated landings to fail. The “F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Concurrency Quick Look Review” claimed the flaw meant that the “arrestor” hook, used to stop the plane during landing, was too close to the plane’s wheels.
When a fighter lands on an aircraft carrier an arrestor cable catches the hook on the back of the aircraft, preventing it from overshooting and ditching into the sea. The documents warn of “major consequences” to the aircraft’s structure and cast doubt on the readiness of the JSF to provide close-air support, which is seen as critical to a carrier’s role in providing amphibious landings.
The review further suggests the planes will be unable to fire the British Asraam air-to-air missile.
This could be an amazing disaster and a huge fiasco. The story should break in the coming weeks.
I’m confused by this. Are we still good at killing people or not?
Yep. But some of them may be our own troops…
This should not be a problem as it continues a tradition of incompetence and overall ass-hattery which has had a long and distinguished career in this nation’s military.
Alos the headline is wrong. It should read:
F-35 can not sea as it can land.
The problem is the positioning of the tail hook which is used to catch the plane before it goes whoosh!!! off the end of the landing deck.
This is such a waste, can’t we just kill others with drones?
Apparently those folks were smoking a “Joint” when they designed this.
I read an article that stated each manned US aircraft requires something akin to 50-60 man-hours support per hour of flying. Unmanned drones require upwards of 200 man-hours per hour of flying.
Go figure.
This WIRED magazine article identifies a number of flaws:
Trillion-Dollar Jet Has Thirteen Expensive New Flaws
Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top weapons-buyer, convened the so-called “Quick Look Review” panel in October. Its report — 55 pages of dense technical jargon and intricate charts — was leaked this weekend. Kendall and company found a laundry list of flaws with the F-35, including a poorly placed tail hook, lagging sensors, a buggy electrical system and structural cracks.
How many planes has General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin provided to the Navy?
Zilch.Testing is still going on. Big waste of billions. Not even close to a finished aircraft safe for use in combat. I thought helicopters needed extreme amounts of maintenance, this Fighter is a mistake.
“F-35 orders and deliveries
The USAF ordered 32 new F-35A aircraft in 2010. USMC ordered 16 F-35B aircraft and is considering more 13 more aircraft. The USN ordered seven F-35Bs aircraft in 2009, and 12 F-35s were delivered to the US in 2011.”
I stand corrected.
http://airforce-technology.com/projects/jsf/
The only carrier capable jet plane GD/LM ever produced, until now, were the Lockheed S-3 Viking, Lockheed T2V SeaStar, and General Dynamics F-111.
Lockheed had to ask Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) for help with the landing bits on the S-3, and General Dynamics used help from Grumman on the F-111’s aft fuselage and the landing gear.
Our effort to reduce the number of defense companies, while increasing the size of the remaining companies, seems to have not had the intended result. Imagine that.
Is this the one they can’t fly in rain?
That was the B-2. The iron-ball anti-radar paint had problems sticking to the composite material the plane was made of.
Time to reactivate production of the F-22 Raptor.
Or use airliners which have no difficulties landing on carriers:
http://youtu.be/KIbi39QdHJ4
Well that’s one way to do business. Take the money, design a useless plane, and profit without even have to build an actual product.
If it is cancelled I wonder what the UK will do, it will have two aircraft carriers with no aircraft.
hire the aircraft carriers out for large parties? sell one to carnival to replace the Costa Concordia?
let a couple of MPs declare them as their second home?
Well I suppose the UK can hire the old Harriers we sold to the USA to put on to the two new carriers. That will fix it. No doubt will also need a 10 billion pound software upgrade and refit and swap out the weapons package and on and on it goes…
If they don’t have the planes, the UK can do this:
http://tinyurl.com/8522kb
Best idea yet, lol.
There’s hardly a weapons system from airplanes to rifles that doesn’t seems to have basic failures in design that are covered by fudged testing that wind up costing more millions than they should if honesty had been the programs core review. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes, thats life. Failing to admit it is a personal failure. Covering them up is a crime.
Until more people go to jail, the crime will continue.
Can we still blame Bush for it? Seriously, it sounds like someone knew how to build a great fighter. But forgot to design in how to land it properly. Should only take a few billion more to figure that one out. Really at only a few hundred million per plane. Can’t we just have the pilot eject and just let the plane crash and get another? This could be Obama’s new jobs plan.
So our multi-million dollar fighters that we use today are ready to be replaced? Doubtful.
Another great Hill and Knowlton project, I’m sure Jack de vries, our dutch ex secretary of defense who now works for Hilland Knowltons F35 division has a good explanation.
THis project is a mess for years now, more and more dutch taxpayer money is wasted on this defense nonsense.
To the F-22 nuts: The F-22 is an interceptor, not a strike fighter. The F-22 is also too big for carriers. The F-22 took even longer to roll out, and it doesn’t even have multiple variants. The F-22 also had a ridiculously high flyaway cost that eventually forced the Defense department to cut their order significantly and delay features to later upgrades to get the cost down.
The F-35 A/B/C are replacing the F-16, AV-8, and F-18. Whenever they get this tail-hook issue worked out the Navy variant will be the first stealth carrier-based strike fighter (that we know of, anyway).
It’s odd that they’ve had so many issues with the JSF program, Lockheed Martin knows how to build an airplane. I wonder if these cost overruns might actually be going to a new bomber or something else off the books. The B-2 is getting pretty old and the B-52 is a dinosaur…
“I wonder if these cost overruns might actually be going to a new bomber or something else off the books.” /// Thats clever, insightful, and knowing. but they are “on the books.” Have past covert development programs been funded in such aberrant bookkeeping methods? I don’t know, but I doubt it.
Many/most cost overruns I know of are caused by “change orders” after the initial specs have been bid on and accepted -or- by intentionally low bids based on defective designs to “win” the contract with the assumption that later changes will be accepted with whatever guff as collateral damages. Free Market Capitalism is like that.
A more likely explanation is that Lockheed cut as many corners as possible in designing this plane since it was competing with Boeing in a fly-off for this possibly last manned fighter jet.
There is a great NOVA documentary on the competition, “Battle of the X-Planes”.
It does make an awesome noise, though.
This explains the job openings for Navy kamakazi pilots.
If only someone had warned us about the military industrial complex …
Drones are better!
Heh heh, “Asraam”.
The JSF fighter has been a boondoggle since day one. Untold billions in development costs. Nobody really wanted it and most military people I’ve talked to about it think it will have a very limited lifespan. I think Someone (above – I’d reference the post number if Dvorak would let us have them!) probably has the right answer. The F-35 contract is covering for something much more important.
Anyone smell a skunk>
lets see..
we GOT RID of the bidding process from multiple manufacturers/builders/designers…
We design computer controls, that HATE DEALING with Hydraulics, esp. at HIGH SPEED..
Programmers use WINDOWS(c) over LESS PROPRIETARY, and more DIRECT programmable languages.. HARDWARE programming has gone out the window…MANUAL controls with Physical connections?? we dont need no ON BUTTON..type in your password..JUST DONT FORGET IT. Anyone for a 4 digit pin?
Iv dared a few ONLINE flyers to a duel..
they can have the FASTEST ROCK in the air and I will take a Bi-wing with a rear turret. They have to fly over 100miles per hour and I can just Dodge and float in the air..
They need 20 miles to turn at speed…I can turn on a dime. They cant get near the ground because the ground will SUCK them in, and I could skim and flutter around.. I can float around canyon walls…I can shoot at them from the front, and the back as they pass…
I get no takers.
And when they have to SLOW down, they fall out of the air.
The real flyers get the point. SPEED isnt always the best thing.
And real life, which is not a video game, while your enjoying you ability to avoid the jet, some little gomer on the ground is going to put a bullet up your ass.
you still cant launch Rockets and fire guns at high speed.
GREAt to get some place, but NOT to kill much.
AS well as, at 5000+ feet, Im a small target and RADAR dont work on me.(not very well anyway)
Good thing they don’t design condoms.
Perhaps the problems are being leaked to desensitize us in advance of the news of major redesigns.
Why would the F-35 even need a tail hook when it can land vertically like a harrier?
Only one, of three, versions land vertically.
The vertical one is only for the Marines (in the case of the US), and always seemed like a needless distraction from the mission of building a lot of affordable / capable planes. In short, the vertical one seems like someone’s wet dream.
This isn’t the first such “joint services” fighter NOT to be used by all services it was intended for. I worked on the F-111, back in the 1970s. And I learned it was designed for both the US Air Force and Navy. But the Navy turned it down, because they said it was too heavy to land on their carriers. Sound familiar? But this didn’t prevent Congress from going ahead, and ordering hundreds of them for the Air Force. In spite of it being a one service only craft. And every version of I saw, still came equipped with the “Feel and Trim” assembly unit, that’s used for landing the F-111 on carriers. They never stopped hoping it would. And never stopped billing the taxpayer for this useless bit of gear. We even received brand new (or unused) digital Mag Tape decks, designed for the Navy (as they were portable and waterproof), to replace some of our aging Korean War era models. Last I heard the F-111s had be reconfigured a few times, to be used as stealth aircraft. They just tried tacking every new tech they could onto that airframe. Until they finally retired it in 1996. Maybe.
These devices are designed to employ airplane builders more than to provide a military capability.