Cost to operate F-35 much higher than Canadian and Australian F-18s #cndpoli #auspol

The United States Navy knows it. The United States Air Force knows it, even some of the Dutch know it. The F-35 that these potential customers are looking at will cost significantly more to operate than what they currently fly. For F-18 users like the U.S. Navy, that could be as much as 40 percent higher. Canada and Australia currently fly F-18s.

All of this assumes that customers can even afford to purchase the F-35 as costs climb and development problems are still many years from being sorted out.

source-U.S. Navy

“The cornerstone of the program is affordability based on a next-generation, multi-role strike fighter aircraft that will have a 70 to 90 percent commonality factor for all the variants, significantly reducing manufacturing, support and training costs.”

-U.S. DOD Joint Strike Fighter Program Office-

And as it turns out, not only were the statements of affordability a sham, so were the claims of commonality between variants. Lies. All lies.

F-35 will be able to perform air-to-air refueling both ways #cndpoli #military

Canadian CC-150 Polaris air-refueling tanker / transport, based on an Airbus A310.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is OK to be critical of the F-35 program. It is OK to report on the F-35. However when some get it wrong we should point that out too.

This article reports that there is a concern that the air-to-air refueling method used by Canada won’t be compatible with the F-35. Not so. The F-35 (if it ever gets sorted out) that the current Canadian government wants to waste taxpayer dollars on, will work fine with either boom or hose-and-drogue refueling methods; as per customer requirements.

UPDATE- After looking at this more, could the Canadian DND really be this stupid? To order their F-35 with boom only refuel capability? If so does that mean that they will depend on the U.S. only for tanking? Will they really purchase a tanker with boom capability? They aren’t cheap you know? Then again, DND “analysis”  (read LM briefings and hopes of rent-seeking) on this fiasco has always been faulty. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

A look at Egyptian military capability #military

Intel that supports war planning revolves around capabilities and intentions. When evaluating an adversary and you can no longer depend on intentions, all you have left is capabilities. This will be a problem for Israel when considering any outcome of the Egyptian mess.

Below is a snapshot of Egyptian military forces. It is an extremely broad generalisation. For example, the warship category covers frigates down to small boats that could be considered “warships” and doesn’t count a lot of other things that float.

Large portions of the hardware could be considered obsolete but it will still kill something; and there is a lot of it.

There is also a lot of U.S. hardware. Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft, F-16C fighter aircraft, Apache attack helicopters, M-1 Abrams tanks, Patriot surface-to-air missiles, Hellfire anti-tank missiles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, ex-U.S. Navy frigates and so on. Thankfully, no JDAMs altough a request was put in sometime back.

There are some interesting modified systems. For example, antique Romeo class subs that can fire encapsulated Harpoons.

And, think of all the ammo sitting around to feed this massive amount of weapons.

Hopefully it will never have to be used. But if the Egyptian government goes perminantly unreliable, Israel will be spending a lot of time updating operational plans that are in the intel vault; if they aren’t doing so already.

How will Egyptian troops and combat leadership perform in battle? Unknown; historically it has never been good.

Broad generalisation of Egyptian military capability

Tanks 3700
APCs 6700
Attack helicopters 50
Self-propelled artillery 900
Long-range battlefied rocket launchers 108
Multiple rocket artillery launchers 1100
Self-propelled mortars 180
Army personnel 450,000 (15 million fit for military service)
Ballistic missile launchers 60
Fighter aircraft 450
AEW 8
Medium and high altitude SAM batteries 140
Warships 70
Subs 4

Does Lockheed Martin mislead stock analysts when commenting on F-35 test progress? #Military

Yesterday, Lockheed Martin CEO Robert Stevens told stock market analysts that, for 2011, the company proposes to double the number of F-35 test flights performed in 2010.

This may be a surprise to the F-35 program because they are still trying to pick themselves up from more development delays. These delays have cost Lockheed Martin more than $11.5B pulled from jet purchases by a U.S. Department of Defense that pretended surprise of trouble.

A proclamation of doubling test flights might not be especially interesting since the software block development is way behind. Everything this aircraft does in development testing depends on the right software version to match the needed test point.

Without stocks–and interest in them–a company like Lockheed Martin can not exist. The F-35 program troubles have required some creative explanations to stock market analysts that hype the value of Lockheed Martin stocks to investors.

In May of 2008, when having to explain F-35 program schedule slips to stock market analysts, Stevens said, “Watch this space. We are committed to flying the STOVL mission by the end of this year and we will be scored as to whether we do or don’t do it.” At the time the F-35 program had already stated a delayed plan to start “build down” tests to a vertical landing in the first quarter of 2009.

The STOVL variant of the F-35 would not complete its first vertical landing until almost 2 years after Stevens May 2008 claim.

While some that claim the test program is “on track”–with just a few minor inconveniences–a little history brings things into a less positive light. This was the proposed flight test plan back in 2007. Look at the U.S. fiscal year setup. If Stevens does pull off his claim of doubling fight tests for this calendar year, it will still be two-thirds of that proposed for fiscal year 2010 back in 2007; and a whole lot less than the historical reference for fiscal year 2011.

More history? The people that sold this con to us known as the F-35, claimed that its goal was to be a model procurement program.

Portrait of a £4B fraud on the taxpayer. The end of the Nimrod program. #military

Portrait of a £4B fraud on the taxpayer. The end of the Nimrod program.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will a similar fate happen to the U.S. Defense establishment?

H/T-War is Boring

Canadian Defence minister depends on spin to make his case for the F-35 #cndpoli

Lets look at the Canadian defence minister’s comments of why the F-35 is needed.

“We need this aircraft,” MacKay said at a joint press conference with U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates in Ottawa. “It is the only fifth-generation aircraft that has the capability and the on-board equipment and the stealth capacity and the weapons radar system that is interoperable with our colleagues and our allies in the United States through NORAD.”

The last part is a uniformed nonsense in that any system can be made to be “interoperable” and it isn’t dependent on equipment in the F-35. That is once the F-35 program can prove that a go-to-war variant of the aircraft can work.

Matching the F-35 topic with another fools-errand–Operation:USELESS DIRT in Afghanistan–completes the article nicely.

Video–you got what it takes to be a Ranger? #military

Strong language — a distant friend of mine made this. A different take on advertising for those wanting to be an Army Ranger.

Video–they made the water cannon truck stop for a bit anyway #Egypt #SOTU is news?

DOD joint program office–$6.9B pulled from F-35 purchases #military

Today, the U.S. Department of Defense F-35 joint program office has announced that the DOD will cut $6.9B by delaying F-35 puchases. This is probably a very creative use of the word “delay”.

Gates announced this was going to happen earlier in the month. The Bloomburg link above states at the time the amount of the money pulled from F-35 purchases was unknown but Gates at the time did quote $4B.

Lets see where this goes when you add up all the different colors of graft-money being shoveled into the world’s biggest defense industry (government sponsored) Ponzi Scheme.

Boeing’s evolved Super Hornet, the F-35 as an “F-35 killer”, and it sux to be USMC General Amos #military

The January 17 print edition of Aviation week has an article featuring Boeing’s plan for an evolved Super Hornet. In it is a photo of an F-18E Super Hornet setup as a show-room floor engineering study to showcase a variety of future equipment.

It shows an odd looking IRST that hangs off the gun door (the avionics boxes for it being located somewhere else), a big center-line low observable weapons bay that could carry one 2000 or 1000 pound class JDAM, or two 500 pound class JDAMs or four AMRAAMs or four Small Diameter Bombs (SDB).

It also has the shoulder conformal fuel tanks which together are good for an extra 3000 pounds of gas.

The article goes on to show an advanced cockpit (not part of the mockup) that can only be what you would see if there was a Boeing F-32 Joint Strike Fighter.

Also mentioned are uprated engines. We have seen this offered for the Super Hornet before; either you get a little more thrust or you can get more reliability, but not both. Part of the motivation for the uprated motors was that the wheezing performance of an already under-powered design was an attempt to make Pudgy competitive for India. Stock motors may put out 22k of thrust on a test stand but not when installed on the aircraft.

The article makes claims of lots of range. I won’t say what the numbers are because they don’t sound all that believable. Boeing mentions improved range and even more with external tanks but doesn’t mention that unless they want to redesign the wing, those external stores along with their pylons will be pointing outward 4 degrees; a result of design inbreeding without thinking things through otherwise known as history. Early in the Super program, the design crew had to come up with a way to keep dropped stores from bashing into each other and the aircraft after trouble was discovered in the wind tunnel. The kludge of a fix–outward pointing pylons and stores–means that every time an admiral gets up in front of congress and reports that the Super Hornet has 40 percent more range than the classic; he doesn’t have a clue of what he is talking about.

So for Boeings range claims; they require a flying version of the mockup. They state (like F-16 tests have shown) that the conformal fuel tanks don’t hurt performance much. With that, I think the conformals are a good thing. They will give more range than stock Super Hornets.

The article teases us with part if its title “JSF Killer?”. To that I would say; “no”. So far the only thing that has killed the F-35 program is the F-35 program. There wouldn’t be 24 Super Hornets in Australian service if in 2006, the F-35 program didn’t spook the then Defence Minister, Mr. Nelson. The Navy would not be buying more Super Hornets if the F-35 program was composed of sound engineering practice. Instead, what the American public and Joint Strike Fighter Partner nations get are fairy tales of F-35 greatness; no superlative spared.

The evolved Super Hornet would be a great power-hitter for the U.S.; 12 years ago during Operation: ALLIED FORCE. This evolved design would be great if all your enemy had were legacy SAM systems and some half-broken down MiG-29s.

Today? Well this Boeing mockup can be looked at not only as a combined package but as a buffet. If you only added the conformal tanks to a Block II Super Hornet, the United States Marines would have just the kind of aircraft needed to support their ground troops. The Super Hornet will always be cheaper than an F-35 (until real evidence appears). It will always be more proven than an F-35 (until real evidence appears). It will always be more practical than an F-35 (until real evidence appears).

Neither the Super Hornet (in any form) or the F-35 can stand up to advanced air defense systems growing in the Pacific Rim, so any claim that the F-35 will help deal with this problem is a pure nonsense. The F-35–if it ever matures–like the Super Hornet, will always be a second-tier strike aircraft which will need the likes of the F-22 to make the airspace safe vs. hard threats.

It sucks to be Marine General Amos forced to sell the Just So Failed idea to anyone gullible enough to listen. If the USMC is seriously interested in sustaining their fighter flying club, they better come up with a plan-B.