Watch F-35Cs Land on the USS Eisenhower

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The F-35/F-16 Dogfight Debacle

The news has been running around for a number of days.  I've not posted it because I've been trying to stick to my blog post draw down schedule and there are other potential topics which are not getting as much "air time" in the blogosphere.  However, here's where I give in.

David Axe, a complete F-35 hater and then some, was passed a report on how badly a F-35 faired when dogfighting F-16s: it had its lunch eaten and then some.  The fact came out that the plane is really, really underpowered, not to mention has serious ergo problems with the helmet-canopy combo and not to mention canopy-fuselage combo.

There have been several reactions.  Bill Sweetman's response is probably the most all encompassing. It has the best quote about the entire debacle:

“People all need to look at what F-35 really is,” another aviator comments. “A stealth A-7 bomb truck, capable of first-night suppression of enemy air defenses, with limited self-escort. It is, as software-configured right now, not a light air-combat-maneuvering-capable platform. This is what we saw with the early F/A-18E/F blocks: millions of lines of code, and in need of constant update. But, in this case, it’s becoming increasingly easier to rewrite the code laws to allow for those changes.”

Lockheed responded to the whole event by stating dogfighting is obsolete and the F-35 is meant to fire from a distance taking advantage of stealth and long range missiles.

Via Breaking Defense, the US Air Force responded.  The short version is the F-35 is not an F-16 and should not be seen as such.  It is not a dogfighter.  If you need a dogfight, you send in...wait for it...an F-22.  Y'know, that fighter we only bought 180 odd because we didn't need it.  Oops.

Its looking minimally like F-35 needs a new engine.  Wait.  The US Air Force has already started that: its called ADVENT.

F-35C Catapult Launches From USS Nimitz

nice writeup. 

F-35C Lands on an Aircraft Carrier

F-35C set to Make First Carrier Landings Next Week

The naval variant of the tri-service Lockheed Martin F-35 Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter is set to land upon the deck of USS Nimitz (CVN-68) next week. Two of the single-engine F-35C stealth fighters are set to carry out a set of sea trials onboard the carrier to ensure that the jets can operate safely from the flight deck.

“They will fly on the third of November, and the first time that they touch the deck of the Nimitz will be with a trap,” Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, the Joint Strike Fighter program executive officer told reporters on Oct. 30.
“We’re not putting them on the ship with a crane.”

The Joint Strike Fighter Program Office is deploying test aircraft CF-3 and CF-5 to the carrier. The jets were set to arrive at Yuma, Arizona, from Fort Worth, Texas, on Oct. 30, Bogdan said. The two aircraft will be prepared for their trials at Yuma over the next “couple of days,” he added.

The two jets are fully instrumented and are cleared to operate with a full flight envelope, Bogdan said. Once onboard Nimitz, the jets will be run through the gamut of carrier operations.

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Two F-35Cs to Deploy to USS Nimitz for Testing in November: one may not really be ready for carrier flights

Plans to test a Lockheed Martin F-35C aboard a US aircraft carrier in November are on track, but both aircraft scheduled to deploy to the Pacific may not be capable of taking off and landing from the ship.

The C-model F-35 will be the US Navy’s carrier-based version of the jet and will be the last to enter service in 2018, following the Marine Corps and air force variants. Lt Gen Christopher Bogdan, speaking at a meeting of the programme’s joint executive steering board in Oslo, Norway, said the deployment to the USS Nimitz in the Pacific Ocean was on track despite lagging software development and flight restrictions resulting from a June engine fire that damaged an F-35A prior to a training flight.

However, work is ongoing to determine if both aircraft slated to deploy will be fully capable of performing carrier launches and landings, Bogdan says.

“We have some work to do as we lead up to that point in November,” he says. “That work we’re doing now will decide whether both airplanes that go to the ship will be capable of doing arrestments and catapult launches or only one of them will be and the other airplane we will leave on the deck to do logistics testing.”

“The November deployment will happen. It will most likely happen with two airplanes. Whether both airplanes will be fully capable of doing all the work remains to be seen,” he says.

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Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 121 on Track for F-35B IOC in 2015

Pilots at Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 121, the US Marine Corps' (USMC's) first operational squadron of Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters began training in early September to the standards required for the jump-jet version of the aircraft's initial operational capability (IOC) declaration, according to the squadron's pilots and leaders.

"We shifted into IOC training last week," Lieutenant Colonel Steve Gillette, the squadron's commanding officer, told IHS Jane's on 12 September. He explained that the skills checklist the pilots are training to now features more specific and rigorous standards than it did when they first began flying the F-35 in 2012.

After taking over command of the squadron in 2013, Lieut. Col. Gillette began overseeing the move to the more detailed IOC-specific training and readiness standards. "The big difference between what we were doing then and what we're doing now is the rigidity of the standards we're holding people to in order to call a [training] event complete," he explained. Eight pilots in the squadron must master the entire training package in time for the planned July 2015 IOC declaration, he added.

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F-35A Fire Fix Coming

It hasn’t been tested yet, and the “root cause” for the problem has not yet been identified, but Maj. Gen. Peter Bogdan, head of the F-35 program, expects upcoming tests to demonstrate a fix for the engine problem discovered when an F-35A engine exploded early this summer.

The fix will be made to the fan module, which will be replaced in all the 156 engines should the tests prove out, Bogdan said at the annual ComDef conference. Pratt & Whitney, maker of the F135 engine. is setting up a test in southern Florida at its treat facility next to the Everglades “to see what a good rub is and what a bad rub is,” he said to snickers from the juvenile press corps. Basically, the blades on the fan rub a spot on the engine cowl. The blades are expected to rub on the cowling and dig that trench. The problem is that the blades are getting hotter than expected.

Bogdan said that the plane that blew up was damaged during two seconds of flight when the test pilot — operating well within the safety envelope of the plane’s abilities — put G forces, yaw and roll stresses on the plane all at the same time. The titanium blades heated to 1,900 degrees, as opposed to the normal 1,000 degrees and began to crack. On June 23, when the pilot was taking the plane down the runway for takeoff, the fan blade “cracked,” Bogdan said. The circular part of the engine stretched out and shot through the left fuel tank. Fire resulted. The plane, Bogdan said, is not a write-off but an opportunity for combat repairs…

Exactly why this happened isn’t exactly clear yet. The root cause, as engineering types call it, appears close. Initially, the program was searching through 138 possible reasons. “We are really close,” Bogdan told the ComDef audience, having whittled the number down to four.

In the meantime, Pratt & Whitney is designing a fan section with a built-in trench to avoid the rubbing. It must be done very carefully, to avoid allowing air in — which is why the engines are designed the way they are now. The program office, in the meantime, is going to take a new F-35 and place the same G forces, yaw and roll “in a very disciplined manner to see how burn-in occurs.” The prototype fan action with the trench should be designed by late October.

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Japanese White Paper Outlines Industrial Side of F-35 Procurement

Japan’s annual defence whitepaper underlines the importance Tokyo places on the industrial participation aspects of the Lockheed Martin F-35A programme, and casts a wary eye on airpower developments in China.

The whitepaper, produced annually by the Ministry of Defense, touches on all aspects of Tokyo’s security situation, from the disruptive potential of non-state actors to challenges posed by major powers, namely China. It also outlines Tokyo’s plans for developing its combat capabilities and the importance of the country’s defence industry.

In regard to specific weapons programmes, the report places strong emphasis on Japan’s F-35A acquisition. It notes that Japanese companies have been working to develop the manufacturing processes related to Tokyo’s 2011 decision to obtain 42 F-35As.

“It is important for Japanese companies to participate in the manufacturing process and to come into contact with cutting edge fighter aircraft technology and knowledge in order to ensure safety and high operational availability, resulting in the safe and efficient management of [Japan Air Self Defense Force] F-35As,” says the report.

“Following discussions with related parties such as the U.S. government, the participation of Japanese companies in the final assembly and check out (FACO) for airframe and the manufacture of certain engine and radar parts was decided in FY2013. In FY2014, the companies plan to further participate in the manufacturing process, in the engine FACO and the production of parts within the infrared detection device, the electro-optical distributed aperture system (EODAS).”

Produced by Northrop Grumman, the EO/DAS system is a core element of the F-35, effectively giving the aircraft’s pilot 360 degree visibility of the battlespace.

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Australia Takes Delivery of First of 100 F-35As

Australia will take delivery of its first F-35 Lightning II on [today] from Lockheed Martin in Texas, according to an Australian Defence Force spokesman.

Australia — which plans to buy 72 F-35s — is among several close allies, including the United Kingdom and Japan, which plan to purchase the advanced combat jet despite a string of safety issues, including a recent engine fire that forced the plane to skip this month’s Farnborough Airshow in southern England.

The United States is supposed to build almost 2,500 of the jets. Nine partner countries, including Australia, are involved in its production.

On Monday, the Australian Defence Force released a draft statement on the likely environmental impact of F-35 flight operations and invited members of the community to comment.

The draft statement compares expected impact of the F-35s to that of the F-18 Hornets already in service with the Royal Australian Air Force, according to a defense force statement.

The Australian F-35s will fly out of RAAF bases Williamtown in New South Wales state and Tindal in the Northern Territory. The aircraft will visit other RAAF bases in Darwin, Pearce, Amberley, Townsville and Edinburgh for training.

The first F-35 will arrive in Australia in late 2018, the statement said, adding that new facilities and infrastructure worth $1.5 billion will be built to support the jets at Williamtown and Tindal.

The defense force’s website says Australia will form three operational F-35A squadrons, one at Tindal and two at Williamtown, which will also host a training squadron. The first F-35 squadron will be operational in 2021, and all 72 aircraft are expected to be fully operational by 2023.

In the future, a fourth operational squadron will be considered for Amberley, for a total of about 100 F-35A’s, the website states.

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HMS Queen Elizabeth Preparing for F-35B Flights

Preparations are underway for the first F-35 test flight aboard the United Kingdom’s new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier slated for 2018, BAE Systems officials said Tuesday at the Farnborough International Airshow.

BAE Systems engineers and UK Ministry of Defence officials are working with simulation technologies in order to ensure the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter will successfully take-off and land aboard the British Royal Navy’s newly christened HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier. The ship was christened July 4, 2014.

U.S. and British officials had planned for the F-35 to execute a fly over of the Queen Elizabeth on the day of its christening to be the F-35s first ever international flight before the grounding of the Joint Strike Fighter fleet canceled those plans.

“Overall, this ship has been designed with the F-35 in mind from day one,” said David Atkinson, BAE Systems, Team JSF.

Slated to enter service in 2020, the 65,000-ton Queen Elizabeth is the largest warship ever built by the UK. It will be the first in a series of two planned Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, ships being engineered to house and sustain as many as 36 JSF aircraft, BAE officials said.

While not quite the size of an U.S. Navy Nimitz or Ford-class aircraft carrier, the Queen Elizabeth-class ships will be 280-meters long and carry a crew of 671. The ship will house a total of 40 aircraft including Joint Strike Fighters and Chinook and Merlin helicopters. The first helicopter trial flights from the carrier deck are slated for 2017, Atkinson said.

The ship is being built by a BAE Systems-led team including Babcock and Thales. Some estimates put the prince of the Queen Elizabeth at $5 billion U.S. dollars.

The design, configuration and deck space of the ship have all been engineered to accommodate the F-35B Short Take-Off-and-Landing, or STOVL, variant of the JSF – the same variant of the aircraft planned for the U.S. Marine Corps.

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Japan Wants More F-35s

Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera on 8 July said Tokyo will consider buying additional Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters should the cost of the aircraft come down.

"If each country expands manufacturing capability [of F-35s] and increases production volume, this leads to the reduction of the unit cost," Onodera told reporters after visiting Lockheed Martin's fighter production plant in Fort Worth, Texas. "In such a case, it's important to think twice about the total volume."

National broadcaster NHK reported that Onodera was told by Lockheed Martin officials that the company will begin assembling the first F-35s for Japan in August.

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F-35 Caught FIre, Possibly Destroyed

A Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was severely damaged — possibly destroyed — in a Monday morning fire on the runway at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., USNI News learned.

No injuries were reported and officials have begun an investigation into the incident, defense officials told USNI News on Monday.

“The aircraft was preparing to conduct a continuation training mission at the time of the incident, but aborted during takeoff at Eglin Air Force Base due to a fire in the back end of the aircraft,” according to a Monday statement provided to USNI News from the Air Force.
“Emergency responders extinguished the fire with foam.”

The aircraft was a F-35A — the Air Force variant of the fighter — assigned to the 33rd “Nomads” Fighter Wing. The wing is schoolhouse for all versions of the JSF and trains sailors, airmen and Marines.

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F-35B Vertical Take-off and Landing Test

Canada to Commit to 65 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters

Canada is poised to buy 65 Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets, sources familiar with the process told Reuters, marking a major renewal of Canada's fighter fleet and helping contain costs of the expensive defense program.

An 18-month review of Canada's fighter jet needs has concluded that the government should skip a new competition and proceed with the C$9 billion ($8.22 billion) purchase, three sources said.

The decision must still be finalized by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's cabinet. The government is likely to face fierce criticism from opposition politicians concerned that the contract is being awarded without an open competition. Similar concerns over sole-sourcing and costs derailed the purchase two years ago.

A spokesman for Harper's office said there was nothing to announce yet.

However, the sources said the recommendation was expected to lead to formal approval of the F-35 purchase. They said Harper and key cabinet members supported the decision.

Canada's planned purchase is the 6th-largest by a country and would further safeguard the $399 billion program. Its rising costs had sparked fears of a "death spiral," in which countries cut plane orders, driving up the price of remaining planes and triggering further cancellations.

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Will Canada Can the F-35 Purchase?

Things are hotting up in Canada over the nation’s F-18 replacement options, with the key question being whether Ottawa will go forward with previous plans to buy the F-35, or enter into a competitive process.

Clearly worried by the prospect of the second option, the pro-F-35 ‘Canadian JSF Industry Group’ published an open letter ahead of the CANSEC show, which took place in Ottawa from 28-29 May. Further delaying a firm commitment to the Lockheed Martin type (US Air Force image below) would be “a costly exercise in terms of personnel, resources and life extension for the existing fleet”, the partner companies warn, while also adding that “current Canadian F-35 contracts and jobs will very soon start going to countries that are today buying the aircraft”.

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F-35B Will Fly & Hover But Not Land Vertically at Farnborough Air Show

Will the F-35B land vertically at the Royal International Air Tattoo or the Farnborough Air Show? No. Will it hover? Yes.

One of my colleagues had raised the issue that the F-35B will not perform a vertical landing this July, inferring this might be because it would damage the plane or the runway.

F-35 program spokesman Joe DellaVedova told me that the Marine version of the Joint Strike Fighter will perform short takeoffs and landings and perform hovers at both shows. I’m betting you can expect the same at the July 4 christening of the HMS Queen Elizabeth.

The blast from an F-35B as it lands vertically is pretty fearsome, but the Marines, Navy and program office all say the effects are manageable. I’ve seen the landing spots on the USS Wasp after several days of F-35 testing and spoken unsupervised with crew members. The Wasp deck crew told me they were seeing less damage to the deck than it sustains from some other aircraft that routinely fly from the Wasp and other LHD class ships.

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US Navy to Start Testing F-35C on Aircraft Carriers

The U.S. Navy for the first time will begin testing its version of the F-35 fighter jet from an aircraft carrier this fall, according to the No. 2 official in charge of the program.

Rear Adm. Randy Mahr, deputy director of the Defense Department’s Joint Strike Fighter program, didn’t specify a date or ship for the upcoming evaluations. But he spoke confidently of the planned milestone for the F-35C, the Navy variant designed for taking off from and landing on carriers.

“It’s going to be the year of the F-35C,” he said during a briefing at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference on Monday in National Harbor, Md.

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Australia to buy F-35

Going ahead with the acquisition of F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters (JSFs) will best meet Australia's priorities for capability, industry participation, and alliance management with the United States, according to an Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) report released on 24 March.

The ASPI report came to its conclusion despite the unavoidable continuing cost of the 24 F/A-18F Super Hornet strike fighters already in service with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and the 12 EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft on order.

"Risks to both [JSF] schedule and performance seem sufficiently under control to make that a responsible decision. Although the development program could still throw up surprises, it looks like the F-35 will be ready in time to retire the vintage Hornet fleet as scheduled, and will perform as required," the report stated.

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South Korea Wants F-35A Plus its Tech for KF-X Indigenous Stealth Fighter

With Seoul’s March 24 announcement of its long-held intent to purchase the F-35A, South Korea is likely securing an offset deal that will include a new military communications satellite and technical assistance in the country’s plans to develop an indigenous stealthy KF-X fighter.

Lockheed Martin, the sole producer of stealthy fighters globally, will provide more than 300 man-years worth of engineering expertise in assisting Seoul in designing its KF-X. The F-22 and F-35 builder will also offer more than 500,000 pages of technical documentation derived from the F-16, F-22 and F-35, says Michael Rein, a company spokesman.

South Korea is looking at multiple KF-X designs, but has recently found that a single-engine option may be as effective at an affordable price point as a twin engine. It is slated to become operational around 2025.

Also in the offset proposal is a secure satellite communications satellite; Lockheed is building the newest U.S. Air Force jam-proof satellite called the Advanced Extremely High Frequency spacecraft. It is built on the company’s A2100 bus and includes the latest security measures to avoid interference or jamming. The offset also includes “necessary control equipment and technical training,” Rein says. The deal could cover delivery of the new satellite, launch and turnover of the operational system.

Seoul announced its choice of the F-35A over the Eurofighter Typhoon and Boeing F-15 Silent Eagle, a Strike Eagle modified with stealthy weapons bays and leading edges, in December. Though Boeing’s offer was the only one to comply with South Korea’s budget limitations, the government overrode a recommendation to buy the Super Hornet. To stay in a budget of 8.3 billion won ($7.2 billion), the country is only purchasing 40 F-35As, far less than its intended buy of 60 aircraft in the F-X phase 3 program.

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