Decisions loom for Joint Strike Fighter Program

http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123132039
by Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON (AFNS) –– Decisions about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and
F-22 Raptor aircraft programs are expected early in President Barack
Obama's administration.

The F-35 program manager said Jan. 15 he sees strong support for the
F-35 from the services, allied partners, and, so far, on Capitol Hill.

Based on initial indications and inquiries from President Obama's
administration, Maj. Gen. Charles R. Davis said he's confident the F-35
program begun during the Clinton administration will continue, even if
budget restraints force scale-backs. General Davis made the comments
here as keynote speaker at a Brookings Institution forum, "The Joint
Strike Fighter and Beyond."

"Support throughout what appears to be three administrations has been
relatively consistent," he said. "As of yet, we see no reason that that
support is going to change. There is nobody on Capitol Hill who has said
they want to cancel the Joint Strike Fighter."

That doesn't mean, he acknowledged, that the program to develop the
next-generation strike aircraft weapon system for the Navy, Air Force,
Marine Corps, and allied countries might not get scaled back.

General Davis conceded he gets many questions about the F-35's cost ––  
expected to be $80 million to $90 million, depending on the variant ––  
and delivery schedule. And if fewer aircraft are built, each will cost
even more.

"We lose two airplanes in our [fiscal 2009] appropriation and every
other one of the airplanes being bought in that year goes up $3
million," he said.

Another consideration, he said, is the cost of maintaining the aging
legacy fleets the F-35 would replace if production is cut.

Earlier yesterday, William Lynn, President Obama's deputy defense
secretary nominee, told the Senate Armed Services Committee it would be
"very difficult" for the Defense Department to keep all its weapons
systems development programs on track in tight budget times.

Mr. Lynn said at his confirmation hearing he'll push for a speedy
Quadrennial Defense Review to set priorities through fiscal 2015 and
expects the tactical aviation force modernization issue to play heavily
in those considerations.

In written responses submitted to the committee, Mr. Lynn recognized the
capabilities of both the F-22 and F-35 aircraft –– particularly when
considered together.

"The F-22 is the most advanced tactical fighter in the world and, when
combined with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, will provide the nation
with the most capable mix of fifth-generation aircraft available for the
foreseeable future," he said.

The F-22, to replace the legacy F-15 fleet, brings "tremendous
capability" and is a critical element of the department's overall
tactical aircraft force structure, Mr. Lynn said. The F-35, on the other
hand, "will provide the foundation for the department's tactical air
force structure."

The F-35 is the first aircraft to be developed within the Defense
Department to meet the needs of three services, with three variants
being developed simultaneously.

It will replace the legacy F-16 aircraft for the Air Force and the
F/A-18 and AV-8 aircraft for the Navy and Marine Corps, as well as
numerous legacy aircraft for the international partners participating in
the F-35 program, Mr. Lynn told the Senate committee.

So the big question, he said, is determining the appropriate mix between
the two aircraft. "If confirmed, I would expect this to be a key issue
for the early strategy and program-budget reviews that the department
will conduct over the next few months," he said.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has made no secret of his interest in
reaching a decision and moving forward. During a June visit to Langley
Air Force Base, Va., he told Airmen at Air Combat Command the new
administration will have to determine the proper balance between the two
aircraft.

"End the debate, make a decision, and move on," Secretary Gates said.
"'Start getting stuff built' is just so important.'"

Secretary Gates told the Airmen he had allocated enough money to keep
the F-22 production lines open so the next administration could make its
decision. He did not know at the time that he would be part of that
decision-making process.

General Davis told the Brooking Institution audience Jan. 15, "support
from all three services has never been stronger" for the F-35 program.

The Marine Corps, slated to receive the "B" variant that has a
vertical-lift capability, has been "the most vocal, avid, and fervent
customer," General Davis said. The Marine Corps leadership expects the
F-35 to become "the most effective air platform they have ever had," he
said. "Looking at their history of how they have used airplanes, that is
quite a bold statement."

Similarly, the Navy, to receive the aircraft's "C" variant designed for
carrier launches, "has never been more supportive of the program,"
General Davis said. He noted that the Navy has been "fighting
aggressively" to keep its aircraft carriers fully outfitted.

In addition, the Air Force recognizes the need for a complementary mix
of aircraft to meet its mission requirements, he said. Its "A" variant
of the F-35 will provide conventional take-off and landing capabilities.

Meanwhile, nine partner nations continue to support the program, with
other countries considering signing on, too, General Davis said. The
F-35 program represents the first time in military procurement history
that the United States has partnered with another nation to build an
aircraft from the ground up.

"We believe that the coalition that was put in place when they signed up
for this program is probably stronger than ever now," General Davis
said.

This partnership, he said, brings the concept of coalition integration
to a whole new level. In addition to funding and developing the F-35
together, the partners plan to use a single system to sustain it ––  
sharing spares and repair capabilities to reduce costs.

"There is something very unique that Joint Strike Fighter offers that
other programs I have seen do not," he said.

The big challenge for now, General Davis said, is to take advantage of
the latest manufacturing processes to get the production line moving
ahead.

"Even the manufacturing lines for some of our newest fighters, the F-22,
started in the late '80s and early '90s," he said. "We have progressed
almost two decades in manufacturing technology, but we have never really
tried it out on a full-scale program."

I'm still expecting them to both die.





-K

I understand that the A model of the F-35 will be a conventional aircraft, while the C model will be able to do carrier takeoffs and landings.  

I'm wondering what advantages the A has over the C model.  IIRC the C model has larger wings for better low speed handling which result in a greater fuel capacity and longer range.

Would the C model work well for the Air Force instead of the A model?




-K

Anyone who didn't dump LockMart stock when Obama won was a fool.

I expect we'll be fighting the next war with spit-balls.

Don't forget naughty words too !

I don't think that you're going to be far off. Obama promised to slash defense spending. I expect that the military will become a make work program. Obama isn't going to want to be "wasting" hundreds of billions on new jet fighters and tanks, or on maintaining existing weapons systems when that money can be "better" spent on social programs and curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Besides, you don't need jet fighters to open a peaceful dialog with your enemies.

No naughty words or harsh language!



Sounds to me like you have a hole in your soul that needs to be healed young man!

He'll kill R&D because it is the least confrontational way out.  No one will miss those programs until years down the road.

They will kill the F-22 to protect the F-35 program

F-22 = $115 Mil a pop, in full scale production, no nasty surprises


F-35 is already $100 Mil a pop and expected to rise significantly. Still a protoytype, may have nasty surprises.

Man, I hope you are wrong.

Yep. Too bad we couldn't start rolling new '16s and '15s for the AF again and buy a bunch more '18s for the navy instead.

That way our "high-low" would be set for a long, long time.

Both are going to go away. It will be one of the promises he made he can keep. His cult will be appeased and don't believe we need any weapons or troops. Can't be an aggressive imperialist if you have no army or guns.

Last UK MoD estimate I read was a $150 mil a pop tab for our F-35B's, OK, the B is the most expensive version, but I can remember when they were being touted at $45 Mil a time.

F-22 just got some support when a bipartisan bunch of congressmen sent a letter to Obama telling him to buy more F-22s. Of course, F-22 components are built in all their states/districts. Same with ships.

I bet if we see any major defense program get threatened with an Obama cut you'll see a bunch of Congressmen screaming about the possible resulting job losses. You'll have them and the lobbyists pointing out, "well, if this program gets cut 5,000/10,000/whatever people will lose their jobs in an already troubled economy! I thought Obama wanted to protect jobs!"

You can't say you want to create and protect jobs and do a bunch of things that get people fired. Obama and his "oh god unemployment" issues may back him into a corner.

Like always, people want defense projects cut for cost. Just ones that aren't in their districts.

The F-22 is probably a goner.  The F-35 will survive because of export potential plus use by three services.  Already have a number of foreign sales inked, Norway comes to mind, UK (both RAF and RN).

Navy and Marines are still buying F/A-18 E and F models, I thought.  The G model (to replace the Prowler) is also in the pipeline.

USAF is the service with it's 'nads in a mangle…

It's facing block obsolescence of it''s F-16/F-15 fleet. It has to have a replacement…

The  F-22 is too much fighter to replace the F-16.

The Marines are not buying Super Hornets or the Growler.

http://tinyurl.com/ab6db5

Right, they are holding out for the JSF to replace the harrier and F/A-18. I don't know how they expect to replace the ancient EA-6B without buying Growlers, unless they expect to see a electronic warfare version of the JSF.

I remember I got jumped on about a year ago when I said that the F-35 was junk.

A non-maritime plane is lighter and cheaper to operate.  Fuel costs money, after all, and a non-maritime plane is 30% lighter.

RIP.

It was such a pretty plane too.

Do you have a crystal ball??

How can you label a plane as "junk" when it is still in the testing phase? As far as the aircraft specs are concerned, everthing is subject to change until requirements are met. There are several nations banking on this plane, I'm sure they will continue the test/evaluation work until everyone is happy.  

Can the F-35 be armed with Humility and Restraint?

Not applicable to the F-35.


Empty weight: A: 29,036 lb, B: 32,161 lb, C: 32,070 lb

Not at all.  We're the only military air force in the world who's been operating stealth aircraft for two decades.  The F-22 is in no way "too much" airplane to replace the lawn dart.  The High-Low mix was a flawed design from it's inception, pleasing nobody but bean counters.  The F-22/F-35 replacement for the F-15/F-16 pairing only perpetuates the foolishness of the original construct.  The F-22 is a better ground attack platform than the F-35, since it carries the same number of SDBs internally, and the same number of pylons externally, but with the advantage of carrying more ATA missiles at the same time.  It has two engine redundancy, which will yield 1/2 the accident rate over time (as proven by dozens of airframes over 4 decades).  At current prices for the F-22 (a known quantity) they are actually cheaper than the vaporware F-35 anyway.

Tsk! Tsk!


Zoomies will never allow people to hang pylons and dumb bombs for ground pounding under the wings of their hot ride!


Keep the F-22 for air superiority/precision strike, buy $50 Mil a pop F/A-18E's for ground pounding to replace all the Darts that are going to be faliing apar.

Inside information here but Luke Airforce Base here in AZ just got the f-35 contract 2 days ago. They will have the f-16's transistioned out by 2011.

Ugly as hell but cheap. Shoulda gone with Boeing.

The USAF should kill the F-35 and instead focus on large procurement orders of F-22s. Standardizing from the high-low mix to a single type of aircraft would yield significant savings both initially due to the economies of scale being brought to bare and operationally since only one training program, one maintenance program, and one spare parts pool would have to be operated.

The improved avionics developed for the JSF could be integrated into later block F-22s.

What happens to the F-16s? Do they go to air National guard?

Bases don't get aircraft manufacturing contracts.    They may have been chosen to bed down the new vaporware fighter, but unless any are actually built that's not happening.  Trust me when I tell you our new CinC is going to shitcan the F-35, or scale it back so dramatically it becomes a niche program like the F-22 has.

Plus every one purchased drives down the cost of aquisition! If you rolled all the R&D and aquisition cost from the F35 into the F22 you would be golden right now!

The only thing keeping the concept afloat is that pushing it through will mean a large number of jobs will be created in a field that generates large amounts of political capital.  Numbers will drop, but we'll see both platforms running, الحمد لله

I'd agree…


LM reckon a continuous production cycle could drive the cost of the F-22 down to $90 Mil a unit.

I believe the Air Force just awarded a contract to begin converting F-16's into Q model target drones.





-K

No, mostly those will be banned as hate speech.

Instead, we will cuddle with our enemies, and talk and listen and try to understand their viewpoint . . .

The Obama administration will make a token buy of more F-22s, so they don't appear to be following in the Bush Administration's footsteps. At the same time, they will continue with the F-35. Too many Congresscritters would cry if they didn't. The rest of military will suffer for it.

The SDB is the darling of the low collateral damage guys, but those of in fires and effects have come to realize although it may be easier to get a strike approved with one we actually may not be getting the job done.  Since we cannot use the JMEMS solution for even the SDB to ensure the desire effects, the low collateral effects means the target we are trying to kill often gets away.

We have seen the same things dozens of times with Pred strikes, we see an HVI, shoot him with the low collateral effect weapon and he isn't killed in the strike.

For those of us in the targeting we won't bigger bombs, not small ones to ensure the target goes away, vice having to do several attacks.

Two crystal balls actually.

I knew it was junk by the cost to worth ratio of the project. Which is the problem they are running into. Other countries don't have the guts to spend billions on a project like we do in order to get results.

That makes far too much sense.  We might even be able to replace planes on our carriers if, God forbid, we should lose one in a war or something.  Obviously this idea is not wasteful enough for our government.  Now if you had suggested that we develop an entirely new version of the F/A-18 for the Air Force while continuing the F-22, F-35, and F/A 18, then you'd be getting somewhere.  

We've got plenty of long endurance platforms carrying Mk82s, Mk83s, Mk84s, and JDAM versions of all of them.  There are plenty of B-1 and B-52 orbits carrying the big stuff, for the vast majority of strikes a 500lb JDAM or SDB is plenty.  The most in demand JDAM isn't the Mk84, but the Mk82.  With the laser JDAM update we can hit what we want even on the move.  If you want big bombs both the F-22 and F-35 can carry two internal Mk83s or JDAM equivalent, or whatever mix of 500/1000/2000lb bombs on pylons.

The reason the GBU-38 and GDU-12 are most in demand has more to do with that the Mk83 and Mk84 platforms are less likely to be approved to be dropped.

I have seen in numerous times, that unless you are in a TIC, you cannot get the target engagement authority to approve a strike with something bigger than a Mk82 series, because of collateral concerns.  You can show them the JMEMS or bug splat showing them that the 500 may not do it, but that won't convince them.

I know of several occasions that we went "small" and although the target was at the strike, through multi-source intel we know he got away because he wasn't in the exact room the bomb hit.

So what happens if they decide to can the program as far as the other countries that all have them ordered already?

Do they continue to produce them and just leave the US out or what?

No US orders, no F-35 period.

Aren't the maintenance costs supposed to be much lower on the F-22 than our creaky old F-15s and F-16s?

As for the SDB not being big enough issue when using F-22s or F-35s as strikers, why not also get some of the "F-16 with a backpack" Block 60 variants as well?  Being super stealthy is nice when you're fighting on equal terms, but if you already dominate the airspace you don't need the latest and greatest, which is why the A-10 has been doing so well over in the sandbox.

Oh there will be orders, a fraction of what was projected, so they'll be $300M each, but we'll build a handful of them.  The program has enough inertia to at least eke a few out.  The B model is headed for the chopping block, as is likely the A model.  If we stuck to a single design (the C model) the program could be worth a crap as long as the economies of scale are applied.  I truly believe it'll turn into a boondoggle, and will in no way mirror the international success of the F-16 program.  We tried the "all things to all people" thing once before, remember TFX?  

Why no F-16 Block 60's?

RCS

F-22 - very, very, very small and all aspect.

F-35 - very, very small, frontal aspect.

F/A-18E - quite small, frontal aspect.

F-16 - not small.

F-15 - very large


F-15's and 16's can't stand up in modern double digit SAM environments without lots of SEAD.

I should buy stock in Boeing because I see more superhornets in the future.

Are the powers that be on your side of the pond making contingency plans if we bail?