The topic in this article is maintenance culture and commonality.
There isn’t all that much commonality for jet type A to land at a jet type B or C base. The original goal of the F-35 program was to have 70-80 percent part commonality between airframe types. That did not happen. There are 14 different part classifications with the F-35 and "cousin parts" do not qualify as "common parts".
As for the maintenance culture between the three alleged operators of the F-35, there are a few ways to help make this a little easier with the U.S. Forces. Make the Marines fly all C model F-35s and dump the STOVL B. The USMC has already had to eat 80 F-35Cs. Or, get rid of USMC fast-jet operations altogether. We can’t afford 3 fast-jet air arms. Not with the piles of debt we have. Those ideas would save on maintenance culture expense. Especially since the aircraft is going to cost 30 percent more per flying hour than the legacy aircraft it was meant to replace.
All of this assumes that the program ever makes enough development progress to get out of the under-tested mistake-jet phase. We won’t know for some years.
That, and other things, you will not see mentioned much at the Second Line of Defense F-35 fan club.
3 comments:
I hate to have to be the one to say it, but reconfiguring our Wasp Class "carriers" to have EMALS and buying Sea Gripen (NG) for them would solve all kinds of problems for USMC Air. Especially since EMALS catapults can be configured to incorporate ski jumps into the end of the catapult run (ie. an electric catapult doesn't need a *flat* piston stroke in order to be functional).
Of course, at that point, you might as well redesign the Wasp Carriers, rather than refit them ...
I wouldn't be surprised if you've seen this ELP, but look up a .pdf titled "Joint Strike Fighter Parametric Cost Estimates" from Oct. '98. There's a hilarious slide in there about how the common production line was supposed to work. Plans /reality mismatch, indeed.
- mike j
the sea gripen is not compatible with catapults, it's only STOBAR capable.
hornet and rafale m are catapult (incl. emals) capable.
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