Saturday, August 27, 2011

LM official- F-35 production 3 per month "for the next couple of years"

Not the progress they wanted but here is the ceremony.

This quote is most interesting.

Lawson said Lockheed Martin now is finishing about two F-35s a month. That output is expected to increase to about three a month for the next couple of years before production ramps up even more.

Emphasis mine. That is 24 per year followed by 36 per year. In 2007,(10MB PDF) the Ponzi scheme predicted the following numbers per year.

2011---78
2012---142
2013---178
2014---243
2015---252
2016---255

We are looking at a lot of lost F-35 orders. These are cuts by any other name unless you want to keep running production way beyond 2050.

The cut in orders has a huge affect on industry. And don't forget the sub-contractors; all those little shops all over the map who are not making widgets at the rate the PowerPoint slide promised them. Eventually investors will say, "where is my money?"

And, as delivered, the aircraft will be obsolete. Just what the warfighter needed.

Following the ceremony, Medal of Honor recipient and retired Air Force Col. Bud Day and his wife Doris were given an up-close look at the jet. Bud Day said the F-35 was much more complex than the ones he flew in Vietnam, but added that it is very functional.

“This is going to be a real efficient airplane when you get it out and get it on the line,” Day said. “There’s a ton of work you can do out in the combat theater with this airplane quick. It’s got a lot of internal defense built into it because of its great offensive capability.”

After reading this, I wonder how Bud would feel about the prospects of a minor bit of combat damage being able to take out the IPP on the gold-plated F-35?

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That number would only supply a small airforce.
There must be more problems in development than admitted?

nico said...

"...That output is expected to increase to about three a month for the next couple of years before production ramps up even more."

The general makes it sound like 3 a month is already a nice production run and WOW!, it might go to 5 or 6 month or something. We are all so impressed! I hope he just isn't well informed on the program and all the fake promises. Interesting to note that BA with 787 hopes to go to 10 a month in 28 months from 2.5 right now. Wonder if LMT will ever get there.

Anonymous said...

Could this be what it driving this massive reduction in the production rate:

http://tinyurl.com/65ebd6z

After all, just this reduction in numbers is pretty massive, in its own right.

Anonymous said...

Shadow Puppets. This is all ... shadow puppets.

Give us all your money.

Heretic

Anonymous said...

Turkey is going to cancel. There is no way they are going to stick around with absolutely no european supply chain. It doesn't make any sense. Same goes with Norway, but they couldn't care less. They have money and almost no threat.