“The United States Air Force will never back away from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter despite fears America's Defence Department may be asked to find almost $1trillion in budget savings by Christmas”
In the area of procurement, the USAF stands on a platform of proven weakness and not strength. USAF plans and programs people have not figured out how to pay for the original number of F-35s they want.
Christmas indeed. Who is naughty and who is nice?
A little bit better reporting here.
"I don't have specifics on cost or schedule issues at this point," Mr Donley said.
"I would say, though, that my understanding of our burden-sharing relationships is that the United States is carrying most of the costs of the restructuring. There is some impact for sure on the mission partners, but we are having to reprogram Air Force dollars and restructure our own programs to adjust to the cost overruns of the last several years. We're anxious to get out of that situation as much as our international partners are."
Of interest; USAF unit procurement of the F-35 does not include R&D, just like F-35 Partner Nations such as Australia. USAF will be the biggest potential buyer by a wide margin compared to anyone else. And they are yet to see the hyped low price on their aircraft.
Here is what the USAF has paid so far for their F-35s. It also shows future projections. And this assumes they get all 1763. This will be an interesting trick when it looks like they will only see a few hundred before the program ends.
How can that be? This was the promise.
Current F-35 production looks like this. Which is a big disconnect from the con-artist claims of 2003.
Buyer beware.
I would say that Australian Defence is now (officially) painted into a corner with the dysfunctional F-35 program. Next year when Smith makes a final decision, the fast jet part of the RAAF--aka the flying club--has a very good chance of looking like this in the coming years.
Not much of a solution.
4 comments:
Maybe Boeing can supply us with some upgraded F15 Stealth Eagles
Graeme,
Of course Boeing could supply an upgraded version of the F-15. Frankly I dont know why they are not going the whole hog and looking at doing to the Eagle what they have done with the SH and give it capability essentially similar to the F-35 but at a lesser price on a proven airframe with superior performance. But that would make too much sense and would imply that several defence ministers and the RAAF made an incorrect choice when deciding on the SH so it is unlikely to happen no matter how much sense it might make.
I only hope that if that option is essentially closed off by groupthink and the F-35 plan cancelled then they may go with the upgrade path for the SH that would hopefully involve re-engining, airframe improvements and distributed sensors as recently suggested by Boeing. That at least would be an improvement on the current Super Bug.
Probably, correct as all maintenence is done in the US, and we will be lucky to have at least two flying at once.
More good F-35 News: Mistake Jets
Lockheed Martin F-35 Wing Part Has ‘Design Flaw,’ Tester Says
Q
By Tony Capaccio - Sep 1, 2011 1:09 PM CT Thu Sep 01 18:09:39 GMT 2011
Two of three models of Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT)’s F-35 jet have a “design flaw” that reduces the expected life of a wing structure to 1,200 hours, which is “significantly less than” the expected 8,000 hours, according to the U.S. Defense Department’s testing office.
story: Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-01/lockheed-martin-f-35-wing-part-has-design-flaw-tester-says.html
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