Saturday, December 10, 2011

DOD releases contract for F-35 low-rate initial production batch 5

The U.S. Department of Defense has just released a contract for purchase of 30 low-rate initial production aircraft. This is the 5th batch or “LRIP-5”. Cost of the contract is approximately $4B.

Defense Tech broke the story.

The Air Force gets 21 F-35As, the Navy gets six F-35C carrier variant jets and the Marines will get three F-35B short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) jets.

Note that like LRIP-4, three STOVL aircraft are the minimum to keep that specific supply chain going while the F-35B works its way out of probation.

In addition:
This contract combines purchases for the U.S. Air Force ($2,644,270,340; 65.9 percent); the U.S. Navy ($937,374,286; 23.34 percent); the U.S. Marine Corps ($426,190,013; 10.6 percent); and the United Kingdom ($4,084,671; 0.1 percent)

It is unknown if this contract includes jet engines.

This means the roll-away price of each USAF F-35A for this batch is $125M. The U.S. Navy carrier variant F-35C is $156M. Each USMC F-35B STOVL is $142M.

There are only small amounts of fatigue testing done and much discovery of this unstable design still out there. A resent U.S. DOD report stated that the USAF and USN found the fuel dumping function unacceptable and a fire risk. The tail hook of the USN F-35C will need a complete redesign as it failed all of its tests. This may have an affect on the aircraft's radar signature. There are also flight envelop issues to work through.

You can read Aviation Week's happier (whitewashed) version of F-35 progress here.

Under the original plan of many years ago, LRIP-5 was supposed to be 120 aircraft.

Even if the aircraft somehow reaches its design goals, what will be delivered to the warfighter is certain to be obsolete against threats over the F-35's alleged lifetime.