F-22 life, F-35 life

The F-22 started service in 2005. Its' design need is for a 20 year service life. It might actually get there if some more money is spent on serious service life concerns such as airframe-life limits now showing up.

The USAF wants  to limit airframe stress (loads and high-G activity) as much as possible. This covers such worries about drop tank carry stress and even high-G warm up turns before practice air-to-air combat done to help get the blood going a bit.

Then there are the dog-year credits the F-22 gets vs. maintenance intervals when stationed in a dry climate. This is a cry for help by USAF maintainers vs. F-22 corrosion of many flavors.

USAF wants to push the F-22 beyond its's 20-year design life. How, I do not know. Various USAF briefs from 2012 and before show great worry in these areas.

I would think: station them in the Desert and periodically deploy them to only arid climates in the Middle East. Oh yeah, and, use drop-tanks only for ferry, and you darn pilots: do you really need G-warm up turns before air-to-air practice? Management also noticed you wanted to do such things like breathing properly to stay awake.

The F-22A is a true A-model of the old school.

The F-35 is designed for a 30 year life.

Also, like the F-22: allegedly. Note: various reports of different F-35 airframe cracks. Unless you want to add more weight to the jet, the F-35 does not sound like a 30 year design life. More like the length of service of USAF F-16 A-models.

Most of those can be seen here:

And at least those F-16A's did some good things.

This read on a 2010 U.S. Government Accounting Office review on the topic of corrosion for these two aircraft is informative.

Has the F-35 program gained profit from F-22 corrosion lessons learned?

In some ways, as the article points out: yes. In other ways there is still risk.

This 2006 brief JSF F-35 Pollution Prevention Activities makes a nice side-bar, (warning: periodic table alert).

At least the F-35 program (by force of a Navy mission requirement) put some thought into corrosion prevention.

I suppose, this late in the game, that we will learn not long after F-35 IOC (whenever that is) about F-35 corrosion resilience and other airframe life issues.

In that regard, not unlike the F-22 program.

Other defense programs may have had similar histories, and some could even call it "normal". If only we were not subjected to one of the most outrageous and longest-running defense advertising programs in all of known history. Where much of it is based on blatant untruth.

Today, we are well on our way toward spending $140B (sunk) cost on the fifth-generation fighter experiment.

All for 120-some combat-coded F-22s and no F-35s of worth.