The F-35 continues its' task of destroying SME's

How do you help to destroy military aviation supply chains? Well, one way is to have a poorly managed fighter aircraft program loaded with Ponzi scheme promises.

Let us see yet another industry victimization story courtesy of the Joint Strike Failure:

The company has already trimmed down. Six years ago, it bought a 17,000-square-foot building to prove it could house the milling machines to meet the F-35’s needs for two decades. The facility sat vacant as Faustson struggled to meet the demand for price reductions from its customer, Ball Aerospace and Technologies, after the large orders that Ball—and ultimately, Lockheed—had promised never materialized. Finally, last year, Faustson put the building up for sale. Now, Hostetter says, there’s no guarantee that the company would be able to meet the manufacturing demand should production return.

Ball Aerospace, a Boulder, Colo.-based company supplying low-observable antennas to Lockheed, employs about 2,800 people. Seventy percent of its business supports the defense and intelligence communities. Two years ago, Ball also invested in a new aerospace manufacturing center to support the F-35, its fifth-largest defense contract, and other growing programs. “If sequestration hits all the programs like it’s bound to, there’s a probability that facility is going to go underutilized,” Ball’s program manager, Ken Rockwell, says. “The whole sequestration environment makes it very difficult to go out and make large capital investments when you don’t know if sales are going to come in.”

Faustson’s antenna housing is so precise that a thread half as wide as a strand of hair couldn’t fit between it and the antenna it holds. If one part is slightly off, the F-35 won’t fly—or, in some cases, even fit together. If Faustson can’t meet Ball’s new price demands, Ball may get the part from Australia, Hostetter says, even though Faustson spent 10 years with skilled machinists and sophisticated tools to create its housing. If Ball takes its business offshore, she says, “something would be impacted, either quality or delivery or both.”

And, Sequestration isn't hurting the F-35 program suppliers. F-35 supply chain worries have gone on for a long time. For example: Production Parts is no more. The root cause of all of this are those that believed in a total indifference to what is real.

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-Time's Battleland - 5 Part series on F-35 procurement - 2013 
-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Aviation Week (ARES blog) F-35 posts (2007 to present)
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)