Add another year to F-35 IOC dates

Expect U.S. military IOC dates for the F-35 to slip another year. That is not fact, but a nomination based on years of observing the program.

The Navy Times reported that the mishap F-35 had an event 3 weeks before that likely contributed to the fire. They only flew it in a very benign way. 

The issue began three weeks before the fire when a pilot took the aircraft up and executed a two-second maneuver involving adding Gs, roll rate and yaw to the plane at the same time.

Although that move was ““well within the envelope of the airplane,” Bogdan said, those two-seconds led to the engine rubbing against a rubber piece at a much higher rate — and nearly double the temperature — than it was designed to do. In turn, that led to what Bogdan called “microcracks” that went unnoticed until the day of the fire.

Daddy Bogdan says that PW will pay for all the motor fixes, but that you and I will pay for half of an engine mod in the future that is yet to be tested.

To-date, they are yet to find the root cause of the mishap that was likely caused by a faulty motor.

The IOC push?  If you track the only consistent performance metric of the program: delay, it could be more. That doesn't count all of the other problems besides the motor.

You can probably forget carrier trials in the near future for the C-model.

Testing like that has to be done when the motor (as well as a lot of other mistakes in the aircraft) are not put into question. In other words: a healthy aircraft. Slamminig the throttle. Hitting the deck at -750 per minute and so on.

Bad all the way around.

The program is stalled.

Will FY15 money be fully released?

Who knows.

Until then, we need an investigation of the coverup.

"Coffin Corner".


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-Time's Battleland - 5 Part series on F-35 procurement - 2013 
-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Bill Sweetman, Aviation Week and the F-35
-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)
-A look at the F-35 program's astro-turfing
-F-35 and F-16 cost per flying hour
-Is this aircraft worth over $51B of USMC tac-air funding?
-Combat radius and altitude, A model
-F-35A, noise abatement and airfields and the USAF
-Deceptive marketing practice: F-35 blocks
-The concurrency fraud
-The dung beetle's "it's known" lie
-F-35's air-to-air ability limited
-F-35 Blocks--2006 and today
-The F-35B design is leaking fuel
-F-35 deliveries
-ADF's wacky F-35 assumptions
-Gauging performance, the 2008 F-35, Davis dream brief
-Aboriginal brought out as a prop
-Super Kendall's F-35 problem
-LM sales force in pre-Internet era
-History of F-35 engine problems
-Compare