Lacking confidence

November? Interesting. It was supposed to be October. They don't sound confident either. Carrier cat and trap work should only verify what they know (at least for the initial benign environment part of it). Slamming the jet on the deck. Sudden jolts with the catapult. Slamming the throttle forward. Many times. With a system where prognostics did not detect adverse G effects to an engine.

For this work, I would want an engine that was not in question. Something that just always works.

Sad. 13 years after contract award.

With an aircraft that will likely get shot down when facing the enemy.

And otherwise bring no value to the fleet.

Plans to test a Lockheed Martin F-35C aboard a US aircraft carrier in November are on track, but both aircraft scheduled to deploy to the Pacific may not be capable of taking off and landing from the ship.

The C-model F-35 will be the US Navy’s carrier-based version of the jet and will be the last to enter service in 2018, following the Marine Corps and air force variants. Lt Gen Christopher Bogdan, speaking at a meeting of the programme’s joint executive steering board in Oslo, Norway, said the deployment to the USS Nimitz in the Pacific Ocean was on track despite lagging software development and flight restrictions resulting from a June engine fire that damaged an F-35A prior to a training flight.

However, work is ongoing to determine if both aircraft slated to deploy will be fully capable of performing carrier launches and landings, Bogdan says.

“We have some work to do as we lead up to that point in November,” he says. “That work we’re doing now will decide whether both airplanes that go to the ship will be capable of doing arrestments and catapult launches or only one of them will be and the other airplane we will leave on the deck to do logistics testing.”

“The November deployment will happen. It will most likely happen with two airplanes. Whether both airplanes will be fully capable of doing all the work remains to be seen,” he says.