Gross over-optimism and hope will not fix that problem.
This read is what was told to the U.S. Senate recently. Unaffordable, unsupportable, unable to face emerging threats. That is the F-35.
And, the RAAF even wants another try at the bad idea of extending the airframe life on legacy Hornets. Here is the problem faced by the U.S. Navy.
The Navy intends that a SLEP would extend the life of select legacy F/A–18s from 8,600 to 10,000 flight hours. As yet, the Navy does not have sufficient data to predict the failure rate for aircraft being inducted into the SLEP program. Too high a failure rate could leave the Navy with too few aircraft that could benefit from the SLEP program, which would exacerbate the shortfall projections.
