F-35B declared operational with USMC

Totally agree that the acquisitions process is FUBAR- and our Generals know that too, and are trying to find ways to fix it.

At this point, we're dancing with the girl we brought.

Oh, and she's the only girl on the dance floor that can respond to a TIC in a contested environment without massive losses and support. So if you ever want to fight a war in *any* country that is actively supported by Russian or Chinese defensive systems, you'll want to be dancing with her.

Anyone who thinks invading Syria would be a walk in the park clearly doesn't have any legitimate knowledge of the ground situation or our current offensive capabilities. Perpetuating that belief in the public sphere puts countless military lives at risk for a fight we shouldn't start.
 
NewYorkophile said:
Anyone who thinks invading Syria would be a walk in the park
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The US military is a victim of its own successes. In fact, we're still suffering the after-effects of public perceptions generated in 1991, which think that the US military is unbeatable and can win wars with 100% precision, no fratricide, no CIVCAS, few US casualties, and in minimum time. Unfortunately folks don't understand that these things are the outlier, rather than the norm.

While there is no doubt that, strictly militarily the US would win a military conflict in Syria, that doesn't mean it would not be without notable US losses and accidental civilian casualties. The same could be said for action against Iran or North Korea, and obviously against larger potential adversaries like China or Russia.

If people are concerned about the money that the Lightning costs, then they need to be pointing a finger at the Executive and Congress they've elected who have kept the US military at constant low-simmer war for the last 20+ years.
 
Lawman said:
For 1. The GAO is trying it's best to handle the fact that there has never been a program of this scope or complexity. So gotta keep in mind they are inventing a standard to go with the program.

2. Take GAO with a heavy grain of salt. These are the same people yelling how much of a failure the 18E/Fs were 15 years ago. Went so far as to call the chief test pilot and Boeing on the stand (sound familiar) to defend the program and why we should keep funding it. Turned into the extremely successful strike fighter it is today despite that.
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I'm mostly staying out of this thread (indeed almost all threads these days) but since we're talking about nuance and accuracy, it's necessary to point out that the GAO can't make someone testify. GAO provides reports to the legislative branch as ordered - these would go through the DCM branch of GAO. Those reports go through twenty-eight levels of review before release. It is Congress - usually HASC and SASC - who actually call people to testify in those committees, though, not GAO. (Source: married to a woman who was a DCM analyst for 7 years. Girl knows her weaponry.)

Autothrust Blue said:
GAO's job is to make sure that the public money is spent properly, and in accordance with the Congressional authorization for that expenditure. This isn't necessarily about flying to me: the airplane is important for national security reasons, but how the airplane is produced and how much it costs you and I are ALSO very important questions.
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This is true. Sadly, they have no enforcement capability. If malfeasance is suspected, that's when the various IG offices get involved.

EDIT - by the way - my comments on accuracy should in no way be construed as a criticism of what @Lawman is saying. I've learned quite a bit.
 
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Hacker15e said:
If people are concerned about the money that the Lightning costs, then they need to be pointing a finger at the Executive and Congress they've elected who have kept the US military at constant low-simmer war for the last 20+ years.
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I'm delighted to point the finger directly at both of those august institutions. Which still doesn't make this discourse even remotely logical.

"Man that bridge sure costs a lot of money. It's like way more than any bridge ever built."

"Well, yeah, but it's the BEST BRIDGE EVER."

"That's not what I heard."

"Well you don't know what you're talking about, it is. I drive over bridges all the time. This one is the best."

"Well, ok, let's say it IS the best bridge ever. It's still really expensive. I mean really, really expensive. Astronomically expensive. And we're kind of broke. Do we really need the best bridge ever?"

"Were you not listening to me? It's the best bridge ever. And our current bridges are old and falling apart."

"No, no I heard you. But maybe we could buy a less expensive bridge?"

"Do you even drive over bridges at all? I didn't think so. You don't know what you're talking about. We have to buy the best bridge ever. I drive over bridges, so I know. Now shut up."

*rolleyes*
 
MikeD said:
A good example is the F-16N that the USN purchased in the late '80s to replace A-4 and F-5 aircraft as an aggressor simulator at TopGun to replicate newer gen MiG-29-style aircraft (the A-4 simulated the MiG-17, and the F-5 the MiG-21). These 20-some jets that were purchased were already purchased with reinforcements to the airframe installed, and they flew relatively clean with few external stores. Within 10 years, all the fleet of these planes were retired due to severe airframe cracks. 10 years, and the fleet is done. And these were new Block 30 jets at the time.
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The Navy flew the snot out of those aircraft! The airframes just weren't built to fly that much and take as many Gs as they did repetitively. They were lucky to pick up those 14 Pakistani A and B models to use at Fallon.
 
H46Bubba said:
The Navy flew the snot out of those aircraft! The airframes just weren't built to fly that much and take as many Gs as they did repetitively. They were lucky to pick up those 14 Pakistani A and B models to use at Fallon.
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There is actually a little more to the story than that. USN F-16N were built/specified with titanium wing attach components based on the intended service use of that special group of aircraft (the re-enforcements MikeD speaks of), unlike USAF spec or FMS variants. Unfortunately that really hard material caused stress cracks over time in the adjoining surfaces. I'm sure they saw plenty of G during normal operations, but so do our current A's and B's, which we have now flown for longer and with no significant airframe issues. Where the story gets more complicated is in the archaic way NAVAIR decided to handle the problem. They said at the time, basically flat out that "unless those cracks are fixed, the jets are down". Complete repair of the cracks would have been a cost prohibitive option. Had they adopted the more engineering based approach the USAF takes, they could have incrementally monitored the development of the cracks, applied engineering analysis to the problem, and continued flying them if they didn't significantly grow over time. I suppose it is anyone's guess how long that would have remained viable, but the bottom line is that they weren't about to fall apart or even in a dangerous condition when we permanently grounded them. That said, I agree the A/B's that we got were a fantastic deal, and they are in very good condition with pretty minimal total hours. In terms of technology, they are quite outdated, but again, good at what we use them for. It is literally like a really really overpowered 1979 cessna 152 in terms of what you actually have to look at and navigate by in the cockpit. But it is a VFR and BFM machine.
 
Boris Badenov said:
A bit of an over simplification of the topic*
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Look I like your bridge analogy I really do. But a couple things.

1. Your ignoring requirements of the bridge. If you ask for a bridge that can do x, y, and z it's gonna cost so much. Now yes you can say wow that's way more then I wanted to pay but realize you can't do y or z if you go cheaper. Not only that if the bridge that only does x and y isn't much cheaper what's the point there.

You suggested flanker for example and I showed you that the "cheaper solution" is only gonna save you 10-15 percent with a higher life cost. So that's not really a savings to get an aircraft that can't do a lot of the stuff we need it to do. It's a lot like the low cost strike aircraft ideas. I'm a proponent of that as an augmentation not a replacement. That is to say let's buy a cheap aircraft to do the low intensity coin fight so we stop burning hours on our expensive fighters. And believe it or not there are more expensive airplanes than F-35, but when all people do is shout it's unit cost in a vacuum without any comparison nobody knows that.

2. As much as you want to say we have both seen or driven over bridges, it's not that simple. You only get to look at the bridge, you don't get to see the detailed engineering that went on behind it or even know it's full capabilities you just see it, hear people talk about it (mostly in accurately) an know what it cost. That's the nature of not showing your hand however you want if the above explanation doesn't explain enough to you then have to do something than be more than just a tax payer. It's not just military then either it's RAND or congress or some think tank with access and the overall picture to effectively evaluate this airplane or other stuff.
 
Lawman said:
Look I like your bridge analogy I really do. But a couple things.

1. Your ignoring requirements of the bridge. If you ask for a bridge that can do x, y, and z it's gonna cost so much. Now yes you can say wow that's way more then I wanted to pay but realize you can't do y or z if you go cheaper. Not only that if the bridge that only does x and y isn't much cheaper what's the point there.

You suggested flanker for example and I showed you that the "cheaper solution" is only gonna save you 10-15 percent with a higher life cost. So that's not really a savings to get an aircraft that can't do a lot of the stuff we need it to do. It's a lot like the low cost strike aircraft ideas. I'm a proponent of that as an augmentation not a replacement. That is to say let's buy a cheap aircraft to do the low intensity coin fight so we stop burning hours on our expensive fighters. And believe it or not there are more expensive airplanes than F-35, but when all people do is shout it's unit cost in a vacuum without any comparison nobody knows that.

2. As much as you want to say we have both seen or driven over bridges, it's not that simple. You only get to look at the bridge, you don't get to see the detailed engineering that went on behind it or even know it's full capabilities you just see it, hear people talk about it (mostly in accurately) an know what it cost. That's the nature of not showing your hand however you want if the above explanation doesn't explain enough to you then have to do something than be more than just a tax payer. It's not just military then either it's RAND or congress or some think tank with access and the overall picture to effectively evaluate this airplane or other stuff.
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Plus Acquisition is ~20% of the lifecycle cost. Operations and support is the major portion (Fuel, MX, Upgrades, Training, etc....)

Oh and if its a Military bridge, it would start as a covered bridge, during long lead procurement that would change to a cable bridge, halfway through bridge we would stop and study the costs to change it to a stone bridge based on congressional testimony and inquiries that delayed the program for a year, then two administrations later would cut the bridge to just a half lane based on a GAO study, CNN would crow about the savings, Faux News would say we are killing the bridge industry, the next administration would resurrect "Star Wars Bridge", however due to cuts it would only support one donkey cart at a time. Britefart.com would run a series of stories on how the current administration paid $4B for an unusable bridge.....

Meanwhile, unknown to you, Bridge 3.0 has been under development at Area 51 and funded under black programs for the last 12 years...........


Keep in mind what the original JSF was supposed to be, one single engine airframe with minor difference to support three services. This was the spec that came out to the original three bidders, McDonnell-Douglas, Boeing and LMT. MDC was arrogant as usual (I worked there) and we proposed a twin engine jet since we knew that since the A-7, the Navy would never operate Blue water with a single engine again (plus our design required it for the Marine version).....We were the first out of the competition. Original Boeing designs had a thermoplastic mono wing.....would have been fun to manufacture.
 
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Another point to bring up when we are talking about how did we get here from where we started...

1. We were writing capabilities for a plane that would take at least a decade to get, and much has changed in a decade. That's the problem with mission creep. It doesn't necessarily add to the unit cost but when we are quoting whole program X trillion dollar costs, those redo's add up fast. It doesn't so much mean the plane got more expensive so your not suddenly buying a 200 million dollar jet when you started at 70.

2. We never built a prototype. That's one of the most infuriating things with all these poorly written/informed "F-35 can't!....." News articles. Most of the white noise they are yelling about is because these aren't prototype aircraft they are "production variants" doing a prototype job. We never built a YF-35 based on the idea of it being unsuitable with there being 3 models. We built almost ready or sorta ready production models to do certain types of testing. Those airplanes can be brought up later to be full rate vs prototypes that are more or less throw away. More expensive at the onset but we have worked out far more kinks in the actual production process meaning costs we would have discovered farther down the line happened now before inflation etc. that's also why when you hear people screaming "it can't fly in clouds," or " the gun doesn't work," hey aren't nearly what people make it out to be. The gun in the YF-16 or the YF-22 didn't work for a good long while, that's because it was a prototype and nobody expected it to because it was labeled a prototype.
 
Some buyers have more weapons:

kama.jpg


*too soon? only 70 years
 
Lawman said:
We never built a YF-35 based on the idea of it being unsuitable with there being 3 models.
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Uhhhhh....?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-35

The X-35A/B/C airplanes don't count? The Lightweight Fighter and Advanced Tactical Fighter programs both had "YF" prototypes, but sure didn't have "X-plane" prototypes like the JAST/JSF program did. The YF-17 differed significantly in an engineering sense from the F-18, as did the YF-22 from the F-22.
 
Hacker15e said:
Uhhhhh....?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-35

The X-35A/B/C airplanes don't count? The Lightweight Fighter and Advanced Tactical Fighter programs both had "YF" prototypes, but sure didn't have "X-plane" prototypes like the JAST/JSF program did. The YF-17 differed significantly in an engineering sense from the F-18, as did the YF-22 from the F-22.
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Concept demonstrator vs prototype. Different plane and goal entirely. Really all the X-32/35 were was an airframe to demonstrate the general concept of can it be both conventional and vstol. And they never even made a real C model of either, just bigger wings on what was fundamentally an A, so not at all a carrier airplane. I have no doubt if we hadn't needed to get Vstol in it there never would have been an X but nobody looked willing to sign off on either airplane without seeing it "work" first. Which was good since Boeings didnt.

And yeah the YF-17 was different from the F/A-18, but we also built a YF-18. The YF-22 also flew for years testing stuff to eventually go on the Raptor, the X-32/35 didn't.

The way one engineer explained it to me was essentially we are paying more up front for test aircraft but finding ways now to cheapen final production. The old way to do it we only learned how to cheapen them after full rate production so you were building 80-90 airplanes for a few million more than they should end up costing vs building 10-11.
 
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H46Bubba said:
The older C-130s have wing box issues and are being replaced with the C-130Js which are new airframes.
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This is an incorrect statement. Due to personnel mismanagement by the Marine Corps, an Air Force Aquisition officer that was giving hand jobs to Boeing when she should have been procuring the upgrades needed in our cockpits that would have brought us out of the 60s, technology wise, and Lockheed selling the aircraft as "higher, faster, better" when in all actuality it did none of those is the reason the Corps now has "Js".

Oh and we wont talk about how Marine Corps flight crews are paid less than their DoD counterparts. So weird how they had retention problems in the past and the current ones are jumping ship faster than the Corps can shed the legacy models. Even still the Corps in its infinite wisdom, is still sending qualified legacy crews with thousands of hours of experience, to transition to the new Js. When they cant even maintain the crews that they have for the legacy models. Every legacy Herk that was retired either went to the boneyard in AZ for preservation(original F models, most of these are 40 years old or more), was transferred over to the Navy, or sold to foreign countries for continual service(built in the 80s and 90s). I pulled two of the last Herks the Marine Corps acquired right out of the factory in '94. There is now only one legacy squadron left. Still flying, loud and proud legacy models. There were/are no "issues" with our wing boxes.
 
Wardogg said:
This is an incorrect statement. Due to personnel mismanagement by the Marine Corps, an Air Force Aquisition officer that was giving hand jobs to Boeing when she should have been procuring the upgrades needed in our cockpits that would have brought us out of the 60s, technology wise, and Lockheed selling the aircraft as "higher, faster, better" when in all actuality it did none of those is the reason the Corps now has "Js".

Oh and we wont talk about how Marine Corps flight crews are paid less than their DoD counterparts. So weird how they had retention problems in the past and the current ones are jumping ship faster than the Corps can shed the legacy models. Even still the Corps in its infinite wisdom, is still sending qualified legacy crews with thousands of hours of experience, to transition to the new Js. When they cant even maintain the crews that they have for the legacy models. Every legacy Herk that was retired either went to the boneyard in AZ for preservation(original F models, most of these are 40 years old or more), was transferred over to the Navy, or sold to foreign countries for continual service(built in the 80s and 90s). I pulled two of the last Herks the Marine Corps acquired right out of the factory in '94. There is now only one legacy squadron left. Still flying, loud and proud legacy models. There were/are no "issues" with our wing boxes.
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The AF E-model 130s indeed had wing box issues, hence were restricted from flying for a short while, then restricted in load carrying, before finally all getting shipped to the junkyard.
 
I can't speak for the AF Maint. issues. I do not know what their inspection cycle looked like, how skilled their technicians were, or how they flew those airplanes back in the "old days." There is only one constant rule when it comes to metal. It never forgets. Our Fs which were the AF Es, never had an issue that I remember. I qualified on Fs and flew many missions with them and never remember any limitations prior to them retiring. In fact a few of them put new R model wings on them, we called them Super Fs, which included wto external fuel tanks adding more weight to the wing. Flew a bunch of those Super Fs with fuselage tanks in as well. Nothing like a Herk loaded with 85,000 pounds of fuel. That was back when the men were men though.

The point of my post was the Corps could have saved a buttload of money had they just upgraded the cockpits and managed their people at little better. Instead we spent ridiculous amounts of money, revamped the entire community, caused a 10 year shake up of personnel promotions and chased off a lot of great Marines. Just to get a new version of the same product doing the same missions. No cheaper, better, faster, or higher.

And before anyone brings up Harvest Hawk, the whole program could have been installed on a T model. Js didn't come out of the factory ready for Harvest Hawk.
 
@Wardogg I flew the restricted E's we had. There were known cracks in the wings, but they allowed us to continue flying them (around the flagpole) under weight and speed restrictions until the wing boxes were replaced. I'm not sure it's something that was fixed on the later H3's either, and whether or not any high-time airframe will need a new center wing box at some point.

Oh, and the J is faster, carries more, and has a bigger range on a smaller crew. Fact. However, you could have the exact same speed/altitude/range savings by putting the NP2000 props on the H3, which was proven to work and the crews loved it. New avionics are optional (the H3 does just fine)- but if you wanted to, I'd replace SCNS with a true FMS and open up the world of RNAV approaches to the C-130.

You wanna talk FUBAR acquisitions process? Let's talk AMP.
 
Again, I can't speak for the Air Force. I'm sorry. In the title, I thought we were talking about Marine Corps aircraft. When the gentleman made the comment about the Herks I thought he was speaking of Marine Herks.

NewYorkophile said:
@Wardogg
Oh, and the J is faster, carries more, and has a bigger range on a smaller crew. Fact. However, you could have the exact same speed/altitude/range savings by putting the NP2000 props on the H3, which was proven to work and the crews loved it. New avionics are optional (the H3 does just fine)- but if you wanted to, I'd replace SCNS with a true FMS and open up the world of RNAV approaches to the C-130.
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No, It's not a fact. 1. Faster: Maybe compared to an E model with a -7 engine, ok yeah probably. You guys were limited to what 930TIT with a -7? Yeah it's going to go faster than that. Add on refueling pods and all of our RWAR gear and the Corps' Js have the same drag component as our Ts. 2. Carries more: Really? Last I check Lockheed never upped the Max T/O weight. Unless you guys are operating on AF only rules you aren't taking off above 175,000 lbs. 3. Bigger Range: give me a number. Loaded with pax. stuck at 25,000 feet because you dont have supplemental O2 how much further can you go than a legacy T model. 4 Smaller Crew: Lets see, old standard crew operational mission-2 pilots 1 FE, 1 Nav, 1 Load, 1 FM. New crew same mission requirements - 2 pilots(95% of the time there is a third on board for training or relief) 3 crew masters(which is just the FE FM Load all rolled into one guy). So if we don't count the thrid pilot who is always there(at a greater cost I might add) then you've saved yourself 1 crewmember. Congratulations.

Those, my friend, are the facts.
 
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