Another apparent setback for the F-35 light attack bomber.   The Pentagon has informed Congress of plans to sell twelve more F-18 E/F Super Hornets plus a dozen electronic warfare F-18 Growlers to Australia.   The two dozen jets, including the electronically sophisticated Growlers, will come in at around $3.6 billion including parts, training and logistical support.

In 2007, concerned about delays and cost overruns in the F-35 programme and faced with the need to retire aging F-111s, Australia opted to buy an initial batch of 24 Super Hornets.

Another apparent setback for the F-35 light attack bomber.   The Pentagon has informed Congress of plans to sell twelve more F-18 E/F Super Hornets plus a dozen electronic warfare F-18 Growlers to Australia.   The two dozen jets, in…

Reading MoS, I’m struck not for the first time, that some senior members of the Air Staff here, I suppose Australia too, live in a fantasy world. If I were in charge (come on, we all have these moments), I’d retire or fire any military leader who could…

Australia is becoming nervous about the planned purchase of 100 Lockheed F-35 light strike bombers.The fighter’s soaring costs have produced rising consternation in Australia, with a number of politicians questioning whether the air force can afford …

Australia is becoming nervous about the planned purchase of 100 Lockheed F-35 light strike bombers.

The fighter’s soaring costs have produced rising consternation in Australia, with a number of politicians questioning whether the air force can afford to purchase the 100 fifth-generation stealth aircraft it initially intended to buy.U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, principal executive of the Pentagon’s JSF Program Office, candidly addressed the issue of F-35 cost overruns recently met with Australian defense officials at the Avalon air show in Melbourne, Victoria.Bogdan said that his survey of the JSF program had uncovered “ugly” problems the program but that his office had sought to have the F-35 manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, to share the costs of fixing faults and covering delays, The Australian reported Thursday.“You hear Lockheed Martin keep talking about $65 million, $67 million. Well, guess what? That’s the cost back in 2004 or 2003. Who cares . . . → Read More: The Disaffected Lib: Ugly Problems Loom for F-35 Light Bomber

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Instead of taking healthcare away from millions of Americans, lawmakers in Washington should kill the zombie of the F-35. …

Kids were getting chemical burns from a toilet seat (and probably desk, for a boy with burned elbows) at an Ottawa area school. Most likely the disinfectant was sprayed on but never properly wiped off and rinsed. One of my concerns with using publish washrooms that have just been cleaned, is chemical splash-back or toxic [...]

This line from Wired.com says it all:

America’s latest stealth fighter just got heavier, slower and more sluggish.

 For the second time in a year, the Pentagon has eased the performance requirements of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The reduced specs — including a slower acceleration and turning rate — lower the bar for the troubled trillion-dollar JSF program, allowing it to proceed toward full-rate production despite ongoing problems with the plane’s complex design. Under the old specs, the stealth fighter, due to enter service in 2018 or 2019, probably wouldn’t pass its Pentagon-mandated final exams. the same time, newly identified safety problems could force F-35-smith Lockheed Martin to add fire-suppression gear that will only increase the plane’s weight and further decrease its maneuverability. The JSF is meant to be a jack of all trades, equally capable of dropping bombs and fighting other aircraft — the latter requiring . . . → Read More: The Disaffected Lib: Pentagon Lowers the Bar on the F-35 – Again!

This line from Wired.com says it all:

America’s latest stealth fighter just got heavier, slower and more sluggish.

 For the second time in a year, the Pentagon has eased the performance requirements of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The reduced specs — including a slower acceleration and turning rate — lower the bar for the troubled trillion-dollar JSF program, allowing it to proceed toward full-rate production despite ongoing problems with the plane’s complex design. Under the old specs, the stealth fighter, due to enter service in 2018 or 2019, probably wouldn’t pass its Pentagon-mandated final exams.

At the same time, newly identified safety problems could force F-35-smith Lockheed Martin to add fire-suppression gear that will only increase the plane’s weight and further decrease its maneuverability. The JSF is meant to be a jack of all trades, equally capable of dropping bombs and fighting other aircraft — the latter requiring extreme nimbleness in the air.

For the pilots who will eventually take the F-35 into combat, the JSF’s reduced performance means they might not be able to outfly and outfight the latest Russian- and Chinese-made fighters. Even before the downgrades, some analysts questioned the F-35′s ability to defeat newer Sukhoi and Shenyang jets. Despite the JSF’s lower specs, Lockheed bizarrely claims its new plane is now more maneuverable than every other fighters in the world except the company’s own F-22.

Lockheed seems to have been flung into panic mode.  They’re making truly bizarre claims to duck criticisms.   Last year a Lockheed exec claimed the airplane would get more stealthy with age, even without upgrades.  It would just somehow grow stealthier, magically I suppose if only you plant these special beans.

Incompetent political and military leadership has very nearly saddled the Canadian air force with what has every appearance of being, hands down, the biggest procurement blunder in Canadian history, utterly eclipsing the Sea King fiasco. 

Time is running out on the CF-18s.   Let’s get the competition to Cold Lake.   Let’s get them all into the air and have them show their stuff in intercept profiles, in ground attack profiles, in strike profiles and in air-to-air combat profiles.  Let’s see how far they go, how fast, how they climb and how they turn.   Let’s work out how vulnerable they would be to contingencies such as engine failure, ground fire, and the guns and missiles of hostile fighters.   Let’s see how many missions each can generate within, say, a 2-week campaign scenario.

Let’s get this done.

The F-35 programme has been underway for, well, eleven years.   Current plans call for completion of testing in 2019.   Here’s a sobering look at F-35 development taken from Aviation Week.The U.S. bill for JSF development and produc…

You might have thought that the auditor general’s report and the KPMG audit amounted…

Dan Ross, the former assistant deputy minister of defence materiel, tells Postmedia that the…

The Harper government has tried to scapegoat its way out of the F-35 debacle, blaming bureaucratic bungling, deceit within National Defence, just about any likely target that could deflect responsibility from themselves.Now the recently retired assista…

Harper DefMin, Peter MacKay, like a trained seal smacking its flippers, constantly barks about the Lockheed F-35 being a “Fifth Generation” fighter and, hence, oh so much superior to all the Gen 4.5-fighters on today’s market.As The Fifth Estate noted …

Harper DefMin, Peter MacKay, like a trained seal smacking its flippers, constantly barks about the Lockheed F-35 being a “Fifth Generation” fighter and, hence, oh so much superior to all the Gen 4.5-fighters on today’s market. As The…