Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning and F-22 'Raptor' : News & Discussion
- Thread starter Nick
- Start date
And once one blows up, the rest blow up a la Moskva. There's maybe an argument for better armour on ships these days.
Electronic rarely works well, we've seen that in Ukraine. They can break the radio link to the operator for drones at the very last minute, but it's usually too late, the missile itself is unaffected. A lot of newer weapons are using passive guidance too. As regards radar jamming, new radars are also moving to dual plane polarisation, which current jamming techniques and so-called active stealth wouldn't work against, even on a theoretical basis.
Autocannon with airburst and lasers will be the future.
Analysis – Lightning strikes: F-35 continues to storm Europe
Two recent announcements pertaining to the Czech Republic and Greece confirmed the seemingly relentless progress of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike...
www.janes.com
ECU in production expected in 2029 :
www.defenseone.com
F-35 engine upgrade on track, despite congressional dysfunction
Pratt & Whitney plans to start delivering the upgraded engines by 2029.
www.defenseone.com
But they haven't even decided which PTMS they're going to use with this ECU.ECU in production expected in 2029 :
F-35 engine upgrade on track, despite congressional dysfunction
Pratt & Whitney plans to start delivering the upgraded engines by 2029.
Indeed.
As always they are puting the plough before the beef.
Report: F-35 Struggled With Reliability, Maintainability, Availability in 2023
Report: F-35 Struggled With Reliability, Maintainability, Availability in 2023
The F-35 fleet continues to struggle with mission availability and capability rates, the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation said.
www.airandspaceforces.com
The U.S. fleet of F-35 fighters continued to be vexed by reliability, maintainability, and availability (RMA) problems last fiscal year, available for operations only 51 percent of the time—compared to a goal of 65 percent—according to the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation’s annual report.
“The operational suitability of the F-35 fleet remains below service expectations and requirements,” according to the report, published in late January.
Aircraft availability among all U.S. F-35s hit its high water mark in January 2021 but has declined since, the report authors noted.
“In [fiscal year 2023], aircraft availability was slightly below that in FY’22, after declining for most of FY’21,” the report assessed. “Available” means an F-35 can do at least one of its many assigned missions.
The RMA performance of the F-35 has been the subject of numerous congressional hearings and Government Accountability Office reports over the years, and the Pentagon has launched many initiatives meant to get mission capability rates up.
Newer aircraft—with more proven components—have tended to perform better than older ones across the 20-year-old program, and the Pentagon has argued that the complexity of the stealthy and computer-intensive jet means its availability shouldn’t be judged against less-complex earlier types of aircraft.
Even though the F-35 still has not met the developmental exit criteria to enter “full rate production,” the flying hours accumulated by the fleet mean it should be viewed as a largely mature system.
A total of 628 F-35s had been delivered to the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy by the end of September 2023, but that figure doesn’t include aircraft in developmental test or any of the F-35s completed but now in storage, awaiting completion of Tech Refresh-3 update testing. The report did not assess F-35 performance with foreign operators.
Aircraft that were combat-coded—which typically receive priority for spare parts and maintenance—achieved the best performance for availability, the report stated, noting that 61 percent were available on an average monthly basis. But that was still below the goal of 65 percent, and in only one month of fiscal 2023 did the F-35 fleet surpass the goal. Across all F-35s, the average was 51 percent.
Viewed in terms of full mission capability—which means an F-35 is “capable of executing all assigned missions”—combat-coded aircraft again did better than the overall fleet but fell well short of the goal. Across 2023, the combat-coded fleet achieved a monthly full mission capable rate average of 48 percent, versus 30 percent for the whole fleet. The full mission capable rate for the operational test fleet was only nine percent. Non-combat-coded aircraft include those down for maintenance, in depot, or being used as daily trainers.
Slightly more than half the fleet—51 percent, as of the end of September 2023—is now combat-coded, the report noted.
Aircraft dubbed “not available” are designated as such when they are in depot or unable to fly due to maintenance or supply issues. Rates of aircraft down due to supply was 27 percent; “relatively flat” but “slightly worse” than the fiscal 2023 rate, the report noted. It’s been on a worsening trend since July 2021.
Aircraft down because they were awaiting maintenance in 2023 was 15 percent.
“To improve aircraft availability, the program should continue to pursue maintenance system improvements, especially for common processes distributed among many different [Non-Mission Capable for Maintenance] drivers, such as low-observable repairs, adhesive cure times for attaching hardware such as nutplates,” and stocking enough of the “most critical” in-demand spares, the DOT&E report stated.
“The program should also focus reliability improvements on the components most often not immediately available in supply,” the report added.
Particularly for the Air Force F-35A version, “the significant shortage of fully-functional F135 engines contributed” to lower aircraft availability.
This was offset in part by “aggressive program efforts to lay in additional depot resources, improve depot efficiencies, and ruggedize key engine components,” and increasing “the number of spare modules ready for issue,” the report noted.
However, “other degraders such as canopy and egress system issues have contributed to stagnant, or slightly declining, availability.”
As a fleet, the F-35 still isn’t meeting the reliability and maintainability standards set in the Operational Requirements Document, the report noted.
“The F-35A meets two and the F-35B meets one of the three reliability requirements. No variant is meeting [all] the maintainability requirements,” it said.
The F-35A fleet was supposed to achieve a rate of 20 Mean Flight Hours Between Critical Failures after 75,000 fleet hours. But in 2023, it only achieved a rate of 10.5, despite having racked up more than 288,000 total flight hours since entering service. The F-35B variant, operated by the Marines, and the F-35C, flown by the Navy, both missed their goals as well.
The main drivers of critical failures were “troubleshooting (including software stability), attaching hardware (including nutplates), wires/tubes/ducts/ fiber optics, throttle grip, aircraft memory device, [low observability] repair, standby flight display, refueling door, position light,” the report noted.
The fix times for “critical failures” was double the operational requirement for the Air Force, nearly three times for the Marine Corps, and more than double for the Navy.
In the category of Mean Flight Hours Between Removal, all the variants did better, achieving 108 percent for the A model and 78 percent each for the B and C.
All the variants came close to or beat the requirement for “Mean Flight Hours Between Maintenance Events (Unscheduled),” with the Air Force and Navy F-35s besting the requirement by 110 percent and 120 percent, respectively, while the Marine Corps hit 80 percent of the goal.
DOT&E’s recommendations regarding RMA mirrored those of the fiscal 2022 report. It urged continued maintenance system improvements and more investment in spares, “especially for F135 engines, to reduce down-time for aircraft waiting [for] spare parts by developing alternate sources of repair, including organic repair.”
F-35 engine review pushed back months as government takes closer look
A key design review for the F-35 fighter jet’s engine upgrade will take place several months later than originally predicted, as the government adds another level of review to the process.An executive for Pratt & Whitney, the RTX-owned company that makes the jet’s F135 engines, told reporters Tuesday that the Engine Core Upgrade program’s preliminary design review is expected to take place in May 2024.
That is later than the company originally predicted last fall, when it said the review was scheduled for January 2024, about a month after the company expected to finish its preliminary design.
In a statement to Defense News on Friday, the F-35 Joint Program Office said the design review is “event driven” and has not been delayed, but that it is taking a closer look at the engine upgrade.
“We have added a senior-level engineering and technical review to the schedule, which will take place in the February/March time frame,” the JPO said. “The JPO, in conjunction with our industry partner [Pratt & Whitney], continues to mitigate risk as we work toward the PDR [preliminary design review].”
Pratt & Whitney spokesperson Heather Uberuaga said the Engine Core Upgrade program, or ECU, is on track, and referred follow-up questions to the JPO.
The program is intended to give the F-35 more power, thrust and cooling ability. That will be necessary for a wide-ranging slate of modernizations planned for the fighter, known as Block 4, which will allow the jet to carry more weapons as well as improve its targeting, electronic warfare capability and sensors.
The Pentagon considered creating an entirely new engine for the jet to provide the necessary thrust, power and cooling ability, but last year decided to instead keep and upgrade the F-35′s current Pratt & Whitney-made F135 engines.
Jen Latka, vice president for Pratt’s F135 program, also told reporters the company is on track to finish designing the engine upgrade in mid-2025 and start testing it the following year. The ECU’s critical design review is expected to take place next year as well.
This will allow the engine upgrade to be delivered in 2029, Latka said.
Pratt & Whitney executives have downplayed the potential danger of an extended continuing resolution on the ECU program’s long-term timeline. The top officer in charge of the F-35 program, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, warned lawmakers in December that funding could run out for the engine upgrades within months if a 2024 budget isn’t passed.
Latka told reporters that passing a budget is critical for ECU and other programs, and an extended continuing resolution for a longer period of time would affect it. But, she added, it’s unlikely a longer continuing resolution would delay plans to have the engine upgrades fielded in 2029.
“There’s a lot of different pieces of design that are progressing at different rates right now,” Latka said. “We don’t have an exact date when the money runs out and the timer goes off.”
Latka said all versions of the F-35, including the “B” variant that has a tilting version of the engine so the fighter can hover, will use essentially the same core upgrade, although the configuration will differ for the F-35B.
Pratt & Whitney expects the process of swapping out the engine cores for all F-35s in the field will take about 18 months. Once the new engine core is ready, Latka said, the military’s own maintainers would be able to install it at depots or potentially on the flight line in a few shifts.
“It’s not a one-shift job, but it’s a fairly simple exercise,” Latka explained.
Pratt & Whitney is heavily using digital design techniques on the F135 upgrades, Latka added, which she predicted will save time and money as well as and improve the quality of the components going into the engine. The company is designing all parts with a digital model, she said, and once those digital blueprints are done, the firm will send them to suppliers to build.
The complete “digital thread” for each part will also help military services conduct preventive maintenance, Latka said. And Pratt & Whitney’s pitch for a next-generation adaptive propulsion engine will similarly use a fully digital process, she added.
Jill Albertelli, Pratt & Whitney’s president of military engines, also noted the company plans to test prototypes of its next-generation adaptive propulsion engine, which would go in the Air Force’s planned Next Generation Air Dominance fighter, in the late 2020s.
The F-35
Since the inception of the JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) programme, the future of the F-35 Lightning II has oscillated between commercial success and industrial fiasco. A situation that seems unlikely to change in the years to come. Between disastrous management and persistent technical faults, the programme is still racking up delays and cost overruns.
In the final days of the Trump administration, acting Defence Secretary Christopher Miller openly described the F-35 as a "piece of shit". In February, General Charles Q. Brown, USAF Chief of Staff, confirmed the launch of studies aimed at developing a new light fighter less ambitious - and less expensive - than the F-35, echoing earlier statements by the Air Force's former chief procurement officer, Will Roper, who suggested replacing some of the 1,763 F-35As planned for the USAF with new F-16Vs. Little by little, the idea of reducing F-35 orders to finance the successor to the F-22, the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD), seems to be gaining ground in both the Pentagon and Congress.
The Court of Auditors, which appeared before the Committee, also stated that it was strictly impossible for the US forces to ever buy and operate the number of aircraft planned.
Perhaps even worse for Lockheed Martin's communications, pilots have clearly expressed their doubts about the F-35's design. The cockpit's human/machine interface has been particularly criticised, whether it be the low resolution of the helmet display, the regrettable disappearance of the HUD (Head-up display) or the voice commands that are unusable in combat situations. The absence of physical buttons around the large touchscreen also means that at least one interaction in five takes place on the wrong part of the screen! This flaw seriously calls into question the combat effectiveness of F-35 pilots and the overall safety of the aircraft.
An undisputed commercial success
At the same time, the aircraft found new markets, particularly in Europe. At the same time, communications from Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon kept reminding us that the F-35's costs were finally under control. But the Chinese manoeuvres around Taiwan revealed the weakness of the US military presence in the Pacific, and legislators finally seemed ready to look at the JSF programme beyond Lockheed Martin's marketing prism.
The impossible F-35 test campaign
In recent years, the Court of Auditors, the Armed Forces Committee and the armed forces themselves have turned their attention in particular to the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E), which is carrying out the Initial Operational Test & Evaluation (IOT&E) of the aircraft. The aim of this in-depth analysis of the F-35 is to identify and correct any residual faults in the airframe or on-board software, so that the aircraft can be declared ready for series production at full production rate, enabling multi-year orders to be placed. Although almost 900 aircraft have already been delivered, the F-35 is still technically considered to be a development aircraft.
The Block 3F standard, which has been deployed since 2018 and is already being used in combat by US and Israeli forces, is still a long way from having all the tactical functionalities envisaged by the programme. At the end of IOT&E, initially scheduled for summer 2019, Block 3F should have given way to Block 4, the first stable and complete version of the aircraft. But things have not gone according to plan, with DOT&E repeatedly postponing its conclusions, which are no longer expected before, at best, the first quarter of 2024.
The C2D2 fiasco
But today, the Block 3F test campaign is not enough: we also need to tackle the Block 4 campaign, designed to finally equip the F-35 with all the operational capabilities originally planned for the programme. In 2018, faced with the delays, the DoD decided to develop the new Block 4 using Continuous Capability Development and Delivery (C2D2), inspired by the Agile method used in software engineering. Rather than a single upgrade from Block 3F to Block 4, C2D2 was to enable updates to be implemented twice a year, containing both new functions for Block 4 and fixes for faults encountered on Block 3F. This has complicated the task of DOT&E, which reports that C2D2 has turned out to be a complete failure: the first update required thirteen months' work instead of the six planned, and twelve software developments instead of the four envisaged.
As a result, Block 4, originally scheduled for 2024, is not expected before 2029 at the earliest, at a cost of around 16 billion dollars. This amount is in addition to the development costs already incurred, and will necessarily be passed on to customers, who will have to pay several million dollars per aircraft to upgrade their fleet. Obviously, this amount has not been taken into account in any of the export contracts signed to date, given that the final cost of Block 4 and its deployment schedule are still unknown.
Far from improving over time, the F-35's digital architecture is proving increasingly problematic. In addition to the fact that each patch introduced leads to instabilities that in turn require new patches, it has now been established that these ad hoc modifications are leading to a dramatic increase in potential cybersecurity flaws. While the development teams are constantly increasing the frequency of updates, the team of cyber testers is simply unable to validate the various patches.
As far as hardware is concerned, the situation is not much better. As far as avionics and on-board systems are concerned, the Block 4 update is based on Tech refresh 3 (TR3). This hardware update of the aircraft's internal components concerns all F-35s produced after 2023, and will be retrofitted to aircraft already delivered. Several hundred of the oldest aircraft will simply not be compatible with TR3, and therefore with Block 4.
The cooling fiasco
The hardware needed to make Block4 work harmoniously will amplify a long-standing problem: cooling. This problem dates back to at least 2008 when Lockheed discovered that the PTMS on the stealth fighter had to extract more air than expected from the aircraft's engine to cool its sub-systems, thus taxing the engine beyond its design specification. In addition to cooling - an essential feature for stealth aircraft that need to mask their heat signature - the PTMS also performs other vital functions, such as providing an emergency power supply.
The decision to siphon more bleed air from the engine proved to be a costly compromise, which is likely to result in more maintenance on the powertrain, which the GAO estimates will cost up to $38 billion over the life of the programme.
The Joint Program Office (JPO) said that Block 4 is designed to operate with the aircraft's current F-135 engine, manufactured by Pratt & Whitney, but acknowledged that the "cooling requirements" posed by the Block 4 upgrades "will increase operating and maintenance costs over the life of the programme".
The next engine upgrade also proposed by Pratt is known as the Engine Core Upgrade (ECU), "with its increased performance, it will be able to meet the demands that Block 4 capabilities place on the engine and eliminate the impact on operation and maintenance". A modernised PTMS solution, combined with the F135 ECU, will allow us to go beyond Block 4 capabilities," said Russ Goemaere, programme office spokesman, in a statement to Breaking Defense.
To arrive at this 'modernised' PTMS, however, the JPO has not yet officially announced whether the Honeywell PTMS will be upgraded or replaced en bloc through a competitive bidding process. However, there are indications that the Pentagon is leaning in this direction. At a congressional hearing in December, Lieutenant General Mike Schmidt, head of the Air Force programme, indicated that he was open to broader industry participation, citing the challenges of modernising the F-35.
The F-35 programme has sought input from industry, recently issuing a request for information (RFI) that set a minimum target of 62 kilowatts of cooling and a target of 80 kilowatts.
Old problems persist
In addition, certain structural defects identified across the fleet may simply never be addressed. On the F 35A, the vibration problems caused by the internal cannon could be 'solved' by limiting its use. Similarly, to reduce the damage caused by the use of afterburner on the rear structure of the F 35B and C, it was simply decided to restrict the supersonic flight envelope of these aircraft... And in the face of political pressure to start full production as quickly as possible in order to preserve industrial jobs, there is a great risk that other defects in the aircraft, including cybersecurity flaws, will be dealt with in the same way, by downgrading contractual ambitions without any real technical resolution.
Maintenance and availability
The monthly NMC-S (Not Mission Capable for Supply) rate started to increase (deteriorate) in July 2021, compared to previous trends, and remained relatively stable for most of FY22, with a deteriorating trend in the last quarter. To improve aircraft availability, the programme must continue to seek to improve maintenance systems, particularly for common processes spread across many different NMC-M factors, such as poorly observable repairs, and spares posture for the most in-demand critical items.
In November 2022, the GAO found that many fixed-wing fighter aircraft in each military service were becoming increasingly expensive and hard to maintain, as they faced issues with parts obsolescence or diminishing manufacturing sources.
In the same report, the annual mission capability targets - the percentage of total time an aircraft can fly and perform at least one mission - for 49 aircraft types were examined. This review revealed that, for the years 2011 to 2021, only four aircraft types, none of which were fixed-wing fighters, met their annual mission capability targets for the majority of these years.
Specifically, mission capability rates have been a challenge for the F-35, which is the cornerstone of the DOD's tactical aircraft fleet. In April 2022 the F-35 was reported as not being able to perform missions at expected rates (i.e. mission capability rates) and that it did not meet reliability and maintainability criteria. The availability of spare parts and maintenance were the two main factors behind the programme's performance shortfalls.
By July 2022, the MoD was facing significant challenges in maintaining the F-35 engine and needed a new engine maintenance strategy to achieve the results desired by the military services.
A significant shortage of fully functional F135 engines has also contributed to reduced aircraft availability. The F-35A variant is the most affected by the engine shortage, which has been exacerbated by a lack of repair capacity at depots. Recent efforts to provide additional depot resources, improve depot efficiency and strengthen key engine components have reduced the number of aircraft without engines. Nevertheless, the programme predicts that, in the absence of additional measures, the lack of spare parts for the propulsion will mean that some aircraft will not have a functional engine until at least 2028.
The F-35 fleet remains below the JSF Operational Requirements Document (ORD) thresholds in some areas of overall reliability and maintainability. Maintenance data collected through April 2022 from the U.S. fleet of all three variants shows that the F-35A and F-35B do not meet the overall ORD reliability and maintainability requirements for mature aircraft.
The GAO recommended that the DOD evaluate and modify the support strategy for the F35 engine and develop a common model for forecasting spare parts requirements with the engine prime contractor. The DOD agreed and stated that a new strategy was being developed and would be reviewed as the programme evolved.
These sustainment challenges have led to a steady increase in F-35 sustainment costs. The services are facing significant affordability issues, as the gap between estimated F-35 sustainment costs and financial constraints grows.
Finally, while the aircraft's availability ambitions were already, from the outset, hardly impressive, the Department of Defense (DoD) points out that the objectives for the entire fleet have still not been achieved over time, either for the sortie rate, or for the ability to carry out at least one mission (mission capable), and even less for the ability to carry out all the missions planned (fully mission capable).
This latter capability, which requires all the aircraft's sub-systems to be functional, is particularly hard to achieve because of the aircraft's lack of modularity. For example, since the electronic warfare and laser designation systems are integrated into the aircraft's airframe, rather than in removable nacelles, the slightest failure of one of the components could result in partial or total unavailability.
How much does the F-35 cost?
Unavailability has an impact on the sortie rate, so an air force has to oversize its fleet to meet a specific operational objective, thereby increasing the purchase and ownership costs of its F-35 fleet, which are still hard to assess. For the last ten years or so, Lockheed Martin's communications, echoed by the American press, have been constantly pointing out that the price of the F-35 is falling. However, the reality is more nuanced, since the latest biennial report from the USAF's procurement department shows that the unit cost of the F 35A, including development, is now $130 million, compared with $134 million in 2012.
The off-the-shelf price, excluding development, is around $80 million for the F 35A, slightly less than for competing aircraft. But whereas the fly away price of an F 15EX, Rafale or Typhoon is really for a ready-to-fly aircraft, the F 35 requires a lot of ancillary investment to really work, from ODIN service subscriptions to ground support equipment, not to mention the costly simulators needed to make up for the lack of a two-seat F-35. The delays, additional costs and operational limitations of the aircraft are also pushing the US forces (and some foreign customers) to acquire palliative solutions, such as the Eagle II or the Super Hornet Block III, whose bills will not be included in the F-35's accounts. Ultimately, as the F-35 is part of a complex integrated system, the very notion of a "fly away" price no longer really makes sense, at least not from a comparative point of view.
But in addition to acquisition costs, it is really the F-35's operating costs that are proving problematic in the long term. While Lockheed Martin promises that the cost per flying hour of the F-35 will be $25,000 in 2025, the DoD was expecting $34,000 in 2024, compared with $44,000 at the time of its assessment. This is still considerably more expensive than the F-16 or F-15, and over the entire career of the F-35 would result in hundreds of billions of dollars in additional budgetary costs. The USAF Chief of Staff has confirmed that the F-35's operating costs make it impossible to achieve the 386-fighter squadron format planned for 2018, and that they limit the resources available for developing the NGAD.
A useless aircraft?
Traditionally, a customer is not required to update its fighter fleet. Nevertheless, even though it will be deployed 25 or 30 years after the launch of the programme, the Block 4 is not a mid-life renovation of the F-35, but its first fully operational standard. The delta is so large that the latest wargames, simulating the defence of Taiwan by the United States in 2030, did not even take into account the current Block 3F standard. A USAF deputy chief of staff declared that every F-35 coming off the production line today was "a fighter that we wouldn't even bother to include in our scenarios".
But beyond the standard integrated on board the F-35, it is the very nature of the missions entrusted to the aircraft during the 'wargames' that raises questions about the relevance of the JSF concept for American forces. During last autumn's simulation, deep strikes against China were carried out using hypersonic weapons dropped by B 52s and F 15EXs, as well as the future B 21 and a hypothetical NGAD.
Faced with Chinese A2/AD systems, the F-35 already lacks the reach and firepower to carry out the penetration and destruction missions for which it was designed. During the simulation, the F-35 - accompanied by a hypothetical low-cost successor to the F-16 - was therefore content to carry out escort, support and close defence missions.
For the Lightning II's defenders, the shower is all the colder for the fact that these admittedly essential tasks could only be carried out effectively by the F-35s because the scenario included the presence, in numbers, of NGADs and new low-cost fighters.
These are aircraft that currently do not exist, and that will not be able to enter service within the decade without drastic cuts in F-35 orders. If this were to happen, the F-35 could well be confined to European operations, whether as part of US or NATO forces. The overall bill would be reduced for the Pentagon, but purchase and maintenance costs would skyrocket for all F-35 export customers.
Since the inception of the JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) programme, the future of the F-35 Lightning II has oscillated between commercial success and industrial fiasco. A situation that seems unlikely to change in the years to come. Between disastrous management and persistent technical faults, the programme is still racking up delays and cost overruns.
In the final days of the Trump administration, acting Defence Secretary Christopher Miller openly described the F-35 as a "piece of shit". In February, General Charles Q. Brown, USAF Chief of Staff, confirmed the launch of studies aimed at developing a new light fighter less ambitious - and less expensive - than the F-35, echoing earlier statements by the Air Force's former chief procurement officer, Will Roper, who suggested replacing some of the 1,763 F-35As planned for the USAF with new F-16Vs. Little by little, the idea of reducing F-35 orders to finance the successor to the F-22, the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD), seems to be gaining ground in both the Pentagon and Congress.
The Court of Auditors, which appeared before the Committee, also stated that it was strictly impossible for the US forces to ever buy and operate the number of aircraft planned.
Perhaps even worse for Lockheed Martin's communications, pilots have clearly expressed their doubts about the F-35's design. The cockpit's human/machine interface has been particularly criticised, whether it be the low resolution of the helmet display, the regrettable disappearance of the HUD (Head-up display) or the voice commands that are unusable in combat situations. The absence of physical buttons around the large touchscreen also means that at least one interaction in five takes place on the wrong part of the screen! This flaw seriously calls into question the combat effectiveness of F-35 pilots and the overall safety of the aircraft.
An undisputed commercial success
At the same time, the aircraft found new markets, particularly in Europe. At the same time, communications from Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon kept reminding us that the F-35's costs were finally under control. But the Chinese manoeuvres around Taiwan revealed the weakness of the US military presence in the Pacific, and legislators finally seemed ready to look at the JSF programme beyond Lockheed Martin's marketing prism.
The impossible F-35 test campaign
In recent years, the Court of Auditors, the Armed Forces Committee and the armed forces themselves have turned their attention in particular to the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E), which is carrying out the Initial Operational Test & Evaluation (IOT&E) of the aircraft. The aim of this in-depth analysis of the F-35 is to identify and correct any residual faults in the airframe or on-board software, so that the aircraft can be declared ready for series production at full production rate, enabling multi-year orders to be placed. Although almost 900 aircraft have already been delivered, the F-35 is still technically considered to be a development aircraft.
The Block 3F standard, which has been deployed since 2018 and is already being used in combat by US and Israeli forces, is still a long way from having all the tactical functionalities envisaged by the programme. At the end of IOT&E, initially scheduled for summer 2019, Block 3F should have given way to Block 4, the first stable and complete version of the aircraft. But things have not gone according to plan, with DOT&E repeatedly postponing its conclusions, which are no longer expected before, at best, the first quarter of 2024.
The C2D2 fiasco
But today, the Block 3F test campaign is not enough: we also need to tackle the Block 4 campaign, designed to finally equip the F-35 with all the operational capabilities originally planned for the programme. In 2018, faced with the delays, the DoD decided to develop the new Block 4 using Continuous Capability Development and Delivery (C2D2), inspired by the Agile method used in software engineering. Rather than a single upgrade from Block 3F to Block 4, C2D2 was to enable updates to be implemented twice a year, containing both new functions for Block 4 and fixes for faults encountered on Block 3F. This has complicated the task of DOT&E, which reports that C2D2 has turned out to be a complete failure: the first update required thirteen months' work instead of the six planned, and twelve software developments instead of the four envisaged.
As a result, Block 4, originally scheduled for 2024, is not expected before 2029 at the earliest, at a cost of around 16 billion dollars. This amount is in addition to the development costs already incurred, and will necessarily be passed on to customers, who will have to pay several million dollars per aircraft to upgrade their fleet. Obviously, this amount has not been taken into account in any of the export contracts signed to date, given that the final cost of Block 4 and its deployment schedule are still unknown.
Far from improving over time, the F-35's digital architecture is proving increasingly problematic. In addition to the fact that each patch introduced leads to instabilities that in turn require new patches, it has now been established that these ad hoc modifications are leading to a dramatic increase in potential cybersecurity flaws. While the development teams are constantly increasing the frequency of updates, the team of cyber testers is simply unable to validate the various patches.
As far as hardware is concerned, the situation is not much better. As far as avionics and on-board systems are concerned, the Block 4 update is based on Tech refresh 3 (TR3). This hardware update of the aircraft's internal components concerns all F-35s produced after 2023, and will be retrofitted to aircraft already delivered. Several hundred of the oldest aircraft will simply not be compatible with TR3, and therefore with Block 4.
The cooling fiasco
The hardware needed to make Block4 work harmoniously will amplify a long-standing problem: cooling. This problem dates back to at least 2008 when Lockheed discovered that the PTMS on the stealth fighter had to extract more air than expected from the aircraft's engine to cool its sub-systems, thus taxing the engine beyond its design specification. In addition to cooling - an essential feature for stealth aircraft that need to mask their heat signature - the PTMS also performs other vital functions, such as providing an emergency power supply.
The decision to siphon more bleed air from the engine proved to be a costly compromise, which is likely to result in more maintenance on the powertrain, which the GAO estimates will cost up to $38 billion over the life of the programme.
The Joint Program Office (JPO) said that Block 4 is designed to operate with the aircraft's current F-135 engine, manufactured by Pratt & Whitney, but acknowledged that the "cooling requirements" posed by the Block 4 upgrades "will increase operating and maintenance costs over the life of the programme".
The next engine upgrade also proposed by Pratt is known as the Engine Core Upgrade (ECU), "with its increased performance, it will be able to meet the demands that Block 4 capabilities place on the engine and eliminate the impact on operation and maintenance". A modernised PTMS solution, combined with the F135 ECU, will allow us to go beyond Block 4 capabilities," said Russ Goemaere, programme office spokesman, in a statement to Breaking Defense.
To arrive at this 'modernised' PTMS, however, the JPO has not yet officially announced whether the Honeywell PTMS will be upgraded or replaced en bloc through a competitive bidding process. However, there are indications that the Pentagon is leaning in this direction. At a congressional hearing in December, Lieutenant General Mike Schmidt, head of the Air Force programme, indicated that he was open to broader industry participation, citing the challenges of modernising the F-35.
The F-35 programme has sought input from industry, recently issuing a request for information (RFI) that set a minimum target of 62 kilowatts of cooling and a target of 80 kilowatts.
Old problems persist
In addition, certain structural defects identified across the fleet may simply never be addressed. On the F 35A, the vibration problems caused by the internal cannon could be 'solved' by limiting its use. Similarly, to reduce the damage caused by the use of afterburner on the rear structure of the F 35B and C, it was simply decided to restrict the supersonic flight envelope of these aircraft... And in the face of political pressure to start full production as quickly as possible in order to preserve industrial jobs, there is a great risk that other defects in the aircraft, including cybersecurity flaws, will be dealt with in the same way, by downgrading contractual ambitions without any real technical resolution.
Maintenance and availability
The monthly NMC-S (Not Mission Capable for Supply) rate started to increase (deteriorate) in July 2021, compared to previous trends, and remained relatively stable for most of FY22, with a deteriorating trend in the last quarter. To improve aircraft availability, the programme must continue to seek to improve maintenance systems, particularly for common processes spread across many different NMC-M factors, such as poorly observable repairs, and spares posture for the most in-demand critical items.
In November 2022, the GAO found that many fixed-wing fighter aircraft in each military service were becoming increasingly expensive and hard to maintain, as they faced issues with parts obsolescence or diminishing manufacturing sources.
In the same report, the annual mission capability targets - the percentage of total time an aircraft can fly and perform at least one mission - for 49 aircraft types were examined. This review revealed that, for the years 2011 to 2021, only four aircraft types, none of which were fixed-wing fighters, met their annual mission capability targets for the majority of these years.
Specifically, mission capability rates have been a challenge for the F-35, which is the cornerstone of the DOD's tactical aircraft fleet. In April 2022 the F-35 was reported as not being able to perform missions at expected rates (i.e. mission capability rates) and that it did not meet reliability and maintainability criteria. The availability of spare parts and maintenance were the two main factors behind the programme's performance shortfalls.
By July 2022, the MoD was facing significant challenges in maintaining the F-35 engine and needed a new engine maintenance strategy to achieve the results desired by the military services.
A significant shortage of fully functional F135 engines has also contributed to reduced aircraft availability. The F-35A variant is the most affected by the engine shortage, which has been exacerbated by a lack of repair capacity at depots. Recent efforts to provide additional depot resources, improve depot efficiency and strengthen key engine components have reduced the number of aircraft without engines. Nevertheless, the programme predicts that, in the absence of additional measures, the lack of spare parts for the propulsion will mean that some aircraft will not have a functional engine until at least 2028.
The F-35 fleet remains below the JSF Operational Requirements Document (ORD) thresholds in some areas of overall reliability and maintainability. Maintenance data collected through April 2022 from the U.S. fleet of all three variants shows that the F-35A and F-35B do not meet the overall ORD reliability and maintainability requirements for mature aircraft.
The GAO recommended that the DOD evaluate and modify the support strategy for the F35 engine and develop a common model for forecasting spare parts requirements with the engine prime contractor. The DOD agreed and stated that a new strategy was being developed and would be reviewed as the programme evolved.
These sustainment challenges have led to a steady increase in F-35 sustainment costs. The services are facing significant affordability issues, as the gap between estimated F-35 sustainment costs and financial constraints grows.
Finally, while the aircraft's availability ambitions were already, from the outset, hardly impressive, the Department of Defense (DoD) points out that the objectives for the entire fleet have still not been achieved over time, either for the sortie rate, or for the ability to carry out at least one mission (mission capable), and even less for the ability to carry out all the missions planned (fully mission capable).
This latter capability, which requires all the aircraft's sub-systems to be functional, is particularly hard to achieve because of the aircraft's lack of modularity. For example, since the electronic warfare and laser designation systems are integrated into the aircraft's airframe, rather than in removable nacelles, the slightest failure of one of the components could result in partial or total unavailability.
How much does the F-35 cost?
Unavailability has an impact on the sortie rate, so an air force has to oversize its fleet to meet a specific operational objective, thereby increasing the purchase and ownership costs of its F-35 fleet, which are still hard to assess. For the last ten years or so, Lockheed Martin's communications, echoed by the American press, have been constantly pointing out that the price of the F-35 is falling. However, the reality is more nuanced, since the latest biennial report from the USAF's procurement department shows that the unit cost of the F 35A, including development, is now $130 million, compared with $134 million in 2012.
The off-the-shelf price, excluding development, is around $80 million for the F 35A, slightly less than for competing aircraft. But whereas the fly away price of an F 15EX, Rafale or Typhoon is really for a ready-to-fly aircraft, the F 35 requires a lot of ancillary investment to really work, from ODIN service subscriptions to ground support equipment, not to mention the costly simulators needed to make up for the lack of a two-seat F-35. The delays, additional costs and operational limitations of the aircraft are also pushing the US forces (and some foreign customers) to acquire palliative solutions, such as the Eagle II or the Super Hornet Block III, whose bills will not be included in the F-35's accounts. Ultimately, as the F-35 is part of a complex integrated system, the very notion of a "fly away" price no longer really makes sense, at least not from a comparative point of view.
But in addition to acquisition costs, it is really the F-35's operating costs that are proving problematic in the long term. While Lockheed Martin promises that the cost per flying hour of the F-35 will be $25,000 in 2025, the DoD was expecting $34,000 in 2024, compared with $44,000 at the time of its assessment. This is still considerably more expensive than the F-16 or F-15, and over the entire career of the F-35 would result in hundreds of billions of dollars in additional budgetary costs. The USAF Chief of Staff has confirmed that the F-35's operating costs make it impossible to achieve the 386-fighter squadron format planned for 2018, and that they limit the resources available for developing the NGAD.
A useless aircraft?
Traditionally, a customer is not required to update its fighter fleet. Nevertheless, even though it will be deployed 25 or 30 years after the launch of the programme, the Block 4 is not a mid-life renovation of the F-35, but its first fully operational standard. The delta is so large that the latest wargames, simulating the defence of Taiwan by the United States in 2030, did not even take into account the current Block 3F standard. A USAF deputy chief of staff declared that every F-35 coming off the production line today was "a fighter that we wouldn't even bother to include in our scenarios".
But beyond the standard integrated on board the F-35, it is the very nature of the missions entrusted to the aircraft during the 'wargames' that raises questions about the relevance of the JSF concept for American forces. During last autumn's simulation, deep strikes against China were carried out using hypersonic weapons dropped by B 52s and F 15EXs, as well as the future B 21 and a hypothetical NGAD.
Faced with Chinese A2/AD systems, the F-35 already lacks the reach and firepower to carry out the penetration and destruction missions for which it was designed. During the simulation, the F-35 - accompanied by a hypothetical low-cost successor to the F-16 - was therefore content to carry out escort, support and close defence missions.
For the Lightning II's defenders, the shower is all the colder for the fact that these admittedly essential tasks could only be carried out effectively by the F-35s because the scenario included the presence, in numbers, of NGADs and new low-cost fighters.
These are aircraft that currently do not exist, and that will not be able to enter service within the decade without drastic cuts in F-35 orders. If this were to happen, the F-35 could well be confined to European operations, whether as part of US or NATO forces. The overall bill would be reduced for the Pentagon, but purchase and maintenance costs would skyrocket for all F-35 export customers.
This nightmare will see an end : US will ask France to sell 1,000 Rafales F 4.2, and very fast, please !
On time, on specifications, on budget : a dream come true !
Froggy puh-leeze! When it becomes too expensive to finance your stealth program and every Euro nation is flying the F-35, as Rafale becomes outdated 4th gen fighter against modern IADS and stealth fighters, France will be the last Euro nation to buy the F-35.
Unlike the Brits, French won't succumb to Uncle Sam. Keep on dreaming.
Not designing for China was a serious miscalculation. But the jet itself is not ready yet, so it's become irrelevant. Only a new engine can help circumvent that.
Anyway, I believe the US will still buy all 2400+ F-35s. Once they open up the jet to all and sundry, like the ME and many other F-16 operators who need jets in the hundreds, it will get cheaper than any new replacement design. New operators would need at least 500-1000 jets. Especially with the world going bad again.