If I'm a Yankee tax-payer and my name isn't Innominate, I would be rather worried with this effed up money-drain program known as F-35. Pako really dissed F-35 hard, lmaoHe has no respect for the F-35.
Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning and F-22 'Raptor' : News & Discussion
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GAO blasts contractor-led F-35 maintenance as costly, slow
By Stephen Losey Friday, Sep 22
WASHINGTON — A lack of spare parts and technical data, poor training of maintainers, and a lagging effort to expand repair depots are dragging down the U.S. military’s ability to keep the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in the air, a government watchdog said in a report released Thursday.
And the problems hindering the military from taking over more sustainment activities from the prime F-35 contractor, Lockheed Martin, will cost the government billions of dollars each year if a more cost-effective strategy isn’t found, the Government Accountability Office wrote in its report.
The F-35 and its advanced capabilities make it a formidable weapon in the United States’ arsenal, GAO said. But if the plane can’t get off the ground because of problems with its maintenance and sustainment, the report added, that “valuable edge” does the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps no good.
The three services combined have more than 450 F-35s, and the Defense Department eventually plans to buy a total of almost 2,500 fighters with a life-cycle cost of more than $1.7 trillion.
The vast majority of that life-cycle cost, $1.3 trillion, comes from the operation and sustainment of the jet, GAO said.
But the F-35′s availability has lagged for years, and if a war broke out today, many fighters would be unavailable to fight. In March 2023, GAO said, the mission-capable rate for all F-35s was at 55%. That’s well below the 70% mission-capable goal the Air Force has for its F-35As, and the 75% goal for the Navy and Marine Corps’ F-35B and F-35C variants.
Key lawmakers and watchdog groups have regularly criticized the military and Lockheed Martin for failing to improve the F-35′s availability. Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, who directs the F-35 program, has launched an effort he calls the “war on readiness” to fix the issue, although public details remain scarce.
GAO’s new report presents a deep dive into the many issues that combine to drag down F-35 availability — particularly in obtaining parts to fix broken jets.
The Pentagon agreed with GAO’s recommendations to reconsider its sustainment approaches to the F-35; decide whether the government should take over more responsibilities; consider whether changes to the Navy and Air Force are necessary to better sustain the jet; decide what technical data the services need to support any changes to maintenance processes; and identify what resources might be necessary.
In a statement from the F-35 Joint Program Office, Schmidt said the program continues to work on a “more resilient sustainment structure” and grow its capacity and efficiency worldwide. This includes standing up a network for repair, transportation and warehousing faster, and using incentives to industry to make more F-35s available at an affordable cost.
Lockheed Martin said in a statement to Defense News it’s ready to work with the government as it plans for the future of the F-35′s sustainment. The company added it has long worked with the government to fix the issues that degrade F-35 readiness through its reliability and maintenance program.
A spare parts conundrum
The backlog of broken spare parts that need fixed has more than doubled since spring 2019, GAO said, from 4,300 to more than 10,000.It now takes an average of 141 days to repair a broken spare part — far above the F-35 program’s goal of 60 days — and nearly three-quarters of those parts are sent back to the original equipment manufacturer for repair.
Rather than wait nearly five months for a repaired part, GAO said the F-35 Joint Program Office often buys new parts at a higher cost. This helps get the fighter back in the air faster, GAO acknowledged, but it drives up sustainment costs.
Pentagon officials do not think it’s a sustainable strategy.
Staff Sgt. Michael Sanders of the 58th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron checks out an F-35A Joint Strike Fighter at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. (Chrissy Cuttita/U.S. Air Force)
Program officials told GAO that military service depots can repair parts more quickly than the original manufacturer, in about 72 days on average. The parts that most frequently lead to an F-35 being unable to carry out its mission include its canopy, engine, distributed aperture system sensor and nacelle vent fan.
But the program’s habit of buying new parts instead of fixing broken ones is siphoning money that could go to establishing repair activities at six depots. Furthermore, the F-35 program has fallen 12 years behind schedule in setting up those activities, GAO said, in part because of inadequate funding as the military focuses more on buying new jets than on sustaining existing ones.
The military is now able to repair 44 of the 68 components at F-35 depots including Ogden Air Logistics Complex at Hill Air Force Base in Utah as well as the Fleet Readiness Center East at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in North Carolina. Parts that depots will be able to repair include the fighter’s landing gear, ejection seat and power thermal management system.
However, the depots will be unable to repair all parts until 2027, the Pentagon projects. These delays have led to slow repair times, lower readiness and a growing backlog of broken parts.
A lack of spare parts was a significant problem for 10 of 15 F-35 installations the GAO surveyed, and last year fighters were unable to operate about 27% of the time because a spare part was unavailable.
Maintainers told GAO they often can’t do their jobs because they don’t have enough parts or don’t know when they will receive spares. The maintainers identified Lockheed Martin’s supply chain process as the cause.
The report singled out the F-35′s distributed aperture system sensor as an example of a problematic part. This sensor, made by RTX subsidiary Raytheon, provides 360-degree situational awareness and is intended to allow an F-35 pilot to detect potential threats, such as missiles.
One installation has resorted to “workarounds” to keep F-35s flying with broken sensors when they’re waiting for replacement parts to be delivered, GAO said, but this degrades the jet’s ability to fully carry out its mission.
The F-35 Joint Program Office told GAO it is looking for ways to fix the spare parts issue, including potentially entering into a performance-based logistics contract with Lockheed Martin. But buying enough spare parts and supplies to have each installation fully stocked would be too expensive, officials told the watchdog.
F-35 installations also often lack enough support equipment on the flight line, including equipment needed to provide the jet with electric or hydraulic power, or to tow it.
At some installations, it is common practice for squadrons to borrow support equipment from other squadrons. But when an F-35 squadron deploys and takes most of the installation’s support equipment, that leaves the remaining squadrons “scrambling” to find equipment to maintain the remaining jets.
That support equipment frequently breaks, GAO said, and because it is proprietary, contractors must come in to fix it — a process that can take months.
In the last few years, the F-35 program has grown to conclude it can’t afford the current strategy of contractor-led sustainment of the jet. By 2036, GAO wrote in a 2021 report, contractor-led sustainment of the jet will be $6 billion more than the military can afford in that year alone.
Haunted by ‘acquisition malpractice’
Decisions made at the dawn of the F-35 are also coming back to haunt it — particularly the Pentagon’s early decision not to obtain technical data on the fighter from Lockheed Martin, and the considerable amount of concurrency in the program.Concurrency refers to when a program’s development, testing, production and fielding phases overlap. In the case of the F-35 program, the jet has continued to undergo testing and refinement for more than a decade after the first lot was built and delivered to the U.S. military and international customers.
The F-35 is now in its 15th production lot, and GAO said aircraft as recent as lot 12 required repairs and modifications after testing showed major changes were necessary.
There are now at least 14 different versions of the F-35 undergoing work at depots, officials at several locations told GAO.
When jets must receive modifications, the work further strains depots’ ability to conduct day-to-day repairs. Depot officials told GAO upgrading these jets takes thousands of workload hours apiece and requires F-35s to stay in depots for an extended period.
Airmen 1st Class Griffin Smith and William Manion don safety gear to prepare an F-35A jet for maintenance at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., on Jan. 13, 2016. (Senior Airman Andrea Posey/U.S. Air Force)
Without necessary and complete technical data from Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors, repair times have lagged. When the F-35 program began, GAO said, the Pentagon thought it would be more cost-effective to have contractors handle the bulk of the jet’s sustainment. As a result, the Pentagon didn’t require Lockheed to hand over the technical data that would allow the military to “organically” handle maintenance itself.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has repeatedly criticized that decision, earlier this year calling it “a serious mistake” the service won’t repeat on its sixth-generation Next Generation Air Dominance fighter.
The acquisition philosophy in vogue at the time of the F-35 program’s launch two decades ago, dubbed Total System Performance, meant the contractor on the program would own it for the system’s entire life cycle, Kendall said during a May breakfast with reporters.
This creates “a perpetual monopoly,” Kendall explained, and amounts to “acquisition malpractice” on the F-35.
Officials at an unidentified depot told GAO that maintenance manuals for some key parts are “ambiguous and rarely are detailed enough for depot personnel to make the repair.”
“As a result, depot personnel not only cannot fix the part, but they cannot learn and understand how to fix the part,” the watchdog wrote.
This is proving to be a particular problem as the military tries to add a software maintenance repair component to depots. Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors wrote the fighters more than 8 million lines of code, and they handle the management of and repairs for this code.
The government’s F-35 program has wanted to take over this sustainment for more than five years, and the military has long done the same work on other aircraft. But the program’s inability to acquire the source code necessary to sustain the F-35′s software has prevented it from taking over that work.
In its statement to Defense News, Lockheed Martin said it delivers all data to the government required under its contracts “and is committed to providing data for the Department of Defense to sustain the aircraft under applicable sustainment contracts.”
“The U.S. government has unlimited rights to all operation, maintenance, installation and training data delivered to the government that allows the DoD to maintain and operate the aircraft,” Lockheed added.
The training process for service members to maintain the F-35 is also lacking, GAO said. Maintainers told GAO they mainly learned how to fix the jet while on the job. Initial Lockheed Martin-led training mainly relied on PowerPoint slides in a classroom, with limited hands-on lessons, GAO said.
Training personnel acknowledged to GAO the maintenance training is “poor and inadequate,” adding that because Lockheed Martin runs the training, the firm controls what information is presented to maintainers.
“Since so much of the technical data used to maintain the aircraft is proprietary and unavailable to the military services, trainers in the military services cannot develop effective training programs for maintainers,” GAO wrote.
The situation differs considerably from F-15 and F-16 maintenance, which includes detailed manuals spelling out how the systems operate that allow maintainers to troubleshoot nagging problems.
But at one location, F-35 maintainers told GAO that “they have access to so little technical information on the aircraft that they do not fully understand the aircraft or how to troubleshoot common problems.”
This means they regularly must consult contractor personnel to help with these maintenance tasks, GAO said. In one case, maintainers told the watchdog, a unit that had trouble with an F-35′s ejection seat had to transport a contractor by helicopter to a ship to fix the part.
And there are those who believe that the F-35 is easier to maintain than the Rafale.
And there are those who believe that the F-35 is easier to maintain than the Rafale.
I think I posted this article before in my replies to you. It's not a jet problem, it's a supply chain problem, in relation to the F-35 not being in FRP yet. Suppliers cannot expand production if they don't know how much they will produce, so they need bulk orders, expected from Lot 20, ie, 2024.
As long as the parts are available, the F-35 is far more maintenance-friendly than the Rafale.
But why are you neglecting this?
And maybe if there aren't enough spare parts, that's why:
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The govt is working on doing something about it via their war on readiness plan.
For example, they want to junk the just-in-time maintenance and just create a warehouse for spares via some PBL type system. And even repairs require a supply chain. As for technical data, I guess it's 'cause the jet isn't ready yet. Technical data is typically handed over during IOC and FOC, not while it's still under development, so that's probably what's delaying it.
So the airframe, engine, radar and some avionics data are handed over during IOC, whereas the EW suite subsystems are likely FOC products. So if the EODAS is not repairable, then they don't have the documentation for it. And if they can't repair the airframe, it's 'cause they don't have the spares for it. That's why I think it's too early to judge the program. The IAF faced such issues with LCA until FOC as well, but it was just 1 base and something like 8-12 jets, and HAL was also around to fix issues, so it didn't matter. And we had more than enough spares.
Check out this article. Especially the part that says "Huge win."
‘Just in time’ F-35 supply chain too risky for next war, general says
“When you have that mentality, a hiccup in the supply chain … becomes your single point of failure," the F-35's program executive officer said Monday.
www.defensenews.com
So they could fix their engine issues in just a year with the right investment. The same could repeat with the avionics.
Answers could come next year, when they decide on Lot 20-24.
Who said easier/less skilled?
It is cheaper to maintain that the rafale, as nations have said.
Pic, where are your numbers on the Rafale?
The F-35a is nearly twice as reliably and requires nearly half as many man-hours than required.
It is cheaper to maintain that the rafale, as nations have said.
Pic, where are your numbers on the Rafale?
The F-35a is nearly twice as reliably and requires nearly half as many man-hours than required.
I have always said that the availability of an aircraft is not a characteristic of the aircraft alone, but a characteristic of the aircraft and the organisation that is put in place to maintain it in operational condition. But in this duo, if the aircraft is poor, the organisational effort becomes superhuman and costly. That's what's happening with the F-35 and the USA. They've been ordered to fly the F-35 200 hours a year and despite considerable efforts on the ground, which no other country could achieve, they can't manage it, in my opinion, this is not a good sign for other countries or for their ability to deal with crises or wars.The govt is working on doing something about it via their war on readiness plan.
For example, they want to junk the just-in-time maintenance and just create a warehouse for spares via some PBL type system. And even repairs require a supply chain. As for technical data, I guess it's 'cause the jet isn't ready yet. Technical data is typically handed over during IOC and FOC, not while it's still under development, so that's probably what's delaying it.
So the airframe, engine, radar and some avionics data are handed over during IOC, whereas the EW suite subsystems are likely FOC products. So if the EODAS is not repairable, then they don't have the documentation for it. And if they can't repair the airframe, it's 'cause they don't have the spares for it. That's why I think it's too early to judge the program. The IAF faced such issues with LCA until FOC as well, but it was just 1 base and something like 8-12 jets, and HAL was also around to fix issues, so it didn't matter. And we had more than enough spares.
Check out this article. Especially the part that says "Huge win."
‘Just in time’ F-35 supply chain too risky for next war, general says
“When you have that mentality, a hiccup in the supply chain … becomes your single point of failure," the F-35's program executive officer said Monday.www.defensenews.com
So they could fix their engine issues in just a year with the right investment. The same could repeat with the avionics.
Answers could come next year, when they decide on Lot 20-24.
This article is from avril. 8 monthes after the same head of the JPO have said during the hearing that they only win 4 % MC. The problem is structural and due to LM.
I propose to explain the availability of the F-35:
The first step is to show that the availability observed is "constrained": I've put inverted commas around it because it's a term that I've invented and which therefore needs to be defined.
First of all, availability is not a characteristic of the aircraft alone, but of the aircraft and the organisation around it:
The characteristics of the aircraft contribute to availability, because if it is bad from this point of view, a more cumbersome organisation will have to be put in place than if it is good.
So we can give availability targets for any aircraft in the form of an order, and it will be possible to obey them by reinforcing the technical organisation on the bases so as to compensate for any weaknesses in the aircraft and still meet the availability target.
This is what has been done for the F-35: it has been given an MC target of 80%, which is very easy to achieve, which would not be the case for an FMC target of 80%.
The F-35 has not managed to meet its target, despite the obvious media hype and the fact that the USA has considerable resources at its disposal, compared with other air forces, to strengthen the technical organisation at its bases.
In particular, this means that the F-35s are not flying as much as they need to.
I call this situation the 'constrained' number of flying hours.
To prove my point, here is an extract from the DOT&E FY 2019 ANNUAL REPORT:
https://www.dote.osd.mil/Portals/97/pub/reports/FY2019/dod/2019f35jsf.pdf?ver=2020-01-30-115432-173 page 29
The objectives are very clear here, and yet we are measuring flight rates that are not improving over time, and which are currently around 13-14 hours per month, with a worrying recent development: the total number of hours flown by the F-35 A is no longer increasing, despite the arrival of new aircraft:
Now I'd like to share a few thoughts.
Firstly, on the MC and FMC rates, which are 55% and 30% for the F-35: this means that 55% of the F-35s are capable, at any given time, of carrying out one of the missions for which they are intended and 30% are capable of carrying out all the missions. This gives a completion rate of 39% of assigned missions, i.e. of the 25% that are only capable of some missions, 9% can actually be assigned a useful mission and 16% are capable of missions that are not needed at the moment.
What's very disappointing is the FMC rate, the MC rate is more or less the same as the average for American aircraft, and in France we also have rates of the same type without this hindering operations, because whenever necessary we know how to make the efforts to bring this rate up to the level we need.
There is a difference between a constrained low rate and a low rate that we consider sufficient for the operational contract, and for which we make no further effort. The F-35 FMC rate is a constrained low rate.
There's also the problem of engines: this is a problem that frustrates Garamendi, but for the moment we haven't seen anything: only a few small percent of F-35s don't fly because they don't have a working engine, but forecasts are that this figure will rise to 40% in the next few years, making it impossible to have more than 1,000 engines available at any given time. This is a problem that will affect the MC, because without an engine no mission is possible, and the simple fact that the MC has not yet been affected shows that this problem is only in the making.
And then we'll have a constrained low MC. That's going to be a screamer.
In 2020, with 600 aircraft, the F-35 will have flown 115,000 hours, or 192 hours per aircraft, instead of 240 in 2019, and in 2021, with 700 aircraft, it will have flown another 115,000 hours, or 164 hours per aircraft, instead of 192.
How can this be explained? My theory is that the total number of flying hours that the F-35 can do is limited by the total number of engines available.
The graph shows that the number of engines in service is growing much more slowly than the number of F-35s built, and seems to be levelling off at around 1,000. So if we can generate 115,000 flight hours with 730 engines, we could generate 160,000 with 1,000 engines, which would have to be shared between 1,851 aircraft, i.e. 85 hours per aircraft per year.
There's another phenomenon if we look at the availability of the F-35:
Flying Hours of Air Force Fighters, by Age
Number of Hours per Aircraft per Month
There is an abnormal drop in the availability rate (MC) and in the number of hours flown per month as a function of the age of the aircraft if we compare it with other aircraft. This may be an additional problem, but it may also be because the engine problem is less noticeable on new aircraft, which therefore have a new engine for some time.
The US are well aware of the problem and have made a major effort to improve their engine overhaul capabilities, but they have treated the symptoms, the engines fail, they are repaired more quickly... they have not yet sought to achieve an engine failure rate within the norm. In this sense, the F-35's engine is similar to the Soviet engines, which have a shorter service life than Western engines, and this partly justifies the comparison between the J-20 and the F-35, since the Chinese engines are very much inspired by the Russian engines.
The whole psychodrama of the need to upgrade the F-35 engine to install Tech Refresh 3 in order to be able to run the block 4 software is an attempt to get to the root of this problem rather than just dealing with the symptoms.
The first step is to show that the availability observed is "constrained": I've put inverted commas around it because it's a term that I've invented and which therefore needs to be defined.
First of all, availability is not a characteristic of the aircraft alone, but of the aircraft and the organisation around it:
The characteristics of the aircraft contribute to availability, because if it is bad from this point of view, a more cumbersome organisation will have to be put in place than if it is good.
So we can give availability targets for any aircraft in the form of an order, and it will be possible to obey them by reinforcing the technical organisation on the bases so as to compensate for any weaknesses in the aircraft and still meet the availability target.
This is what has been done for the F-35: it has been given an MC target of 80%, which is very easy to achieve, which would not be the case for an FMC target of 80%.
The F-35 has not managed to meet its target, despite the obvious media hype and the fact that the USA has considerable resources at its disposal, compared with other air forces, to strengthen the technical organisation at its bases.
In particular, this means that the F-35s are not flying as much as they need to.
I call this situation the 'constrained' number of flying hours.
To prove my point, here is an extract from the DOT&E FY 2019 ANNUAL REPORT:
https://www.dote.osd.mil/Portals/97/pub/reports/FY2019/dod/2019f35jsf.pdf?ver=2020-01-30-115432-173 page 29
The objectives are very clear here, and yet we are measuring flight rates that are not improving over time, and which are currently around 13-14 hours per month, with a worrying recent development: the total number of hours flown by the F-35 A is no longer increasing, despite the arrival of new aircraft:
Firstly, on the MC and FMC rates, which are 55% and 30% for the F-35: this means that 55% of the F-35s are capable, at any given time, of carrying out one of the missions for which they are intended and 30% are capable of carrying out all the missions. This gives a completion rate of 39% of assigned missions, i.e. of the 25% that are only capable of some missions, 9% can actually be assigned a useful mission and 16% are capable of missions that are not needed at the moment.
What's very disappointing is the FMC rate, the MC rate is more or less the same as the average for American aircraft, and in France we also have rates of the same type without this hindering operations, because whenever necessary we know how to make the efforts to bring this rate up to the level we need.
There is a difference between a constrained low rate and a low rate that we consider sufficient for the operational contract, and for which we make no further effort. The F-35 FMC rate is a constrained low rate.
There's also the problem of engines: this is a problem that frustrates Garamendi, but for the moment we haven't seen anything: only a few small percent of F-35s don't fly because they don't have a working engine, but forecasts are that this figure will rise to 40% in the next few years, making it impossible to have more than 1,000 engines available at any given time. This is a problem that will affect the MC, because without an engine no mission is possible, and the simple fact that the MC has not yet been affected shows that this problem is only in the making.
And then we'll have a constrained low MC. That's going to be a screamer.
In 2020, with 600 aircraft, the F-35 will have flown 115,000 hours, or 192 hours per aircraft, instead of 240 in 2019, and in 2021, with 700 aircraft, it will have flown another 115,000 hours, or 164 hours per aircraft, instead of 192.
How can this be explained? My theory is that the total number of flying hours that the F-35 can do is limited by the total number of engines available.
There's another phenomenon if we look at the availability of the F-35:
Flying Hours of Air Force Fighters, by Age
Number of Hours per Aircraft per Month
There is an abnormal drop in the availability rate (MC) and in the number of hours flown per month as a function of the age of the aircraft if we compare it with other aircraft. This may be an additional problem, but it may also be because the engine problem is less noticeable on new aircraft, which therefore have a new engine for some time.
The US are well aware of the problem and have made a major effort to improve their engine overhaul capabilities, but they have treated the symptoms, the engines fail, they are repaired more quickly... they have not yet sought to achieve an engine failure rate within the norm. In this sense, the F-35's engine is similar to the Soviet engines, which have a shorter service life than Western engines, and this partly justifies the comparison between the J-20 and the F-35, since the Chinese engines are very much inspired by the Russian engines.
The whole psychodrama of the need to upgrade the F-35 engine to install Tech Refresh 3 in order to be able to run the block 4 software is an attempt to get to the root of this problem rather than just dealing with the symptoms.
Another problem which Pako alluded to was they need to re-cable the frame to enhance cooling of various systems/sub-systems by digging bigger holes and there isn't much space even now to do it. All in all, a complete fvck-up program by Lockheed Martin.
Now it's 100% clear, Rafale>>F-35. @Optimist and @Innominate, deal with it
Now it's 100% clear, Rafale>>F-35. @Optimist and @Innominate, deal with it
I still think the issue is they didn't finish development before they started production. The JPO blames concurrency for their main problems too, and the Pentagon is fixing that with NGAD, including the issue with ownership.
I'm sure MN faced problems with the Rafale when they decided to induct F1s.
The F-35 is definitely not a poor design, or it wouldn't have met the sustainability figures it did in ideal circumstances.
It's a multi-year fight. We can pass judgment only after the jet achieves FOC and the first bulk production squadron is delivered in 2026. If by 2026 or 2027, they are facing the same issues, then it's a failure.
Until the arrival of the ECU and the new heat managment systems it will only goes worst since TR3 and block4 both nead more power.
I propose to explain the availability of the F-35:
The first step is to show that the availability observed is "constrained": I've put inverted commas around it because it's a term that I've invented and which therefore needs to be defined.
First of all, availability is not a characteristic of the aircraft alone, but of the aircraft and the organisation around it:
The characteristics of the aircraft contribute to availability, because if it is bad from this point of view, a more cumbersome organisation will have to be put in place than if it is good.
So we can give availability targets for any aircraft in the form of an order, and it will be possible to obey them by reinforcing the technical organisation on the bases so as to compensate for any weaknesses in the aircraft and still meet the availability target.
This is what has been done for the F-35: it has been given an MC target of 80%, which is very easy to achieve, which would not be the case for an FMC target of 80%.
The F-35 has not managed to meet its target, despite the obvious media hype and the fact that the USA has considerable resources at its disposal, compared with other air forces, to strengthen the technical organisation at its bases.
In particular, this means that the F-35s are not flying as much as they need to.
I call this situation the 'constrained' number of flying hours.
To prove my point, here is an extract from the DOT&E FY 2019 ANNUAL REPORT:
https://www.dote.osd.mil/Portals/97/pub/reports/FY2019/dod/2019f35jsf.pdf?ver=2020-01-30-115432-173 page 29
The objectives are very clear here, and yet we are measuring flight rates that are not improving over time, and which are currently around 13-14 hours per month, with a worrying recent development: the total number of hours flown by the F-35 A is no longer increasing, despite the arrival of new aircraft:
Now I'd like to share a few thoughts.
Firstly, on the MC and FMC rates, which are 55% and 30% for the F-35: this means that 55% of the F-35s are capable, at any given time, of carrying out one of the missions for which they are intended and 30% are capable of carrying out all the missions. This gives a completion rate of 39% of assigned missions, i.e. of the 25% that are only capable of some missions, 9% can actually be assigned a useful mission and 16% are capable of missions that are not needed at the moment.
What's very disappointing is the FMC rate, the MC rate is more or less the same as the average for American aircraft, and in France we also have rates of the same type without this hindering operations, because whenever necessary we know how to make the efforts to bring this rate up to the level we need.
There is a difference between a constrained low rate and a low rate that we consider sufficient for the operational contract, and for which we make no further effort. The F-35 FMC rate is a constrained low rate.
There's also the problem of engines: this is a problem that frustrates Garamendi, but for the moment we haven't seen anything: only a few small percent of F-35s don't fly because they don't have a working engine, but forecasts are that this figure will rise to 40% in the next few years, making it impossible to have more than 1,000 engines available at any given time. This is a problem that will affect the MC, because without an engine no mission is possible, and the simple fact that the MC has not yet been affected shows that this problem is only in the making.
And then we'll have a constrained low MC. That's going to be a screamer.
In 2020, with 600 aircraft, the F-35 will have flown 115,000 hours, or 192 hours per aircraft, instead of 240 in 2019, and in 2021, with 700 aircraft, it will have flown another 115,000 hours, or 164 hours per aircraft, instead of 192.
How can this be explained? My theory is that the total number of flying hours that the F-35 can do is limited by the total number of engines available.
The graph shows that the number of engines in service is growing much more slowly than the number of F-35s built, and seems to be levelling off at around 1,000. So if we can generate 115,000 flight hours with 730 engines, we could generate 160,000 with 1,000 engines, which would have to be shared between 1,851 aircraft, i.e. 85 hours per aircraft per year.
There's another phenomenon if we look at the availability of the F-35:
Flying Hours of Air Force Fighters, by Age
Number of Hours per Aircraft per Month
There is an abnormal drop in the availability rate (MC) and in the number of hours flown per month as a function of the age of the aircraft if we compare it with other aircraft. This may be an additional problem, but it may also be because the engine problem is less noticeable on new aircraft, which therefore have a new engine for some time.
The US are well aware of the problem and have made a major effort to improve their engine overhaul capabilities, but they have treated the symptoms, the engines fail, they are repaired more quickly... they have not yet sought to achieve an engine failure rate within the norm. In this sense, the F-35's engine is similar to the Soviet engines, which have a shorter service life than Western engines, and this partly justifies the comparison between the J-20 and the F-35, since the Chinese engines are very much inspired by the Russian engines.
The whole psychodrama of the need to upgrade the F-35 engine to install Tech Refresh 3 in order to be able to run the block 4 software is an attempt to get to the root of this problem rather than just dealing with the symptoms.
All of this is based on speculation though.
Some of the current engine problems are also related to the engine upgrade program expected to start next year.
Pratt & Whitney to Start F-135 Engine Upgrades in 2024
A $700-million Pentagon award sets the start for the engineering and manufacturing phase of the-35 Engine Core Upgrade, to improve the propulsion system ahead of DoD’s planned...
The engine and TR-3 hardware upgrade are happening simultaneously. It will help stabilize the supply chain.
Another problem which Pako alluded to was they need to re-cable the frame to enhance cooling of various systems/sub-systems by digging bigger holes and there isn't much space even now to do it. All in all, a complete fvck-up program by Lockheed Martin.
Now it's 100% clear, Rafale>>F-35. @Optimist and @Innominate, deal with it
Switching to GaN should help deal with that problem.
The world's top military powers each have fifth-gen jets, but Russia, China, and the US are all facing problems with their fighters
Jake Epstein Dec 23, 2023, 1:30 PM UTC+1
Russia, China, and the US all have fifth-generation fighter jet programs. The Russian Su-57, Chinese J-20, and American F-35 are all facing various challenges. Business Insider spoke with several experts about what's been holding these programs back.
The world's top military powers have been working to develop formidable fifth-generation fighter jet fleets for decades, and that's still a work in progress.
The US built the first fifth-generation fighter, the stealth F-22 Raptor, and it followed that project with the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. Russia and China have the Su-57 and J-20, respectively.
The American F-22 is no longer in production, and the three newest jets, all of which are regarded as fifth-gen jets even if some of them don't quite check all the boxes, are each facing challenges.
To qualify as a fifth-generation fighter, an aircraft needs to have certain features like stealth capabilities to avoid detection and the ability to cruise at supersonic speeds without engaging its afterburners, among other things.
Aviation experts outlined several issues with the Russian, Chinese, and American fifth-generation programs — including problems with stealth technology, engine development, and maintenance — in recent interviews with Business Insider.
The Sukhoi Su-57 is Russia's first attempt at a fifth-generation fighter aircraft, but analysts have questioned if it actually qualifies for this distinction given its shortcomings in several key categories.
Known to NATO as the 'Felon,' the Su-57 was delivered to the Russian military in 2020. There are said to be only 10 aircraft in Moscow's arsenal, but state media suggests this figure will increase to 22 by the end of 2024 and jump again to 76 by 2028. It's unclear if those plans will hold though.
The Su-57 first saw combat experience above Syria in 2018. Last year, Russian officials claimed that the aircraft had seen combat experience in Ukraine, which is backed up by intelligence published by Britain's defense ministry. But while the jets may have engaged in some standoff attacks, there isn't really any evidence of widespread Su-57 employment in the ongoing war.
One explanation for the lack of participation in the kind of war that fifth-generation jets were built for could be that the Russian jet lacks the low-observable characteristics that would allow it to operate as a proper fifth-generation fighter. Issues with the aircraft include Moscow's apparent struggle to outfit it with stealth-capable engines and tightly placed body panels that would adequately reduce its radar signature.
Ultimately, Russia's reluctance to use its Su-57s in Ukraine "suggests that they do not have confidence in the claimed stealth properties of the jet," Justin Bronk, an airpower expert at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank, previously told Business Insider.
Additionally, he noted, the aircraft can only carry an older variant of the R-77 air-to-air missile. This has "folding grid fins that prevent it from being carried internally on the aircraft and hence compromises its stealth signature," he said.
China, as the so-called "pacing challenge" for the US military, also has a fifth-generation fighter program. Six years after making its first flight, China's Chengdu J-20 entered service in 2017.
There, it joined Beijing's inventory of 1,900 fighter jets and has since been "operationally fielded," according to a 2023 Pentagon report on the country's military power. It is estimated that China has built more than 200 J-20s and is preparing several upgrades for the fighter, among them being the installation of domestically produced WS-15 engines.
The capable WS-15 is the engine that the J-20 was originally supposed to have because it would allow the fighter to fly at supersonic speeds without engaging afterburners and lend the aircraft some additional stealth capabilities. But the Chinese defense industry has long struggled to manufacture the advanced engine, so the military has used older Chinese engines and Russian ones instead.
"The J-20 engines have been a big headache, but I think they're indicative of larger challenges within the Chinese defense industry," said Mike Dahm, a former US Navy intelligence officer. "For all of China's technological progress, they still lag behind the West in high-end manufacturing techniques, whether it is engines, low-observable materials, or metallurgy."
"Precision manufacturing," he said, "has an outsized impact on stealth and fifth-generation aircraft capabilities."
Despite earlier setbacks, the J-20 appeared to fly with a pair of WS-15 engines this past summer in a milestone moment. But Dahm, a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, cautioned that even if China has managed to overcome its manufacturing challenges, the reliability of the WS-15 engines is still questionable and could cause problems — especially if it's not built to the same tolerances as Western aircraft.
"Over the course of the engine's lifetime, they will have to perform maintenance on their engines more often and will probably have to replace the engines more often," he said. "Those maintenance challenges will ultimately impact the readiness of the aircraft and the availability of the aircraft."
Michael Bohnert, a licensed engineer at the RAND Corporation think tank who has supported analysis work for the US Air Force, said maintenance of stealth materials — like applying coating on an aircraft — is an expensive and "painful" process that requires a lot of investment, both from a labor and infrastructure perspective.
"Having stealth aircraft is more than just the plane," Bohnert said. "It's the missiles, the tactics, it's the logistics, it's the maintenance infrastructure — there's a lot that goes into it. It's a long train to get there, and you can choose not to follow it."
Like the Russians, China is still relatively new to the fifth-generation fighter game. But even the US, which has had a fifth-gen jet since 2005, is having challenges with its new Joint Strike Fighter.
Developed by defense manufacturer Lockheed Martin, the F-35 is the second fifth-generation fighter in America's arsenal after the F-22 Raptor and comes in three variants.
The US Marine Corps F-35B is capable of short takeoffs and vertical landings and was first achieved initial operational capability in 2015. The F-35A is used by the US Air Force and achieved IOC in 2016 while the F-35C is employed by the US Navy and was operational by 2019.
The aircraft, which was built for ground attacks, air-to-air combat, and networked airpower, has patrolled in Europe and the Pacific and seen some combat experience in the Middle East.
The fifth-gen plane is operated by both the US military and a number of US allies. Israel was actually the first nation to fly the jet in combat.
The US military has around 450 F-35s and the Pentagon plans to procure approximately 2,500 more over the next several decades; the estimated life cycle cost is more than $1.7 trillion — much of which will go to operating and repairing the aircraft.
This very expensive program has been plagued by maintenance and sustainability issues that have often impacted the fighter jet's readiness, and that continues to be the case, according to a September report published by the Government Accountability Office, or GAO. Earlier this year, for example, the aircraft was capable of flying missions barely over half the time.
The report identified several specific issues at military installations, including a lack of support equipment, spare parts, adequate training, and technical data — all of which can contribute to maintenance delays. The report also found that the F-35 program was behind schedule in establishing facilities to conduct repairs and that the US government has relied heavily on contractors, which reduces its own ability to make decisions.
An overarching problem is that for many years, the F-35 program was focused on production, said Diana Maurer, the director of defense capabilities and management at the GAO. The priorities were largely about research, development, and acquisition, while sustainment and its costs were downgraded to a later focus. These problems are now in play.
"The F 35, when it was becoming operationally available to the services, did not have the depot repair facilities up and running to fix the aircraft when it was needed to be repaired. Even now, the program is still years behind in completing depot standup," Maurer said. This means that when major parts of the aircraft need to be repaired or replaced, they often times need to go all the way back to the original equipment manufacturers.
"That creates a lot of delays," she said. And because it takes longer to repair those parts, the backlog grows, and the aircraft becomes "less able to fly across the entire fleet."
The GAO has made several recommendations to the Pentagon in a bid to alleviate some of the challenges, including reassessing the breakdown between government and contractor responsibility. If there is any change to this balance of oversight, the GAO suggested in its September report that the Pentagon figure out what sort of technical data or intellectual property it might need.
Adding to the F-35 program's woes, a December GAO report determined that there are issues with the fighter's cooling system. In particular, it's overtasked, operating beyond what it's designed to do, which could increase wear on the engine, reduce its life, and add billions in maintenance costs.
"It's really important for the US to get a grip on the F 35 program. When it is flying, we've heard from pilots that they're very happy with the capabilities of that weapon system," Maurer said, adding that "it's not just the future of combat aviation for three of our military services — it's the present."
Jake Epstein Dec 23, 2023, 1:30 PM UTC+1
Russia, China, and the US all have fifth-generation fighter jet programs. The Russian Su-57, Chinese J-20, and American F-35 are all facing various challenges. Business Insider spoke with several experts about what's been holding these programs back.
The world's top military powers have been working to develop formidable fifth-generation fighter jet fleets for decades, and that's still a work in progress.
The US built the first fifth-generation fighter, the stealth F-22 Raptor, and it followed that project with the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. Russia and China have the Su-57 and J-20, respectively.
The American F-22 is no longer in production, and the three newest jets, all of which are regarded as fifth-gen jets even if some of them don't quite check all the boxes, are each facing challenges.
To qualify as a fifth-generation fighter, an aircraft needs to have certain features like stealth capabilities to avoid detection and the ability to cruise at supersonic speeds without engaging its afterburners, among other things.
Aviation experts outlined several issues with the Russian, Chinese, and American fifth-generation programs — including problems with stealth technology, engine development, and maintenance — in recent interviews with Business Insider.
The Sukhoi Su-57 is Russia's first attempt at a fifth-generation fighter aircraft, but analysts have questioned if it actually qualifies for this distinction given its shortcomings in several key categories.
Known to NATO as the 'Felon,' the Su-57 was delivered to the Russian military in 2020. There are said to be only 10 aircraft in Moscow's arsenal, but state media suggests this figure will increase to 22 by the end of 2024 and jump again to 76 by 2028. It's unclear if those plans will hold though.
The Su-57 first saw combat experience above Syria in 2018. Last year, Russian officials claimed that the aircraft had seen combat experience in Ukraine, which is backed up by intelligence published by Britain's defense ministry. But while the jets may have engaged in some standoff attacks, there isn't really any evidence of widespread Su-57 employment in the ongoing war.
One explanation for the lack of participation in the kind of war that fifth-generation jets were built for could be that the Russian jet lacks the low-observable characteristics that would allow it to operate as a proper fifth-generation fighter. Issues with the aircraft include Moscow's apparent struggle to outfit it with stealth-capable engines and tightly placed body panels that would adequately reduce its radar signature.
Ultimately, Russia's reluctance to use its Su-57s in Ukraine "suggests that they do not have confidence in the claimed stealth properties of the jet," Justin Bronk, an airpower expert at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank, previously told Business Insider.
Additionally, he noted, the aircraft can only carry an older variant of the R-77 air-to-air missile. This has "folding grid fins that prevent it from being carried internally on the aircraft and hence compromises its stealth signature," he said.
China, as the so-called "pacing challenge" for the US military, also has a fifth-generation fighter program. Six years after making its first flight, China's Chengdu J-20 entered service in 2017.
There, it joined Beijing's inventory of 1,900 fighter jets and has since been "operationally fielded," according to a 2023 Pentagon report on the country's military power. It is estimated that China has built more than 200 J-20s and is preparing several upgrades for the fighter, among them being the installation of domestically produced WS-15 engines.
The capable WS-15 is the engine that the J-20 was originally supposed to have because it would allow the fighter to fly at supersonic speeds without engaging afterburners and lend the aircraft some additional stealth capabilities. But the Chinese defense industry has long struggled to manufacture the advanced engine, so the military has used older Chinese engines and Russian ones instead.
"The J-20 engines have been a big headache, but I think they're indicative of larger challenges within the Chinese defense industry," said Mike Dahm, a former US Navy intelligence officer. "For all of China's technological progress, they still lag behind the West in high-end manufacturing techniques, whether it is engines, low-observable materials, or metallurgy."
"Precision manufacturing," he said, "has an outsized impact on stealth and fifth-generation aircraft capabilities."
Despite earlier setbacks, the J-20 appeared to fly with a pair of WS-15 engines this past summer in a milestone moment. But Dahm, a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, cautioned that even if China has managed to overcome its manufacturing challenges, the reliability of the WS-15 engines is still questionable and could cause problems — especially if it's not built to the same tolerances as Western aircraft.
"Over the course of the engine's lifetime, they will have to perform maintenance on their engines more often and will probably have to replace the engines more often," he said. "Those maintenance challenges will ultimately impact the readiness of the aircraft and the availability of the aircraft."
Michael Bohnert, a licensed engineer at the RAND Corporation think tank who has supported analysis work for the US Air Force, said maintenance of stealth materials — like applying coating on an aircraft — is an expensive and "painful" process that requires a lot of investment, both from a labor and infrastructure perspective.
"Having stealth aircraft is more than just the plane," Bohnert said. "It's the missiles, the tactics, it's the logistics, it's the maintenance infrastructure — there's a lot that goes into it. It's a long train to get there, and you can choose not to follow it."
Like the Russians, China is still relatively new to the fifth-generation fighter game. But even the US, which has had a fifth-gen jet since 2005, is having challenges with its new Joint Strike Fighter.
Developed by defense manufacturer Lockheed Martin, the F-35 is the second fifth-generation fighter in America's arsenal after the F-22 Raptor and comes in three variants.
The US Marine Corps F-35B is capable of short takeoffs and vertical landings and was first achieved initial operational capability in 2015. The F-35A is used by the US Air Force and achieved IOC in 2016 while the F-35C is employed by the US Navy and was operational by 2019.
The aircraft, which was built for ground attacks, air-to-air combat, and networked airpower, has patrolled in Europe and the Pacific and seen some combat experience in the Middle East.
The fifth-gen plane is operated by both the US military and a number of US allies. Israel was actually the first nation to fly the jet in combat.
The US military has around 450 F-35s and the Pentagon plans to procure approximately 2,500 more over the next several decades; the estimated life cycle cost is more than $1.7 trillion — much of which will go to operating and repairing the aircraft.
This very expensive program has been plagued by maintenance and sustainability issues that have often impacted the fighter jet's readiness, and that continues to be the case, according to a September report published by the Government Accountability Office, or GAO. Earlier this year, for example, the aircraft was capable of flying missions barely over half the time.
The report identified several specific issues at military installations, including a lack of support equipment, spare parts, adequate training, and technical data — all of which can contribute to maintenance delays. The report also found that the F-35 program was behind schedule in establishing facilities to conduct repairs and that the US government has relied heavily on contractors, which reduces its own ability to make decisions.
An overarching problem is that for many years, the F-35 program was focused on production, said Diana Maurer, the director of defense capabilities and management at the GAO. The priorities were largely about research, development, and acquisition, while sustainment and its costs were downgraded to a later focus. These problems are now in play.
"The F 35, when it was becoming operationally available to the services, did not have the depot repair facilities up and running to fix the aircraft when it was needed to be repaired. Even now, the program is still years behind in completing depot standup," Maurer said. This means that when major parts of the aircraft need to be repaired or replaced, they often times need to go all the way back to the original equipment manufacturers.
"That creates a lot of delays," she said. And because it takes longer to repair those parts, the backlog grows, and the aircraft becomes "less able to fly across the entire fleet."
The GAO has made several recommendations to the Pentagon in a bid to alleviate some of the challenges, including reassessing the breakdown between government and contractor responsibility. If there is any change to this balance of oversight, the GAO suggested in its September report that the Pentagon figure out what sort of technical data or intellectual property it might need.
Adding to the F-35 program's woes, a December GAO report determined that there are issues with the fighter's cooling system. In particular, it's overtasked, operating beyond what it's designed to do, which could increase wear on the engine, reduce its life, and add billions in maintenance costs.
"It's really important for the US to get a grip on the F 35 program. When it is flying, we've heard from pilots that they're very happy with the capabilities of that weapon system," Maurer said, adding that "it's not just the future of combat aviation for three of our military services — it's the present."
The first 2 jets are based on speculation. The Russians are behind, judgment should be reserved at least until the first squadron is deployed. The Chinese must have done something right if they are building potentially 50+ every year. Or even 100+.
The F-35 is the same as the Su-57, judgment to be reserved after FOC for both. I mean, look at the changes that happened in India after LCA received FOC. 4 new fighter jets and 2 stealth drones were announced.
When people talk about F-35 program challenges…
— Jay McVann (@JayMcvann) December 22, 2023
Thank god there was no internet when the F-14, C-17, B-1, M-1, etc were being developed. https://t.co/rKcWXp6ecB
