Saturday, February 1, 2014

The dung beetle's "it's known" lie

Here is the usual from Operation:RICO STATUTE.

Michael Rein, a Lockheed spokesman, said in an emailed statement that Gilmore’s report also outlined “a tremendous amount of positive information” and said the findings highlighted known problems.

“The F-35 aircraft has flown to every corner of the envelope and is meeting or exceeding expectations in flight performance,” Rein said. “The challenges identified are known items and the normal discoveries found in a test program of this size and complexity.”

Joe DellaVedova, Pentagon spokesman for the F-35, said in an e-mail that “there were no surprises in the report. All of the issues mentioned are well-known to us, the F-35 international partners and our industry team.”

Incompetence and corruption in the F-35 program--shown by years of program history--can not be waved away by the simplistic, "this is normal in a test program."

Aircraft are being sent to "operational" units that are nowhere near ready; backed up by lies and platitude.

The program is full of surprises.

1. Cost:

“It’s about $37 million for the CTOL aircraft, which is the air force variant.”
- Colonel Dwyer Dennis, U.S. JSF Program Office brief to Australian journalists, 2002-


" ...about $77 million per copy."
-Robert Gates, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Feb. 2008.

One of the first JSF program managers stated that the business plan declared costs don't "flatten out" until about 1500 jets are made. Surprised?


2. Engineering surprises:

While many think the 2004 SWAT episode may be the signature F-35 weight reduction event, there were signs of these problems a year before. Back in 2003, Lockheed Martin announced that an earlier weight reduction event had shed 1000 pounds off the design. The down side is that "quick-mate joints", appliances that made aircraft assembly efficient, were removed from the production line procedure. This would add several days time to the production cycle. Tom Burbage, Lockheed Martin's director of the Joint Strike Fighter Program stated: "That was the trade-off we had to make to get the weight down". (Bob Cox, Team Seeks Weight Loss for F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 19, 2003)

Take a look at this F-35 weight chart:


F-35 Target Weight*240-1 CY2002 (pounds)*240-2 CY2003
(pounds)
*240-4 CY2006 (pounds)Change since 2002
F-35C30,04930,70032,0726.7%
F-35B29,73530,50032,1618.2%
F-35A26,50027,10029,0369.6%


Today, the C-model is looking at 34,593 pounds (2013 DOTE). And this is not an operational empty weight yet to be determined when/if ops-testers sign-off, pencil-whip  this disaster. Going over on weight throws off fatigue assumptions; parts wear assumptions; lowers max-G; reduces combat performance and...increases approach speeds to the carrier.

For carrier ops, in order for the F-35C to pass OPEVAL, there is a chance it could end up killing internal carry of 2x 2000lb bombs to get carrier-specified mission radius key performance perimeters. As the spy from the 1968 movie 'Ice Station Zebra' stated, "Oh no, that's not an accusation, it's a nomination."

The F-35C empty weight assumptions (again, at this time, no known operational empty weight) have porked out 15% since 2002.

Even after multiple weight reduction events have allegedly removed thousands of pounds from the design (1000lbs. in 2003: up to 3000lbs. for some variants from the 2004 SWAT).

Normal discovery? Surprise?

-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)

This from the CALF program of 1993-94 on cost, weight and performance assumptions in a future "affordable" strike-fighter.

The CALF program employed a unique design approach for the time - rather than defining specific performance requirements for the operational aircraft, the government defined a set of mission goals and asked the contractor to conduct design trade-studies to find the most cost effective solution. The government imposed only a single requirement - that the aircraft weight empty be less than 24,000 lbs. This weight target was set for two reasons. First, this weight was consistent with the thrust available for vertical landing from an F-119 class engine. Second, since parametric cost estimating relationships show strong correlation with weight, this also ensured that a low cost design would be achieved.

3. Schedule.

Looking at this chart from 2003 and comparing it to today (over 12 years from contract award), shows current F-35 status as not being "normal".

4. Planning surprise.

Many of the JSF/F-35 assumptions have turned out to be untrue. Including ALIS (failed) or convincing politicians, that two engine vendors brought down costs. For the later, this assumption had potential. However the RR-GE motor was used as a convenient prop to cover cost blow-outs from other parts of the program (Thank you, General Davis.)

From a 1997 JSF brief:


Early in the program, when real engineers pointed out all the risks, they were talked down by lesser-skilled managers. Many, of these skilled engineers, tired of all of this, left.

Left it to those who think they know the problems but don't, to sort out the mess.

One skilled aerospace engineer described it this way. Imagine a tennis ball being the requirement (a.k.a. the JSF JORD) while the resulting product/capability produced is more like a golf ball. Meantime, a very large beach ball represents the marketing and resulting customer expectations.

The difference in volume, is made up by bullshit.

And the actual output shown thus far?

Something like this.

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-Time's Battleland - 5 Part series on F-35 procurement - 2013 
-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Aviation Week (ARES blog) F-35 posts (2007 to present)
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)
-A look at the F-35 program's astro-turfing
-F-35 and F-16 cost per flying hour
-Is this aircraft worth over $51B of USMC tac-air funding?
-Combat radius and altitude, A model
-F-35A, noise abatement and airfields and the USAF
-Deceptive marketing practice: F-35 blocks
-The concurrency fraud


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