http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...engine-delivery-over-titanium.html

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/art..._35-engine-problems-since-may.html

Summary:

- Pratt & Whitney halted engine production in May after concerns over the titanium used.

- Pratt & Whitney only went public when the news was broken by Bloomberg on August 29th.

- Pratt & Whitney only filed a suit against the supplier of the titanium after the news went public.

- The production halt has basically been covered up by all parties concerned.

- Among those kept in the dark was Congress.

- No mention of the production halt was made during a major press brief at RIAT.

- Still no public explanation for what caused the June 23rd engine fire.


So are we seeing collusion among the USAF, manufacturers and various government agencies in covering up setbacks in the F-35 programme and hide them from outside scrutiny?

The links don't work, it's a conspiracy!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-29...r-titanium.html

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/article-view/feature/156613/p%26w%2C-others-hid-new-f_35-engine-problems-since-may.html


Try these.

What we're seeing is a private company downplaying its mistakes so its bottom line and stock price aren't hurt, because that's all that matters to them--how much money they have and make.
Whether the customer is ignorant, aware yet NOT aware of how big the problem is, or complicit is largely irrelevant.

I love that P&W went public bashing the other company without having apparently even really spoken with them yet. "Oh, they did it! Not us!"



The Jedi Master

The interesting thing about P&W and the F-35 is that when they quote the flyaway cost, or in fact any cost pertaining to the F-35, it's always sans-engine. The reason being that P&W say that the cost of the engine is a commercially sensitive information.

"Dependable Engines" was a long time ago, it seems.

It's getting the F136 people all up in arms, but of course it's way past being able to afford to resurrect that.

On the subject of the engine fire, if I remember what I've read on aviationweek over the last few months, that was due to a blisk in the low-pressure (compressor, I think?) rubbing against something that it shouldn't. I can probably dig up the article if anyone's interested, but it doesn't say much more than that.

They still don't have a working carrier version, do they?

I say develop DAS as a pod/add-on for current gen jets and #%&*$# can the F-35 airframe.

The only viable solution, obviously:

Start over from scratch* and design the F-14E/F Tomcat II




* Northrop Grumman can start with this and work from there

I always thought the idea of having two engine suppliers was:

i) It keeps the suppliers honest.

ii) If there's a problem with one engine the alternative is available.

So basically this episode has proven why it's perhaps prudent to have two engine suppliers for such a big project, and again underlined why the F-35 is bad news when it comes to everybody being convinced (lobbied) to put their eggs into one basket.

The USN is in no hurry for the F-35C (they ditched their Tomcats for Super Bugs, and the legacy Hornets aren't falling apart like the old F-16s and AV-8s are) so its development is last due to lack of urgency.

Yeah, P&W's "competitive privilege" on keeping the price under wraps is a joke. I mean, they don't want to compromise their position vs the other supersonic STOVL production engines out there...

So, in the end we were stuck with the competing crappy choices of what we have now--a company who has the gov't over a barrel when it comes to pricing and performance because there's no choice, so it can make far more than it should be able to--or a second competing engine whose development and other changes needed to the airframe and avionics would cost a ton more upfront but possibly save money over the long run of engine productions.

The gov't chose to save the money now by canning the F136, or rather the DoD finally convinced Congress to stop paying for it. Of course, had they NOT the F135 would likely have a tarnish-free reputation and excellent pricing, so P&W could say "gee, what did you bother doing that for?" while making less money on each engine sold.



The Jedi Master

No doubt the F-35 acquisition process has been a fiasco, resulting in delays and cost overruns, and some heads really should be rolling by now.

However, that doesn't automatically mean the F-35 won't turn out OK.

Here are a few video clips about another aircraft that had similar complaints and concerns, and it seemed to turn out OK:

Watch this one through the 47 minute mark or so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkrtxDdaWuM#t=2589

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkrtxDdaWuM#t=3055

And this aircraft even had a crash landing during development, unlike the F-35 (so far):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XuFmTPdIE2k

Arthonon, don't forget about the F-14 prototype that crashed after a complete hydraulic failure!

The thing about the F-35 is that everyone WILL make it work, simply because there's no plan B - both us and you will be up the creek without it. It'll just... take longer, and cost more than we were hoping for.

But hey, that's the modern military procurement system for you.

Seems like what happened during WWII where thousands of aircraft and vehicles were manufactured PER MONTH will turn out to be a truly unique thing that wont happen again.

So we just bend over and spread our nice little taxpayer cheeks for Uncle Lockheed and his pals?

What they've gotten away with is scandalous, and if we bend over and take it now they'll just come back next time and do it even harder.

The argument that it's not so bad because the F-whatever crashed during development, had technical problems with the dooberrywotsit and couldn't get to its specified top speed don't stand up to scrutiny either.

- The F-35 is the most expensive weapons programme in human history, and has taken longer than any of the others to get into service.

- It's supposed to be a better and more efficient way of designing and building a tactical jet.

- All the other jets were designed in an environment where there were multiple alternative aircraft designers ready to step in should the incumbent make a mess of it.

Unfortunately, yes, we do just bend over and shovel good money after bad.

The alternative is starting over, and there is absolutely no guarantee of that working right either - you'd be gambling one unknown for another, and because you've gone right back to the beginning, you'll have to start right back from bidding.

The fact of the matter is that although engineering precision, technique and quality has stepped up to make things more efficient, some of those aspects actually make it more complex and time consuming.

You gain engineering precision which should make things more accurate, but that then means that you need to design in that accuracy. Now that you're able to predict, simulate and design things with so much more precision, you end up using more margin, pushing what was previously a loose envelope, in terms of aerodynamics, structure, performance and the rest, so that you're designing everything to the last 0.1% of its ability.

We're also more risk averse. Couple that with defence requirements, which now that we have the ability to predict more, have much tighter requirements, means that the defcons have to demonstrate much closer compliance. Demonstrating compliance isn't new, but the depth to which compliance is now required, is.

Software is a relatively new thing. Look at how much time was spent working on software back in the old days compared to now, and you'll find that we spend a crapload more on sensors, sensor fusion, and the software driving all of it. This makes its own flustercluck - now we've got aircraft designed by different companies, to different standards, and they can't talk to each other. Sure, we used to have software since the 50s, but not millions of lines of code.

Things cost more and are more complex because we demand it from a technological point of view. We're not like what Russia was with the numbers game. We (I say we - I mean defcons and the defence people in power) demand that we make the most kickarse aircraft, that pushes the edge of technology. That costs, it has cost previously, and it will continue to cost, and that's just the way it is, because we demand it. Oh, and the goalposts move as well. Otherwise we wouldn't have sold the Harrier.

I'd be careful about saying that the other aircraft had stand-ins in the event that they failed. That's true to an extent up to about the 70s (the V-bombers is an excellent example), but as soon as you get to the teen-series US fighters, that stops being so true. I'm thinking specifically of the 14, 15 and 16 - they serve similar roles, but due to the specific requirements of the design, they cannot replace each other. (I'll let you have the F-15E vs 16XL though). The other thing is, there is a big, BIG difference between a prototype and a production model - Using the (Y)F-23 in the event of the '22 not making it would entail a pretty big engineering job, and as the requirements changed through the life of the F-22s emergence, it would have been subject to the same BS.

At the end of the day, if us engineers don't engineer the complexity into it, the government will define an impossible problem and then move the goalposts.

I'm not trying to expunge defcons of being money grabbing, but after gaining a little experience in how it works from the floor (rather than from a management level), I'm less inclined to think that it's with malicious intent, but more just due to crap management and a lot of other stupid little human things (e.g. contractors switching jobs every 2 years) that after you go through a workforce of 100,000 supporting the programme, really adds up to a giant mess.

No, we shouldn't just take it, and there should be some very serious investigations into why the cost overruns and other problems happened.


I didn't post the F-16 information as an excuse, but more to say that the press - which is pretty much our only srouce of info on this (other than LockMart) - has a history of focusing on the problems of every airframe, and the complaints never seem to change - too expensive, over budget, late, not performing to specification, etc., even for the same aircraft that everyone seems to want to keep now. How do we know what we're reading now is any more accurate than it was when it was said about those older aircraft?

I'm old enough to have been around for the introduction of the F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18, F-22, and now the F-35, and just about everything being said about the F-35 was said about those other aircraft. After a while, it sounds a lot like crying wolf. Maybe it's right this time, but history is not favoring that.


Part of that is because it is doing more than most other weapons programs. It's an aircraft that is replacing several others, and adding a lot of capability that never existed before, so just because it costs more doesn't automatically make it a bad program.


Well, it's clearly failed at that, although I always thought the focus was on making it cheaper to buy and maintain, not so much designing it. It's not hitting the cost marks, and we'll have to see if it's cheaper to maintain.


I don't think that's actually true. In the case of the F-16, for example, no one else could step up and start building a competitor once GD won the contract. The Navy decided on the F-18, but had they not, any decision to go with another aircraft would have required starting from scratch, much like the current situation with the F-35. Plus, Boeing is still producing Super Hornets and Eagles of various sorts, and LM is also still making F-16 variants, so we still have other companies/aircraft to go to now.

I've said it before, here and on other sites, that I don't know that the F-35 will work as advertised, but I don't trust that the negative info we're getting is necessarily any more accurate than it's been in the past, said about aircraft that actually turned out to work pretty well.

The biggest mistakes of the F-35 program cannot be fixed because they're done with: to flight test and produce simultaneously (because of the mistaken belief that "computers are so good the planes will roll off the line perfect") and to make one airframe work for 3 different requirements (to force a repeat of the F-4). That was a management mistake, perhaps fed by yes-men lead engineers who mistakenly thought they were there and others who knew it wouldn't work but also knew it wouldn't affect THEIR jobs. So you had incompetence in industry and gov't on the management side.
You can't fire gov't people, so there's zero reason to think a new program won't suffer the same fate in addition to wasting all the billions already spent.

The "most expensive program" is a bogeyman because the bulk of the money hasn't been spent yet. They're talking about total costs to build 3000 jets and operate them for decades. Yeah, salaries, parts, all that stuff keeps getting more expensive, so this will be the most expensive one...until the next one which will surpass THIS one.

So the reason it makes sense to "throw more money at it" is because a new program will cost even more overall. There's no getting any money back from the F-35 program that was already spent, it would cost billions to shut it down at this point (paying back all those other countries that paid in) and we'd still have to hold a new competition to design and build another plane (or planes) to do this job. Twenty years later, the new jet would enter service.

If you buy a house under market value, then discover there are more problems with it than you thought, such that to finally fix it you've spent a good deal over market value and will have to sell at a loss...do you fix it, sell it, and take the loss, or do you just walk away and lose MORE money...and then still have to buy another house anyway which you'll have no guarantee won't be in the same boat.


Gov't procurement is broken because there are gov't people in charge with no interest in anything but CYA. LOTS of gov't people. An army. Look at SpaceX. They did their qualification launches for the USAF already, but it will take another YEAR to be officially qualified because of all the stupid gov't paperwork and t-crossing and I-dotting. Will that make a difference? Of course not. The rocket will still work or fail regardless of that stuff, but all those people whose jobs depend on their saying so won't dare let anyone take it away from them.



The Jedi Master

The biggest criticism I have of the F-35 programme is it was run as "winner takes all".

That's what I mean when I say in the past other manufacturers were still around. The JSF programme has left one company as pretty much the sole supplier of tactical jets to the entire western world.

I'm sure I don't need to explain why that was extreme folly and why Lockheed were more than happy to promise everybody the moon on a stick if it meant their product was given the go-ahead.

It's not like Boeing didn't. They just lost. Had they won, I'd give good money we'd be saying the same thing about them. Also, the engine competition was run separately, so I'd say there was a good chance we could've been talking about GE instead.

The gov't created a monster (stupid) requirement that was quite honestly a bad idea. They'll never be held accountable, especially as the slow timelines of modern defense means by the time you notice things are all screwed up those people aren't in the same positions anymore (possibly even retired) and since so much time has passed they can plausibly claim it was the people AFTER them that screwed up.

The system is setup so that no one is held accountable on the gov't side.



The Jedi Master

Pielstick, I don't think the aircraft manufacturing landscape is what you think it is right now. For example, one of the reasons why we have fewer manufacturers has nothing to do with the F-35, it has to do with defense industry business, and business in general. It's due to consolidation. LM bought out GD years ago, Boeing bought out McDonnell Douglas, etc., so you just have fewer manufacturers to start with.

On top of that, the F-35 work is getting spread around a fair amount. Major fuselage assemblies are being produced by Northrop Grumman (I've seen the production lines), and of course other parts are coming from other manufacturers. Boeing is still producing Super Hornets and Eagles, and finding markets for them, although we're not sure how much longer. And that's just the manufacturers in the US.

I think a big difference between now and the past is that in the past, there was no way to build an airframe that could do all the things we can make one do today. Even it you think building conventional, carrier, and STOVL versions is a bad idea, we still would need fewer types of airframes than in the past, because we don't need dedicated strike, interdiction, and air-to-air aircraft. If the US Navy decided not to buy the F-35, they'd pretty much just have one airframe on the deck, the Super Hornet (Legacy Hornets will be wearing out soon - too many traps).

I guess that's my long way of saying that I don't think the selection process of the F-35 really changed the landscape that much.

If you look back over the history of the programme, the 'lets have one type' decision can be traced back to the merging of 1990s JAST (UK/US Harrier follow on) and CALF (Common Light Affordable Fighter/F-16 follow-on) programmes which were merged because surprise, surprise it was thought it would save money.