Why the Gypsy Woman Laughs at DOT&E

(Photo by Darrin Russel/Lockheed Martin)

DOT&E FY15 Doomsaying…

- Full Block 3F mission systems development and testing cannot be completed by May 2017, the date reflected in the most recent Program Office schedule, which is seven months later than the date planned after the 2012 restructure of the program. Although the program has recently acknowledged some schedule pressure and began referencing July 31, 2017, as the end of SDD flight test, that date is unrealistic as well. Instead, the program will likely not finish Block 3F development and flight testing prior to January 2018,...

DOT&E FY16 Doomsaying…. 

• Insufficient time and resources to conduct all required weapons delivery accuracy (WDA) events. The program completed a surge of weapons test events in August and is analyzing the results. While some of the events appear to have been successful, several WDAs unsurprisingly had significant issues that either required control room intervention or the employment of the weapon was likely unsuccessful. Despite making some progress, the program still has not completed the full set of planned test events for Block 3F weapons in the TEMP, with 13 WDAs remaining, excluding the multiple gun scoring events, which must also be completed. Due to the limited time and funding remaining in SDD, the program has prioritized completing testing of new and deficient Block 3F mission systems capabilities over completing the remaining WDAs. While completion of Block 3F mission systems is necessary, the WDAs are also an integral part of successfully completing required development and adequate testing of full Block 3F capabilities. Each of the planned WDA events is an essential end-to-end test of the full fire-control chain. Conducting all of the WDAs is the only way to discover problems that otherwise will be realized in operational test and/or combat. For example, one of the recent AIM-120 missile WDA events required control room intervention to direct the pilot when to launch, as there were no shoot cues or launch zone indications displayed to the pilot due to an outdated AIM-120 missile attack model within the mission systems software. Due to their importance and the distinct differences among them, all of the planned WDA events must be completed during DT; otherwise, these events will have to be completed before or during IOT &E, which will delay discovery of deficiencies and the completion of IOT&E while adding to its cost.

Today: “F-35 developmental testers surge toward [F-35 3F] IOC”

“This was kind of a cleanup, or a closeout, of (System Development and Demonstration). It’s the closeout of JSF developmental test for Block 3F, which is a big deal because it’s for Air Force IOC, and Navy IOC,” he said…. 

…“I like to think of these as the last for Developmental Test,” he said. “This is like our graduation exercise before we hand the aircraft off to the operational test organizations so they can go prove it’s ready for combat. That’s very significant for us.”… 

…There is a single WDA event remaining for 3F, which marks the completion for all three variants and will pave the way to the declaration of IOC for all F-35s.

Now, If you are a journalist and EVER cited DOT&E as if they knew WTF they were talking about, then take a large mallet and apply it forcefully to your forehead in penance. Ye shall be known by thy flat face.

What's the lesson here? There is a reason this quote was displayed in the entryway to ASD HQ at Wright Patterson back in the 80s-Early 90s.

(Image Source)

A Survey: What does State of the Art Fighter Maneuverability Look Like?

How Would You "Score" Maneuverability Requirements Today? Part 1

Since maneuverability is a hot topic these days (especially here)....


As I noted in a post ages ago, in the 1980's Skow, Hamilton and Taylor (Ref 1) observed:

“In the late 1940's and early 1950’s, with the advent of jet propulsion, radical new wing designs and greatly expanded flight envelopes, a corresponding need for more definitive measures of merit for aircraft performance comparisons was generated. When the "century series" fighters were developed and rear-aspect IR missiles became the principal air-to-air combat weapon, point performance comparisons were found to be inconclusive and insufficient to predict superiority. Out of this need, energy-maneuverability (E-M) concepts were formulated and developed. In the 1960's. E-M came into widespread use by aircraft designers and fighter pilots. E-M provided an analog picture of a fighter's performance capabilities over a range of velocities and altitudes. It gave quantifiable credit to measures of merit which allowed the advantages of speed (energy) and turning (maneuverability) to be balanced. These measures of merit were shown to be dominant in determining the outcome of an air battle at that time.  

 ...

But, as they say, time marches on, and in the past 10-12 years, several significant advancements have been made in the capabilities of fighter aircraft and air-to-air weapons. Three of these advancements; the all-aspect IR missile, greatly improved weapons delivery systems, and high thrust-to-weight engines have dramatically altered the character of the air battle, especially the close-in fight. The modern air battle is characterized by (1) time compression – shorter duration maneuvering required and (2) harder maneuvering - nose position at the expense of energy vs. nose position with energy conservation…

Air combat trends have expanded to ever increasing altitudes and speeds for beyond visual range (BVR) combat and conversely have tended to a lower and sometimes slower arena for close-in, within visual range (WVR) combat. … …This changing complexion of air combat, primarily due to the all-aspect IR missile, has altered the relative significance of the various performance characteristics with which we judge relative merit. Table 3 depicts the more common agility characteristics with some relative rankings.”

Time does march on, and so fighter and threat technology have progressed since 1985. So....

What About Today?

Regular readers will recognize this table from that earlier post:  


'Table 3' Reconstruction from “Advanced Fighter Agility Metrics”



The authors of the original table and paper recognized the game changing aspects of being able to engage with missiles from 'all aspects' and those changes in their view re-jiggered the fighter maneuverability design priorities.

As I see it, this would be a two part mental exercise. First we need to add columns on the right side of the table identifying any 'game-changing' developments that would cause further changes to the rankings shown. Stealth is an obvious development, but are there others like "very-high off-boresight missiles". 

Before I put too much grey matter onto the project, I thought I'd open the floor for ideas, and then decide (collectively if there is interest) first what order and perhaps grouping the header(s) should be populated from left to right. I THINK the columns should be added in order of chronological developments, but I don't KNOW yet: I try to keep an open mind until info is in hand.

The end product of Phase 1/Question 1 would be the jumping off point for exploration of how these developments may change the relative rank ordering.  I think I'm going to solicit inputs from F-16.net board members in a thread of its own, but I would welcome an even wider range of inputs and insights.

Survey Question 1:
What has changed since 1985 that would affect the rank ordering scores that each 'Agility Characteristic' (as the term is used in the table) would receive? 


Reference:
ADVANCED FIGHTER AGILITY METRICS; Andrew M. Skow, William L. Hamilton, John H. Taylor; AIAA-A85-47027 

We Can't let an F-35 Myth Die!

The "Phone it in Edition"

The only thing worse than 'phoning it in'.... is doing so with incredibly poor timing.

28 April 2017

“For me, it’s my first time dogfighting against an F-15”….“Dogfighting is a test of pilot skill, but it’s also constrained by the aircraft’s capabilities and I’ve been really impressed by the flight control and maneuverability of the F-35.”

--Maj. (Lt Col Sel.) Luke Harris, F-35A instructor and former F-16 pilot

 4 May 2017 click-bait regurgitation of an article first written in 2015 

“Close in, the JSF does not have the maneuverability of the Raptor––or even a F-16 or F/A-18.”

--Dave Majumdar, a journalist who rode in the back seat of a trainer someplace.

When Majumdar first started at FlightGlobal he showed promise. Alas, unrealized to date.

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves: F-35 Edition.

Punctuation: It's important.

Reference in Title Explained  

 



There was a poor article published at Business Insider (as if that is a surprise) on 18 April where the author did a mashup of an interview of a retired USMC Major and F-35 pilot with a bunch of factoids, a few facts, and...well, let's just call it a lot of  'other than facts', such as repeating the lie about the 2015 CLAW test being a 'dogfight' and claims like.

The F-35A's mid-mission T/W ratio is better than 1 to 1, good enough to have pilots saying that at typical WVR speeds it can out accelerate an F-16. The F-35A's wing reference area is greater than an F-16 so one presumes he was talking about 'wing loading' -- which isn't a big deal if you've got the thrust to overcome it. I would still dearly love it if some enterprising journalist ever asked how many thousand pounds heavier the early production F-35A (AF-2) with instrumentation is than the first production spec weight target aircraft that was built several LRIPs later. Because weight matters.

What the pilot, Dan Flatley had to say was pretty good and consistent with all the other feedback from the people who fly the F-35 are saying. I think it should have been made clear that his views as a syllabus developer were in no way relevant to the JSF program process and pace in opening up the control laws (the very purpose of that 2015 exercise and publically known a year in advance), but the BI author seems to tie the two together more than the pilot does.

Everyone in the test program knew the control laws start out conservative for safety's sake and over time as the envelope is tested, the control laws get loosened to get all the 'safe' performance out of a jet that possible.  I'd also want some clarifications, but that need comes from the author's mashup. One has to read very carefully to keep from mixing up what the author asserts and the correlations he draws on his own with the interview: what was actually quoted as coming from the Major. The author doesn't have the technical chops to draw the correlations he does make (see thrust/weight ratio), and to me, unless you already knew what was going on, the article just muddies the waters.

Poor Writing Causes Even Poorer Writing

So as if that's not bad enough, we now have a sterling example of how perverted 'copypasta' will take  a poorly written article and turn it into a misquoted source. Compare the BI excerpt with an excerpt from a blogger posting opinions on the subject. Who the blogger is isn't important, what's important is what gets changed in the original story.

Now here's the copypasta:

Ignoring the highlights in the second graphic, do you see what was changed and how the entire meaning of the passage was changed with it?
.
.
.
(intermission)
.
.
.
In the original, Major Flatley states:
"If you try to fly it like the fighter it isn't, you're going to have terrible results."

In the copypasta, the blogger quotes Flately as stating:
 "If you try to fly it like the fighter, it isn't. You're going to have terrible results."

I hope there's no need to explain how, why, and what meaning has been lost in the translation there.

The blogger then builds a whole rant based on a misquote he made in the transcription. I do not believe this was intentional, at least I hope it wasn't. BI doesn't allow simple copy/paste using at least some browsers, including mine, so the transcription was probably manual and prone to human error. But I have to believe preconceived notions caused the mistranslation from one site to the next. Why?
To make that kind of error, it seems you would have to want it to be as you perceived it to even want to post about it in the first place.

Too good to check

The saddest thing is, I checked the comments (69 at the time) and not one person called the blogger out on the error. Almost certainly for most it was because the error reaffirmed their own world view, and the rest seemed to just take it at face value that the quote was legit and correct, whether they agreed or disagreed. This is how B.S. thrives on the web.

Note: I found the blog post with a search engine while looking for the BI article. It was at a site I used to frequent and my curiosity was piqued. Considering the time of night, I shouldn't have bothered in retrospect.

'Opti-Onics': Arrived in the Late 20th Century

Via x-ray delta one we find the visionaries at Bell & Howell understood Intelligence Strike & Reconnaissance (ISR) way back in the 1940s :

Source: XRay Delta One (James Vaughan)

Just envision that's a 'Predator' or 'Global Hawk' silhouette we see looking down on the battlefield.

B&H is still with us-- somewhat transmogrified--too.

What I've Been Doing

Is what I'll be doing for a little while longer.

No deadline considerations, just quality ones.

I've had a few enquiries as to why the long time 'light blogging'. I hope to come out from under a rock someday and hit some of the big topics anyway, but here's what I've been spending my off-work hours doing since the weather was still cold (for Texas).

I designed what we call 'the shed' (~500sq ft) for construction at the secret location of stately Mac Manor somewhere in the wilds of Parker County Texas. I have played general contractor for the heavy stuff, am but doing the insulation, drywall, trim and paint, and also building the large bay barn doors myself. The foundation slab is twice typical thickness with 2ft deep perimeter and cross 'rails' with up-sized rebar so it isn't going anywhere. Believe it or not, the most time consuming part of the project (so far) was finding a concrete contractor who would take the job.  Couldn't find one forever. Seems the job was too small for the guys who do real house foundations and too complex for the guys who pour patios and driveways.

I would have done the electrical, but my main breaker box at home was so full I needed a new panel and the wiring had to be dragged all the way from the other side of the house AND a buried cable run was needed to get 110v/220v to the shed. Better to pay someone who does this kind of stuff all the time, I say.    

Framing the roof. If I had known how complicated a cathedral ceiling, and storage area over the side room, would make the insulation and drywall job I may have simplified it some. Live and learn.

 Back side, Roof on!

Drywall beginning. I had to temporarily hang the doors I built to keep the Spring storms from blowing through. The table you see on the sawhorses is 4' x 8' and was where I built the template for the bi-fold barn doors (80 lbs per panel plus or minus).

 Stone selected and delivered:

 Finally! the brick came. It matches my house and is part of the last batch the company will ever make. I didn't do this a moment too soon.

 No finished photos will be posted except maybe from the back. You'll have to take my word for it-- it is IMHO-- freaking awesome! (And the neighbors seem happy since I knock off at 10 every weeknight.) I'm now re-hanging the barn doors permanently so I can put an A/C in there and finish the drywall.
Have you  ever tried to finish drywall joints when the air AND the wall is about 100 degrees F? Fugeddaboutit!

Law of Unintended Consequences and F-35 H8ers.

Hillarity ensues.

My apologies for not posting more, but I’m swamped with higher priorities and will continue to be for a while yet. There’s been a lot going on that I’d like to really get into the weeds on with some in depth posts. Those can sit for a bit without harm and I notice the internet seems to do just fine with most of the ‘news’ without me having to add my 2 cents worth. It does seem others often have things covered pretty well.

But here’s a little story breaking that I haven’t seen anyone pick up on yet….and it is just too delightful to let lay unnoticed and unloved.

Flashback to the A-10 Fanbois Faction whining up a delay in the A-10 ramp-down to retirement.

Then remember how the AF bluntly stated this delay will impact the F-35 by hindering the training-up of the maintenance force. (Those bodies gotta’ come from somewhere, y’ know.)

Recall how there’s a whole bowl of granola (what ain’t ‘flakes’ is ‘fruits and nuts’) trying to ‘stop’ the Vermont National Guard “Green Mountain Boys” from transitioning from the F-16 to the F-35. That Sprey-hosting crowd is currently pursuing a lawsuit that has so far soundly lost every court challenge, but they keep appealing their ‘lost’ cause. They even snookered a local city into helping subsidize their antics and they just asked for and received even MORE ‘joe public’ money. (How do most of the citizens feel about that ongoing rent-seeking, eh?

Enter last week’s unsurprising announcement that the F-35 will be based at Eielson AFB (well OK, many Canadians were probably shocked because they’ve been told for years that the F-35--or any single engine fighter--isn’t any good at operating over vast expanses of cold nothingness). Buried on metaphorical Page 2 of that Eielson announcement has the AF accelerating the deployment of F-35s to the Green Mountain Boys at their Burlington VT ANG base.
 
This, as you can imagine has the ‘Stop the F-35’ snowflakes in a very unhappy place.

So why is the AF accelerating the F-35 basing in VT?

“The accelerated timeline is intended to help the Air Force address a shortage of active-duty fighter aircraft maintenance workers, officials said.” (link)

Like I said, the bodies have to come from somewhere.

If the AF can’t transition the A-10s out of the fleet at the needed rate, that pretty much leaves the F-16’s having to speed up their conversion pace to make up for it.

Bottom Line: 'A-10-forever' Anti-JSF faction has hosed a 'NIMBY luddite' Anti-JSF faction.

Sweeeeeeeeeet.

BTW: The Green Mountain boys don’t fly out of a backwater grass strip in some idyllic mountain meadow. They fly out of the very nice and relatively busy Burlington Int’l Airport, where jetliners fly in and out with far greater frequency than the ANG does it's F-16s and soon to be F-35s.

CNO Nominee Richardson Got These F-35 Questions Too?

I told them I didn't want the job, but I answered them anyway.

Hat Tip "spazinbad" @ F-16.net

SMSgt Mac appearing before SASC?

CNO Nominee Admiral Richardson answered some pre-confirmation hearing questions. I like his answers pretty much, but like my answers better. It comes with the freedom of being long retired (as well as never being an Admiral).

RE: Tactical Fighter Programs
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program, which is the largest and most expensive acquisition program in the Department’s history, was formally initiated as a program of record in 2002 with a total planned buy of 2,443 aircraft for the U.S. At projected procurement rates, the aircraft will be procured by the Department well into the 2030 decade to reach its total quantity buy. The program has not yet completed its systems development and demonstration phase, and is not due to enter full rate production until 2019, 17 years after its inception.

The Navy’s FY16 budget request indicates a program of record of 369 F-35C, with Navy procurement continuing throughout the life of the F-35 procurement program. The overall requirement for 2,443 aircraft was established nearly 20 years ago. Since that time, however, there have been countervailing pressures to: (1) reduce force structure to conserve resources; (2) improve capability to respond to prospective adversary technological advances and increased capabilities from updated threat assessments; and (3) respond to an evolving national defense strategy.

Do you believe the Navy’s F-35C requirement is still valid?
Well Senators, that’s quite a preface to a “yes or no” question. But as it comes from such an august body as the Senate Armed Services Committee, I will use the working assumption it is offered to provide proper perspective to the questions to come, rather than an attempt to ‘poison the well’,and so the Committee’s prefacing informs my response,and I believe due diligence also requires me to to expand upon the very fine points the Committee raises, in part as an answer to this first question. 

As the Committee very well knows, the F-35 Program is as large and expensive as it is because it is really three programs in one. While there have been studies that have reviewed whether or not combining programs was worth the effort, we must note that aside from them all having contentious ground rules and assumptions embedded, that NONE of them measured the costs and benefits of the F-35 program against the typical number of programs we would have to undertake to successfully field three different aircraft. Can there be any doubt looking back at history that at least four or perhaps five programs would have to be attempted to actually field three different jets? Can we possibly fathom the procurement costs per airplane if we had attempted to field the minority F-35B and F-35C as stand-alone programs? Mr. Chairman and Committee Members, the Navy and Marine Corps budgets are very blessed to have the Air Force subsidize The Department of the Navy’s rent-seeking by absorbing a disproportionate percentage of the net development costs.

As the bulk of the development is behind us in sunk cost and schedule, and there is no indication that the way forward is too difficult, completion of the systems development and demonstration phase should not be a problem.

That it will have taken 17 years to reach full rate production would be an issue above my station if I were still on active duty: I would not be in a position to second-guess prior Congressional decisions to stretch development and delay production, trading risk for schedule and cost. It would also not be my place to pass judgement on the actions of prior Congress’ that created the three-in-one program approach in the first place. 

As a retiree who returned to civilian life over twenty years ago however, I am free to answer that the former was typical, foolish, political tinkering and/or ego-stroking on the part of Congress. The latter however, is shaping up to have been a very good idea by your predecessors.

And so the final answer to your question is therefore, of course: “Yes”--the F-35C will be a VITAL part of the future Carrier Air Wing.

Do you believe the Navy can afford and needs to procure 310 more F-35Cs with a procurement cost of over $42 billion?

As to ‘need’, the F-35C provides essential 5th generation strike fighter capability to our Carrier Air Wings. Without this capability, we cannot achieve air superiority. The Department of the Navy currently has a requirement for 340 F-35Cs. That number needed of course is always subject to revision as national strategies change and new information is made available. For example, on the one hand, the Navy doesn’t yet have any operational experience with low observable or fifth generation capabilities. As the Navy gains experience, it will probably create opportunities and incentives to not procure more of or retire older systems faster on the one hand. On the other hand, the Navy has a history of buying aircraft over long timeframes due to expected attrition, and given the F-35C’s stellar initial sea trials, we may just not lose as many jets like we have in the past and so they will not need replacement. If I were confirmed as CNO, I would work with the Chairman and other service chiefs to revalidate the appropriate number of aircraft the Navy requires to meet the mission.

Speaking to the cost figure offered, let us note that the numbers you mention are either future inflated dollars or dollars that include developmental cost dollars that are already sunk, both, and/or are based upon presumptions of future economic factors that may or may not apply. They are also spread over how many years? I would enjoy exploring the nuances of these numbers with the SASC, numbers that should never be aired in a casual manner, as no doubt the SASC would agree.

Do you believe that the Navy will still want to buy the F-35C, an aircraft design that will be 30 years old before the Navy production is scheduled to finish?
Well let’s see, we’re flying the F-18C/Ds and F-18E/F/Gs right now. The current versions are evolutions of a design originally produced in 1975 and are still in procurement. That’s 40 years since inception. So 30 years should not be a stretch at all for the Navy and the F-35, especially considering that unlike its predecessors, the F-35B and C are designed to evolve as required over time. Right now the Navy is committed to making the F-35C the next Carrier Air Wing fighter, complementing the F/A-18E/F until the F-18 reaches the end of its lifetime in the 2030s when the basic design will be over 50 years old. I believe once the fleet gets its hands on the F-35C, the fighter/strike community will set new standards in creative thinking and divining ways to get rid of the older jets and buy more F-35Cs as the older jets obsolescence becomes more obvious.

Do you believe the Navy’s current and planned force mix of tactical aircraft is sufficient to meet current and future threats around the globe, and most especially in the Asia-Pacific theater of operations where the “tyranny of distance” is such a major factor?

Currently, I do. There are capability, inventory, and readiness aspects to delivering the required force mix. If I was ever to be confirmed as CNO, I would work with leadership to determine the best options to pace the threat in a dynamic security environment. The fiscal environment will bound the scope of our efforts, and so I would urge Congress to work harder in creating a fiscal environment that will provide for all of our Constitutionally-mandated needs.

The Secretary of the Navy recently remarked that he believed the F-35 should be and would be the nation’s last manned fighter aircraft. Do you believe this to be true?
If I were to be confirmed as CNO, I would work with the Secretary of the Navy to aggressively advance the development of unmanned systems. It is crucial that we push the boundaries of what unmanned technologies can achieve; the next generation in tactical aviation will play a large part in this transformation.

Having said the above, let me also observe that the Secretary has all of the technical knowledge and expertise in all the relevant knowledge areas and disciplines, with the liberal-arts and legal education sufficient to have once been a competent junior ship’s officer. I’m sure he was a very fine surface warfare officer, once upon a time. His thoughts and opinions on the subject of UAVs carries all the commensurate weight that comes with such an accomplished background.

I thank the Committee for their interest. Now go away.

F-35B IOC is Imminent

Prepare for all the Handwringing

Word on the street is that F-35 IOC is all done except for the signatures (which always leaves the political angle, but ya gotta have faith).

I remember all the angst when the B-2 IOC occurred. How did that work out?

Like this:

IOC is the beginning, not the end. People who think you can field a perfect airplane out the door don't know airplanes, people, or how weapon systems become operational.

Note the critics were still acting in accordance to their SOPs even after B-2 IOC. Although the GAO pretty much threw in the towel after they published the report they had already written before Allied Force in 1999 (with only a cursory nod to the reality that just smacked around their paper pushing exercise.  

By the time F-35 FOC occurs, the critics will have lost all their teeth and will be gumming it to death. 

There's Legal Analysis, and then there's REAL Analysis

I usually enjoy Eugene Volokh's stuff. Though his move to the WP was disconcerting, I got over it.

But Volokh has a BIG swing and a miss in describing a 'growing' rationale for an argument that the Supreme Court should revist/reverse previous court opinions and enforce Interstate Sales Tax collection the way the greedy little state and local politicos/taxmen WANT it enforced.

The ' rationale' goes like this:

This argument has grown stronger, and the cause more urgent, with time. When the Court decided Quill, mail-order sales in the United States totaled $180 billion. 504 U.S., at 329 (White, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). But in 1992, the Internet was in its infancy. By 2008, e-commerce sales alone totaled $3.16 trillion per year in the United States.

Sorry, those are RAW numbers. What does the trend look like factoring the overall economic environment.  I'm  assuming internet sales have supplanted most catalog sales:  a pretty safe assumption I believe.  And even if it's not, if someone can compare them directly across the timeline--well then! So can I.

Here's those two numbers Volokh used, lined up against GDP figures for private and government consumption and investment:

Correction: I had fat-fingered $3.16T as $3.6T , Heh. Now my point is even 'Truer'

The big number for 2008 compared to the little number in 1992 overstates the growth in interstate sales. Complaints about 'missing revenues' from politicians reeks of unwillingness to compete, and worse a certain sense of entitlement to other people's dollars--no matter what the source--to feed the allmighty 'state'.

A rising tide lifts all boats

As the 'Barf Box' at the bottom of the chart indicates, NO ONE ever seems to ever ask the question as to what entities receiving all that internet revenue spend it on -and where? I would normally presume states with the better internet-friendly tax laws would benefit most and the local governments would be happy about it. But I realize we're dealing with people whose lives are often immune to the direct effects of the real economy, and I think more than a few resent the denial of an "opportunity for graft".

And I'm not buying any argument that the Local and State governments NEED those taxes on internet revenues: All hail the rise of the "Social Spending-Entitlement-Complex...

  State and local government is THE 'Growth Sector' of government. 

When the data is on your side, argue the data....

Sorry Eugene.

Reuters & Lockheed Martin: Pick a Headline, Any Headline

Separate the Hacks from the Pros

'Reuters': Hacktastic 

I did my usual Google for F-35 news this AM and spotted a Reuters article about LockMart's quarterly earnings. Fine. What caught my eye first was the graphic:

  
I noted the title only in passing.

This evening I repeated the search, and saw the same graphic, only there was also a different headline attached:

 I went looking for the first headline and found it at Business Insider with a short blurb instead of an article (source of the first graphic above) but still attributed to Reuters:

:
Here's a bigger shot of tonight's article:

So what gives? Did a new quarterly report revision/update come out?

Nahhhhh.........

It just took Reuter's editorial staff a little time to decide how the wanted to report the news. How is everyone else reporting it?...

 

I see sides drawn here. 

The electronic rags the 'bizness' types follow seem to take the positive bent. The yellow journalism ratholes pick the negative. 

Note that while "sales rose", "earnings were weak", but the LM folks 'beat' the estimates (which is what you always want to do), and the F-35 has 'higher' demand. 

Note: There is an unusual factor involving an accounting change due to tax law changes (surprise) that moves money from one column to another and shifts the earnings downward. It's affecting a lot of companies. [sarc] I'm certain Reuters explains it rationally in their 'revised' article [/sarc]

Full disclosure: To the best of my knowledge I own ZERO Lockheed Martin Stock, but some may be in some fund or another that is managed for me.  

Lt General Bogdan: F-35 Noise “Good to Go”

F-35 No More Noisier Than Other Fighters the VANG Has Flown

Hat Tip Spazinbad @ F-16.net

In fact, the F-35 will very often be quieter taking off than the F-16s it is replacing because afterburners will not be required for the F-35 under more weight, operational, and environmental (density altitudes) conditions than the F-16.

From AF Magazine's website (Google cached) :

F-35 Noise “Good to Go”
—John A. Tirpak  10/31/2014 

Studies of F-35 noise relative to legacy fighters will be released Friday, and will show that “on the ground, at full military power,” which is full power without afterburner, the F-35 is “actually quieter, by a little bit” than legacy aircraft such as the F-15, F/A-18, and F-16, F-35 Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan said Thursday... 

...This “real noise data” should dispel rumors that the F-35 will be much louder than its predecessors. Part of the reason is that the F-35 is “very sleek in its outer mold line, without a lot of drag,” Bogdan said. Using afterburner, however, the F-35 is considerably noisier than its predecessors, as it generates 43,000 pounds of thrust. Its noise will be on a par with the old F-4 Phantom, Bogdan reported. Although its character is different, the F-4 noise is deeper than that of the F-35, he said.

That's Great News!  

The F-4 started flying out of the Burlington VT  airfield in 1982 (preceded by Canberras, Delta Daggers, Scorpions, and Starfires) and were replaced by the F-16s in 1986. That makes the F-35 the quietest jet since 1981 to operate out of Burlington. To help the 'Stop the F-35 in Vermont' crowd (website and Facebook no less!) disseminate this awesome good news faster, I've created the following graphics to drive the good news 'home':

The F-35 has a lot shorter takeoff roll than the Phantom, so it will get to higher altitude than the Phantom before getting to  the end of the runway. I also see this phenomenon regularly at Carswell JRB compared to  the JRB's F-16s and F-18s.   

When the F-35 takes off out of Carswell, only the deeper note, and the fact that the sound does not linger tells 'your ears' that an F-35 is taking off instead of an F-16 or F-18

At Burlington's 335 ft altitude and 44°28′19″N latitude, the F-35 won't need afterburner as much as the aircraft that came before it. 

 What This Means 

Overall, the residents of Winooski can expect to be more annoyed (noise times the number of airfield operations) by the airliners currently operating out of the Burlington VT airport. Just like 'now'.

Soooooo... 

When the next "bioregional decentralist", "writer/satirist" and/or "delicate flower of Yankee womanhood with a profound lack of respect for authority" starts 'going off' about the Green Mountain Boys'  new F-35s, just tell 'em:

Also, because there is NO  'Divine Right to Stagnate' (but we won't get into that).  

Update 2 November: The 'noise report' summary is now  out:

If you were too lazy to look at the notes, the blue background data is 'old' data, the white background data is 'new' data.

Looks like I'll need to do another chart for 'Approach and Go' (airfield pattern work). In the interim. an 'artist's concept' of what a 'Stop the F-35; reaction might look like:

I suppose 'some' might think I'm being a little hard on what they see as good  'civic minded citizens'. If so, that 'some' obviously never really looked at the drivel the Stop the F-35 Vermont website and Facebook page proffer. Socialists, Luddites, Aging Hippies, NIMBYers, and Opportunists --all on a bus to 'Nowheresville' man! AKA 'Rabble meets Rousers'. 

F-35 "price sinks to US$80-85m" in FY2019 Dollars?

Some H8ters H8, Others are (Apparently?) 'Gobsmacked'

Hat Tip: 'Spazsinbad' over on F-16.net



F-35 Numbers Growing, Prices Falling? 

Courtesy of 'Spazsinbad', I first read this at the Sydney Morning Herald website and wondered why I didn't see anything about it at any of the so-called 'leading' defense websites:

JSF price sinks to US$80-85m

Australia looks like paying a less than expected $US80-$US85 million for each F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft and that could drop if production ramps up. That's much cheaper than recent indications of over $US100 million ($A111.73 million) per aircraft. Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan, who heads the JSF acquisition program for the US military, said the price included profit for JSF manufacturer Lockheed Martin and was in 2019 dollars, accounting for inflation. That's less than the $130 million budgeted price for each of Australia's first two, which are in production set for delivery in the US later this year and next (Read it all here ).

The initial reaction around the web appears to be muted to say the least, especially compared to what it has been whenever hypothetical and amorphous outside cost 'estimates' have gone up. Could the Anti-JSF bias be any more blatant?

From the thread at the F-16.net link above, I saw that the Euroshill was allegedly casting aspersions Gen. Bogdan's way, so I dropped in to find another Moronic Convergence at Defense-Aerospace. First de Briganti heads his 'piece' with:

Recent Statements by F-35 Program Chief Strains Credibility

Then, after opening with an 'incredulous' review of past cost numbers, he reports the JSFPO e-mail reply he received when he asked them to explain:

JPO spokesman Joe DellaVedova confirmed Bogdan’s figures in an e-mailed statement, adding that “The number [he] quoted is an affordability initiative we're working on with our industry partners.”  

He added that “Don't know if ‘contradiction’ is the right word to use or how you did the math or what is included in a FUC ... but the reality is we've been buying aircraft at a lower cost than what are in budget estimates” such as the FUC figures quoted above.  

“For example, in LRIP 7 (buy year 2013, delivery 2015), we negotiated with LM the price of $98 million for an air vehicle and we fully expect to negotiate a lower price in LRIP 8 and a lower price in LRIP 9,” he said.  

The $98 million cost quoted by DellaVedova is $28.8 million lower than the $126.8 million budgeted by the US Air Force for LRIP 7 aircraft, implying that the JPO was able to negotiate a reduction of 22% in the price of F-35A fighters

Where's the problem Giovanni?

Is it in your inability to do math: you can't or refuse to put two and two together without insisting it must be something other than 4? Or is it that you don't understand 'learning curves' and Economic Order Quantities? Somebody-- anybody!-- please, help that man.

 

Like Europe Needed Another Maroon: Diversity in the Strangest Places 

Evidently this Don Bacon character has found a European home, so that we now have a strange alliance formed between a European Defense PR Flack and an US Anti-Defense Isolationist.

 

Go Figure.

 

The Euroshill  gives Bacon a platform (again) to sputter from incoherently. His ability to determine what is a direct quote (hint: they are called quotation marks) and someone reporting what was said in a press release is apparently non-existent. But 'Non-existent' is still more than what I can say for his critical reading skills. (Is it possible for someone to NOT understand anything?) 

 

Example? How about the DoD press release (Emphasis mine) Bacon references:

Interim capability currently allows the F-35s to survey the battle space, absorb information and give the department a clear picture from an individual perspective, the general said. Meanwhile, he added, the software development aims to ensure not only that two jets can assess and fuse the information, but also that multiple systems can share and process the data -- systems such as F-22 Raptor fighters, Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft, B-2 bombers, satellites and ground stations.  

Bogdan explained that finishing interim capability as quickly as possible with the resources at hand will help the program move to the next development phase. So far, he said, airframe and engine production schedules are stable and predictable, measuring milestones in days and weeks, not months and years.

“It’s more important to know when those lines will come out so we can get them to those bases and start that stand-up,” the general said.

The developmental test program is 50 percent complete for 28 F-35s, Bogdan said. At this time last year, he added, the program office delivered about 36 airplanes, with plans this year to deliver 36 to 38.

Don Bacon's comment?

--"The developmental test program is 50 percent complete for 28 F-35s" makes absolutely no sense.

Makes....no...sense...?

Pssst. Don. Look at the passage again. Keep looking at it until you realize the paragraphs are about the same topic: Interim Capability.

 

Bacon's comments on the DAS indicate a lack of technical knowledge impervious to reason, so I won't waste my time on them.  

 

Note: A friend e-mails me that he thinks Mr. Bacon is a retired Army officer. If so, I suspect he was the 'classification' of officer that Baron Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord warned us about.

 

The rest of the JSF Defamation League seems silent for now, but why do I suspect they are all just comparing notes to get their story meme straight?

F-35 and the "Crack"-pots of Doom...Again.

They never learn.

At least it seems that way.

If the F-35 is 'plagued' by anything, it is plagued by critics who haven't a clue as to how Airframe Durability testing is conducted, what its objectives are, and how it fits into the modern aircraft development process. It seems this ignorance 'dooms' the F-35 program to an annual round of misplaced and sneering derision by people who have no idea they are broadcasting their own ignorance after every DOT&E report release.

Durability Testing Promotes the Useful Life.

Amusing as it is, such unwarranted criticism is counter-productive. I could produce a lengthy dissertation (you know I can) on the history and benefits of this kind of testing, and show how the developments to-date for the F-35 are no different than the programs before it --except for the F-35 doing it perhaps better and in a bigger fish bowl --but that would bore the cr*p out of most people.On top of that, the unrepentant anti-JSFers would only claim I was making excuses or some other equally stupid assertion. So I will default to providing an illustrative example of what I mean. Consider the following passage concerning the EARLY F-16 development (Queen's English BTW).

Fatigue tests 

In parallel with the flight-test programme a series of ground fatigue trials were carried out on the fifth development airframe. A test rig set up in a hangar at Fort Worth used more than 100 hydraulic rams to apply stress to an instrumented airframe, simulating the loads imposed by takeoff, landing and combat manoeuvering at up to 10g. By the summer of 1978, this airframe had clocked up more than 16,000 hours of simulated flight in the rig. These tests were carried out at a careful and deliberate pace which sometimes lagged behind schedule. 

As the tests progressed, cracks developed in several structural bulkheads. News of this problem resulted in hostile comments in the media, but GD pointed out in its own defence that the cracks had occurred not in flying aircraft but on ground test specimens. If the risk of such cracks during development testing was not a real one, a company spokesman remarked to the author at the time, no-one would be willing to pay for ground structural test rigs. GD redesigned the affected components, thickening the metal, and installed metal plates to reinforce existing units.  

--Source: F-16: Modern Fighter Aircraft Vol 2., Pg 18. ARCO Publishing, 1983.

Sounds kinda' familiar doesn't it?

I was tempted to employ some trickery to deceive the reader into thinking the above was written about the F-35, but I think this point is better made straight up.  Even after this testing, because the F-16 was initially the ultimate knife-fighting hot rod of a dayfighter, there were useful-life 'issues' on the early airframes. Pilots were flying higher G-loading at several times the rate as previous fighters and higher percentages of the time than that for which the airframe had been designed.    

Guest Post at Op-For

Many thanks to 'DaveO' and 'LtColP' at Op-For for the opportunity to give a guest commentary today, to explain and expand upon a comment I made in an earlier thread on Op-For  .

This is particularly 'timely' considering there's a 60 minutes segment on the F-35 tonight. I myself am prepping a quick viewer's guide as it concerns the topic of 'Concurrency'.  Should be up before it airs in most time zones.

Moronic Convergence at Defense Aerospace

Mmmmm. BACON! I usually like to fry mine so it is somewhat less crispy, but tonight? ‘Carbonized’ is just fine. 

AKA 'Blogiversary Over'

Don Bacon & DeBriganti. What could go wrong?
Defense Aerospace has a ‘guest commenter’ who appears to have more ambition than to just keep saying stupid things in the comment threads at other people’s websites. He now wants to be ‘featured’ saying stupid things.

You don’t have to go there to read it.

I fisk it here, so you don’t have to take a shower afterwards.

The F-35 O&S Cost Coverup

(Source: Defense-Aerospace.com; published Feb. 04, 2014)

By guest contributor Don Bacon

The F-35 selected acquisition report (SAR) reported last Spring that there had been no progress in reducing its staggering $1 trillion, 50-year life-cycle cost. Then in June 2013 it was reported that "the company and the U.S. military are taking aim at a more vexing problem: the cost of flying and maintaining the new warplane." Not only was the total cost stratospheric but the cost per flying hour was much higher than the legacy fleet at $31,922.

What could be done to cut high operations and sustainment (O&S) costs? International customers were being scared away by high production costs, and particularly by high operating cost.

The F-35 program office had the answer. Simply announce that the costs are lower! Why not? The result:

Pentagon Cuts F-35 Operating Estimate Below $1 Trillion

WASHINGTON (Reuters), Aug 21, 2013 - "The U.S. government has slashed its estimate for the long-term operating costs of Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets by more than 20 percent to under $1 trillion, according to a senior defense official, a move that could boost international support for the program." 

That arbitrary announcement out of the F-35 program office that operating cost had dropped from $1.1 trillion to $857 million didn't fly very high. (See related story—Ed). On September 6 the Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall announced that there would be a review of F-35 operating costs. Kendall indicated that the program office's estimate might have been overly optimistic. 

In fact the GAO has reported that F-35 operating and support costs (O&S) are currently projected to be 60 percent higher than those of the existing aircraft it will replace. 

“We’re … looking at that number,” Kendall said. “The official number is still the one we put up in the SAR [selected acquisition report]. We’re going to do a review of F-35 this fall. We’ll get another estimate out of CAPE [Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation] for that and we’ll probably make some adjustments.

On October 6, 2013 Kyra Hawn, spokeswoman for the Pentagon’s F-35 program office, said a high-level Defense Acquisition Board meeting was expected to proceed on Monday despite the partial government shutdown. The meeting has already been postponed several times. 

Well that CAPE meeting came and went, with no news on F-35 operating cost. The cost data must have been bad and so it had to be covered up, just like other cost data (production cost, etc.) on the F-35. We did get some PR fluff out of the meeting, though. “While risks remain, progress on the F-35 program at this point has been adequate to support a decision to budget for increased rates,” Frank Kendall, under-secretary for acquisition, said in a decision memo.

If it was good cost news supporting an increase in production rates, then why didn't Kendall release the data? Apparently the opposite was true, the data was bad. And now we have the data, in the FY2013 F-35 test report, and it isn't pretty.

Got all that?

Bacon cherry picks old news reports and not only ponders why there’s been no operating cost updates, but asserts it must be bad for the JSF because Kendall would have released it if it were ‘good’. I could just say “proof please”, but I got a theory too—only I’ll tell you it is just a theory and not assert it as ‘fact’. As we have noted all along (one, two, three) the actual costs have consistently come close enough to LM’s ‘should cost’ curves to call LMs estimates 'accurate'. The CAPE stuff? Not so much. My theory assumes the CAPE-ers will try to cover their collective estimating a**es by bringing down their estimates slow enough that (they hope) people won’t notice how bad they were to start with. Note I do not blame the analysts themselves, just their political management that tells them what and how to compute.

As to the ‘massive’ O&S costs (Cue Austin Powers clip) ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!? Who the H*LL cares about a GUESS covering FIFTY years of future operations? Answer: No one. At least no one in their right mind that is.

Pssst, Don: Calculate the B-52s operating costs over the first 50 years, go back in time to the start of the program and tell them what it will cost in 2010 dollars. Think that would stop them? Answer: No. They, unlike you and the legions of mouth-breathers, actually understood the 'time value' of money.      

Next, Don Bacon takes us into a world where he proves he hasn’t a freaking clue: R&M.

FY13 DOT&E Report

-- Mean Flight Hours Between Critical Failure (MFHBCF)
variant--threshold/observed
F-35A--20/4.5
F-35B--12/3.0
F-35C--14/2.7

-- Mean Corrective Maintenance Time for Critical Failure (MCMTCF)
variant--threshold/observed/FY12 Report
F-35A--4.0/12.1/9.3
F-35B--4.5/15.5/8.0
F-35C--4.0/9.6/6.6

So you fly the F-35A for 4.5 hours, get a critical failure, and then it takes 12.1 hours to fix it, or nearly three hours longer than it took last year. (That's hours, not manhours; Eglin AFB has seventeen mechanics per F-35.)

Similarly with the F-35B -- fly it for 3 hours, critical failure, then corrective maintenance takes 15.5 hours (7.5 hours more than last year).

The F-35C will fly for only 2.7 hours before 9.6 hours for corrective maintenance time. (Only one engine, too, out over the deep blue water.)

~Sigh~
As I noted over at F-16.net, “Statistical Crimes Against Humanity” were about the only thing of note in the latest DOT&E report.

Bacon evidently even missed the part of the DOT&E Report that stated: “the program has fielded too few F-35C aircraft to assess reliability trends”. 
That’s OK though, because the entire program has flown too few hours, especially considering training activity and the changing and expanding operational footprint, to assess anything meaningful. The fact that reality didn’t stop some calculator in DOT&E from applying their inconsequential knowledge simply invites more abuse of math and logic. I’m surprised Bacon didn’t also glom on to that B.S. software reset ‘analysis’ inside. Maybe that much idiocy was obvious even to Bacon. 

 My 2012 post on the subject criticizing the GAO’s similar violations holds up rather well when applied to DOT&E. The DOT&E report IS helpful in one way in that it provides the bounds for measuring the R&M of the airplane. Each variant has a cumulative flight hour measuring point and the fleet cumulative flight hour measuring point. People seem to have a better time of it visualizing just how little the program is into the data collecting if you graph it for them, so the following is offered for your enjoyment:

I started the growth slope at zero, but that isn’t really important, as the initial starting point is usually an educated guess or completely capricious. Raise the start point to 5-10 Hrs MTBCF if you like: it is still a long way from where the ‘grade’ counts, and not much of a slope to climb from where the program is now.
What is most important is to show how far away the current flight hour total is away from the cumulative experience required to be even considered as showing any kind of ‘trend’, much less a ‘grade’.  The chart above shows how far the total fleet hours have to go. Here's how far the variant measure has to go:

These charts are simplified and use a linear scale, so remember Log-log scales as are the norm, as I've thoroughly described before (same link as previous). Also note the apparent bobbling in the ‘objective’ lines comes from rounding and my selecting precise flight hour data points for the current flight hours in the DOT&E report among the other, evenly spaced, ones.

Give us a ring when the planes get to about the 25K-30K Flight Hour per variant and 100K Fleet Flight Hour mark. Then we can talk trends and problems areas.

Same thing goes for the mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) figures. And bring average crew size and MMH/FH with you so it can be discussed intelligently next time.

 

So Bacon then decides he wants to beat on fictional operating costs some more. Let’s keep tagging along shall we?

If anybody thinks the acquisition cost is high, and it is, it will be totally eclipsed by the operating cost. An independent audit by KPMG has estimated the cost of buying and operating the F-35 warplanes at $600-million per jet, two-thirds of that operating cost. 

Captain Overstreet of the F-35 program office warned in November that while development costs are high for the F-35, they will be “dwarfed” by the sustainability costs. Back in May 2011 Defense Undersecretary for Acquisition Ashton Carter described current projected costs for the F-35 as “unacceptable.”

Ahem, Minor point. It is a rule of thumb that 2/3 of total life cycle costs are in the operating and support of the systems. Nothing shocking there.

 It is an accepted premise and I think it was taught in just about every DAU course I ever completed. Any bets Bacon wants to use it for nefarious purposes?

Awww, you guessed right. He does:

All of this reality runs against what the early F-35 promises were.
-- From the 1997 doc -- "The Affordable Solution - JSF": Tactical Aircraft Affordability Objective 1997: R&D 6%, Production 54%, total dev & prod 60%, O&S 40%.

-- The actual 2014 test data is way different:
dev & prod -- $397B = 26%, O&S -- $1,100B = 74%, total -- $1,497 

So the F-35 has gone from an initial-operating cost ratio of 60-40 to 26-74, and that's with much higher production costs. Nobody can afford that, especially foreign customers -- which is why it's been covered up. 

Hate to harsh your mellow there Don (OK, I really don’t mind it a bit) but you are shoveling some mighty fine hoo-haw there. The only real question is:

 

Are you doing it 'intentionally' or 'stupidly'?

 

Answer?...It's 'Stupidly'

That first set of numbers comes from a ‘document’ that is a POWERPOINT presentation. It looks very much like those numbers are talking about either the planned cost reduction percentage over legacy aircraft OR where the percentage of cost reduction opportunities resided at the time. I use the past tense, because that slide was from before either of the X-planes were built or flew, and before the Operational Requirements Document was defined and published. See Slides 3, 4, and 5 from the ‘1997 document referenced:

See anything in there about those numbers standing for the proportion of total cost? Me neither. Next slide?

 

Wow. The two X-planes aren't even built yet, and the requirements document isn't even firmed up to determine how much capability for what cost will be pursued.

 

More talking about affordability opportunities to balance before deciding what to pursue. the whole briefing is this way.

I’d love to find the original with ‘notes pages’ view for clarification just to smack the stupidity down even more for my visitors, but I guess I will have to (for now) settle for just salting the wound by pointing out the 1997 ‘document’ wasn’t an authoritative source to begin with. With only a cursory search, I’ve found three copies on the web of various versions and unknown provenance, none on an official government website. So Bacon bases his argument on a 17-year old PowerPoint slide with a unexplained message and calls it a 'conspiracy'?  

Can’t you just feel the Dezinformatsia in Bacon’s ramblings now oozing out into the interwebs and being passed around by the illiterate and the innumerate?     

So who is this 'Don Bacon' writing this drivel for the Euro-Shill?

About the author: 
Don Bacon is a retired army officer with acquisition experience, who has seen how programs go wrong in spite of the evidence, largely because of the military 'can-do' attitude which leads to harmful, ineffective results. Now he is a private citizen who sees the necessity of challenging baseless claims in order to get to the truth, and so the truth will prevail.

That’s rather verbose for “completely clueless out-of-the-loop retiree with no knowledge relevant to the subject which he so ardently, yet so flaccidly opines about” Isn’t it? No wonder the children don’t respect their elders anymore.