Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

[marauder2048]

I never thought anyone would ever cite the Classic Hornet as a benchmark for swift and problem-free service entry, but here we are.

I never thought anyone opining on Navy terminology would be so easily blindsided by its historical usage.

 

[sferrin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pBvmCO1aUo

 

[Hood]

Poland is strongly considering the F-35 for its Harpia fighter requirement.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/poland-eyes-f-35-for-harpia-requirement-456554/

 

[Deltafan]

Pentagon Cuts F-35 Funding for Third Year Running As Unit Costs Increase :

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/feature/5/200786/pentagon-cuts-f_35-funding-for-third-year-running.html

 

[Deltafan]

Missile integration starts on UK F-35s (Meteor and SPEAR)

http://www.aircosmosinternational.com/missile-integration-starts-on-uk-f-35s-121635

 

[sferrin]

Pentagon Cuts F-35 Funding for Third Year Running As Unit Costs Increase :

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/feature/5/200786/pentagon-cuts-f_35-funding-for-third-year-running.html

Cutting funding is how unit costs increase. You'd think they'd have figured this out by now.

 

[starviking]

Cutting funding is how unit costs increase. You'd think they'd have figured this out by now.

I demand an upvote button solely for this post!

 

[marauder2048]

Pentagon Cuts F-35 Funding for Third Year Running As Unit Costs Increase :

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/feature/5/200786/pentagon-cuts-f_35-funding-for-third-year-running.html

Cutting funding is how unit costs increase. You'd think they'd have figured this out by now.

Look at the huge jump in Super Hornet unit cost with the cut in buy rate for FY2022+.

 

[SpudmanWP]

I saw someone in another forum actually call the additional Congressional F-35 buys as "Corporate Welfare" while at the same time defending the F-15EX buy and the decision that lead to it.

 

[bring_it_on]

The additional F-35's appropriated over the last number of years have either been asked for informally, or have been part of the formal unfunded priorities lists for the services. This is why I don't like reading much into the near term numbers on the SAR because over the last five budgets the Congress has added 60+ aircraft so any changes that the services may have had to do to balance their budget given a firm DOD top line get adjusted for by the Congress. I think it's likely to also be this way in FY20 and 21 so we should expect somewhere between 170 and 200 F-35's over these two budgets.

 

[LowObservable]

There is a widely held belief that unit production costs are directly linked to rate. But as neither Mark Twain nor Will Rogers said, "it's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble, but what we do know that ain't so."

Rate is a factor but not the only one, and even then its impact can be controlled via management and planning.

 

[SpudmanWP]

Rate is clearly tied to cost but it is also not the only contributing factor.

 

[marauder2048]

There is a widely held belief that unit production costs are directly linked to rate. But as neither Mark Twain nor Will Rogers said, "it's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble, but what we do know that ain't so."

widely held belief: the direct implication of Wright's Law, repeatedly re-affirmed as a durable statistical finding over the last 75 years of fighter cost studies

 

[SpudmanWP]

After some number crunching, here is the Pre-Block 3F Fleet status.

As of March 31st, 2019:
--There are only 17 F-35s at Block 2B, all USAF.
--No F-35Bs or F-35C are at Block 2B. They are all 3i or 3F.
--43 Early Lot F-35s are at Block 3F
--That number goes to 106 one year from today
--Six months after that (Sept 31st, 2020) all early Lot F-35s will be Block 3F.

So much for all of that "OMG, 100+ F-35s will be left behind" reporting we saw a couple of years ago.

 

[LowObservable]

With all due respect to Prof. Wright, his report was empirically based, and he had little enough data on riveted aluminum structures (writing in 1936), let alone today's complex systems. Also, his focus was on quantity rather than rate.

http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/research/papers/others/1936/wright1936a.pdf

Rate influences unit procurement cost through a number of fixed-cost factors, such as overhead and the fixed cost of maintaining facilities. In the latter case, it's less a matter of rate itself as the match between what the facilities were designed to do and the actual rate (see B-2). However, the picture gets confused as we move down the supply chain, where the supplier is producing similar or identical components for multiple aircraft.

Rate and planned quantity also play a large part in management decisions. The prime (or higher-tier sub) who can dangle the carrot of decades of work, and thousands of units, has a strong hand in dealing with a field of competing suppliers and can force their margins down today in exchange for jam tomorrow.

That said, much of the recurring unit cost remains relatively unaffected by rate, so the cut of a few units should not have a major effect on system price.

 

[Mike Pryce]

Fighters aren't sausages.

Volume/rate effects are often odd. I have got plenty of data showing inverse learning curves.

Take a 'cost of capability' view and you are into paying for the sizzle, not the sausage.

 

[marauder2048]

Also, his focus was on quantity rather than rate.

Which is completely irrelevant since production rates are the direct implication of his analytical model.
Much in the same way that faster device speeds are an implication of Moore's Law rather than the law itself.

And it's that implication that has been empirically validated by practically every study on fighter costs over the last 75 years.

The nice thing about these analytical models and the studies that re-affirm them is that are much stronger
than the feeble anecdotes deployed in an attempt to explain them away.

In the latter case, it's less a matter of rate itself as the match between what the facilities were designed to do and the actual rate (see B-2). However, the picture gets confused as we move down the supply chain, where the supplier is producing similar or identical components for multiple aircraft.

Okay take mission systems: a dominant cost of modern fighters. They are in turn dependent on foundry
processes (e.g. MMICs, FPAs) where you don't have the same T/R module or even the same MMIC shared between aircraft.
Which means the buy rate only impacts that particular fighter.

The level of fungibility you imply does not really exist for modern fighters; what you'll find is that
when mission systems' vendors say two systems "share commonality" the reality is that they
share a common architecture.

That said, much of the recurring unit cost remains relatively unaffected by rate, so the cut of a few units should not have a major effect on system price.

I don't think you understand power laws.

 

[marauder2048]

Fighters aren't sausages.

Hence me mentioning studies on aircraft cost.

Volume/rate effects are often odd. I have got plenty of data showing inverse learning curves.

Since it hasn't appeared in any fighter cost study of note who cares?

Take a 'cost of capability' view and you are into paying for the sizzle, not the sausage.

An irrelevant tangent since we're talking about the impact of buy rate on unit cost.
Direct Fuel costs (and the cost of fuel delivery to theater) are so dominant on LCC for fighters the government
would be better off owning its own wells and refineries than trying to manipulate other factors.

 

[bring_it_on]

 

[LowObservable]

And it's that implication that has been empirically validated by practically every study on fighter costs over the last 75 years.

If you would actually cite one of them, we could have an intelligent discussion.

However, the fact that few fighter programs (F-35 included) appear to hit their intended unit procurement costs with anything less than a Snark-like CEP might suggest that this unanimous body of knowledge is indeed an example of "what we do know that ain't so."

 

[bring_it_on]

The USAF has requested 12 additional F-35A's in FY20 in its Unfunded Priorities List delivered to Congress. The USN has requested an additional 2 F-35C's.

 

[TomcatViP]

The USN will have a full carrier capable fleet of C at the end of budget year (Marines airframe included).

 

[Deltafan]

https://www.pogo.org/investigation/2019/03/f-35-far-from-ready-to-face-current-or-future-threats/

 

[SpudmanWP]

POGO's not worth the paper it's printed on.

 

[Colonial-Marine]

I do wonder what their proposed solution is, start over and pray that older less capable aircraft can meet those threats instead? What could possibly go wrong?

 

[GTX]

POGO's not worth the paper it's printed on.

Unless it’s soft paper... ;D

 

[icyplanetnhc (Steve)]

Getting "analysis" from POGO about the F-35 is like getting news from Breitbart on Democrats or globalresearch.ca on Republicans.

 

[Foo Fighter]

Have they worked out how to wind up the elastic bands yet?

 

[LowObservable]

POGO's not worth the paper it's printed on.

Unless it’s soft paper... ;D

Check title of thread, please. And try to avoid schoolyard potty humor, unless it's actually original, or possibly funny.

 

[FighterJock]

POGO's not worth the paper it's printed on.

Unless it’s soft paper... ;D

Check title of thread, please. And try to avoid schoolyard potty humor, unless it's actually original, or possibly funny.

It is about time that the two F-35 threads were combined into one to stop the confusion. This is not the only time that this message has appeared.

 

[sferrin]

The problem is it frequently ended up turning into a political flame war.

 

[Triton]

"Senators Introduce New Bipartisan Bill to Block F-35 Sales to Turkey"

Source:
https://www.defensedaily.com/senators-introduce-new-bipartisan-bill-block-f-35-sales-turkey/international/

 

[Triton]

"F-35's Most Sinister Capability Are Towed Decoys That Unreel From Inside Its Stealthy Skin"
These "little buddies" not only protect the jet, but they can be used creatively to goad the enemy into showing itself and dying as a result.
By Tyler Rogoway
March 28, 2019

Source:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27185/f-35s-most-sinister-capability-are-towed-decoys-that-unreel-from-inside-its-stealthy-skin

 

[bring_it_on]

"F-35's Most Sinister Capability Are Towed Decoys That Unreel From Inside Its Stealthy Skin"
These "little buddies" not only protect the jet, but they can be used creatively to goad the enemy into showing itself and dying as a result.
By Tyler Rogoway
March 28, 2019

Source:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27185/f-35s-most-sinister-capability-are-towed-decoys-that-unreel-from-inside-its-stealthy-skin

Nice! Spudman told us all that here or elsewhere (including the same budget documents) a few years ago

 

[LowObservable]

He did indeed. Only two years after it was in AW&ST. Speed reading!

 

[sferrin]

Hopefully not a stupid question, but are towed decoys meant to be reeled back in or have the wire clipped? (This goes for either the F-35 system being discussed or the towed decoy on the Typhoon and the like.)

 

[LowObservable]

Clipped. I don't know of any with a retraction capability. The cool kids now have free-flyers popped from a standard chaff-flare dispenser.

 

[sferrin]

Clipped. I don't know of any with a retraction capability. The cool kids now have free-flyers popped from a standard chaff-flare dispenser.

Wouldn't they slow down fairly quickly and be easy to discern?

 

[SpudmanWP]

Clipped. I don't know of any with a retraction capability. The cool kids now have free-flyers popped from a standard chaff-flare dispenser.

Wouldn't they slow down fairly quickly and be easy to discern?

They are also relatively low powered and "dumb" when compared to the signals that can be pumped out of a towed decoy.

On the clip vs real-back-in, they are clipped now but IIRC there is talk of developing a retractable version.

 

[sferrin]

Clipped. I don't know of any with a retraction capability. The cool kids now have free-flyers popped from a standard chaff-flare dispenser.

Wouldn't they slow down fairly quickly and be easy to discern?

They are also relatively low powered and "dumb" when compared to the signals that can be pumped out of a towed decoy.

On the clip vs real-back-in, they are clipped now but IIRC there is talk of developing a retractable version.

Other than cost, why would you want to? Seems like it would limit one's maneuverability. Not something I'd think you'd want to do with a missile inbound.