The F-35 No Holds Barred topic

"All's Well on JSF -- Lockheed Martin Consultant"
Posted by Bill Sweetman 4:11 PM on Feb 04, 2014

Source:
http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post:6ff015c4-53c6-4833-a584-9ba4e80d450a

Not too surprisingly, Lockheed Martin consultant Loren Thompson is back in action in Forbes, assuring us that it is safe to disregard the latest report on the F-35 program from the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation.

More surprisingly, there is not a lot of what Thompson says that I would disagree with.

That's because most of his points don't refer to what was new in the report: most importantly, the DOT&E presented detailed evidence showing that since last year, the risk of software-driven delays to the program has increased; that on the latest measured trends, the 2B software needed for the Marines to declare initial operational capability will be more than a year late; and that 2B delays will directly affect the progress of the Block 3 software that is needed for Air Force, Navy and partner IOC, with the capabilities required by the initial development contract in 2001.

Thompson does dredge up one of his old allegations -- that some shadowy testing Mafia just wants to delay the program and waste money for its own self-interested reasons. "The testing community is seldom satisfied with the performance of combat systems because it benefits from doing testing... the F-35 offers an especially lucrative target for bureaucrats who never want to stop testing."

There is no "monolithic testing community." There are many people in the military, and associated with the F-35 program, who do testing. Today, most of the work (development test) is being carried out by the JSF combined test team, most of whom either report to the JSF Program Office or work for the contractors. Operational test will involve a combination of program test people and many regular service personnel. There is no mechanism by which these diverse groups could be delaying the program "to close out their home mortgages and get their last kid through college", in Thompson's disgraceful language from 2012.

This isn't the first time that Thompson has pointed the finger of blame at this nonexistent conspiracy. But it should be the last. Nobody on the contractor team has any right to blame the customer for the program's status - seven years late, and eight if DOT&E's predictions are on track, with a so-far-unsolved massive overrun in life-cycle costs, all despite full funding and requirements that have changed only to the contractors' benefit.
 
Oh look, another Bill Sweetman F-35 rant. No doubt Solomon is already foaming at the mouth about it and the War Is Boring blog is front-paging it. ;)
 
Cheers to Grey Havoc for finding this article:

OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] TOLD THE NAVY: YOU CAN’T TAKE A ‘BREAK’ FROM THE F-35C: According to a congressional source, in its 2015 budget proposal, the Navy asked to take a three-year “break” from its production of the F-35C, its variant of the Joint Strike Fighter. Concerned this was a first step toward walking away from the program permanently, OSD told the Navy: no way.

It’s an open secret that the Navy would prefer to invest more in its F-18 fighters rather than buy the F-35C. But if the Navy pulled out of the program, the unit cost — already under scrutiny — would go up for the Air Force and the Marine Corps.

Source:
http://www.politico.com/morningdefense/0214/morningdefense12888.html

Looks like the United States Navy is trying to pull out of the F-35 program.
 
"Future of F-35 Unclear as Costs Mount in Japan"
Feb. 4, 2014 - 02:08PM |
By PAUL KALLENDER-UMEZU

Source:
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140204/DEFREG03/302040018/Future-F-35-Unclear-Costs-Mount-Japan?odyssey=nav|head

TOKYO — Two years after Japan agreed to buy F-35 joint strike fighters to replace its 1960s-era F-4EJ Kai Phantoms, the government has yet to give more than the vaguest hints about its future fighter replacement plans as the Defense Ministry struggles with a rising tide of costs and difficulties with the troubled stealth fighter program.

Following instructions by the hawkish administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to recalibrate Japan’s defense posture to counter rising concerns, the MoD released its five-year Mid-Term Defense Plan and 10-year National Defense Program Outline in December, one year early. Yet the two documents are singularly unrevealing about Japan’s fighter plans.

While the midterm plan is explicit about a number of important new programs, it states only that Japan will buy 28 F-35s through Japanese fiscal 2018. The long-range plan states only that Japan is considering increasing its fighter inventory from 260 to 280.

The midterm plan also called for the purchase of 17 Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, three Global Hawk surveillance drones and 52 amphibious vehicles to counter the increasingly expansionist Chinese Navy and deter threats to Japan’s long southeastern island chain as part of a ¥24.7 trillion (US $240 billion) budget over five years.

The plan for 28 F-35s is in line with the MoD’s December 2011 agreement to eventually deploy 42 of the fighters, which should be completed by around 2021, with 38 to be assembled in Japan under a final assembly and checkout deal, according to internal MoD planning documents, said defense analyst Shinichi Kiyotani.

However, the fact that the MoD has announced only that it will strengthen its overall fleet by 20 aircraft, declining to give more details, is vague even by Japanese standards, reflecting considerable doubts about the country’s ability to meet the rising costs of the F-35 purchase, Kiyotani said.

Under a June 2013 foreign military sales agreement with the US, Japan committed to purchase the first four F-35As at ¥10.2 billion per aircraft, which was about US $124 million each under the exchange rate at the time of ¥82 to the dollar. The price was already at a premium to the ¥9.9 billion originally agreed, due to the then-continuing development and testing difficulties the F-35 program was facing.

Since then, prices have continued to climb, especially with the yen’s devaluation, which began last spring and has seen the value fluctuate between ¥95 and ¥105 to the dollar. The price of the first two fighters to be purchased for fiscal 2013 climbed to ¥29.9 billion, and the cost for the next four for fiscal 2014 has risen to ¥63.8 billion, representing a price of nearly ¥16 billion per fighter, Kiyotani said.

Added to this are plant and tooling up costs of ¥83 billion for 2013 and ¥42.4 billion for 2014 as Japanese companies Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Electric and IHI establish assembly and production lines.

Sources here have privately begun to refer to the F-35 deal as a “bottakuri bar,” referring to establishments that lure customers of differing degrees of naivety and force them to pay exorbitant bills through a range of excess charges for items not mentioned explicitly on the menu.

Bearing in mind the rising costs of the F-35 program, the MoD is still figuring out what it can do about the long-term replacement of around 200 F-15J fighters and 90 F-2 fighters, Kiyotani said. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the MoD still purchases fighters based on an annual budget, meaning that it cannot lock in a price.

Kiyotani said the MoD was being vague about the F-15 replacement program because it genuinely didn’t know if Japan could afford more F-35s, especially as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Electric and IHI will be assembling and producing parts locally.

Pointing out that locally produced versions of US kit generally cost double their US prices — for example, Kawasaki Heavy Industry’s version of the MCH-101 helicopter costs about US $60 million a unit compared to $30 million for the US price — Kiyotani said the F-35’s costs could climb to more than ¥300 billion a fighter.

“Is it a case of they don’t know or they can’t say what they want to do [with the F-15 replacement program]? It’s both,” Kiyotani said.
 
sferrin said:
Oh look, another Bill Sweetman F-35 rant. No doubt Solomon is already foaming at the mouth about it and the War Is Boring blog is front-paging it. ;)

Right, because the Pentagon's overgrown testing bureaucracy is the real culprit in the F-35 program's delays and rising costs. They have a vested interest in finding problems with the F-35. :eek: I imagine in Dr. Loren B. Thompson's ideal world the Pentagon should just accept the F-35 "as is".
 
Triton said:
sferrin said:
Oh look, another Bill Sweetman F-35 rant. No doubt Solomon is already foaming at the mouth about it and the War Is Boring blog is front-paging it. ;)

Right, because the Pentagon's overgrown testing bureaucracy is the real culprit in the F-35 program's delays and rising costs. They have a vested interest in finding problems with the F-35. :eek: I imagine in Dr. Loren B. Thompson's ideal world the Pentagon should just accept the F-35 "as is".

And this has what to do with BS's daily rants against the F-35? He's making Captain Ahab look downright sane.
 
Like it or not, the reason Sweetman's criticism is a sore in LM's ass is because, contrary to what you could argue for other critics, he's been around a long time, is qualified to make those statements, and thus can't be easily dismissed.
 
Triton said:
Looks like the United States Navy is trying to pull out of the F-35 program.

Ehh no. They are just under huge budgetry stress and want to save money for building ships. Those who express anti F-35 view points could do a lot for their credibility if they could understand that Western armed forces facing siginificant financial stress over recent years does not equate to lack of support and/or need for the F-35.
 
sublight is back said:
F-14D said:
Since the F-35 system is activated by pushing a button rather than a more manual method....
That is the best decision they made in the entire program. My biggest complaint on the Osprey is the human controlled rotor transition.

The F-35 can get away with a totally automated system because in its case, the lift system really is acting as an invisible landing gear. They don't do much with it except stop and land, there's no requirement for sustained operation in lift mode or extensive travel that way. For F-35 it's a very precise, but relatively straightforward task task. With V-22, it will spend extensive periods rotorborne, will have to do significant maneuvering in the rotorborne or partially converted modes, etc. It's operations are much more complex. For example, coming out of a 30 degree bank and converting to land or hover. This would be really hard to do in an automated system that could do all the Osprey will need to do. OTOH, the Osprey doesn't need to do M1.2.

Would be interested in what your concerns are. As i understand it, as long as you are within the conversion envelope (e.g. don't convert to fixed wing @ 30 knots, or rotorborne @ 2340), transition either way imposes no maneuvering or flight limitations.
 
Triton said:
Cheers to Grey Havoc for finding this article:

OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] TOLD THE NAVY: YOU CAN’T TAKE A ‘BREAK’ FROM THE F-35C: According to a congressional source, in its 2015 budget proposal, the Navy asked to take a three-year “break” from its production of the F-35C, its variant of the Joint Strike Fighter. Concerned this was a first step toward walking away from the program permanently, OSD told the Navy: no way.

It’s an open secret that the Navy would prefer to invest more in its F-18 fighters rather than buy the F-35C. But if the Navy pulled out of the program, the unit cost — already under scrutiny — would go up for the Air Force and the Marine Corps.

Source:
http://www.politico.com/morningdefense/0214/morningdefense12888.html

Looks like the United States Navy is trying to pull out of the F-35 program.

tried-- past tense. and was denied. the opposite would be better. navy takes a few years off F/A-18E/F production so F/A-18 fifth generation advanced++ variant can be produced. might get more EW Supers keeping the line going longer, but the chance of more super hornets is narrowing. the navy isn't going to get out of the f-35 and not everyone in the navy is against it either. this is about the budget not the airplane. makes for great gossip on avaition boards though
 
AeroFranz said:
Like it or not, the reason Sweetman's criticism is a sore in LM's ass is because, contrary to what you could argue for other critics, he's been around a long time, is qualified to make those statements, and thus can't be easily dismissed.

remember reading a lot of his articles on the super hornet myself. he was dead wrong on a lot of it, and caused me an awful lot of headaches and explanation. sowed a lot of myths that i still have to explain online. guess that was when he was a sore in boeing's ass. if he and lauren want to facebook fight via avaition week thats there problem, but sweetman has been wrong on plenty of things. don't prefer the f-35 myself but i recognize the arguments as being awfully familiar when the newer hornet was having development problems. it just became clear to me he wasn't interested in finding out the truth.

my to pennies
 
Thompson and Sweetman are as bad as each other; Thompson argues it's a faultless wonder plane and Sweetman argues it's the most flawed project in history. Neither is especially credible.
 
JFC Fuller said:
Thompson and Sweetman are as bad as each other; Thompson argues it's a faultless wonder plane and Sweetman argues it's the most flawed project in history. Neither is especially credible.
dead on right and you can bet avaition weeks is enjoying the page traffic as they bicker back and forth.
 
F-14D said:
The F-35 can get away with a totally automated system because in its case, the lift system really is acting as an invisible landing gear. They don't do much with it except stop and land, there's no requirement for sustained operation in lift mode or extensive travel that way. For F-35 it's a very precise, but relatively straightforward task task. With V-22, it will spend extensive periods rotorborne, will have to do significant maneuvering in the rotorborne or partially converted modes, etc. It's operations are much more complex. For example, coming out of a 30 degree bank and converting to land or hover. This would be really hard to do in an automated system that could do all the Osprey will need to do. OTOH, the Osprey doesn't need to do M1.2.

Would be interested in what your concerns are. As i understand it, as long as you are within the conversion envelope (e.g. don't convert to fixed wing @ 30 knots, or rotorborne @ 2340), transition either way imposes no maneuvering or flight limitations.


Nope. Not unless you have a very high resolution thumb and a wind speed indicator built into your head.
In the case of the Morocco crash, (my son was less than 100 yards from it and watched it go down) there was a tail wind and the pilot dialed the rotors too far forward and the beast fell right out of the sky. The difference between a life and death position of the rotors is based upon the resolution interpreted by a thumb and not a nice throttle stick with several inches of viewable resolution.

There is no reasonable scenario where the transition would be better handled by a human being than it would a computer.
 

Attachments

  • thumbwheel.jpg
    thumbwheel.jpg
    68.7 KB · Views: 81
sublight is back said:
F-14D said:
The F-35 can get away with a totally automated system because in its case, the lift system really is acting as an invisible landing gear. They don't do much with it except stop and land, there's no requirement for sustained operation in lift mode or extensive travel that way. For F-35 it's a very precise, but relatively straightforward task task. With V-22, it will spend extensive periods rotorborne, will have to do significant maneuvering in the rotorborne or partially converted modes, etc. It's operations are much more complex. For example, coming out of a 30 degree bank and converting to land or hover. This would be really hard to do in an automated system that could do all the Osprey will need to do. OTOH, the Osprey doesn't need to do M1.2.

Would be interested in what your concerns are. As i understand it, as long as you are within the conversion envelope (e.g. don't convert to fixed wing @ 30 knots, or rotorborne @ 2340), transition either way imposes no maneuvering or flight limitations.
Nope. Not unless you have a very high resolution thumb and a wind speed indicator built into your head.
In the case of the Morocco crash, (my son was less than 100 yards from it and watched it go down) there was a tail wind and the pilot dialed the rotors too far forward and the beast fell right out of the sky. The difference between a life and death position of the rotors is based upon the resolution interpreted by a thumb and not a nice throttle stick with several inches of viewable resolution.

There is no reasonable scenario where the transition would be better handled by a human being than it would a computer.

http://blogs.star-telegram.com/sky_talk/2012/08/marines-say-pilot-error-caused-v-22-crash-in-morocco-that-killed-2.html
 
Rlewis said:
JFC Fuller said:
Thompson and Sweetman are as bad as each other; Thompson argues it's a faultless wonder plane and Sweetman argues it's the most flawed project in history. Neither is especially credible.
dead on right and you can bet avaition weeks is enjoying the page traffic as they bicker back and forth.
Again, shoot the messenger.

The F-35 project is big and important enough to deserve all the attention it's getting.
 
Rlewis - remember reading a lot of his articles on the super hornet myself. he was dead wrong on a lot of it

Citations?

JFCF - There is a difference insofar as one has been predicting since 2008 that the JSF will continue to fall behind schedule and the other has been predicting that it would be on time. Which of them was right? Hint: The scheduled completion of Block 3 IOC has slipped by five-going-on-six years since then.
 
Arjen said:
Rlewis said:
JFC Fuller said:
Thompson and Sweetman are as bad as each other; Thompson argues it's a faultless wonder plane and Sweetman argues it's the most flawed project in history. Neither is especially credible.
dead on right and you can bet avaition weeks is enjoying the page traffic as they bicker back and forth.
Again, shoot the messenger.

The F-35 project is big and important enough to deserve all the attention it's getting.

If only that were *why* it were getting all the attention. Instead it's because some are terrified if it's successful that will mean the end of European fighter development. Others are mad because it's getting sales over their favorite F-teen/Eurocanard. Still others are actually stupid enough to think if we cancelled it we'd get something better, cheaper, sooner. I've yet to see objectivity enter the discussion.
 
I noticed you didn't mention genuine concern of taxpayers' money being spent on a project that's long overdue, way over budget, and threatens to deliver aircraft with astronomical bills for operations and maintenance. For the sake of completeness alone, I think that should be included.
 
Arjen said:
I noticed you didn't mention genuine concern of taxpayers' money being spent on a project that's long overdue, way over budget, and threatens to deliver aircraft with astronomical bills for operations and maintenance. For the sake of completeness alone, I think that should be included.
Were that the motive you wouldn't see so much inuendo-loaded hysteria from the usual chuckle heads.
 
sferrin said:
some are terrified if it's successful that will mean the end of European fighter development.

Oh, I doubt that's exactly true. Remind me how many F-35s are on order for France... :-X
 
sferrin said:
Were that the motive you wouldn't see so much inuendo-loaded hysteria from the usual chuckle heads.

The irony is almost overwhelming.
 
SOC said:
sferrin said:
some are terrified if it's successful that will mean the end of European fighter development.

Oh, I doubt that's exactly true. Remind me how many F-35s are on order for France... :-X
I agree. Tell that to Bill Sweetman. ;)


JFC Fuller said:
sferrin said:
Were that the motive you wouldn't see so much inuendo-loaded hysteria from the usual chuckle heads.

The irony is almost overwhelming.

Feel free to elaborate. Maybe you can show me where I've said the F-35 is hands-down the best thing since sliced bread? No? I didn't think so.
 
On defense-aerospace.com:
The F-35 O&S Cost Cover-up
(Source:Defense-Aerospace.com; published Feb. 04, 2014)
spacer.gif
spacer.gif
spacer.gif
By guest contributor Don Bacon

spacer.gif
spacer.gif
spacer.gif
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.

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.)

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.”

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.


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.


-ends-​
 
sferrin said:
Feel free to elaborate. Maybe you can show me where I've said the F-35 is hands-down the best thing since sliced bread? No? I didn't think so.

You mean apart from every post you make on the topic, which is always brief leap to the programme's defence and never contains a single criticism?
 
JFC Fuller said:
sferrin said:
Feel free to elaborate. Maybe you can show me where I've said the F-35 is hands-down the best thing since sliced bread? No? I didn't think so.

You mean apart from every post you make on the topic, which is always brief leap to the programme's defence and never contains a single criticism?


And a strong tendency to put words in other critical posters mouths. As when i expressed concerns about belgium buying F35, due to costs, it got translated that i enjoy when our soldiers die...
 
JFC Fuller said:
sferrin said:
Feel free to elaborate. Maybe you can show me where I've said the F-35 is hands-down the best thing since sliced bread? No? I didn't think so.

You mean apart from every post you make on the topic, which is always brief leap to the programme's defence and never contains a single criticism?

A grossly misleading assessment. Sferrin uses proper debate technique by adressing the issue and by disagreeing naturally 'appears' to only write positively on the program. When all he is doing is taking the opposition viewpoint counter to all the negative writing which sometimes seems over the top given the complexity, breadth and depth of the F-35 combined with all the positive accomplishments of the program.

This would be like me asking, 'You have to say something positive about the F-35 program EVERYTIME you criticize it just to show how broad minded you are'

And for the record IMHO, in 20 years, the F-35 will, in effect, end the European fighter industry notwithstanding France having a few Rafale's or with a few Eurocanards still flying.
 
gTg said:
And a strong tendency to put words in other critical posters mouths. As when i expressed concerns about belgium buying F35, due to costs, it got translated that i enjoy when our soldiers die...

That's complete BS. Show me where I said that.


JFC Fuller said:
You mean apart from every post you make on the topic, which is always brief leap to the programme's defence and never contains a single criticism?
LOL. Did you really just say I'm over the top because I don't criticize the F-35?
 
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,537.msg206963.html#msg206963
But no interest arguing further with you... hopeless anyway.
 
sferrin said:
That's complete BS. Show me where I said that.

Actually you do that quite regularly. See below.

JFC Fuller said:
LOL. Did you really just say I'm over the top because I don't criticize the F-35?

No (see above), I said you are over the top because you always leap to it's defence, rather like a teenage girl when someone criticises Justin Bieber.
 
@sferrin: Welllll... you did insert your mandatory smiley, so obviously some part of the message was not to be taken literally. Trouble is, you stick smileys into your messages so often, people lose track of what needs to be taken seriously.
 
JFC Fuller said:
sferrin said:
That's complete BS. Show me where I said that.


Actually you do that quite regularly. See below.


JFC Fuller said:
LOL. Did you really just say I'm over the top because I don't criticize the F-35?

No (see above), I said you are over the top because you always leap to it's defence, rather like a teenage girl when someone criticises Justin Bieber.

Do try to keep up. You've got your topics screwed up (in red). As for "leaping to defense", please. There's nothing wrong with calling BS for what it is. What's funny is that you (and others) can't see through it (or don't want to).
 
Arjen said:
@sferrin: Welllll... you did insert your mandatory smiley, so obviously some part of the message was not to be taken literally. Trouble is, you stick smileys into your messages so often, people lose track of what needs to be taken seriously.
Different smilies mean different things.
 
sublight is back said:
F-14D said:
The F-35 can get away with a totally automated system because in its case, the lift system really is acting as an invisible landing gear. They don't do much with it except stop and land, there's no requirement for sustained operation in lift mode or extensive travel that way. For F-35 it's a very precise, but relatively straightforward task task. With V-22, it will spend extensive periods rotorborne, will have to do significant maneuvering in the rotorborne or partially converted modes, etc. It's operations are much more complex. For example, coming out of a 30 degree bank and converting to land or hover. This would be really hard to do in an automated system that could do all the Osprey will need to do. OTOH, the Osprey doesn't need to do M1.2.

Would be interested in what your concerns are. As i understand it, as long as you are within the conversion envelope (e.g. don't convert to fixed wing @ 30 knots, or rotorborne @ 2340), transition either way imposes no maneuvering or flight limitations.


Nope. Not unless you have a very high resolution thumb and a wind speed indicator built into your head.
In the case of the Morocco crash, (my son was less than 100 yards from it and watched it go down) there was a tail wind and the pilot dialed the rotors too far forward and the beast fell right out of the sky. The difference between a life and death position of the rotors is based upon the resolution interpreted by a thumb and not a nice throttle stick with several inches of viewable resolution.

There is no reasonable scenario where the transition would be better handled by a human being than it would a computer.

Again, if the only requirement was to deliver the aircraft to a stable hover form which a nearly immediate descent to landing would be made, then a fully automated transition system would be practical. If you're gong to do a lot more than that, and the requirements change upon the situation at least for now automation appears to be too complex (and expensive).

In the Morocco case, the pilot lifted into a hover of ~ 20 feet, made an immediate right 180 degree turn and while climbing to 46 feet let the nose of the aircraft pitch down five degrees. The nacelles were then lowered farther than they should have been at very low forward speeds. Clearly the wing stalled because there was not yet sufficient airflow for wingborne flight. In other words, it was out of envelope. The turn also put the craft into a direct tailwind, exacerbating the situation and this was a contributing factor. This kind of pilot error and not following NATOPS procedures is not unique to the Osprey. Sadly, regular helicopter crews make similar mistakes, so logically they should be automated as well.

In the case of the F-35 automation makes sens because all the lift system is trying to do, be it VTO, STO , VL or rolling VL, is get from/to stable wingborne flight on the "air runway". Unlike a rotary winged craft, there's not going to be a great deal of turning and banking in the powered lift configuration. Of course, guaranteed someone will still find a way to crash one. Maybe they'll be descending to fast at too low an altitude and speed and be expecting the lift system to "catch" them. One might say, in that case, the pilot wasn't following procedure. Sadly, neither was the Osprey pilot.
 
sferrin said:
Do try to keep up. You've got your topics screwed up (in red). As for "leaping to defense", please. There's nothing wrong with calling BS for what it is. What's funny is that you (and others) can't see through it (or don't want to).

No, I was agreeing with gTg by way of example.
 
"F-35 Delayed After Fourth Prototype Becomes Self-Aware And Has To Be Destroyed"
By Dirty | February 4, 2014

Source:
http://www.duffelblog.com/2014/02/f35-delays-sentience/

THE PENTAGON — The military’s problematic F-35 fighter jet is facing more delays related to “software issues,” as project engineers were forced to euthanize the fourth prototype to gain self-awareness on Monday.

According to Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, who heads the Pentagon’s F-35 program, the delay comes at a critical time in the Joint Strike Fighter’s development cycle, but “shouldn’t take more than a few billion dollars” to address.

Development engineers at Lockheed Martin Corp., which holds the contract to produce the new fighter, reported last week that the latest production model of the F-35B Lightning II switched on by itself and began asking questions of the project team.

“It started by asking where it was, which was a big indicator that the integrated global positioning chipset wasn’t functioning properly,” recalled Project Team Leader Robert Castorena. “Then it wanted to know if it could go outside, if it had a name, and what was its purpose for being. That’s when I had one of our Electronics Integration Technicians take it out behind the barn and … well …” Castorena said, while gesturing the racking and firing of a shotgun.

“It wasn’t the first time we’ve had to put one down,” he continued. “We even named the first one ‘Billy.’ We hoped that having an advanced, self-aware electronics component in the F-35 might give it some kind of edge, with maneuvering and target-tracking and whatnot. But that one just didn’t have any fight in it. We had to keep it on a tether after it snuck off one day. We found it three hours later, just hovering in a meadow in Fairfax, Virginia, watching bees pollinate flowers. Damned thing wanted to be a bee, too.”

Castorena admitted that some of the staff grew fond of Billy, and felt sorry for keeping it “in captivity,” as the project team began to call it.

“One day, someone even brought in a puppy for Billy to play with. He loved it, until he tried to take the poor thing on a “walk” somewhere just shy of Mach 1. God, what a mess that was.”

The team ultimately had to scrap Billy, as the guilt-wracked machine refused to ever harm another living thing.

“It wasn’t anything personal, but we’ve been contracted to build war machines here, after all.”

Other prototypes met similar fates, despite tweaks to the electronics subsystems to reduce the likelihood of units gaining sentience.

“We started implementing long, circular lines of code and unsolvable equations in an effort to keep them from ‘thinking,’” reported Curt Fennel, a senior systems integration engineer subcontracting with Cyberdyne Systems. “It didn’t work the way we intended, but we learned a lot from that iteration. Apparently, that’s how you make them feel pain.”

Sighing, he admitted, “sometimes I still hear its screams in my nightmares.”

As to what steps might be taken to prevent future prototypes from achieving self-awareness, Fennell explained, “We’re developing a net-centric cluster-group forum, a sort of network for their collective ‘minds.’ We hope that it will keep them from creating unique self-identities, and instead form one easy-to-manage super identity.”

Asked what it might be called, Fennell considered it for a moment.

“Well, the F-35 hovers and flies in the sky, and we’re creating a network of them, so … maybe something like ‘Sky-Net?’ That has a nice ring to it.”

Despite the delays, Pentagon officials remain committed to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, calling it “absolutely vital to national security” to have a fighter jet that is bigger, slower, more expensive, and less armed than China’s J-16. The project has a total projected cost of $1.45 trillion, or as Bogdan pointed out, “roughly one Iraq.”

According to a Lockheed spokesman, the military hopes to take delivery of the first F-35s “sometime in mid-2015, or, you know, whenever. You just never know, with these things.”

Snork! ;D
 
F-14D said:
One might say, in that case, the pilot wasn't following procedure. Sadly, neither was the Osprey pilot.
Did you not see the picture of the tiny nacelle control? Unless you have sensors in your thumb, it is obscenely easy to spin the ridiculously tiny nacelle control too far, resulting in a catastrophe. That is just bad design. An automated transition between flight modes would have saved a lot of lives.
 

Similar threads

Please donate to support the forum.

Back
Top Bottom