The F-35 No Holds Barred topic

Typical Guardian liberal crap, as they take a swipe at the Nuclear deterrent, ignore the fact the Royal Navy and RAF were both culled during the last decade to keep the Army in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan. Forget to mention that the Carriers and F-35 are in fact replacing our standard capability that we were forced to cut back too far mostly due to those wasteful wars. Yes the Carrier Strike will be our preferred method of exerting power to protect our overseas trade routes and interests as the Army will be settling in for Garrison duty in the UK as there will be no public stomach for putting our troops into harms way without a really just cause that can be accomplished very quickly.
Give it a couple of years and they will be complaining about the troubles around the Army Garrisons as bored squaddies get into trouble with locals or immigrants in the local towns on nights out !
 
CJGibson said:
Anybody in the UK see Newsnight on BBC2 last night?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26124894

Also on Iplayer but not available to Johnnie Foreigner unless by other means.

Mods - feel free to move this to the News Only thread, I wasn't sure if this was news or more fuel.

Chris

Chris,

It got me sufficiently riled to e-mail the BBC:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Mark Urban's Newsnight report of a further purchase of 14 F-35Bs can be read as the UK buying aircraft that are unproven, high risk and coming from the costly 'thick end' of the manufacturing learning curve.

However, if the report is correct, and the 2.5 billion pounds will also be used to buy some of the support infrastructure, the purchase of these aircraft may prove to be good value.

They will allow the MoD to start identifying the key interactions that the aircraft have with the new aircraft carriers and their wider operational and support environments. It is these interactions that can drive operations and support costs (see note below), which are the largest part of life-cycle costs for a fleet of aircraft.

While the report on Newsnight discusses software, mechanical systems can also be the cause of much of the unexpected costs to support new aircraft, so tests and trials of the physical system before committing to full production are important. And doing these tests and trials in real UK service, rather than at a US test base, is a good idea, as the interactions and environments differ.

So even if the 14 F-35Bs are using immature lines of software, and have limited release to service in terms of performance and weapons carriage etc., many potential problems in operations and support can still be identified early, and major support costs avoided in the future by this purchase.

In the past (e.g. Tornado) the MoD has been hit by high support costs in the initial years of service of a new aircraft, but were already committed to large numbers of unreliable production aircraft in an attempt to reduce manufacturing costs through high volumes. Avoiding that this time could be a real benefit of UK participation in the F-35 project, even at a higher unit cost for this batch of aircraft.

Yours faithfully

Mike Pryce

Note: You can read more on the concept of interactions with the environment (e.g. p.7), as well as examples of mechanical systems driving support costs (e.g. p22), in a report I wrote for the Naval Postgraduate School a couple of years ago:
http://www.acquisitionresearch.net/files/FY2011/MBS-CE-11-196.pdf
 
You missed out the "Angry of Altringham" sign off.

Chris

(yes, I know you've moved but the new place doesn't sound as good.)
 

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F-35’s Critics Repeat History of Trashing the Next Military Aircraft Author:

Daniel Gouré, Ph.D.

February 13, 2014.

Designing and producing a new military aircraft is a challenging and at times torturous business. Problems often emerge relatively late in the development process or even when the first aircrafts are rolling off the production line. Then, the manufacturer has to scramble to fix the problems. Almost invariably, the initial unit price proposed for the aircraft turns out to be optimistic or at least dependent on production rates that are difficult to achieve. Yet, over the past four decades at a minimum, the United States has fielded a succession of military aircraft – fighters, bombers, transports, intelligence collection platforms and even unmanned aerial systems – that dominate the skies. The experienced F-35 program is typical of a military aircraft program. It has had its share of technical, cost and schedule problems. It also suffers from some unique challenges such as that of building three different variants of the same aircraft, including one that can take off and land vertically. Yet, even as the cost of the F-35 comes down, problems are corrected and the threats to fourth-generation aircraft become more severe, the critics continue to hound the program.

If you think that the F-35 is a particularly problem-plagued aircraft or that it must be a lemon because of all the criticisms leveled against it, you are wrong. Virtually every modern military aircraft, particularly fighters, have been subject to nearly identical criticisms. In fact, each of the airplanes that the critics say should be preferred over the F-35, the F-15, F-16, F/A-18 E/F and the A-10 were in their day the targets of similar critiques, sometimes by the very same individuals who today are excoriating the Joint Strike Fighter. Many of these debates were catalogued in a terrific article by Peter Grier in Air Force Magazine. Back in the day, there was a stormy debate both within the Air Force and in public over the relative merits and cost-effectiveness of the F-15 and F-16, the two fighters that redefined aerial combat in the modern age. The F-15 was criticized by a group of pilots and analysts dubbed the “Fighter Mafia” as being too large, heavy and costly. One persistent F-35 critic trashed the F-15 for being too dependent on air-to-air missiles and too big to win in a close-in dogfight. In 1982, Senator Carl Levin thundered: “This is a dubious purchase costing billions. Why not use a less expensive plane?” He wasn’t talking about the F-22 or F-35 but about the F-15. The F-16, in turn, was opposed by a different faction within the Air Force precisely because it was lightweight and cheap, relying on a single engine. In addition, both airplanes also suffered from teething problems that led U.S. News and World Report to characterize them both as “America’s Jinxed Warplanes.”

Another fighter often cited by critics as an alternative to the F-35, the F/A-18 E/F, went through its own trial by fire. Sold to Congress as a simple upgrade of the extant F/A-18 C/D, the E/F cost almost as much as a brand new design fighter. After procurement had begun, the E/F demonstrated the problem of “wing drop” that would have rendered it unfit for combat. At the time, the Navy withheld $1 billion dollars in payments to Boeing waiting on the fix. Another of the F-35’s current critics opined at the time: “We’re not talking about incompetence as far as aeronautical . . . engineering here; this kind of thing happens all the time. What is terrible about this thing is that it’s in production.” This statement encapsulated the challenge of concurrency both then and now. The plan to employ the F-35 for the mission of close air support (CAS) currently performed by the A-10 has some experts and pundits almost literally spitting nails. However, it is worth remembering that, at the time, the Army didn’t want the A-10, preferring instead its brand new AH-64 Apache. In the 1980s, critics both in and out of the Air Force questioned the survivability of a low-flying, slow moving airplane in the face of formidable Soviet/Warsaw Pact air defenses.

If we had listened to the critics then (and, in fairness, if the companies building the aircraft hadn’t been able to fix the problems) we would not now have the F-15, F-16, F/A-18 E/F, A-10, B-1, AWACS or C-17. But each of these platforms surmounted technical problems and operational issues to perform magnificently. Our mistake (or more exactly the mistake made by Secretaries of Defense Dick Cheney and Robert Gates) may have been listening to critics regarding the B-2 and F-22. Now that the F-35 appears on a development and cost track very much like all its predecessors, maybe the critics should show a little humility and take a rest. - See more at: http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/f-35s-critics-repeat-history-of-trashing-the-next-military-aircraft/#sthash.H0mGCpEz.dpuf

http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2010/August%202010/0810failures.aspx
 
As alteration to an old and often quoted statement : "Nobody has the intention of killing this thread !"

As long, as it is used within the limits of reasonable manners, it can go on, until the first squadrons
will fly their worn out F-35s to the desert boneyard and exchange them for ...well, who knows ? ;)
 
I think it is quiet as the Singapore Airshow means the 'Bill baiting' is on hold.
 
Ah "most expensive weapon evah". Do we even need to go to the link to know how the article reads, who it quotes, and what it's agenda is? I think not. Funny thing is, if one were to think about things logically, and try to figure out what kind of system would or should be "the most expensive weapon system ever" it would make perfect sense.
 
sferrin said:
Ah "most expensive weapon evah". Do we even need to go to the link to know how the article reads, who it quotes, and what it's agenda is? I think not. Funny thing is, if one were to think about things logically, and try to figure out what kind of system would or should be "the most expensive weapon system ever" it would make perfect sense.

Of course they will do a cost comparison of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corp developing three separate aircraft right? ::)

60 Minutes,pro-disarmament, pro nuclear freeze anti- B-2, B-1, ALCM, GLCM, Pershing II, Neutron Bomb, MX, SICBM, advanced nuke warheads, the RRW, the RNEP and every other weapon system many of which are now best in the world.
 
Posting a link to the 60 Minutes preview is still on topic for "The F-35 No Holds Barred" discussion. When the full video, or a transcript, is available, I will post that as well. I would have posted this to the F-35 news only topic, but I imagine there would be members here who would have objected to that.
 
Triton said:
Posting a link to the 60 Minutes preview is still on topic for "The F-35 No Holds Barred" discussion. When the full video, or a transcript, is available, I will post that as well. I would have posted this to the F-35 news only topic, but I imagine there would be members here who would have objected to that.

Same reason I put the Goure column here as well.
 
CBS is a mainstream, big audience medium reporting on the F-35. That should be enough to attract attention.
 
Arjen said:
CBS is a mainstream, big audience medium reporting on the F-35. That should be enough to attract attention.

Yeah, and we all know how the media likes a good opportunity to distort, exaggerate, and misrepresent if it'll get eyeballs.
 
Arjen said:
You mean they'll be quoting Loren Thompson?

You really thing 60 Minutes in objective? Just watch how they lead and distort to a pre-determined conclusion. They are all lefty journalists who think any defense spending is a waste.
 
60 Minutes has had it's share of, shall we say dubious, reporting shows.

In December 1980, 60 Minutes reported that the small army-style "CJ" Jeep was dangerously apt to roll over--not only in emergencies but "even in routine road circumstances at relatively low speeds." A Jeep is shown crashing. "We'll get to precisely what the conditions were that made that single-car accident happen in a moment," promises Morley Safer.

The footage, it seems, is of tests run by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and was produced in collaboration with a CBS film crew. It shows Jeeps going through what appear from a distance to be standard maneuvers. Safer describes the first. "It is something called a J-turn: a fairly gentle right-hand turn that a driver might make if he was going into a parking lot." The Jeep flips over. Safer concedes that "it does not happen every time," and a good thing too, since if it did the nation's parking lots would be cluttered with overturned Jeeps spinning their wheels helplessly like so many ladybugs.


The camera then shows a second test run, "an evasive maneuver, as if the driver is trying to avoid something on the road." An unwanted object is shown obstructing a roadway, lending a you-are-there touch. "The driver would pull out of his lane to the left, go around the obstacle, then pull back to the right into his lane," explains Safer. The Jeep flips over again. Dummy occupants, outfitted in plaid shirts and farmer caps, tumble out to their doom.

Now by this point even trusting viewers might have felt a gnawing canker of doubt. Jeeps may be awkward, hard-to-control vehicles, but do they really do that? After all, skillful stunt drivers can tip over many sorts of vehicles on purpose. Chrysler/AMC, which makes the Jeep, sends out a tape in which this trick is performed on various stock cars and trucks, including a Toyota Corolla, a Ford Bronco, and a Datsun 4 x 4 pickup.
Tantalizingly, Safer seems to share or at least foresee these same doubts. He chats with two guests from the Insurance Institute. "I'm trying to think of some of the things that AMC would accuse you of doing if they were here watching these tests along with us. For example, putting the vehicle through the sort of turns and the sort of stresses that it just would never be put through in normal real-world driving on the road." The guests are reassuring, if that is the right word: yes, the test conditions "do occur in the real world," at least "in panic situations." AMC, for its part, is quoted as saying it suspects the tests of being "contrived to make the Jeep turn over." But the detail stops there.

Too bad. Viewers might have profited by knowing, for example, that testers had to put the Jeeps through 435 runs to get 8 rollovers. A single vehicle was put through 201 runs and accounted for 4 of the rollovers. Make a car skid repeatedly, Chrysler says, and you predictably degrade tire tread and other key safety margins.

Much more at the jump
http://www.walterolson.com/articles/crashtests.html
 
CBS and 60 minutes is usually fairly objective with their reporting. You can find bad reporting with any news network.
 
We have to hold the 'objective media' to much, much highly standards then 'usually, fairly objective' they have to be 100% objective period.

I can forgive errors and mistakes becasue we are all human but not slanted misinformation for agenda driven purposes.
 
Arjen said:
You mean they'll be quoting Loren Thompson?

So are they going to interview the people who would actually know what's going on? You know, the engineers. Or will they be interviewing a bunch of talking heads with an axe to grind? (Wheeler, Sweetman, POGO, Sprey, etc.). I'm sure you already know the answer.
 
I only care if they interview the spokesman of WAND. Womens Action for New Directions should have at least equal representation with POGO.
 
RadicalDisco said:
CBS and 60 minutes is usually fairly objective with their reporting. You can find bad reporting with any news network.

See post above yours. As I recall they're also the ones who "broke" the story about Bradley fighting vehicles using rocket fuel for armor.
 
sferrin said:
RadicalDisco said:
CBS and 60 minutes is usually fairly objective with their reporting. You can find bad reporting with any news network.

See post above yours. As I recall they're also the ones who "broke" the story about Bradley fighting vehicles using rocket fuel for armor.

You can find instances of bad reporting from any news network. From my experience CBS has overall been better than most others. Better than, say, Fox or MSNBC.
 
RadicalDisco said:
sferrin said:
RadicalDisco said:
CBS and 60 minutes is usually fairly objective with their reporting. You can find bad reporting with any news network.

See post above yours. As I recall they're also the ones who "broke" the story about Bradley fighting vehicles using rocket fuel for armor.

You can find instances of bad reporting from any news network. From my experience CBS has overall been better than most others. Better than, say, Fox or MSNBC.

CBS arguable tried to derail the 2004 presidential election with those phony Bush National Guard documents from 1972 or so written in a font and typeset not available until the 1990's. :eek:

That was a disgrace and discredited them in my eyes forever!
 
Why on earth did somebody insist on doing a 50 year total program cost estimate? Has this been done for any other aircraft? All it seems to do is create people shouting about the "TRILLION DOLLAR WEAPON SYSTEM!!!"

If we were doing two or three different fighter programs they'd be whining about inefficiency and unnecessary duplication of costs etc. When we do it all under one program they do the "JET THAT ATE THE PENTAGON!!!" thing.

I have my own disappointments with the F-35 program and can certainly understand some of the frustration with Lockheed Martin, but it's just the same old story with the media.
 
bobbymike said:
RadicalDisco said:
sferrin said:
RadicalDisco said:
CBS and 60 minutes is usually fairly objective with their reporting. You can find bad reporting with any news network.

See post above yours. As I recall they're also the ones who "broke" the story about Bradley fighting vehicles using rocket fuel for armor.

You can find instances of bad reporting from any news network. From my experience CBS has overall been better than most others. Better than, say, Fox or MSNBC.

CBS arguable tried to derail the 2004 presidential election with those phony Bush National Guard documents from 1972 or so written in a font and typeset not available until the 1990's. :eek:

That was a disgrace and discredited them in my eyes forever!

Okay, so which news network do you think is credible then?
 
Triton said:
I take it that sferrin, SpudmanWP, and bobbymike have chosen to reject the 60 Minutes report sight unseen.

I take it you've chosen to swallow it hook, line, and sinker, sight unseen. Tell you what, if they have actual engineers -who work on the program- on the show I'll concede. But I'm betting it'll be chiefly talking heads far removed from the front line with an axe to grind. Want to take that bet?
 
Published on Feb 14, 2014

60 Minutes gets an inside look at what makes the $400 billion F-35 joint strike fighter the most expensive weapons system in history. Watch David Martin's report on Sunday, Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

http://youtu.be/FkSDRDg8y8Q
 
This is likely far more informative:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wSvS5Z-gsI
 
The comment 'straw man' was aimed exclusively at you. You being wilfully stupid isn't helping your case ;)
 
Arjen said:
The comment 'straw man' was aimed exclusively at you. You being wilfully stupid isn't helping your case ;)

Your true colors are showing. (Not that they were a secret.)
 
Triton said:
I take it that sferrin, SpudmanWP, and bobbymike have chosen to reject the 60 Minutes report sight unseen.

Not at all just pointing out to SP members NOT to consider 60 Minutes a neutral source. Among many people the TV program still is considered objective, IT IS NOT!
 
Don't you have any curiosity at all in what 60 Minutes is going to say? The preview didn't seem to veer to the sensationalist.
 
Arjen said:
Don't you have any curiosity at all in what 60 Minutes is going to say? The preview didn't seem to veer to the sensationalist.

Did you watch the video I posted?
 
Arjen said:
Don't you have any curiosity at all in what 60 Minutes is going to say? The preview didn't seem to veer to the sensationalist.

No need to interpret or guess at my motivations. 60 Minutes is not to be considered an objective media program and I wanted SP members to know that.

My 'curiosity' is irrelevant to that point.
 
sferrin said:
Arjen said:
Don't you have any curiosity at all in what 60 Minutes is going to say? The preview didn't seem to veer to the sensationalist.

Did you watch the video I posted?
Yes. It says nowt about the contents of 60 Minutes.
 
Published on Feb 16, 2014

David Martin speaks with Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer, about the problem-plagued F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. What happened and is the program back on track?

http://youtu.be/yp0pCqbiMLg
 

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