re: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Thread
I feel as you do, Jeff, but how do you prove anything? As the producer of a complex aircraft you buy in a lot of parts and services and select the providers on the grounds of their capacity to provide what you need in the near or far future with an eye on quality, quantity and price. There is a very large number of factors to be considered. Who is to prove that you also considered selecting providers from the constituencies of a sufficiently large number of members of Congress?
But let's take a step back. J-10 needed 17 years from inception to full scale production. That was a long time and was caused by the immaturity of China's aerospace industry. F-35 derives from the JSF development contract signed in 1996 leading to X-32 and X-35 and in 2001 Lockheed Martin was awarded the contract for the F-35. Full production is to start in 2018, seventeen years later, if all goes right from now on and after the same company developed F-22. Of course the project was handicapped from the start by the idiotic idea of developing three version that were to be 70% common, one of which is to be a STOVL version, but large scale management incompetence must be part of the problem.
The suggestion by WaPo that corruption and treason are also part of the mix might be an effort to kill the project at this late stage. How can you then continue? There are two possibilities. Choose a single engine aircraft for USAF and start that off and follow it several years later with a twin for USN, to be built by whom? A design team concentrating on a single version should be able to reach production in seven years, 2020. Make large scale use of 3D printing to speed things up. Alternatively choose a twin for the Air Force and set up a second design shop several years later to make use of suitable parts already designed to make the version for the Navy somewhat cheaper or still design an entirely separate aircraft for USN. In every case abandon the STOVL aircraft. I hope the software for designed for F-35 might be adaptable to these aircraft and if not this is a further indictment for the F-35 management.
I feel as you do, Jeff, but how do you prove anything? As the producer of a complex aircraft you buy in a lot of parts and services and select the providers on the grounds of their capacity to provide what you need in the near or far future with an eye on quality, quantity and price. There is a very large number of factors to be considered. Who is to prove that you also considered selecting providers from the constituencies of a sufficiently large number of members of Congress?
But let's take a step back. J-10 needed 17 years from inception to full scale production. That was a long time and was caused by the immaturity of China's aerospace industry. F-35 derives from the JSF development contract signed in 1996 leading to X-32 and X-35 and in 2001 Lockheed Martin was awarded the contract for the F-35. Full production is to start in 2018, seventeen years later, if all goes right from now on and after the same company developed F-22. Of course the project was handicapped from the start by the idiotic idea of developing three version that were to be 70% common, one of which is to be a STOVL version, but large scale management incompetence must be part of the problem.
The suggestion by WaPo that corruption and treason are also part of the mix might be an effort to kill the project at this late stage. How can you then continue? There are two possibilities. Choose a single engine aircraft for USAF and start that off and follow it several years later with a twin for USN, to be built by whom? A design team concentrating on a single version should be able to reach production in seven years, 2020. Make large scale use of 3D printing to speed things up. Alternatively choose a twin for the Air Force and set up a second design shop several years later to make use of suitable parts already designed to make the version for the Navy somewhat cheaper or still design an entirely separate aircraft for USN. In every case abandon the STOVL aircraft. I hope the software for designed for F-35 might be adaptable to these aircraft and if not this is a further indictment for the F-35 management.
