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F-35 Joint Strike Fighter News, Videos and pics Thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
Figures. They would not just stop delivering F-35s and rake in the money because of Block 4 delays.
But the thing is older Block 3 F-35s are not expected to be upgraded to Block 4 ever. Which is why the Air Force initially did not want them. They will just get more dead end planes. And this seems to be happening regardless. Probably because of pork barrel politics.
Kind of reminds you of the LCS debacle where they kept ordering and building useless ships with a broken design. Except on a smaller scale of incompetence.
This is just plain stupid. Probably major regressions of the software when they ported it to the new hardware platform. A frickin nightmare project.
But the thing is older Block 3 F-35s are not expected to be upgraded to Block 4 ever. Which is why the Air Force initially did not want them. They will just get more dead end planes. And this seems to be happening regardless. Probably because of pork barrel politics.
Kind of reminds you of the LCS debacle where they kept ordering and building useless ships with a broken design. Except on a smaller scale of incompetence.
That does not sound particularly good. Working around hardware bugs with software. Is that something you would want in a combat plane where lives depend on it working properly? Maybe another Boeing like scandal in the making as they cut corners to pump out more aircraft.“We also find ourselves using software to overcome hardware design maturity challenges,” Schmidt added.
Or in other words the first release seems to actually be a regression of the software. It can only be used for combat training. Just like Block 2.“The first release (40P01) is a truncation of the TR-3 software at a point when the code is stable, capable, and maintainable to deliver TR-3 configured aircraft for use in combat training, but it is not until the second software release (40P02) that full combat capability is realized.”
This is just plain stupid. Probably major regressions of the software when they ported it to the new hardware platform. A frickin nightmare project.
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It is going to be really interesting to see how this all plays out in the long run.Figures. They would not just stop delivering F-35s and rake in the money because of Block 4 delays.
But the thing is older Block 3 F-35s are not expected to be upgraded to Block 4 ever. Which is why the Air Force initially did not want them. They will just get more dead end planes. And this seems to be happening regardless. Probably because of pork barrel politics.
If your look at block 4 F-35's, they almost seem like a new aircraft in the scope and scale of modernization. Maybe the growing pains of software and hardware will pay off if they can get the software stack in place and hardware problems resolved, but the F-35 program doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
Figures. They would not just stop delivering F-35s and rake in the money because of Block 4 delays.
that is not the way military budgets work. They pay for the planes, then the planes are built. they don't build them and then pray someone pays for them someday when they're delivered.
But the thing is older Block 3 F-35s are not expected to be upgraded to Block 4 ever. Which is why the Air Force initially did not want them. They will just get more dead end planes. And this seems to be happening regardless. Probably because of pork barrel politics.
its not exactly easy to spin up a production line of 150 plus aircraft produced per year. even if they worked every single bug out of the F-35 and then ordered 150 the next year, starting from zero this year the production and learning curves would take a decade or more. This is why they have been doing concurrency, but the issue with concurrency is you get older and outmoded machines. typically the best way to handle this was to relegate them to non-combat units. pork barrel politics is not really a factor.
it kind of reminds me of the F-15 and F-16 a lot of the critiques were the same. More crashes from each though. Hopefully someday the debacle that is the F-15 and F-16 will be fixed.Kind of reminds you of the LCS debacle where they kept ordering and building useless ships with a broken design. Except on a smaller scale of incompetence.
in my experience all aircraft must work properly as people's lives depend on it workingThat does not sound particularly good. Working around hardware bugs with software. Is that something you would want in a combat plane where lives depend on it working properly?
its important to speculate.Maybe another Boeing like scandal in the making as they cut corners to pump out more aircraft.
Or in other words the first release seems to actually be a regression of the software. It can only be used for combat training. Just like Block 2.
This is just plain stupid. It sounds like they had major regressions of the software when they moved to the new hardware platform.
I think its more a matter of administrative issues. The Truncated versions are more combat capable, but they can't be used until they are cleared for testing. if a big war broke out tomorrow, they would care much less about test certifications. but everyone has to play training until they are certified.
this is just like Full rate production declaration. its something that happened over night but changed nothing.
Oh really? You think they pay the whole thing up front? No one does that. They will get a partial payment, and the rest when they deliver.that is not the way military budgets work. They pay for the planes, then the planes are built. they don't build them and then pray someone pays for them someday when they're delivered.
In Russia it is even worse. They pay you like a third of the money up front, then another third in the middle, and the rest only upon delivery. Companies in the Russian MIC have to take in loans to deliver on contracts. Of course the government does not mind the situation, since they also control the banks that loan money to the MIC, and if you do not deliver, then they might just take your company and nationalize it via bank foreclosure due to failure to repay loans. Profit. More property for Rostec. If you deliver then they get their hardware, if you don't, then they just get your company.
They have had like a decade since it was introduced to get it right. At this rate they will never get it right before 6th generation arrives.its not exactly easy to spin up a production line of 150 plus aircraft produced per year. even if they worked every single bug out of the F-35 and then ordered 150 the next year, starting from zero this year the production and learning curves would take a decade or more. This is why they have been doing concurrency, but the issue with concurrency is you get older and outmoded machines. typically the best way to handle this was to relegate them to non-combat units. pork barrel politics is not really a factor.
In the case of those aircraft, separate suppliers were used through competitive bidding. The problems got fixed. Except that is not the case here. They just keep dumping more money on a team that already failed to deliver.it kind of reminds me of the F-15 and F-16 a lot of the critiques were the same. More crashes from each though. Hopefully someday the debacle that is the F-15 and F-16 will be fixed.
Oh great. So you mean they did not have time to run the whole tests. Which means they only finished the software recently. That does not inspire me with much confidence either.I think its more a matter of administrative issues. The Truncated versions are more combat capable, but they can't be used until they are cleared for testing. if a big war broke out tomorrow, they would care much less about test certifications. but everyone has to play training until they are certified.
Being a software guy myself what little they are letting slip stinks to high heaven.
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Oh really? You think they pay the whole thing up front? No one does that
That is exactly what they do. in the US Fiscal Budget, the money is given up front.
this is not like grocery store where you pick up what you need, and then pay for what you get.
instead they give you the money up front and tell you to spend it all, or next time you get less. That is how military budgets work in the United States. the money is given and its expected to last one year. as soon as the FY budget is awarded, the whole process starts over again for next year.
interesting, i did not know that.In Russia it is even worse. They pay you like a third of the money up front, then another third in the middle, and the rest only upon delivery. Companies in the Russian MIC have to take in loans to deliver on contracts. Of course the government does not mind the situation, since they also control the banks that loan money to the MIC, and if you do not deliver, then they might just take your company and nationalize it via bank foreclosure due to failure to repay loans. Profit. More property for Rostec. If you deliver then they get their hardware, if you don't, then they just get your company.
They have had like a decade since it was introduced to get it right. At this rate they will never get it right before 6th generation arrives.
surely 6th generation won't have lots of problems of its own.
In the case of those aircraft, separate suppliers were used through competitive bidding.
The F-35 does that already.
The problems got fixed.
LOL they sure did. research how they were "fixed" and research what was being said in the 1970s and the 1980s. look up the famed "not to exceed" price on the F-16 and how it was exceeded completely. look up how the F-16 gained the nickname "lawn dart" or how the F-14 (sorry switching jets up from F-15 and F-16) lost a quarter of the fleet in accidents over a 30 year span. All of these aircraft had problems, and some were never really solved, but they were used in combat enough (or got famous in movies) that they were basically forgiven and its mostly forgotten.
Try telling a young person now how the F-16 was over budget, late, delayed, buggy, an international mess, that would never sell. one of the ways a lot of the problems were "solved" on the teen series of fighters was basically adding the capability later or not at all. The F-16 couldn't fire BVR sparrows until years after its service entry.
Except that is not the case here. They just keep dumping more money on a team that already failed to deliver.
the dirty secret is that this is not all lockheed martin. The government keeps asking for more features. its an ever moving goal post. little wonder it can't be hit. F-35 is a big program with a lot of moving parts across the globe. Most people on the program understand this isn't easy. You think Boeing would do a better job? what's the alternative?
the "team" that failed to deliver is also the government and they know this. In the US there is the contractor and the "customer" the customer is the industry term for the government and the customer makes the decisions. remember the JPO is headed by a 3 star General or Admiral by law. its a military program the "team" is managed by the military and if the "team" doesn't deliver its on the "team leader"
that is why LM doesn't get "fired." if F-35 was this strange one off weird time where things wouldn't work I would be more than happy to entertain more theories, but when KC-X, LCS, F-22 and a bunch of other programs are always struggling, I don't think its the F-35 alone. Even F-15EX is struggling and that was supposed to be an easy win with an aircraft already in service and in production. even you mentioned LCS and 737Max.
Oh great. So you mean they did not have time to run the whole tests. Which means they only finished the software recently. That does not inspire me with much confidence either.
Being a software guy myself what little they are letting slip stinks to high heaven.
its a complicated process and a lot of boxes have to be checked. If we waited for the Final finished version of the F-16 the USAF would still be waiting on the Block 70 Viper. my point is that you can still have F-35s getting used and used for training and software officially cleared for later rather than have them sitting while pilots kick rocks and wait. its not a permanent situation, and if there is a war all these rules get thrown out anyway. big difference between peacetime and wartime operations.
The government might give the money allocated in the budget to the USAF, but it does not mean it gets all sent to Lockheed Martin.That is exactly what they do. in the US Fiscal Budget, the money is given up front.
the US DoD will soon resume taking delivery of F-35s without the complete TR-3 software upgrade
...
Despite taking deliveries of the F-35 fighter jets, the DoD will continue to withhold some (or even all) of the final payment for each jet, according to reporting by Reuters. The final payment is $7 million per jet (together the F-35s represent around 27% of Lockheed's sales).
The DoD can always find other uses for the money and spend its entire budget allocation for the year anyway. So do not sweat about it.
That is how it works for each government department's annual budget. But it does not mean every single project is financed like that. Quite the opposite. Do not expect the government to pay you for not delivering something.instead they give you the money up front and tell you to spend it all, or next time you get less. That is how military budgets work in the United States. the money is given and its expected to last one year. as soon as the FY budget is awarded, the whole process starts over again for next year.
The F-14 had issues with compressor stall in the PW TF30 engine. This was a known problem. It is even used as part of the plot in the original Top Gun movie (spoiler: Goose dies). And it got fixed when they replaced the engine with the GE F110 in the F-14D. It was used in Iraq 2003. And then of course Cheney took it out of service, he hated Grumman with a passion, and ordered all existing aircraft to be cut into pieces so the F-14 could never be put back into service.research how they were "fixed" and research what was being said in the 1970s and the 1980s. look up the famed "not to exceed" price on the F-16 and how it was exceeded completely. look up how the F-16 gained the nickname "lawn dart" or how the F-14 (sorry switching jets up from F-15 and F-16) lost a quarter of the fleet in accidents over a 30 year span. All of these aircraft had problems, and some were never really solved, but they were used in combat enough (or got famous in movies) that they were basically forgiven and its mostly forgotten.
The F-16 got named the lawn dart because the PW F100 engine was a disaster and the engines kept failing all the time. And guess what they made a separate program where they funded GE to make the F110 engine. And that finally gave PW the motivation to get off their butt and fix their engine.
It was never meant to fire BVR missiles. It was designed as a short range knife fighter to compete with something like the MiG-21. The radar only got added later.Try telling a young person now how the F-16 was over budget, late, delayed, buggy, an international mess, that would never sell. one of the ways a lot of the problems were "solved" on the teen series of fighters was basically adding the capability later or not at all. The F-16 couldn't fire BVR sparrows until years after its service entry.
Except this time they had a software regression. You know what that is right? They lost features. It is not that they did not add something. They lost something. You upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 and now your graphics card doesn't work in 3D mode anymore. You don't have a network driver. You cannot run your FPS anymore. Guess what Microsoft Word does not work either. But hey, don't worry. Windows Explorer still works.the dirty secret is that this is not all lockheed martin. The government keeps asking for more features. its an ever moving goal post.
Pathetic.
It is a jobs program. I mean it is successful in that it makes Lockheed Martin a lot of money. But get this. The article claims they are moving those F-35 so they can deliver them to Denmark, so the Danes can get rid of their F-16s so they can be sent to Ukraine. So Denmark will replace F-16s which can use weapons in combat with an aircraft that can only be used as a trainer... Until they supposedly fix the software later.little wonder it can't be hit. F-35 is a big program with a lot of moving parts across the globe. Most people on the program understand this isn't easy.
No. The F-16 was always meant to be done as a spiral development program. But spiral development does not imply concurrency. And it does not imply regressions either. In the F-16 and F-15 programs they did not use concurrency at all.its a complicated process and a lot of boxes have to be checked. If we waited for the Final finished version of the F-16 the USAF would still be waiting on the Block 70 Viper.
No this is bullshit. With a proper test protocol the software could even be tested without an actual aircraft via computer simulation. You run the software inside a test harness which simulates the aircraft, the environment, and the weapons systems. What this tells me is they are testing the raw software on the aircraft itself. And this is really poor software development practice.my point is that you can still have F-35s getting used and used for training and software officially cleared for later rather than have them sitting while pilots kick rocks and wait. its not a permanent situation, and if there is a war all these rules get thrown out anyway. big difference between peacetime and wartime operations.
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The government might give the money allocated in the budget to the USAF, but it does not mean it gets all sent to Lockheed Martin.
The DoD can always find other uses for the money and spend its entire budget allocation for the year anyway. So do not sweat about it.
thank you
sweet irony as we complain that the F-35 still isn't working after a decade, yet they keep buying them. I guess you lost me on that one.Do not expect the government to pay you for not delivering something.
The F-14 had issues with compressor stall in the PW TF30 engine. This was a known problem. It is even used as part of the plot in the original Top Gun movie (spoiler: Goose dies). And it got fixed when they replaced the engine with the GE F110 in the F-14D.
they never fully replaced all the TF30s, and F-14As flew into Iraq. the F-14 was a safety nightmare right until the end, and it was very scary when the F-14s equipped with the much better F110s continued to have losses from engine issues, which still happened. it took decades to "fix" the TF30s and even then some F-14s were still stuck with them until damn near the end.
it was a "known problem" that cost us about 1 in 4 of the aircraft made would seemingly contribute to my point. here you are making excuses for an airplane that killed how many of its own crew? spoiler, a lot of real people died not just a character in a movie. but that was OK because we knew it was trash?
I'm sorry but that doesn't compute to me. my entire point is that the teen series had much bigger, even more deadly problems and these persisted for a very long time. how can we claim "Well they fixed them" but also "well awful engines that eliminate 1 in 4 aircraft are just one of those known problems"
after the cold war the Tomcat fleet was cut in half, even then with half the airframes in service and decades of experience they were still having problems, and I'm not even going to get into the maintainiance nightmare that was the F-14. if that is "fixed" F-35 critics should have very little to gripe about. The F-35 has never been a "widow maker" for all of its problems and they already have more flying in more places than the F-14 and they have not lose 1 in 4. I calculated it once and If I recall an F-14 could not go 90 days without a loss on average.
The F-16 got named the lawn dart because the PW F100 engine was a disaster and the engines kept failing all the time. And guess what they made a separate program where they funded GE to make the F110 engine. And that finally gave PW the motivation to get off their butt and fix their engine.
....F-15 development was continuing. The airframe and systems were performing well, but the F100 engine had been having difficulties with the 150-hour endurance test that was part of its Military Qualification Test (MQT). Under the milestone program, this would delay the F-15s entry into service, so in April 1973 the director of the System Program Office, General Benjamin Bellis, made the fateful decision to waive the 150-hour endurance part of the MQT testing requirements. Bellis made the decision without telling his Air Force superiors, Secretary of Defense Schlesinger, or Congress, because he felt the F-15 was critical to national defense and needed to go into active service, and thus the urgency to begin production of the F100 engine.
This was the beginning of the problems with the F100, caused by both Pratt & Whitney and the Air Force. The fundamental problem came when, after President Gerald Ford reduced the defense budgets, the Air Force took a calculated gamble and spent its limited funds buying weapons systems rather than spare parts, a decision that was to have far-reaching repercussions. For the F100 engine, this led to a decision not to buy the recommended numbers of spare engines or spare parts, despite warnings from Pratt to the Air Force that the service was ordering too few spare parts. There were also conflicts between Pratt and the Air Force on other issues...
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PW did their part too, but so often we point the finger at one person. the entire thing is worth a read if you are into this stuff. its very enlightening and tends to have more than the cursory claims I see so often.
The reward was also buying more engines from another company, but also buying more pratt engines too. So jobs I guess? luckily we rewrote the narrative. PW was just lazy!
(I'm still not exactly sure of the notion of "competition" when both sides are funded. we give pratt 5 billion dollars. we give GE 5 billion dollars. Then we say "wow thanks to competition we saved 1 billion dollars!" why buy one when you can buy two for twice the price? a study for another time perhaps. )
It was never meant to fire BVR missiles. It was designed as a short range knife fighter to compete with something like the MiG-21. The radar only got added later.
when later? how many radar-less F-16s were produced? and you do realize the design changed drastically early on from the visions of Sprey and Boyd? its interesting that the F-18 was the last teen fighter but came with Sparrows from the start while the F-16 was still working toward them. F-16 was the last teen fighter to get BVR capability.
while pierre sprey and the "reformers" are happy to take credit for the F-16, the USAF threw out most of their recommendations and design philosophies from the beginning:
After it was selected as the winner of the competition, the F-16 was turned over to the Air Force Configuration Control Committee (CCC) for modifications to bring it up to Air Force combat standards before it went into full-scale production. The leader of the Committee was long-time fighter pilot General Alton Slay, who was now a four-star general, having recovered from his disagreements with Ryan and his association with the Lavelle affair. Slay quickly moved to make the F-16 into the multi-role combat aircraft the Air Force wanted.
Because the Air Force was paying the bills, Slay and his committee had the enthusiastic help of General Dynamics, who willingly dropped the [reformer/fighter mafia]concept of a simple, austere lightweight air-to-air fighter. The Configuration Control Committee added roughly two tons of new electronic equipment and other modifications to the F-16, including more pylons for bombs and electronic countermeasures pods, and then increased the F-16s length so it could carry more fuel and enlarged the wing so it could carry bombs and keep the same performance.
The F-16's bombing system was about five times more accurate than the F-4's in dropping conventional bombs, which, as one wag noted, was "a good thing since it carried one-third the number of bombs." More important for the F-16 combat capability, the Configuration Control Committee ordered it equipped with a small but highly capable pulse Doppler radar, something the Critics [reformers] had adamantly opposed.
Critic [reformer] James Fallows later noted correctly that these changes "represented nothing less than the rejection of the entire philosophy under which the plane had been designed." The Critics had been outflanked by the Air Forces ability to make the F-16 a dual-role aircraft, while the F-15 remained the Air Forces primary air-to-air fighter. General Jones was very pleased, saying, "the F-16 turned out to be a much better aircraft than the air-to-air advocates wanted."
There was, as the Critics [reformers] had claimed, a price to be paid for the changes. The cost of the F-16 improvements required to make it a dual-role fighter were initially underestimated and these additional costs, plus a production "stretch out" in the first ten years, caused the actual costs of the F-16 to rise 29 percent over initial estimates for the ten-year period
page 180 same source.
its interesting that this is considered pathetic but such unkind words were not used to describe lethal engines in the F-14Except this time they had a software regression. You know what that is right? They lost features. It is not that they did not add something. They lost something. You upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 and now your graphics card doesn't work in 3D mode anymore. You don't have a network driver. You cannot run your FPS anymore. Guess what Microsoft Word does not work either. But hey, don't worry. Windows Explorer still works.
Pathetic.
It is a jobs program. I mean it is successful in that it makes Lockheed Martin a lot of money.
I think its a little more than that don't you? nothing tactically redeemable? no virtues of note that have 18 countries buying it? just a big old jobs program?
But get this. The article claims they are moving those F-35 so they can deliver them to Denmark, so the Danes can get rid of their F-16s so they can be sent to Ukraine. So Denmark will replace F-16s which can use weapons in combat with an aircraft that can only be used as a trainer... Until they supposedly fix the software later.
there is confusion here. I think the danes are taking older TR2 F-35s and using them for training and transition. not that they can only be used for training, but I might be wrong.
one country in particular ended up on the short end of the delays and thanks to an urgent need to donate F-16s and that's the noteworthy aspect of a program that has produced over 1000 airplanes flying in how many countries?
No. The F-16 was always meant to be done as a spiral development program. But spiral development does not imply concurrency. And it does not imply regressions either. In the F-16 and F-15 programs they did not use concurrency at all.
indeed they did not use concurrency, and one of the reasons concurrency became a thing is because people didn't like having hundreds of aircraft produced and then the fixes added in later. One of the reasons the JSF program was popular with congress and why concurrency is popular was the perception that the first lots of Teen fighters were absolutely terrible intially and basically lemons from multiple profiteering companies. since this was seen as a kind of fleecing or scam of the american, they made changes. are those changes good? better? worse? it requires deeper looks and honest comparisons and an understanding of what the goals and trade offs are.
it might be a poor software development process but the way the F-35 testing works is by flying them also. there is plenty of simulation involved tooNo this is bullshit. With a proper test protocol the software could even be tested without an actual aircraft via computer simulation. You run the software inside a test harness which simulates the aircraft, the environment, and the weapons systems. What this tells me is they are testing the raw software on the aircraft itself. And this is really poor software development practice.
none of this stuff on the F-35 is as simple as you are making it, and even the things on F-15s, F14s, F-16s, and F100s are not as simple as you are making them sound compared to the actual written histories as seen above. if it was a matter of just accepting awful engines or kicking a company in the butt, this would have been done years ago.
The key issue in all of this for me is a structural problem. JSF is a symptom of a disease. a lot people think "if only we cured that F-35!" its just a symptom. my point is that there is a long history of this, the scale of the F-35 is wholly new yes. but the idea that 6th generation is going to be any better is false until the fundamental issues are fixed in the procurement and development areas.
So what? The Navy also kept buying the LCS. Haven't you figured out yet that the current DoD is highly dysfunctional?sweet irony as we complain that the F-35 still isn't working after a decade, yet they keep buying them. I guess you lost me on that one.
Compared with what? Aircraft reliability in the old days wasn't quite as it is today. Try reading about the McDonnell F3H Demon.it was a "known problem" that cost us about 1 in 4 of the aircraft made would seemingly contribute to my point. here you are making excuses for an airplane that killed how many of its own crew? spoiler, a lot of real people died not just a character in a movie. but that was OK because we knew it was trash?
A disaster of an aircraft which led to the highly successful F-4 Phantom.
Well the TF30 engine in the F-14 was shit. But the thing is it was originally designed as a bomber engine anyway. So it wasn't meant to be used with that kind of performance envelope of a fleet interceptor to begin with.I'm sorry but that doesn't compute to me. my entire point is that the teen series had much bigger, even more deadly problems and these persisted for a very long time. how can we claim "Well they fixed them" but also "well awful engines that eliminate 1 in 4 aircraft are just one of those known problems"
The thing is the Navy needed that kind of capability as in the F-14 against peer opponents. And they lost it when Cheney killed the F-14.
The F-14D already had basically most of the issues fixed. And more stuff could have been added if necessary.
Electronics back then in the 70s were highly unreliable. And the F-14 had a lot of them.I'm not even going to get into the maintainiance nightmare that was the F-14.
The Soviets did a Su-27 prototype. It was shit. They dumped it. Then they made a new one from scratch. Tis no excuse.....F-15 development was continuing. The airframe and systems were performing well, but the F100 engine had been having difficulties with the 150-hour endurance test that was part of its Military Qualification Test (MQT). Under the milestone program, this would delay the F-15s entry into service, so in April 1973 the director of the System Program Office, General Benjamin Bellis, made the fateful decision to waive the 150-hour endurance part of the MQT testing requirements. Bellis made the decision without telling his Air Force superiors, Secretary of Defense Schlesinger, or Congress, because he felt the F-15 was critical to national defense and needed to go into active service, and thus the urgency to begin production of the F100 engine.
Ah this is bullshit. It had a design issue and was unreliable. The claim you could just solve that with more spare engines is a massive simplification. It would have made the whole thing way less cost effective.This was the beginning of the problems with the F100, caused by both Pratt & Whitney and the Air Force. The fundamental problem came when, after President Gerald Ford reduced the defense budgets, the Air Force took a calculated gamble and spent its limited funds buying weapons systems rather than spare parts, a decision that was to have far-reaching repercussions. For the F100 engine, this led to a decision not to buy the recommended numbers of spare engines or spare parts, despite warnings from Pratt to the Air Force that the service was ordering too few spare parts. There were also conflicts between Pratt and the Air Force on other issues...
Maybe we should just get done with it and convert to Soviet style State Capitalism since monopolies are way more efficient.(I'm still not exactly sure of the notion of "competition" when both sides are funded. we give pratt 5 billion dollars. we give GE 5 billion dollars. Then we say "wow thanks to competition we saved 1 billion dollars!" why buy one when you can buy two for twice the price? a study for another time perhaps. )
So they did. And that is why the costs ballooned.when later? how many radar-less F-16s were produced? and you do realize the design changed drastically early on from the visions of Sprey and Boyd? ...
while pierre sprey and the "reformers" are happy to take credit for the F-16, the USAF threw out most of their recommendations and design philosophies from the beginning
And get this. It had a radar but it was kind of worthless. With a worthless radar guided missile.
Radar and missile technology only improved later.
It is questionable if they would not have been better off with a separate aircraft design for ground attack. The late 1970s were simply too early for multirole. They only got it working properly like that in the 1980s.The Configuration Control Committee added roughly two tons of new electronic equipment and other modifications to the F-16, including more pylons for bombs and electronic countermeasures pods, and then increased the F-16s length so it could carry more fuel and enlarged the wing so it could carry bombs and keep the same performance.
...
Critic [reformer] James Fallows later noted correctly that these changes "represented nothing less than the rejection of the entire philosophy under which the plane had been designed." The Critics had been outflanked by the Air Forces ability to make the F-16 a dual-role aircraft, while the F-15 remained the Air Forces primary air-to-air fighter. General Jones was very pleased, saying, "the F-16 turned out to be a much better aircraft than the air-to-air advocates wanted."
There was, as the Critics [reformers] had claimed, a price to be paid for the changes. The cost of the F-16 improvements required to make it a dual-role fighter were initially underestimated and these additional costs, plus a production "stretch out" in the first ten years, caused the actual costs of the F-16 to rise 29 percent over initial estimates for the ten-year period
It is what you get when you cut corners and use the engine of a low level bomber on a high altitude interceptor.its interesting that this is considered pathetic but such unkind words were not used to describe lethal engines in the F-14
I hope it is better than Boeing's Starliner test harness. Which kept failing but they decided to build the capsule anyway. And that kept failing, but they decided to launch astronauts with it anyway.it might be a poor software development process but the way the F-35 testing works is by flying them also. there is plenty of simulation involved too
They should be doing a 5.5th generation instead of going for the 6th. But that is just me I guess.the idea that 6th generation is going to be any better is false until the fundamental issues are fixed in the procurement and development areas.
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