US F/A-XX and F-X & NGAD - 6th Gen Aircraft News Thread

sevrent

sevrent

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Hyper

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sevrent said:
last point of it being mature is reasonable. Kendall himself said they've been doing EMD work off the books for a while now even before the actually awarded the contract which happened today. And USAF has been giving funding to Lockmart and Boeing to continue maturation even during the whole pause shenanigans
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OEMs probably have a room full of stealth designs. Bringing it to production is difficult. For example B-21 was a mature design which was actually meant for B-2.
 
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ACuriousPLAFan

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00CuriousObserver said:
Also these

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sevrent said:
last point of it being mature is reasonable. Kendall himself said they've been doing EMD work off the books for a while now even before the actually awarded the contract which happened today. And USAF has been giving funding to Lockmart and Boeing to continue maturation even during the whole pause shenanigans
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So it was the X-planes that flew for 100s of hours, not the F-47 prototype itself.

In that case, I don't see how that's any different from China's case with the J-20S + That delta-winged aircraft seen at Chengdu in 2021/2022 + Another delta-winged aircraft seen at Shenyang just last December (plus some other still unknown aircrafts) - All of which have been acting as the J-36's and J-XDS' X-planes for the past few years.

A tight service induction race between the J-36 + J-XDS versus the F-47 indeed.
 
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antwerpery

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sevrent said:
The crying over Boeing is overblown imo. NGAD is designed such that govt owns IP and can contract out and compete any components to other companies. I.E. its totally possible for a scenario where Boeing flails in software and another firm like Lockheed could win that contract.
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While that's true, having too many cooks/contractors and having all this large and slow multi-billion companies talking to each other isn't a recipe for quick and cheap development
sndef888 said:
Exactly. This is a company that caused hundreds of deaths from crappy software and then colluded with the FAA to cover it up

Their engineering and company culture is rotten to the core.

This is a major win for China
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sevrent said:
Thats definitely the biggest reason most likely. Boeing needs something to claw back its losses with... but on the program side I dont think its that big of a deal
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Oh you have no idea how fucked Boeing is. Plenty of people have heard of their high profile failures, the 737Max, their safety issues with civilian aviation, SLS and starliner. But there's plenty of other small-medium fuckups that never make the news and there's plenty of them. Ever heard of the T-7, KC-36, their issues with Airforce one, their satellite exploding or the MH-139?
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The Air Force is in the process of buying about 350 of Boeing’s T-7s, which will replace the aging T-38 Talon trainer fleet. The T-7 is a fifth-generation aircraft trainer that will make it easier to teach new pilots to fly fighters, such as the F-35, as well as bombers. Boeing has touted its digital design as an advancement in how planes are made.

But the T-7 program has been beset by design, testing and production issues that have caused its schedule to slip behind repeatedly. The service originally expected to buy the first operational T-7s in 2023, but problems with its ejection systems and flight control software pushed that to 2024, and then to 2025. It is now expected to be three years behind the original plan.

In February 2024, Boeing said it would delay delivery of its next test T-7 by several months due to quality problems with some parts. The company also said supply chain issues were forcing it to postpone the planned start of low-rate initial production by several months.
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The troubled KC-46 tanker has yet another problem Boeing has to fix on its own dime, the Air Force said Tuesday.

It’s in the engine: vibrations from the fuel pump are damaging the tanker’s air ducts, said Kevin Stamey, program executive officer for mobility and training aircraft. Air ducts serve multiple purposes, including pulling air from the engine to cool off the plane’s subsystems.

“Boeing has been quick to get those repairs done to the damaged aircraft. We just flight-tested the workaround for that and the initial flight test results look very promising, and we're actually on the path to quickly downgrade that one,” Stamey told reporters at the Air Force’s Life Cycle Industry Days conference here.
The KC-46 program already had six other category one deficiencies.

One of the main problems that has plagued Boeing’s tanker is its Remote Vision System, which allows the boom operator to see the boom through a video feed. The aircraft does not have a window for direct viewing, like other tankers.
Boeing is working to upgrade the refueling camera system through a redesign, called RVS 2.0, but the effort has been delayed two years, and not set to arrive until spring 2026. The new remote vision system will fix two of the aircraft’s seven category one deficiencies. Another unresolved problem is with the tanker’s “stiff boom,” which has prevented the tanker from refueling A-10s.

While the schedules have slipped for both the new vision system and the stiff boom, prototypes for fixes are being tested in the labs now, and the program is making “good progress,” Stamey said.

The tanker’s other three deficiencies have to do with production quality, and are close to being resolved, Col. David Holl, senior materiel leader for the KC-46 program, said Tuesday.
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The Air Force will inspect its entire fleet of 89 KC-46A Pegasus aerial refueling tankers after cracks were found on two of the four new planes set to be sent to the Military Delivery Center, the Air Force told The War Zone exclusively. The issue was discovered by Boeing, which makes the jets, the Air Force said.
In addition, Boeing “is taking measures to temporarily halt deliveries until we fully understand the root cause and implement an effective corrective action plan,” the Air Force stated in response to our query about the latest problems with the troubled Pegasus program.
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The MH-139A—Boeing’s adaptation of the civil Leonardo AW-139—has issues with dust ingestion, software, a redesigned gun mount and spent shell casing management, seating restraints and the seating layout, among other concerns, the office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation said in its 2024 annual report. An electromagnetic pulse test, required for entry into initial operational testing, also still hasn’t been done, the report noted. While testing is set to begin this quarter, the report said the assessment may have to be delayed if the Air Force and Boeing can’t correct the problems.

The Air Force has largely completed developmental testing and made progress in addressing other previously noted deficiencies, testers acknowledged, including issues with the automatic flight control system, sensor displays, and crosswind takeoffs.“But performance concerns remain that present a risk to MH-139A meeting operational effectiveness requirements,” the report states.
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The Air Force One program may be further delayed until 2029 or years later, a senior administration official said, citing supply chain issues and changing requirements, after the White House said the project failed to deliver a new plane on time over the weekend.
The delays are frustrating, but not much can be done to speed delivery, the official told Reuters, noting that Boeing faced problems getting components since some manufacturers had gone out of business.
The first aircraft was slated for delivery in December 2024, but Boeing has pushed its delivery off until at least 2027 or 2028 - towards the end of Trump's second term in office.
Digital magazine Breaking Defense in December reported that the presidential aircraft program faced new delays that could push delivery of the first jet to 2029 or later.
Asked about the report, the administration official acknowledged the fresh delays and the delay could stretch "years beyond" 2029.
U.S. President Donald Trump has been deeply engaged with the program since his 2016 presidential campaign, extracting a promise from then-Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg to cap the program's cost at $4 billion. Those fixed-price contract terms, questioned by analysts at the time and finalized in 2018, have cost Boeing over $2 billion so far.
Trump's renewed engagement could signal further problems for Boeing, whose current Ortberg said the company was meeting with Trump's billionaire cost-cutting ally Elon Musk to get the plane updated quicker, analysts said.

"The president wants those planes sooner so we're working with Elon to see what can we do to pull up the schedule of those programs," Ortberg told CNBC on Jan. 28.
Boeing leaders have said that production has been slowed by supply chain issues, high costs and the complexity of the planes that are intended to be an airborne White House.
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The U.S. Space Force is tracking debris in space after a satellite manufactured by Boeing exploded earlier this week, the satellite's operator said.

The Intelsat 33e satellite, which was launched in 2016 and provides communications across Europe, Asia and Africa, experienced "an anomaly" on Saturday, Intelsat said in a news release. Attempts were made to work with Boeing and repair the satellite, but on Monday, the U.S. Space Force confirmed that the satellite had exploded.
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Some of them are small, but having cracks form on half of your brand new tankers, being 5 years late on a single Airforce one and fucking up so hard that you are 3 years behind schedule on a training plane? And combined with their high profile failures? It's a consistent trend. Which is not to say that Boeing fails at everything, Boeing still makes the F-18 and F-15EX and those programs seem fine for example. But F-18 and F-15EX are old airframes that were originally designed under McDonnell Douglas before the merger. Alot of the new projects Boeing has seems to have issues. I can't see the F-47 going smoothly.
 
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