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F-35 Test Aircraft to Be Temporarily Stored


(Source: Dutch Ministry of Defence; issued April 4, 2013)


(Issued in Dutch only; unofficial translation by defense-aerospace.com)



The two F-35 test aircraft which the Netherlands has bought for the operational test phase will be temporarily stored.

They will remain in storage until a decision is taken on the replacement of the F-16 in conjunction with the vision for the future of the armed forces, the government has decided.

The United States and the United Kingdom have recently begun pilot training for the operational test phase, in which Dutch personnel will take no part.

During the storage period, only US pilots will fly the aircraft, to keep them airworthy.

Planning

The Netherlands purchased the two test aircraft to participate in the operational test phase of the F-35.

The first is ready, and the second will be completed this summer. The operational test phase will begin, according to current plans, in 2015.


Click here for the MoD’s related letter to Parliament (in Dutch) on the MoD website.

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http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articl ... orage.html

F-35 Production on track
http://www.f-16.net/news_article4713.html

March 19, 2013 (by Claudette Roulo) - The F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter program is a different program than it was four years ago, the F-35 program executive officer said here March 12.

In a speech at the McAleese/Credit Suisse Defense Programs Conference at the Newseum, Lt. Gen. Christopher C. Bogdan told attendees that he and his predecessor, Navy Vice Adm. Dave Venlet, worked with Lockheed-Martin and Pratt & Whitney to reform the problem-plagued development program.

"Lockheed-Martin and Pratt & Whitney have been doing a pretty good job over the last few years of stepping up and making those kinds of changes that the government needs for this program to succeed," the general said.

The aircraft's development has been rocky, Bogdan acknowledged. A redesign of the short takeoff and vertical landing system in 2004 led to delays and added $6 billion to the cost of the development program, he said.

"Then, in 2009, we somehow managed to drive the train off the tracks on this program," Bogdan said.

The program breached the Nunn-McCurdy Act, which requires that programs exceeding certain parameters in costs and scheduling appeal to Congress to avoid cancellation.

Venlet led the program through the appeal process, the general said, and "basically gave us a great gift." The appeal led to an extra 30 months being tacked onto the development schedule and provided $6 billion in additional development funds.

"Anybody that gets three more years and $6 billion better be able to get a program across the finish line," Bogdan said.

Since then, he said, the program has been making slow and steady progress and is on track, particularly for two significant deadlines -- 2015, when the Marine Corps is scheduled to have combat-ready aircraft; and 2017, when development is scheduled to end.

"Those two dates are extremely important," Bogdan said. "If I don't get to those two dates or I don't reach the finish line there, then we will continue to produce airplanes that don't have the capability that the warfighter needs."

Some of the program changes have been painful, the general said, but were necessary. For example, until 2010 the program was operating without an integrated master schedule, so it was difficult to track the systemwide effects of a change in any part of the program. The schedule has been built, and now tracks about 16,000 items, he said. It's a small thing that makes a big difference in how a program is managed, he noted.

"We can actually track each of those events and see how they affect the end timeline," Bogdan said.

His predecessor introduced a more radical change in the engineering process, the general said. Previously, design reviews were conducted by the program office, he said.
In the meantime, the 33rd Fighter Wing at Eglin AFB, Fla., stood up its F-35 integrated training center in 2009 just in time to be transitioned to Air Education and Training Center leadership the start of fiscal year 2010. Since then the wing has accomplished more than X sorties and is hosting its second official pilot training class after being certified "ready to train" late December 2012.

"All students learning to fly the F-35 must attend the courses at Eglin. Currently, only experienced pilots are training on the jets, and they will become instructors for future classes," said Col. Andrew Toth, commander of the 33rd Fighter Wing, which hosts the school. "They are setting a foundation for the future of the program and creating a cadre of instructor pilots. In addition to the pilot training, a large number of aircraft maintainers are receiving hands-on experience with the jet and learning what it takes to get it off the ground each day."

As the first of its kind in the Department of Defense, the wing is responsible for F-35 A/B/C Lightning II pilot and maintainer training for the Marine Corps, the Navy, the Air Force and, in the future, at least eight coalition partners. Initially, 59 aircraft and three flying squadrons, one for each service/aircraft variant, will be established at Eglin. They work closely with their Lockheed Martin partners and the F-35 program office, the Department of Defense's focal point for defining affordable next generation strike aircraft weapon systems.

"Well, I have a good program office, but I don't have the resources, nor do I have the expertise that the entire Department of Defense has when it comes to building airplanes," Bogdan said.

Design review boards are now chaired by government executives from throughout the Defense Department who are seasoned engineers with experience developing successful aircraft programs, he said.

"And they draw on the expertise of all the people underneath them at those organizations to help us decide, technically, 'Are we ready to move forward?'" he added, noting that the change has paid great dividends.

The general said the program's affordability is his leading concern. The development program ends in 2017, he said, and is about 90 percent complete, with about $6 billion left in the budget.

"That last 10 percent is the real hard 10 percent," Bogdan said. "So, what I have told the enterprise is, relative to development, we have no more time, and we have no more money."

This requires a change in mindset, the general said. Additional expenses have to be offset by a reduction elsewhere, and that, he said, may mean a reduction in end capability.

"That has profound implications for the warfighter. I can honestly tell you that the warfighter does not like me standing up saying that," Bodgan said.

"There will come a point in time when the enterprise and the warfighters will come back to me and say, 'Oh no, General Bogdan, that is not what we want you to do. That is too painful for us,'" he said. "Maybe they'll give me more money and more time, but I will not take the first step in asking for more money and more time. I will try and finish what I've promised to finish, given the resources I have."

F-35 production is "the shining star" of the program, the general said. About 30 aircraft are being built each year, he said, and the cost per unit has come down with each successive low-rate initial production, or LRIP, lot. Between LRIP 4 and LRIP 5, there was a 4-percent decrease in build costs, Bogdan said -- a trend he said he believes will continue until per-unit costs approach the original 2001 estimate of $69 million.

"I think we can get there," he said. "Lockheed-Martin and Pratt & Whitney are doing a pretty good job of coming down that cost curve. They're getting more efficient in their production line [and] their quality is going up, ... and that is a good thing, because I promise you the one thing that our partners care most about is how much this airplane's going to cost."

Eight nations have committed to participate in the development program, and another three may buy F-35s, with nearly 3,000 aircraft expected to be produced.

With such a large order and so many partners invested in the aircraft, it's essential to keep costs down to avoid what Bogdan called the "death spiral," something he said he's seen kill off many programs.

The death spiral is when increasing costs lead to a reduction in the number of units purchased, which in turn leads to further per-unit cost increases, and so on.

"I don't think that's the fate of this program," Bogdan said. "But the proof is in the pudding, and we have to continue to see Lockheed-Martin and Pratt & Whitney investing in making the production line more efficient, squeezing the costs out, and getting the unit cost of this airplane down. I think they can do it, but we have to wait and see."

Production costs are only part of the puzzle, however. About 70 to 80 percent of any program's costs are in the long-term operation and sustainment phase, the general said.

What's unique about the F-35 is that the Defense Department has never had to estimate the costs of a 50-year aircraft life cycle, he said. Adding to the complications of producing such a cost estimate is that the department hasn't had an aircraft program this large since World War II, Bogdan said.

"So, lots of airplanes over a very long period of time, with inflation added in, you can understand how the (Office of the Secretary of Defense) guys come up with a number like $1.1 trillion," he said. "That's an astronomical number; it's based on a lot of assumptions. I'm not saying that that's a bad number; I'm just saying we need to take that number with a grain of salt."

What he does know, he said, is that action must be taken soon to reduce the F-35's long-term sustainment costs. Without it, the general said, a time will come when the services decide that the aircraft is no longer affordable.

"So we have to start doing things today," Bogdan said.

He said there is already interest from industry in a competitive bidding process to produce, deliver and operate support equipment and pilot and maintenance training centers, administer the logistics and information technology systems and manage the global supply chain.

"The other thing is we've got to work on the reliability and the maintainability of the airplane," he said, a process he described as "Whack-a-Mole."

"You'll take care of those first 10 or 20 cost drivers in reliability and maintainability, and then the next 20 will show up," he explained. "You keep doing that until you get to a point where the reliability and maintainability of the airplane is up where you expected it to be, and in the long term, you can reduce the costs on the airplane."

Bogdan said recent criticisms about technical issues and allegations of limited aft visibility are ill-informed. "I don't lose sleep at night over the technical issues on this program," he said.

There are known solutions for all of the known issues with the aircraft, Bogdan added.

"We have yet to fly a single air-to-air engagement with another F-35 or another airplane," he said. "The airplane's not ready to do that. We're still doing basic training (and testing) on the airplane. So for someone to assess that the visibility behind the airplane is such that it will 'get gunned down every time,' (is) a little premature."

More than 50 pilots and 600 maintainers are scheduled to go through F-35 training at Eglin this year. During the first two courses of the year, four operational test pilots reported to the Academic Training Center's virtual classrooms. They will graduate in time to set up the next phase of the program at Nellis AFB, Nev., and Edwards AFB, Calif., where Air Combat Command just received its first few joint strike fighters.

"This program continues to grow on a daily basis and it's all a credit to all of our maintainers and pilots that are making this happen," said Colonel Toth who expects software to be upgraded for more fifth generation capabilities this year.

Bogdan summarized his expectations.

"We are trying to instill a level of discipline in this program such that there are no surprises -- we have predictable outcomes (and) when we have problems, we have ways of solving those problems," he said. "(This is) very hard to do on a very big, complex program that has lots and lots of decision-makers (and) lots and lots of pots of money, but I think that's an absolute necessity to get the program moving in the right direction."

60 F-35A por US$10,8 bilhões
http://www.dsca.mil/pressreleases/36-b/ ... _13-10.pdf

F-X2 (considerando as diversas estimativas): 36 por US$4 bilhões a US$8 bilhões

MMRCA/Rafale: 126 Rafale por US$15 bilhões a US$20 bilhões
http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/04/0 ... BE20130405
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes ... -air-force

Suíça: 22 Gripen E por US$ 3,3 bilhões

UK pondera reduzir encomendas do F-35. Preço por unidade actualmente em 156 M USD

Philip Hammond Unsure About F-35 Order


(Source: Sky News; published May 4, 2013)



British operational military pilots have begun flying what is being touted as the world's most advanced stealth fighter jet, the F-35. But even as they take to the skies, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has given the clearest indication yet that the UK may not now buy all the jets it had planned.

Speaking exclusively to Sky News, Mr Hammond pledged that the first 48 aircraft on order at a cost of around £100m each would be bought to service the new Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers from 2020.

But he would not commit to a further 90 planes, which had originally been proposed.

He said: "It's dependent on politics, money and the state of the world, but it's also dependent on what is not yet clearly known, what the mix between manned fighter jets and unmanned aircraft is going to be."

Mr Hammond said there were two trains of thought, one suggesting an 80/20 split of manned to unmanned aircraft in future, the other suggesting the exact opposite.

He said the final decision would determine how many manned F-35s the UK could buy. (end of excerpt)


Click here for the full story, including video, on the Sky News website.


(EDITOR’S NOTE: A unit price of £100 million, ($156 million at current exchange rates for delivery in 2020 is more than double the price tag promised to foreign customers by both the F-35 Joint Program Office and Lockheed Martin.
It is significant that Philip Hammond mentioned this figure after having met his US counterpart Chuck Hagel, as this discounts any possible claims of outdated information or of a mistake.)

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http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articl ... 4150m.html

Penguin escreveu:60 F-35A por US$10,8 bilhões
http://www.dsca.mil/pressreleases/36-b/ ... _13-10.pdf

F-X2 (considerando as diversas estimativas): 36 por US$4 bilhões a US$8 bilhões

MMRCA/Rafale: 126 Rafale por US$15 bilhões a US$20 bilhões
http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/04/0 ... BE20130405
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes ... -air-force

Suíça: 22 Gripen E por US$ 3,3 bilhões

180 mi por F-35
172 mi por Rafale no Brasil
150 mi por Gripen na Suiça
150 mi por Super Hornet no Brasil
119 a 158 mi por Rafale na Índia
119 a 125 mi por Gripen no Brasil

China em negociações para aquisição de 48 Su-35 por U$ 4 bi

83 mi por Su-35 na China

India adquire 29 MiG-29K por U$ 1,2 bi

41 mi por MiG-29K na India

India poderá adquirir novo lote de 45 MiG-29K por U$ 2 bi

45 mi por MiG-29K na India

Italy's ruling party divided over order for F-35 combat jets



By Steve Scherer and Roberto Landucci

ROME | Thu May 30, 2013 12:04pm EDT

(Reuters) - Italian opposition parties and some lawmakers from the ruling Democratic Party called on the government on Thursday to abandon its plans to buy 90 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets.

Italy's total planned investment in the new Lightning II Joint Strike fighters (JSF) exceeds 10 billion euros ($12.97 billion) even though it cut its order last year to 90 aircraft from the 131 it had originally penciled in to buy more than a decade ago, a move it said would save 5 billion euros.

The opposition 5-Star Movement, the Left Ecology Liberty (SEL) and 13 members of Prime Minister Enrico Letta's Democratic Party (PD), one of two main components of the right-left coalition, now want to scrap the order completely.

"We can easily do without the F-35," said Giulio Marcon, an SEL lawmaker. "The government should make a responsible gesture and use these resources to increase welfare spending and create jobs."

With Italy mired in recession and struggling with public finances, the money saved by eliminating a single F-35 could be used to build 387 day care centers or renovate 258 schools, according to a motion signed by 158 parliamentarians in the lower house Chamber of Deputies.

The PD said it wanted to cut spending on the program during the campaign for national elections last February, but has since formed a government with Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party, which supports the F-35.

The F-35 investment "should be revised, just as we all said in the election campaign," Giuseppe Civati, one of 13 PD members who signed the motion, told Reuters.

Civati, a frequent critic of his own party, accused the PD and former prime minister Mario Monti's Civic Choice party of reneging on campaign promises to cut spending on the jet.

Defense Minister Mario Mauro, a member of Monti's party, said last week the month-old government wanted to go ahead with the purchase, saying, "we need defense tools to guarantee peace".

The deal includes a provision to give maintenance contracts to state-controlled defense group Finmeccanica as Italy's aerospace industry is a development and production partner in the F-35 project and Italy has already invested about 2 billion euros in it.

However, the project is seven years behind schedule and 70 percent over initial cost estimates. Other countries have also cut their provisional orders for the plane because of the economic crisis that has shrunk defense budgets worldwide. ($1=0.7712 euros)

(Editing by Greg Mahlich)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/ ... R620130530

F-35 Price Fixing Part 4 of 5: Different Planes, Common Problems


(Source: Time Battleland blog; posted June 6, 2013)


By Winslow Wheeler

All good fighter jets are designed to climb into the sky. Unfortunately for the F-35, its price tag — as we have pointed out this week — is joining in the ascent as its fiscal wingman. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re kicking the tires of the Air Force or Navy variants, as you can see in this chart.

Since 2012, the unit costs of Navy models of the F-35 (the STOVL B variant and the aircraft-carrier capable C version, taken together as presented in the Pentagon comptroller’s annual “Program Acquisition Costs by Weapon System” reports) have increased significantly: from $216.6 million per aircraft to $277.9 million, an increase of $61.3 million or 28.3%.

The Air Force’s A model did actually decline in cost from 2012 to 2013: from $195.5 million per aircraft in 2012 to $187.7 million in 2013, a decline of $7.6 million or 3.9%. However, the decline reversed in 2013, and the 2014 budget request shows an increase, albeit minor, up $0.8 million or 0.4% to $188.5 million. (These data do not include the potential impact of sequester-mandated cuts in 2013 and/or in 2014; their effect will be to further increase the unit costs cited here.)

The statements of Air Force Lieut. General Christopher Bogdan, the F-35 program manager, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that F-35 unit cost “continues to come down” or is “coming down” remain false. There are years in the graph in Figure 4, above, where a specific year is lower than the preceding year, but that is not the current trend—for the F-35 program as a whole, or for either the Air Force or Navy variants separately. Moreover, the Navy variants will cost even more in 2014 than they did earlier (eg., from 2008 to 2010); overall the “learning curve” for the Navy variants of the F-35 has been a bending in the wrong direction.

On the other hand, Air Force models of the F-35 have shown an overall unit-cost decline since production in 2008, but the most recent trend is an increase.

Beyond the year-to-year trends, the most prominent characteristic of F-35 costs is how high the costs are.

In the eighth year of production—after significant opportunity for learning-curve efficiencies to occur—the Air Force’s A model appears to be stabilizing at approximately $190 million per copy. The Navy models’ unit cost has not stabilized; for the period 2012 to 2014 they are climbing dramatically, and they are now projected for 2014 to top $270 million each.

Depending on the model, the real-world cost of an F-35 varies today from $190 million to over $270 million—complete with engine and the other materials the Defense Department considers integral to an operative, delivered aircraft — and which are not always reported in documents and advocates’ assertions. If one opts to add the continuing costs of R&D ($1.9 billion that accompanies the purchase authorization for 29 aircraft for the Air Force and Navy in 2014), the unit cost would be still higher.


Click here for the full story, with graphs, on the Time Battleland blog.

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http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articl ... laims.html#

Não entendo a Itália, sócia do projeto EF-2000 se associar aos americanos no F-35, pq não padronizar sua FA com o EF-2000???