# F-35 JSF in jeopardy?



## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

Cost overruns now cracks developing in the airframe...
and Canada is still committed to buying the JSF in "later production"...how many more millions is this going to cost per copy, if they are already having problems at this early stage? 

Mode3sour..your comments on this article?
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/02/cracks-found-in-f-35s-airframe-pentagon-says/


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## OhGreatGuru (May 24, 2009)

Maybe we should hope so, then the government will have no choice but to revisit the whole deal.

As I understand it, we aren't actually committed to buying. There are withdrawal clauses in the contract if we decide not to buy. If we pulled out we would lose some of the money we have contributed towards development of the aircraft, but this would be a small fraction of the $9B estimated project cost.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

Sounds like bad news, and no we shouldn't "hope so" because there is no cheaper alternative with less issues. Any delay in the JSF means cost of maintaining the F-18 airframes goes up exponentially. They have already been modified extensively from stress over time and the longer we fly them the more that will cost. That's the real issue

When you factor in all the costs over the life of the airframe, the JSF is even cheaper than the Super Hornet which is far less capable. This is because of mass production, and the amount of countries using it which makes for cheaper parts and maint around the world (the first time this has been put into the planning). It's like the Walmart of fighter jets, jack-of-all-trades master-of-none, bang-for-the-buck fighter. All the cries of expenses have no clue of the entire picture

These hot spots are fairly common. F-18's and F-15s have lots of airframe issues that have been fixed over the years, often by adding a fin or counterweight or reinforcement etc. This is just being hyped up because it's a jet, I could show you much bigger issues with any jet. F-15's had serious fuselage issues a few years ago, Gripens accidentally ejected pilots during testing, Eurofighters still have bigger issues with instrumentation. Eurofighters also had massive unforeseen expenses in counterweight as different countries wanted different variations etc. Super Hornet is the only other option and it's been calculated to be more expensive because of economy of scale

Any headline with fighter jets gets attention, and often they have no clue what they're talking about. Their job is to sell papers, not save us money, so they just spin it the way you want to hear


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

mode3sour said:


> Sounds like bad news, and no we shouldn't "hope so" because there is no cheaper alternative with less issues. Any delay in the JSF means cost of maintaining the F-18 airframes goes up exponentially. They have already been modified extensively from stress over time and the longer we fly them the more that will cost. That's the real issue.


Cost of maintaining the engines and airframes on the CF18 is already 
on some military budget...the unforseen aspects of a supersonic fighter
having structural weaknesses/vibrations and metal fatique (that affects
all aircraft) can be a serious problem. You would think with modern
airframe design, computer CAD technology, 3D modelling, and windtunnel
tests, they could identify structural weaknesses in the air frame during
the design/prototype/proving stage, and correct these before going into
production. Does this sound like what is happening with the F-35?



> When you factor in all the costs over the life of the airframe, the JSF is even cheaper than the Super Hornet which is far less capable.


Well here we go again.... back to our old argument of a few months ago.

IMO, the Super Hornet is a proven airframe design with some modifications
to upgrade it to current requirements of whomever is going to buy it.
So in my layman's view, not being able to do an A/B comparision between
the two fighter jets, I can only go by the fact, that a proven airframe..,
take for example the old DC3's piston engine transports, designed before WWII...some which are still flying in far north service (ie: Discovery TV Ice Pilots), and still being maintained even though parts and AV Gas is getting scarce for them these days.....is a good example that if you take a proven
design and maintain it properly, the cost of maintenance, even though
it has esculated over the decades, is still the most cost effective way
overall. I am not talking about existing CF-18 airframes that are probably
approaching their effective end of life...I am talking on an airframe based
on the current F-18 here. 




> This is because of mass production, and the amount of countries using it which makes for cheaper parts and maint around the world (the first time this has been put into the planning). It's like the Walmart of fighter jets, jack-of-all-trades master-of-none, bang-for-the-buck fighter. *All the cries of expenses have no clue of the entire picture *


Maybe so, but... unlike buying at Walmart..you can't take a multi-million
dollar piece of state of the art aircraft technology and tell Lockheed-Martin,
"uh..we have found some defects in your products and a few of them have
crashed..so we would like our money back, so we can buy another type of
product to suit our needs"...it is to late by then..and the cost of maintaining
a faulty airframe will esculate. 

And the other thing is you can't just hang counterweights here and
there to absorb vibration on an questionable design..it has to be designed 
correctly for subsonic, mach 2+ speeds, and stresses that only fighter
aircraft with enormous engine power availabilty encounter.

Hearing news about "cracks developing in the airframe" at this early stage means that they should be going back to the drawing boards and trying to understand what went wrong with the design, what needs to be done
to correct it before production begins and calculate the MTBF for each and every major component and subcomponent in the airframe. 



> Super Hornet is the only other option and it's been calculated to be more expensive because of economy of scale


Well lets say that we agree to disagree on this one.  

Yes I understand that Canada's Royal Canadian Air Force having a proud tradition..
(of CF-100s and the like)... wants state of the art fighter designs and good bang for the taxpayers bucks as you are saying. Had the idiot ("Dief the Chief"), not stuck his foot in his mouth, pulling the rug from under Avro Canada, which ended up killing the CF-105 (Avro-Arrow) and the demise of our fighter aircraft industry... we probably would have had *one of the finest, bar none, aircraft fighters in the world by now.* 
The book on the Avro Arrow discusses the superority of Canadian design and technology... and this was back in the mid 50s!
http://www.spaceistheplace.ca/Arrow.html

Had the idiots on parliament hill invested in Canada's proud tradition back then, we WOULD HAVE HAD, an all weather supersonic full capabilty "cadillac design" with fewer defects than the "cr*p" the US Miltary-Industrial Complex is handing to us now..over the next decade.

Afew years ago I visited one of their superior design
failures up close (Arizona Puma air museum), one of the delta wing failures the US Miltary-Industrial Complex produced....Convair B-58 Hustler..it was a piece of Cr*p..because there was so many problems with it..they stopped production and retired it from service...
<quote from wiki>
The B-58 cost three times as much to operate as the B-52. This included special maintenance issues with the nose landing gear that retracted in a complicated fashion to avoid the center payload. It had an unfavorably high accident rate: *26 B-58 aircraft were lost in accidents, 22.4% of total production*. It was very difficult to safely recover from the loss of an engine at supersonic cruise due to differential thrust. *SAC had been dubious about the type from the beginning, although its crews eventually became enthusiastic about the aircraft; its performance and design were appreciated, although it was never easy to fly.* <end quote>.

I weep for Canada...what we lost..and what we could have had today!

All we have now is "pork barrel politics" on parliament hill..
(minister Clement..who was given "carte blanche to blow 50 million
on gazebos in Muskoka"... is now Treasury Board President, that's like
putting the fox in charge of the henhouse when it comes to spending!

Just spend the taxpayers hard earned money, Defence minister McKay..
on UNPROVEN DESIGNS with promises from the Americans that it will get better..ya..they are so good at managing their economy!


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

I would love it if Canada had its own Avro 5th gen fighters a la Saab Gripen, but that ship has sailed a long time ago. I work with a lot of military equipment and the general agreement is that Americans do make very very good aircraft. It's pretty obvious walking down the flight lines currently with Russian and American equipment side by side. The Russian stuff is contracted to save money, but not safe enough to meet our own standards...

Vehicles on the other hand, the American stuff is mostly all crap. I'll take a G-Wagon like all the Euro countries have long before a squeaky bulky Hummer or a German tank before an Abrams.. of ya, that's what Canada has.

These faults in the airframe are possibly (pure speculation here) a result of the competition that taxpayers demand to see. Companies competing to get selected in the early stages of development rather than focusing on making a solid product from the ground up.. Competition is all about smoke and mirrors, focusing mainly on the specs the buyers scrutinize rather than the structural integrity that we could not compare...


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

Don't the economies of scale rely on... well, scale? It seems like the partners are all on the verge of slashing their orders. The US looks to be cutting it in half. If you have to amortize that cost over half the aircraft, the costs will balloon even further. I know that we probably can't escape this fiasco now, but that doesn't change the fact that this whole program will end up being a colossal waste of resources. I wonder if we should start a pool on what the final delivered cost ends up being. I'm betting on over $500 mm per.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

andrewf said:


> Don't the economies of scale rely on... well, scale? It seems like the partners are all on the verge of slashing their orders. I wonder if we should start a pool on what the final delivered cost ends up being. I'm betting on over $500 mm per.


Whatever the final cost, Andrew..it is going to cost Canada a LOT MORE if more countries start slashing their orders or drop out due to projected costs...
or performance flaws/safety issues uncovered. 

With any aircraft design, the R&D and manufacturing is built into the price of each copy ordered and produced. 
Overall costs have to be written off that way. 

Add to that costs retraining, maintenance spares and other things necessary to keep them flying for 25 years...that's
a "few hundred million" more. 

I can't deal with figures in billions (1 x 9 zeros) but lets use 500 million as an example that my cheap dollar store calculator can only display (7 zeros) 

IF.. it costs $50 million to design the airframe, fabricate the production jigs, etc, assembly costs, testing, proving, retesting and so on... and all the 5000 initially ordered are produced, it will cost : $10K+ per copy

However, if only 1000 are produced (instead of 5000
initially ordered due to scaling or dropouts),
the costs WILL esculate to probably $50,000+ per copy, or... in simple terms about 5x more. 
That's the name of the game in highly specialized military machines that are exclusively made, not "second sourced". 

Now there may be something written into the contract that Peter MacKay and the defence staff have setup with Lockheed-Martin, but whatever it is..the final cost is never defined in black and white at the order stage, or the
very beginning of the production phase of an untested
military aircraft. Inflation and other unforseen costs such as redesign, if there are serious operational flaws, (not discovered in pre-production), will inflate the final price per copy.

In custom designed military aircraft..there are no warranties, where the oem will fix the problem for free.
The fix is proposed, and the gov'ts involved fix the problems out of their own miltary budget.. which comes from the tax payer's pocket in the end. 

Engine R&D is another area where costs can balloon..and same with avionics..ECMs/armanents and so on.

So in the end..it's like the base price for a vehicle at the dealers..
You are quoted a base price for the vehicle without engine options, transmission (in some cases), and other
consumer luxury features.

If you want the cheapest alternative (4 cylinder, manual transmissions and no special options ..lets say it's $20K for that basic model.

add a v6 + automatic + courtesy group/a/c/etc ..
it's now $25K for the same vehicle

add optional V8 + automatic, power seats, power mirrors, collision detection system, HID lamps, special handling group..and so on...it's now $35K.

Fighter jets are contracted on a cost plus basis..because at the early stages of R&D and proving an untested design..NO ONE really knows the final costs of production. Costs can esculate very quickly!


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## RichmondMan (Jan 31, 2011)

It looks like an upgrade Raptor. I suppose that technical engineers give into the cockpit all electronics and mobile systems. However, Su 37 Berkut and Su 27 Flanker are still the best machines.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

It's Raptor technology with the costs scaled way back. There are better Russian jets because JSF is built to be jack of all trades, not a master of air-to-air. If the Russians were a threat, the JSF would be useless but they are not

The export price of the JSF is sheltered from most of the R&D costs bared by the Americans and even if they sell less, it's still cheaper than spooling up the factories to make old Super Hornets. The most interesting savings from the JSF is the maint concept, with all bases being interoperable and parts being tracked and available

If we deploy the Super Hornet, there is no other base set up to maintain them. Only USN carriers. A jet designed for aircraft carriers is also not designed specifically to land on runways the same (small flaw with current F-18's)


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

mode3sour said:


> There are better Russian jets because JSF is built to be jack of all trades, not a master of air-to-air. *If the Russians were a threat, the JSF would be useless but they are not*


My point exactly. The Russkies were a threat in 1962..when the Cuban missile crisis brought the doomsday clock "ten minutes to midnight"..
and ONLY because Kruschev had second thoughts..the Russian generals kept their fingers off the ICBM launch buttons! It was very very close to nuclear war at that time. Who's to say that the Russkies will not
be a threat in the future...you never know with them.



> The export price of the JSF is sheltered from most of the R&D costs bared by the Americans and even if they sell less, *it's still cheaper than spooling up the factories to make old Super Hornets*. The most interesting savings from the JSF is the maint concept, with all bases being interoperable and parts being tracked and available.


Malarkey! The best deal for Canada IS the Super Hornet...not only are they cheaper to make and maintain,but they will... actually fly right now. 


> If we deploy the Super Hornet, there is no other base set up to maintain them. Only USN carriers. A jet designed for aircraft carriers is also not designed specifically to land on runways the same (small flaw with current F-18's)


Where are we maintaining the CF18 in Cold Lake AB? 
On Canada's non existant "carrier fleet"..c'mon there...far from the truth.

The superhornet is an evolution of a proven fighter design. It won't take as much investment in retraining pilots nor maintenance crews, nor parts inventories to keep them flying.

The F-35 is yet another "flying money pit" that the Americans like to play with..they lpve their experimental
flying war machines.I saw a few of these at the Puma Air Museum...scrapped. 
Remember the B1 bomber and the huge cost overruns on that one..where exactly the Yanks use it after spending HUNDREDS OF BILLIONs on developing it besides Afghanistan dropping JDAMs. 

If these are so great why aren't they scrapping the B52H, instead of continously upgrading them ..and just relying just on the B-1B and B-2 stealth technology instead? 

<FROM ONLINE SOURCES>
*Superior performance at high subsonic speeds and relatively low operating costs have kept the B-52 in service *despite the advent of later aircraft, including the Mach 3 North American XB-70 Valkyrie, the variable-geometry *Rockwell B-1B Lancer, and the stealthy Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit. *The B-52 marked its 50th anniversary of continuous service with its original operator in 2005. <ENDQUOTE]

<from online sources>
The *B1 Bomber was initially developed in the 1970s as a replacement for the B-52.* Four prototypes of this long-range, high speed (Mach 2.2) strategic bomber were developed and tested in the 1970s, but the program was cancelled in 1977 before going into production. Flight testing continued through 1981. <endquote>


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