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Pentagon grounds entire F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fleet

JEDIYoda said:
They were just following proper procedure...what is the issue again??
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Some kind of fire.

So yeah, you make sure the next guy who goes up isn't going to get cooked before you send him up.

Not that I'm a huge fan of the F-35 program, but this is pretty common sense stuff. The only plane I can't recall them grounding after a crash or an accident is the F-16...?

Well, and the Warthog.
 
The F35 is doing it's job. Generating growth and prosperity via the job creators and contractor military complex.
 
dave_the_nerd said:
The only plane I can't recall them grounding after a crash or an accident is the F-16...?

Well, and the Warthog.
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F-15 had a small problem of the front end falling off in flight.

F-22 has been grounded several times for killing its pilots.

B2's were grounded following a crash due to sensor problems in the rain.

This is just a small sample of a giant list of aircraft groundings.
 
Strk said:
That it is the most expensive military program to date and it still doesn't work.
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planes don't go from the drawing board to rolling off the production line as a finished product on the first try. What we're seeing is very common.
it works, it just has to be refined.

and as for cost, while I believe it was a mistake to make just one airframe instead of a couple of different ones from a performance point of view, it's not really any surprise that a program designed to replace 5 different aircraft with one is going to be very expensive, we're talking a lot of planes here.
 
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Broheim said:
planes don't go from the drawing board to rolling off the production line as a finished product on the first try. What we're seeing is very common.
it works, it just has to be refined.

and as for cost, while I believe it was a mistake to make just one airframe instead of a couple of different ones from a performance point of view, it's not really any surprise that a program designed to replace 5 different aircraft with one is going to be very expensive, we're talking a lot of planes here.
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Was a very dumb idea.

We should have just made a replacement for the Harrier.
 
norseamd said:
Was a very dumb idea.

We should have just made a replacement for the Harrier.
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Just tell the Marines to suck it up and use Helis or armed V-22s instead instead.
Because a new Harrier would likely have not been significantly cheaper as a program, but would have produced a lot less planes. Likely way more expensive than the F-22 per unit. Tough sale.
 
_Rick_ said:
Just tell the Marines to suck it up and use Helis or armed V-22s instead instead.
Because a new Harrier would likely have not been significantly cheaper as a program, but would have produced a lot less planes. Likely way more expensive than the F-22 per unit. Tough sale.
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exactly, getting the funding for a new STOVL aircraft for the marines would have been impossible. The harrier isn't a cheap plane to fly btw, it costs about the same as an F-22 per flight hour, a replacement wouldn't have been cheaper in this department either (economies of scale), the f-35 is considerably cheaper to operate.
 
I didn't even think the F-35 could shoot anything until they get the helmet working since it has no HUD. Grounded from what? Leisure test flights?

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/7128066/Why-F-35-pilots-have-the-jitters

Just one problem: It doesn't work. In flight tests, the visor's "symbology" has evidently been unreadable, because the plane itself has been bouncing up and down in the air more than expected. The effect is probably like trying to read an e-book while riding a bicycle along a boulder-strewn path.

"Display jitter," the GAO report says in a footnote, "is the undesired shaking of display, making symbology unreadable ... [due to] worse than expected vibrations, known as aircraft buffet."

Unfortunately for the plane's designers, jitter and buffeting are only part of the problems undermining the visor's use. The others are a persistent delay in displaying key sensor data - making the visor symbols outdated as the aircraft streaks through the air at speeds up to 3000kmh - and an inability to show night vision readings properly.

So what's the big deal? It's just a visor. Well, the GAO report says "these shortfalls may lead to a helmet unable to fully meet warfighter requirements - unsuitable for flight tasks and weapons delivery, as well as creating an unmanageable pilot workload, and may place limitations on the [F-35's] operational environment."
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Reminds me of all the biology behind how vision works...its a bad idea
 
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sdifox said:
Time for Canada to look for alternatives.
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the trouble is that there just aren't any clear, good alternatives.
The Eurofighter is expensive as fuck to fly and is very limited in air-to-ground.

The rafale has so far no other concrete export customers (deal with India keeps stalling) meaning an expensive plane with expensive parts and expensive upgrades (it also has a limited arsenal, European missiles... read; expensive).

Gripen NG isn't going to be nearly as cheap to operate as Saab keeps saying (the Swiss estimates it's cost them $27k/flight hour which is pretty much the same as the final number for the F-35 will probably be) and technologically isn't going to keep up with the americans.

The super hornet is basically old as balls and was designed in the 60's, sure it's had some serious upgrades along the way but you'll be buying the last planes off the line, which is rarely a good position to be in unless you're the one controlling the project. It's also not as technologically advanced as the F-35 and is really meant to be flying with Growlers covering it on strike missions (so you'll have to buy extra planes, the others except for the F-22/35 really needs EA support as well).

then we have the Russian alternatives, but if you buy those you'll be that weird foreign kid that no one wants to play with because nobody can understand what he's saying and he only has weird knock-off games.

it's a tricky proposition this time around.
 
Broheim said:
the trouble is that there just aren't any clear, good alternatives.
The Eurofighter is expensive as fuck to fly and is very limited in air-to-ground.

The rafale has so far no other concrete export customers (deal with India keeps stalling) meaning an expensive plane with expensive parts and expensive upgrades (it also has a limited arsenal, European missiles... read; expensive).

Gripen NG isn't going to be nearly as cheap to operate as Saab keeps saying (the Swiss estimates it's cost them $27k/flight hour which is pretty much the same as the final number for the F-35 will probably be) and technologically isn't going to keep up with the americans.

The super hornet is basically old as balls and was designed in the 60's, sure it's had some serious upgrades along the way but you'll be buying the last planes off the line, which is rarely a good position to be in unless you're the one controlling the project. It's also not as technologically advanced as the F-35 and is really meant to be flying with Growlers covering it on strike missions (so you'll have to buy extra planes, the others except for the F-22/35 really needs EA support as well).

then we have the Russian alternatives, but if you buy those you'll be that weird foreign kid that no one wants to play with because nobody can understand what he's saying and he only has weird knock-off games.

it's a tricky proposition this time around.
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We are talking less than 50 for Canada, Eurofighter is fine. Fuckers lowballed the cost of F35 to the point that the money we budgeted for will get us less than 50% of airframes projected.
 
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dave_the_nerd said:
The only plane I can't recall them grounding after a crash or an accident is the F-16...?
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The F-16 used to be known as 'The Lawndart'

The F-14 crashed on its first test flight.

The Russian 'answer' to the F-22, the T-50 just had a similar incident

oDN5owD.jpg
 
sdifox said:
We are talking less than 50 for Canada, Eurofighter is fine. Fuckers lowballed the cost of F35 to the point that the money we budgeted for will get us less than 50% of airframes projected.
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LRIP-7 for the F-35A is projected to come in under $100mil, whereas the cheapest Eurofighter, tranche 1 and 2, comes in at $111mil. Right now the the f-35A costs the same as a tranche 3 Eurofighter.

But, the current estimate for cost/flight hour for the F-35 is set at a "high" $35K and is expected to come down (there's debate over how much), The UK and Germany both spend twice that according to some sources. It's not apples to apples of course those numbers are projected lifetime costs spread across the fleet and not just marginal flight hour costs (as in what it costs to put a fully functioning plane in the air for an hour).

costs are not a good reason for selecting the eurofighter based on the numbers I've seen. It's a fast and more agile plane, that's for sure, but it's not cheaper.
 
Broheim said:
LRIP-7 for the F-35A is projected to come in under $100mil, whereas the cheapest Eurofighter, tranche 1 and 2, comes in at $111mil. Right now the the f-35A costs the same as a tranche 3 Eurofighter.

But, the current estimate for cost/flight hour for the F-35 is set at a "high" $35K and is expected to come down (there's debate over how much), The UK and Germany both spend twice that according to some sources. It's not apples to apples of course those numbers are projected lifetime costs spread across the fleet and not just marginal flight hour costs (as in what it costs to put a fully functioning plane in the air for an hour).

costs are not a good reason for selecting the eurofighter based on the numbers I've seen. It's a fast and more agile plane, that's for sure, but it's not cheaper.
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I am saying we are spending Eurofighter kind of money, may as well get Eurofighters.
 
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Watch 1.4 billion of your tax dollars burn up in Guam. (Youtube Video)

This is an old dog soldier that isn't impressed by 1.4 billion dollar aircraft that can't operate from any where except a single AFB with air conditioned hangers.

F-35 might be good for politicians that want to bring part of the estimated $1.45 trillion federal dollars back to their districts so that they can win re-election.

Doesn't seem so good for winning the type of wars that we have now.

Confident that these gold plated defense projects will be no more effective in the next war than battleships were in WWII.

Disappointed that that $1.45 trillion dollars isn't being put to better use...

Uno
Sentry Dog Handler
US Army 69-71
 
Meh, two things, I think, are true: 1) that every single military program is an opportunity for waste, fraud, and abuse, to at least the same extent as every civilian government program, but probably more so because 2) more than any other military ours is always on the very bleeding edge of development. Most of the rest of the Western world arms itself with trickle downs and cast-offs from our development efforts.
 
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