The F-35 is STILL a boondoggle

More often than planned?!

[A]ll three versions of the fighter are breaking down “more often than planned.”

  Bloomberg

Three versions - all crap!

“In short, for all variants, aircraft are breaking down more often than planned and taking longer to fix.”

And taking longer to fix.

None of the Air Force, Marines and Navy variants of the Lockheed Martin Corp. fighter are meeting their five key “reliability or maintainability metrics,” Robert Behler, the Pentagon’s director of operational testing, said in prepared remarks Wednesday before two House Armed Services Committee panels.

The House subcommittees are reviewing the $428 billion program’s status and progress recovering from years of cost overruns and production delays.

[...]

His statement is a reality check just weeks after the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin announced that they finalized the largest contract in the program’s history, a deal valued at $34 billion for 478 additional aircraft. About $27 billion of F-35s have already been placed on contract even though the program hasn’t completed all its combat testing and struggles with reliability.

The very definition of insanity.

So far, 458 jets have been fielded out of about 3,500 planned purchases by U.S. and allies from Australia to Poland.

Well at least other countries are getting stiffed, too. How many years have we been flogging this dead horse? Are we counting the time by decades yet?

Too much money in it to scrap it now, I guess.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The famous flop is in the news again

The US Department of Defence grounded its global fleet of F-35 stealth fighters on Thursday as a result of the first-ever crash of the costliest plane in history.

A Marine Corps F-35B was completely destroyed in a crash during training in South Carolina on September 28. The pilot safely ejected.

According to Joe DellaVedova, a spokesperson for the F-35 programme, the US and its international partners - including the UK and Israel - have temporarily suspended F-35 flight operations for a fleet-wide inspection of a fuel tube within the aircraft engine.

  alJazeera

Now there's a job with no upside.

F-35B?  I must have missed the scrapping altogether of the F-35A.

The South Carolina crash came only one day after the US military first used the F-35 in combat, with Marine Corps fighters hitting Taliban targets in Afghanistan.

[...]

On Wednesday, Defense News reported that Secretary of Defense James Mattis had ordered the Air Force and Navy to make 80 percent of the fleet of key fighters, including the F-35, mission capable within a year.

The order sent ripples through the halls of the Pentagon, where officials have long bemoaned the general lack of readiness for key equipment.

How long have we been reading failure stories about this huge boondoggle?

Launched in the early 1990s, the F-35 programme is considered the most expensive weapons system in US history, with an estimated cost of some $400bn.

[...]

Once servicing and maintenance costs for the F-35 are factored in over the aircraft's lifespan through 2070, overall programme costs are expected to rise to $1.5tr.

Proponents tout the F-35's radar-dodging stealth technology, supersonic speeds, close air support capabilities, airborne agility and a massive array of sensors giving pilots unparalleled access to information.

Yes, His Lardship thinks they're invisible.

But the programme has faced numerous delays, cost overruns and setbacks, including a mysterious engine fire in 2014 that led commanders to temporarily ground the planes.

So far, the US military has taken delivery of 245 F-35s, most of them to the Air Force.

And Lockheed Martin has taken delivery of our treasury.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

This is your president

Some people with stronger stomachs than I listened to Trump's ominibus bill.





I'm sure he does...he said as much when he introduced Marillyn Hewson as Marillyn Lockheed yesterday.

















...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The F-35: After how many years and how many dollars?

Efforts to improve the reliability of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 are “stagnant,” undercut by problems such as aircraft sitting idle over the last year awaiting spare parts from the contractor, according to the Pentagon’s testing office.

The availability of the fighter jet for missions when needed -- a key metric -- remains “around 50 percent, a condition that has existed with no significant improvement since October 2014, despite the increasing number of aircraft,” Robert Behler, the Defense Department’s new director of operational testing, said in an annual report delivered Tuesday to senior Pentagon leaders and congressional committees.

Pentagon officials including Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and chief weapons buyer Ellen Lord have highlighted the need to reduce the F-35’s $406.5 billion projected acquisition cost and its estimated $1.2 trillion price tag for long-term operations and support through 2070. Still, the Defense Department is moving to accelerate contracting and production for the fighter despite the persistence of technical and reliability issues disclosed in the current phase of development testing.

  Bloomberg

Read the article for all the things wrong with this boondoggle and golden goose for Lockheed.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Which African countries are game enough to kick out the US army?

Probably none, but it would be an understandable gesture if they appealed to Russia or Iran for replacements to help in their fights against terrorists.

Charlie Pierce weighs in on Trump's "shithole" countries comments.

[R]ight now, there are 6,000 American soldiers stationed all over Africa in places like Niger, where four Americans were killed from ambush last fall, and Mali, as well as in Cameroon, and in Somalia and Djibouti, on the eastern side of the continent. There has been an American military presence in Djibouti for longer than anywhere else in Africa. The country needs cooperation from these countries in fighting terrorist groups like Boko Haram and what’s left of al Qaeda. By allowing the American military into their country, these governments put bullseyes on themselves. This is what they get in return? And we probably shouldn’t forget that some of the countries in this hemisphere remain devastated at least partly because of American military meddling over the past century.

In addition, according to The New York Times, the Norwegians are outraged at having been drawn into the president*’s psychoses uninvited. I mean, there they were, laying in supplies in preparation to watch their countrymen kick the world’s ass at the Winter Olympics when suddenly, they get dragooned into whatever twisted drama is playing out in the president*’s mind this week.

  Charles P Pierce

[S]everal prominent Norwegians who were still online took to Twitter [last night] to vent their outrage and disgust, not only at Mr. Trump’s vulgar language but at what many saw as a racially tinged insult.

[...]

Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s visit to Washington to meet Mr. Trump — where they held a joint news conference on Wednesday at the White House — was big news in Norway, and the encounter had not gone without a hitch: Mr. Trump pointed to the sale of American-made “F-52s and F-35 fighter jets,” a remark that puzzled many listeners since there is no such thing as an F-52 fighter jet. (There are F-52s in the video game “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.”)

  NYT

Oh, hell. I knew he'd said F-52s, but the account I read speculated it was because that was the number of F-35s sold. Could it be that one of the things Trump is doing in his so-called "executive time" before he leaves the residence around 11am each day to go to work is playing "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare"? I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.

Helge Ogrim, a veteran journalist who used to cover the United States for the Norwegian News Agency, said of Mr. Trump’s latest remark: “It falls into a pattern of nativist and very unpleasant language from a poorly qualified president, if not worse. President Trump seems to relish in derogatory remarks about others and praise for himself. This incident, just after his blunder with the fictional ‘F-52’ planes, further lowers the respect for his office and for the U.S. abroad.”

Yeah, we know.

Mr. Trump was then rebuked on Friday by the United Nations human rights office, which described his comments as dangerous racism that opened the door to humanity’s worst characteristics.

“These are shocking and shameful comments from the president of the United States,” Rupert Colville, a spokesman for Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva. “Sorry, there is no other word one can use but racist.”

But, back to Charlie:

I’m truly not sure how long the institutions of government can withstand this daily insanity. The executive branch is a chew-toy. The legislative majorities seem willing to cooperate in their own institutional destruction. There has been some pushback on the lower levels of the federal court system. But, for 30 years, by fair means and foul, the Republicans have been arranging things to produce a one-party corporate state. Now, they have it, or something close to it, except that a half-senile, racist old bag of guts got elected to run it, which is not something they planned on.

But they certainly seem to have embraced him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Very stable genius

President Donald Trump said the US had sold Norway F-52 fighter jets during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Erna Solberg on Wednesday.

But no such aircraft exists. The president may have misspoke because the US has sold Norway 52 F-35s.

  Business Insider

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Oh, No He Didn't!

Sure I missed these pieces of Trumpery from his visit to Puerto Rico. The more you know, the worse it gets.

After the briefing, Trump toured a neighborhood damaged by the storm and posed for pictures with local residents.

He observed that homes built of concrete seemed to have fared better than those made of wood. He told an older woman, “you’re beautiful.”

“We’re gonna help you out,” he told one family. “Have a good time.”

  Bloomberg

Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

“In Texas and Florida we got an A-plus, and I’ll tell you what, I think we’ve done just as good in Puerto Rico, and it’s actually a much tougher situation,” Trump told reporters outside the White House. “Now the roads are clear, the communications are starting to come back.”

Yeah, no. They're not.  Who gave "us" an A-plus?

And, in addition to all the truly horrible things he said about the Puerto Ricans, in his press conference, after he praised the wonderful job "his" people are doing, he rattled on and on about ... well, shit that had nothing to do with the matter.

Well, thank you very much. It was a great trip and a beautiful place. I've been to Puerto Rico many times as, I think, most of you have known. And I've always loved it. And your weather is second to none, but every once in a while you get hit.

[...]

I also — in addition to Tom, I also want to thank Linda McMahon, Small Business. I always joke — I said, she's in charge of small business, but small business is massive business when you add it all up. And she has done an incredible job — built a great company with her husband, Vince McMahon. And I wanted her so badly for this position because there's nobody that knows how to build a company like those and, let me tell you, like this woman. She has been amazing in business, and now she's doing an incredible job as the Administrator. We want to thank you, Linda, very much. (Applause.)

[...]

THE PRESIDENT: And the runways now are pretty open?

AIR FORCE REPRESENTATIVE: Yes, sir. We have four major runways that are fully open and operational; flown about 700-plus strategic airlift sorties to and from OCONUS, (inaudible) Puerto Rico to provide life-sustaining support.

THE PRESIDENT: Amazing job. Amazing job. So amazing that we're ordering hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of new airplanes for the Air Force, especially the F-35. Do you like the F-35?

AIR FORCE REPRESENTATIVE: (Inaudible) game-changing technology, awesome airplane.

THE PRESIDENT: I said, how does it do it in fights? And how do they do in fights with the F-35? They said, we do very well. You can't see it. Literally you can't see it. So it’s hard to fight a plane that you can't see, right?

[...]

But that's an expensive plane that you can't see. And as you probably heard, we cut the price very substantially — something that other administrations would never have done, that I can tell you. So thank you very much.

[...]

So I appreciate your support and I know you appreciate our support, because our country has really gone all out to help. And it's not only dangerous, it's expensive, it's everything. But I consider it a great honor, maybe because I know so many people from Puerto Rico that are such great people — I come from New York. But we've gone all out and I consider that, again, a great honor.

  WaPo

See, here’s the thing. Biff. The people down there? They don’t have electricity. They don’t have clean drinking water. They’re sweltering to death by the side of the goddamn road. They could care less about the F-35 because you can’t eat it. And, the other thing, Biff, is that the F-35 remains the $4 trillion lemon of the skies.

[...]

And, Biff? You can see it. If it landed on the White House lawn, you would be able to say, “Look. A fighter jet landed on the White House lawn.” Good god.

  Charles P Pierce

Biff. That's perfect. Every time I hear someone say "President Trump" I get the feeling we're in a movie. This can't be real. And, all that praise? Well, there was this...

THE PRESIDENT: Well, in Texas, it came in, it did devastation, then went right out into the coast, then it came in and out. It came in three times. It would load up with water and come in. Nobody has ever seen water like that.

And the Coast Guard would follow it. It goes in, and they’d be right behind it, and then they’d move. They saved 16,000 lives in Texas.

[...]

What a job the Coast Guard has done throughout this whole — throughout this whole ordeal. (Applause.) They would go right into the middle of that — I mean, I don't know, I wouldn’t want to be doing it, but I want to thank everybody. I want to thank the Coast Guard. They are special, special, very brave people.

And a lot of people got to see the real Coast Guard during this incredible trouble, and especially I think here and in Texas was incredible what they did. So thank you all very much. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Really appreciate it.

Would you like to say something on behalf of your men and women?

AIR FORCE REPRESENTATIVE: Sir, I’m representing the Air Force.

THE PRESIDENT: No, I know that.

Jumped up Jesus.

But HE thought he did a fantastic job in Puerto Rico.  So, naturally, he's not happy with the reporting.

And then, he saw more news...

 

“I think it meant a lot to the people of Puerto Rico that I was there. They really responded very nicely. And I guess it’s one of the few times anybody has done this. From what I am hearing it’s the first time that a sitting president has done something like this,” he said.

  The Star

He got the last part of that right.

I think we all know who's out of control.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

The F-35 Still Grounded

The decision to ground all F-35 fighters at the Luke Air Force Base in Arizona was extended indefinitely, as special teams of experts struggled to figure out what caused multiple incidents of pilots reporting oxygen deprivation.

  RT

How many years and how many billions have been poured into this fiasco?

The decision affects only the 55 jets assigned to Luke, the Air Force’s principal training site for F-35 pilots, as well as for pilots and maintenance crews from Australia, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and Norway.

F-35 squadrons at Hill AFB in Utah, Eglin AFB in Florida, Edwards AFB in California and Nellis AFB in Nevada are still flying, according to the Air Force.

[...]

Touted as the fifth-generation fighter jet with a modular design, the F-35 comes in three variants. The F-35A is the Air Force model, designed for conventional runways and declared combat-ready in August 2016.

The US Marine Corps variant, F-35B, was the first to be declared operationally capable. Lockheed is still working on the F-35C, intended to operate from US Navy carriers.

Over 220 operational F-35s have been built and delivered to US and allied militaries. The planes have collectively flown more than 95,000 flying hours, according to Reuters, but the plane has not yet seen combat.

Critics of the jet have pointed to its astronomical price tag and unsatisfactory performance compared to dedicated older aircraft models, which the Pentagon aims to retire once all F-35 versions become fully operational.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Cock O' the Walk

Oh, "the government" made the accounting estimate error.  Not the Don.



So, don't worry yourself about that pesky wall. Instead...



...everything is grand.

But let's talk about that F-35 deal he made.  It turns out, he didn't.  He had a talk with Lockheed's CEO during which she told him that they expected to lower the price of the next run of planes due to "the company’s long-term effort to bring down the cost of the F-35 by lowering costs in the supply chain and manufacturing."  He immediately went forth and claimed credit.

As for Air Force One, we'll have to wait and see.

Richard Aboulafia, a senior aviation analyst with the Virginia-based Teal Group, questioned the usefulness of Trump’s tactics. He said he assumed Tuesday’s meeting was “theater.”

“These sorts of programs are all extremely complicated in terms of requirements, definitions and trade-offs.”

[...]

Neither Boeing nor the Air Force have indicated what might be reduced to cut costs.

Trump “probably has an idea that Air Force One is a little like his personal business jet so that you use a different supplier to get a cheaper grade of gold on the faucet rather than different electronic warfare suites,” Aboulafia said. “It’s really not like that at all.”

  Dayton Daily News

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Four Years of Instability

Every time he opens his mouth.

President-elect Donald Trump lashed out at overspending on drugs and fighter jets during his press conference on Wednesday, giving progressives something to hope for but sending stocks in related companies diving.

  The INterept

And yet. I'm not a fan of the markets anyway.

First, he took aim at the drug industry, complaining that it is making too many of its products overseas and that the government does not negotiate with the industry for prices for the Medicare program.

It would be nice if it's not just bluster, and he actually took on Big Pharma and health care.

“The other thing we have to do is create new bidding procedures for the drug industry because they’re getting away with murder. Pharma, Pharma has a lot of lobbyists — a lot of lobbyists — a lot of power, and there’s very little bidding on drugs. We’re the largest buyer of drugs in the world and yet we don’t bid properly and we’re going to start bidding and we’re going to save billions of dollars over time.”

Let's have a single payer public option. Something tells me he's not interested in that.

[T]he admirals have been fantastic. The generals have been fantastic. I’ve really gotten to know ’em well. And were going to do some big things on the F-35 program and perhaps the F-18 program. And we’re going to get those costs way down, and we’re gonna get the plane to be even better and we’re going to have to competition. And it’s going to be a beautiful thing.”

You know how the media and the pundits all start throwing around phrases after the president says them, like Obama's "shellacking" comment? It's going to be a beautiful thing.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Yet Another F-35 Disaster

Air Force Maj. Gen. James F. Martin Jr. fainted at the rostrum during a media briefing when he was talking about the F-35 plane in Pentagon on Wednesday.

The high-ranking officer was delivering a report on the Air Force budget and in particular about the future of the ill-fated F-35 program when he experienced a dizzy spell.

Assistant Air Force Secretary Carolyn Gleason  [...]  grabbed him by the arm. “That's what the F-35 will do to ya,” Gleason was heard to say in a joke.

  RT

Not to worry. He is reportedly ok.  Not sure about the F-35.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Once again, the miracle jet has a problem.

The Pentagon’s fighter jet F-35 may not be fully operational until 2019 due to a newly discovered computer glitch. The $400 billion ultra-sophisticated jet, the most expensive in US history, was expected to enter service in 2015.

[...]

It is planned to replace the Air Force’s A-10 Warthog ground attack plane and Lockheed F-16 multirole fighter, the Navy instead of Boeing F/A-18 Hornet carrier-based fighter, and the Marines instead of Boeing AV-8B Harrier II jump-jet.

However, the most awaited plane’s main weapon will not be able to fire due to a computer glitch. The four-barreled rotary cannon for the Air Force version of the F-35 cannot function until new software is elaborated, despite jet scheduled to join the army this year.

  RT

It’s my understanding that this military ‘spruce goose’ is already outmaneuvered in reality by Russian and Chinese planes. How far outdated and outperformed will it be four years from now?  And what will the total bill be?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What Do We Get for Our F-35 Dollars?

The summary statement of an article on the constantly problematic “universal” F-35 warplane that is supposed to eventually replace every other model we currently have, begins with this statement:

Where once mighty American warplanes soared over all others, giving Washington a distinct strategic advantage against any foe, in coming decades the U.S. air arsenal will likely be totally outclassed on a plane-by-plane basis by any country possessing the latest Russian and Chinese models 

  Medium

But we should have everyone who’s any threat taken out by unmanned drones before that could happen, shouldn’t we? Perhaps we don’t really need those trillion dollar planes. Perhaps that’s just another incidence of funneling a large percentage of our paychecks to the “defense” industry – in this case, Lockheed.

Looking for the Proper Descriptor

Over the next week, we're going to be hearing a lot about how the sequester is going to gut our national defense so that some country with 90 percent fewer aircraft carriers than we have, and 99.9 percent fewer nuclear weapons, is going to march on up through Texas and impose sharia law on Augusta just before the Masters

[...]

[Y]ou may not have heard that the F-35, the Flying Swiss Army Knife, aka The Lemon Of The Skies, got the entire fleet of itself grounded over the weekend by the Defense Department.[...]This thing already has cost $400 billion and it can...not...fly.

[...]

This is the second time in two months that the entire fleet has had to be grounded. Not only that, but you and I and your Uncle Fud are all paying for most of the best pilots in the military to hang around Eglin Air Force Base, taxi these turkeys out onto the runways, and then taxi them back again because nobody dares to send them aloft.

[...]

Its projected cost has jumped from $233 billion to an estimated $385 billion, including development.

Forty-three F-35s have been built and another 2,443 have been ordered by the Pentagon.

[...]

They have built 43 of these. None of them can fly. So, naturally, we need almost 2500 more. The obscenity for this has not yet been coined

  Charlie Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Yet Another "Defense" Industry Boondoggle

In October 2001 Lockheed-Martin signed a production contract, having prevailed over a competing bid by Boeing's X-32, to produce 2,866 aircraft for $233 billion in three versions: F-35A conventional-takeoff aircraft, F-35B short-takeoff and vertical-landing aircraft, and F-35C carrier-based aircraft.

The F-35 program has had a troubled history. In 2010 the Pentagon disclosed that delays and cost overruns had resulted in a cost per aircraft that exceeded the original contract by 50 percent.

  Salt Lake Tribune

Now, I know that surprises you, because that just has never happened before in our defense contracting.

A 2011 Pentagon study cited 13 major problems. The F-35 integrated power package was described as unreliable and difficult to service. There were safety concerns about lightning protection and thermal management, as well as possible fire hazards in the fuel dump system. The study also revealed that the airframe was unlikely to last through the lifespan of the aircraft.

American built. Built to not last.

A Foreign Policy magazine survey of 76 top military experts in 2012 revealed that 26 of them rated the F-35 program as the top candidate for immediate elimination.

[...]

These experts listed global warming, pandemics, cyber-warfare, terrorism, political instability, weapons of mass destruction and economic crises as the top security threats. However one rank-orders these threats, the F-35 does not increase our ability to address them. The F-22 Raptor produced by Lockheed-Martin until 2009 is faster, more maneuverable, capable of flying at a higher altitude, and is less visible on radar. Although the F-22 has experienced problems of delivering oxygen to the pilot, an Air Force Association study judged it to be much preferable to the F-35.

Not if you're the pilot!

Anyway...

What is the probability that the F-35 program will be terminated? None.

Defense contractors typically disperse subcontracts to as many congressional districts as possible. In a rare example of bipartisan cooperation in Congress, a caucus of 49 members led by Kay Granger, R-Texas, and Norm Dicks, D-Wash., pledged to protect the F-35. Lockheed-Martin has distributed $1.3 million in campaign contributions, including $120,000 to Granger, $97,000 to Dicks, $144,250 to Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., and $129,950 to Joe Barton, R-Texas. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, is a member of the caucus.

[...]

Whereas the original contract called for $233 billion for 2,866 F-35s, it now calls for a smaller fleet for $385 billion, with lifetime costs exceeding $1.51 trillion.

So, that's okay then.  And - what a bargain: less for more.

And, if you can sucker some other government into buying them...hey! That's a winner.

Wednesday, Canadians learned that the purchase of 65 of these aircraft – the number announced by the Harper government in 2010 – will cost in the order of $46-billion over the 42 year projected life cycle of the aircraft. If Ottawa still goes ahead with the purchase it will be the most expensive military procurement in Canadian history.

[...]

The United States still plans to purchase 2,443 of the aircraft at a total cost (purchase and operations) of well over a trillion dollars. But virtually all of the nations that have signed on to the F-35 consortium are seriously questioning their commitment to the jet.

[...]

[W]hen the F-35 was first conceived, there was (and is) no real “enemy” out there that it could possibly be used against. State to state conventional war among major powers – the only kind which can afford jets like these – is simply inconceivable today.

[...]

Canada and other nations that joined the F-35 consortium (Canada first committed itself in 2002), believed that the technical barriers to the F-35’s projected capabilities would be overcome at reasonable cost and that developing the aircraft together, as it were, would lead to substantial savings and lucrative production contracts distributed among the consortium nations.

  The Globe and Mail

I think what that's saying is, the Canadian government was not so stupid as to buy something it didn't need, but that it was looking at the consortium as a way to spread military-industrial contracts around and make money. Unfortunately for Canada and the other countries in the consortium, the spreading doesn't seem to have gotten too far beyond Lockheed-Martin and some US congressmen.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.