Pentagon under-secretary for acquisition John Young said on Thursday that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will require a great deal of extra maintenance work on its stealth or low-observable (LO) features.
Actually, he didn't intend to say that. Young, who along with deputy defense secretary Gordon England has been resisting attempts to extend F-22 production, preferring to concentrate on the new F-35, was in fact criticizing the Raptor's operational availability and maintenance requirements, with specific reference to its LO systems. It's something that's been reported here earlier this year, with some very interesting comments.
But LO maintenance issues with the F-22 raise concerns about the F-35. It's not just that the LO design philosophy of the F-35 is based on that of the F-22 (it is) or that the same people designed the LO systems (they did) or that the materials, coatings and seals that make it up are built in the same place (they are).
It's that, by design, the F-35's LO maintainability targets are only a marginal improvement on the F-22 - as visible in this chart from an April 2007 F-35 briefing:
On the one hand, the F-35's goal is to take less than half the LO-related maintenance of the F-35. However, that difference is small relative to the big advance that the F-22 was supposed to represent over the F-117, and both are regarded as "fifth generation". There have been improvements in materials, but the biggest single effort has been to make LO systems compatible with a carrier-based environment.
Overall, the F-35 is expected to need about 25 man-minutes less LO work per flying hour than the F-22 - which is not a lot, and could simply reflect the fact that the F-35's single exhaust is much simpler than the two 2-dimensional vectoring exhausts of the F-22.
So if the F-22 is needing much more LO maintenance than expected, it seems that at least some of those problems - severe enough that in Young's view they militate against building more F-22s - would be reflected on the very similar F-35.
there are several issues causing problems for the f-22, LO was just the only one he was allowed to mention
nothing indicated that it was the main factor behind the decrease in readiness and increase in maintenance hours
it could be something completely unrelated that we haven't heard of yet
but even if it is, LM's chart is based on PLANNED maintenance hours
perhaps the F-22 is significantly overshooting its PLANNED maintenance hours, yet they understand the issue well enough to feel confident the F-35 WILL meet its planned maintenance hours
in which case the difference between the F-22 and F-35 could be significant
Irtusk - I would not have alerted on it were it not for the USAF news story earlier this year, coupled with the GAO Major Programs report, which confirmed LO maintenance issues that had not previously been brought to light - and the very kind of thing that was supposed to have been fixed.
It could be that the JSF program will now fix these problems and that the fixes can be retrofitted to the F-22, but so far we haven't seen any acknowledgment that there is a problem. And the record so far is that every VLO aircraft has maintenance issues.
However awesome MX has to be proven. Which we won't really know until you have a real operational unit pushing sorties at a real squadron and not a test unit. Time will tell.
How the F-35 will have MX as good as an F-16 (Lockmarts insane claims) is anyones guess considering you have weapons doors, L.O. and of course another one..... the results of thermal wear on various components considering it's a stealth jet and little with no physical space growth room. See ya all at the phase hanger. (Snort, Guffaw).
John Young is clueless yet again. Of course he won't be around when jets get fielded and won't have to answer much for his flagrant bullsh*t statements.
Of course it is easy to claim legacy jets are expensive to maintain when USAF PowerPoint warriors under-fund maintenance for each aircraft community year after year because they can't balance a check book. If you can't keep an F-16 up in the 90+ % rate as an average, you got problems. The last few years of USAF MX data is basically worthless except to explain that maintenance is under-funded. This is part of the reason for low MC rates the last few years.
But hey, I'm sure some marketing whiz will bend those stats to make their point. USAF maintenance metrics the last few years are poison fruit.
interesting comment coming from someone who doesn't have access to even 1/10 the data he does
also to way to bring in the totally unrelated F-16 comment
he was saying the F-35 will have better MX rates than the F-22
while its not proven, i would hardly call him clueless for making such an assertion
And of course Young has access to more data. But so did the people who were saying, at the same stage of the F-22 program, that this time round they had the LO problem sorted and that its overall Mx requirements would not be an issue.
all i was doing was taking exception to the description of Young as 'clueless'
yes we shall see how f-35 mx truly stacks up in the real world, but there's nothing in that article that would indicate he's clueless
Having been around the USAF a lot I can confirm that more times than not, maintenance is not funded enough the last few years. If it isn't funded enough, MC rates fall irrespective of other aircraft type maintenance issues.
Of course then someone like Young is happy to use that as a bat against the F-22 all while having NO information to support his claims that the F-35 is somehow affordable in not only acquisition price, but cost of ownership. So when he gets a clue, I'll give him some credit, right now all I see him doing is carrying water for Gordon England who wants the F-35 and is willing to say just about anything to get it.
When Pentagon officials become honest on this then I will have some faith in them. Until then they are doing the taxpayer a huge disservice by stating somehow the F-22 is a maintenance problem. Using that as extra ammo that the F-22 procurement should be killed off. And that somehow the F-35 is the answer with no proof to back up F-35 capability. Moronic, deceptive and a sure path to ruining the capabilities of U.S. air domination inside of 20 years.