What will the Government buy if the F35 is cancelled?
Discussion
Well it only has the one donkey so all the group contents will (eventuality) go in the same direction ie out the back as hot air.
It always impressed me the way a genned up sooty could shuffle fuel about a Tonka for our various low level checks ( despite the title the amber and red was the easy part) the plumbing under the belly, if you got the chance to see it all at once, was a masterpiece of alignment and routing and actually easy to follow once you'd worked it all out.
No doubt the f35 is simpler but I wonder if they go the route of having tx pipework running through fuel cells/groups aka F4--great until it stops doing what its meant to ...
Oh my earlier fuel pipe comment was a bit tounge in cheek, they may well use analogue capacitance as the sensor but it will be converted and fed into the the aircraft data bus at source I would imagine..
It always impressed me the way a genned up sooty could shuffle fuel about a Tonka for our various low level checks ( despite the title the amber and red was the easy part) the plumbing under the belly, if you got the chance to see it all at once, was a masterpiece of alignment and routing and actually easy to follow once you'd worked it all out.
No doubt the f35 is simpler but I wonder if they go the route of having tx pipework running through fuel cells/groups aka F4--great until it stops doing what its meant to ...
Oh my earlier fuel pipe comment was a bit tounge in cheek, they may well use analogue capacitance as the sensor but it will be converted and fed into the the aircraft data bus at source I would imagine..
Additional F35B groundings and inspections. Fleets within fleets already...
Ref.
https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2018/10/25/s...
WASHINGTON — The F-35 Joint Program Office temporarily has halted flight operations for a number of F-35s with higher flight hours after finding two new parts that will require inspection on older models of the jets.
A spokesman for the F-35 JPO, who confirmed the issue exclusively to Defense News and Marine Corps Times, declined to detail exactly how many jets may possibly be grounded as a result of the inspections. However, one source close to the program said that only a couple dozen F-35Bs meet the criteria where an operational pause would be necessary. “The joint government and industry technical team has completed their assessment of the fuel supply tubes within the Pratt & Whitney engine on F-35 aircraft,” the F-35 Joint Program Office announced in a statement. “In addition to the previously identified failed tube, the analysis has identified two additional fuel supply tubes that require inspection. Some of the older engines with higher flight hours may require additional fuel tube replacements.
“While the two additional fuel tubes have not failed, engineering data collected during the ongoing investigation established the requirement for a time-phased inspection based on engine flight hours,” the Joint Program Office said in an emailed statement. “The procedure to inspect and replace can be done by flightline maintenance without removing the engine.” F-35s that have not reached the “inspection requirements” are continuing normal flight operations, according to the Joint Program Office. A source close to the program said the two additional tubes currently being inspected are made by the same supplier and using the same method as the initial tube that was found to be faulty and resulted in a fleet wide grounding this month.
Because the Marine Corps' F-35B short takeoff and vertical landing jets are subject to different stresses than the other models, only B models that have reached a certain number of flight hours will be grounded for inspections. F-35A conventional takeoff and landing aircraft and F-35C carrier takeoff and landing jets, however, will have tubes replaced as part of normal phased maintenance.
The Marine Corps air station out of Beaufort, South Carolina, told Marine Corps Times that its F-35Bs are cleared to fly. “We are conducting our inspections of all our aircraft, per the JPO statement,” Lt. Sam Stephenson, a Marine spokesperson for the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, said in an emailed statement. There are also F-35Bs embarked with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, or MEU, aboard the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship Essex. The 13th MEU is currently operating in the U.S. Central Command area of operations.
Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for the F-35 air vehicle, referred questions to the JPO and to Pratt & Whitney. “We’re continuing to work with Pratt and Whitney, the F-35 Joint Program Office, the U.S. Services and our international customers to minimize impact to the fleet," the company said in a statement. "Pratt and Whitney builds the F135 engine and contracts directly with the F-35 Joint Program Office — and they can best address technical questions related to the engine.”..
Ref.
https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2018/10/25/s...
WASHINGTON — The F-35 Joint Program Office temporarily has halted flight operations for a number of F-35s with higher flight hours after finding two new parts that will require inspection on older models of the jets.
A spokesman for the F-35 JPO, who confirmed the issue exclusively to Defense News and Marine Corps Times, declined to detail exactly how many jets may possibly be grounded as a result of the inspections. However, one source close to the program said that only a couple dozen F-35Bs meet the criteria where an operational pause would be necessary. “The joint government and industry technical team has completed their assessment of the fuel supply tubes within the Pratt & Whitney engine on F-35 aircraft,” the F-35 Joint Program Office announced in a statement. “In addition to the previously identified failed tube, the analysis has identified two additional fuel supply tubes that require inspection. Some of the older engines with higher flight hours may require additional fuel tube replacements.
“While the two additional fuel tubes have not failed, engineering data collected during the ongoing investigation established the requirement for a time-phased inspection based on engine flight hours,” the Joint Program Office said in an emailed statement. “The procedure to inspect and replace can be done by flightline maintenance without removing the engine.” F-35s that have not reached the “inspection requirements” are continuing normal flight operations, according to the Joint Program Office. A source close to the program said the two additional tubes currently being inspected are made by the same supplier and using the same method as the initial tube that was found to be faulty and resulted in a fleet wide grounding this month.
Because the Marine Corps' F-35B short takeoff and vertical landing jets are subject to different stresses than the other models, only B models that have reached a certain number of flight hours will be grounded for inspections. F-35A conventional takeoff and landing aircraft and F-35C carrier takeoff and landing jets, however, will have tubes replaced as part of normal phased maintenance.
The Marine Corps air station out of Beaufort, South Carolina, told Marine Corps Times that its F-35Bs are cleared to fly. “We are conducting our inspections of all our aircraft, per the JPO statement,” Lt. Sam Stephenson, a Marine spokesperson for the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, said in an emailed statement. There are also F-35Bs embarked with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, or MEU, aboard the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship Essex. The 13th MEU is currently operating in the U.S. Central Command area of operations.
Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for the F-35 air vehicle, referred questions to the JPO and to Pratt & Whitney. “We’re continuing to work with Pratt and Whitney, the F-35 Joint Program Office, the U.S. Services and our international customers to minimize impact to the fleet," the company said in a statement. "Pratt and Whitney builds the F135 engine and contracts directly with the F-35 Joint Program Office — and they can best address technical questions related to the engine.”..
More issues - apparently an aluminium alloy used in its construction is particularly prone to intergranular corrosion in humid conditions 
Did no-one think to test this alloy BEFORE it was used in an aircraft likely to encounter humid conditions during its service life ?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-07/williamtown...
Did no-one think to test this alloy BEFORE it was used in an aircraft likely to encounter humid conditions during its service life ?https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-07/williamtown...
MartG said:
More issues - apparently an aluminium alloy used in its construction is particularly prone to intergranular corrosion in humid conditions Did no-one think to test this alloy BEFORE it was used in an aircraft likely to encounter humid conditions during its service life ?
Probably, but more likely a bean counter or non-technical manager then chose to ignore an Engineer. Did no-one think to test this alloy BEFORE it was used in an aircraft likely to encounter humid conditions during its service life ?Also, though is this an A model problem only, and in which case have the Aussie then bought the wrong one, as if this alloy is present on the B and C models as well, good luck with that given they will be all largely operating at sea...........!!!!
Edited by aeropilot on Tuesday 7th May 10:27
A quick Google search suggests that AA7085 is used extensively in all 3 models.
Remember all that fuss back in 2004 when it became apparent that the F-35B was going to come in substantially over specification weight ? Take a wild guess what they used to replace all that "heavy" Titanium with ..........
https://www.machinedesign.com/what039s-inside/alum...
Remember all that fuss back in 2004 when it became apparent that the F-35B was going to come in substantially over specification weight ? Take a wild guess what they used to replace all that "heavy" Titanium with ..........
https://www.machinedesign.com/what039s-inside/alum...
Surprised I haven't seen anything about this on this thread:
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/07/asia/japan-f-35...
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/07/asia/japan-f-35...
As if problems with the aircraft itself wasn't enough........
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/big-f-35-fl...
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/big-f-35-fl...
aeropilot said:
As if problems with the aircraft itself wasn't enough........
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/big-f-35-fl...
The Oxygen System that was so criticized as a BAE failing on the Goshawk turns out to be a problems on every Aircraft it's fitted to. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/big-f-35-fl...
Tony1963 said:
What a terribly written article. And no agenda, of course.
I'd say the first half covering the F-35 itself could be seen as "agenda driven", especially the guesswork about the OBOGS, however the second half talking about the supply chain, ALIS etc is absolutely correct. I worked with the UK part of the F-35 LRU maintenance development team (based at BAES Rochester) a few years ago, where the requested design was for 1 automated test bench that can test dozens of completely different items (LRU's) including electrical and mechanical testing, and we seriously struggled to get any LRU's delivered so we could test the bench because of the huge short-fall in supply. These 3-12 month delays on 90%+ of the LRU's meant that our testing phases were delayed and the knock-on effect of this poor supply chain effected more than just us as we would see e-mail chains from other companies involved in similar work who also couldn't get hold of parts and were asking if we had any they could use.
We had a requirement to integrate ALIS into the bench (if it finds something wrong it orders a new part automatically once/if a human agrees) and the ALIS software was so garbage that the project manager eventually had to ask for approval to strip the requirement for it to be integrated i.e. we wanted it to be left stand-alone as it required so much extra work to even try and make it stable/usable.
While the A/C may have it's good/bad points which can be debated further, it's undeniable that the project is horrifically left down by the current supply chain, ALIS software and a "support" project management team which is massively out of it's depth.
Pentagon looking to remove Turkey from the F-35 programme over the purchase of Russian missiles
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28421/heres-...
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28421/heres-...
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