America’s $400 Billion Stealth Jet Fleet Is Grounded

Daily Beast ^ | June 28, 2014 | Dave Majumdar

[lbryce]

America’s $400 Billion Stealth Jet Fleet Is Grounded Plagued by delays and cost overruns that turned it into the most expensive weapons program in history, the F-35 program is on hold after a fire nearly destroyed a plane. The U.S. Air Force has grounded its fleet of stealthy Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (JSF) after one aircraft caught fire on takeoff Monday at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. While the pilot got out of the stricken jet without injury, the roughly $200 million machine could be a total loss.

“The airplane aborted during takeoff due to a fire in the rear of the aircraft, the pilot egressed safely without injury, and the fire was extinguished,” Air Force spokeswoman Maj. Natasha Waggoner told The Daily Beast.

Monday’s fire is one of the most serious incidents suffered by the long-troubled and expensive F-35 program, and it could be the first time an aircraft has been lost.

The jet was originally conceived in the 1990s as a relatively low-cost way to replace the Pentagon’s myriad fleet of ageing fighters with a single common design. The Pentagon hopes to buy 2,443 of the jets to replace everything from A-10 Warthog ground-attack planes, to multirole F-16 and F/A-18 fighters, to the AV-8B Harrier jump jet. There are three versions of the F-35: one version designed for flying from normal land bases, another to fly off aircraft carriers, and another that can land vertically.

But the JSF program has been plagued with repeated delays and numerous technical problems over it is 12-year history. Many of the problems stem from the fact that the Pentagon decided to design, built, test and fly the F-35 all at the same time rather than sequentially like a normal program.

The F-35 was originally intended to be operational with

[ClearCase_guy]

I never defend the F-35.
I won’t really defend the thinking of the DoD.
But I will explain that part of the purpose of the new designs (some good, some bad) is to keep the defense industry alive. Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop and the rest can’t survive on producing simple upgrades. They need new expensive programs. The government typically wants those companies around in case we need them, so we fund them with fancy new programs just to keep the firms alive. For example: if we lose our ship-building capability (and we have little left for big Navy vessels) then we would have an awful time trying to resurrect it. So we fund ships just to keep the shipyards.

[Star Traveler]

Go back to the post that I replied to ... Obama is definitely connected to this “death spiral” ...

[laplata]

As a small kid in a concentration camp I looked up and wondered why the two pilots had to sit so far from each other.

---

The P-38 is next favorite after the P-51 Mustang for me.

Best regards to you.

[gura]

[GeronL]

nice

[Big Red Badger]

We seem to be on a death spiral,,,

that about sums it up.

have a nice day!

[Fungi]

How is it possible to “have a nice day” with what is going down?

[daniel1212]

The US cannot do anything right—from jets, to Iraq, to the southern border, to Obamacare, to lost e-mails, to wind power, to pipelines, to ......... you name it. What is going on? We seem to be on a death spiral.

The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. (Psalms 9:17)

REVEALING STATISTICS (or, Present Costs of the War Against God)

[gura]

We just need a bunch of those, more block 52 F-16s, and build a new A-10 type CAS plane.

[Daaave]

Here's a February 21, 2013 article with publicly announced F-35 groundings up to that date.

F-35 Grounded After New F-135 Engine Problems

[clearcarbon]

"The original idea to replace different combat aircraft with a single design has resulted in the most expensive defense program in the history of mankind, with the price tag ballooning from $220 billion to about $400 billion."

I thought the lesson learned from the F-111 program was not to do that.

[GBA]

Good news! Only one percent of the fleet has been lost without ever engaging the enemy.

Yep, our very efficient domestic enemies have succeeded at countering and neutralizing one of our newest and most technologically advanced weapons before it's even been faced in battle.

In the meantime, Putin flexes muscle by firing six new air-launched cruise missiles.

[UCANSEE2]

I do know of a project that went into a Critical Design Review (CDR) to finalize and approve the design, and one of the required inputs for the CDR was a set of "As-Built" drawings.

Sounds like the National Health Care Plan (or ACA)

[PLMerite]

“Are they using that biodiesel fuel?”

Recycled cooking oil. Now we have self-frying aircraft.

[MHalblaub]

The grounding is no threat to the national security due to the fact F-35 has still NO initial operation capability (IOC). In other words a test aircraft is grounded.

[lbryce]

Well, that certainly changes the perspective, ramifications of the article. Thanks very much for the enlightenment.