Posted on 07/04/2014 3:18:41 AM PDT by Timber Rattler
The military on Thursday said it had grounded the entire fleet of Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets until completion of additional inspections of the warplane's single engine built by Pratt & Whitney.
The Pentagon's F-35 program office, Air Force and Navy issued directives on Thursday ordering the suspension of all F-35 flights after a June 23 fire on an Air Force F-35A jet at a Florida air base, according to statements by the Pentagon and the F-35 program office.
The Pentagon said U.S. and industry officials had not been able to pinpoint the cause of the fire, which occurred as a pilot was preparing for takeoff. The pilot was not injured. The Pentagon said preparations were continuing for F-35 jets to participate in two UK air shows later this month, but a final decision would be made early next week.
If I was an A10 driver, I’d SLEEP in the damned thing and dare them to pry me out of it.
Union Labor at P&WA?
There are no coincidences. JULY 4th this is announced? B.s.
I disagree with that statement. Every new aircraft and/or weapons system that represents a major leap in technology will have some problems in it. The engineers try to get most of the problems before fabrication. The Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E) teams try to find any bugs the engineers didn't, and get the fixes in before low speed/high speed production starts. Some bugs just can't be found unless a certain and precise conditions occur that can't be created except under operational conditions. I was on an IOT&E team for over 5 years, and even though we managed 98% bug fixes it was that 2% that caused us the biggest headaches.
Looking back a few years, I remember things felt pretty good under GWB, but the press beat on him daily.
Thanks in large measure to this constant barrage, his approval ratings eventually fell to numbers the media could feel good about and use against him.
And here we are again. SSDD.
The media is not going to praise something like the F-35 for any reason other than it being cancelled.
They are motivated to destroy it, not make it popular, and they are succeeding. One story at a time.
(Note, we rarely hear a single good thing about the F-35, and when we do now we don't believe it.)
The F-22 is a great fighter and we has not yet deployed the F-35 for combat. We still rely on F-22s, F-15s, F-16s and F-18s. The F-35 is starting to look like an overpriced under performing aircraft and that is certainly worry some. I’d like to see us build more F-22s for air superiority, F-111’s for tactical bombing and A-10’s for ground support. It was poor judgement to think the F-35 could perform all of those roles.
Oh, sure we can - that's what the F-16 is. But that's not what we're building.
What we're building is a do-it-all platform, a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, air superiority at 30,000 feet and mud slinger at 10 feet failure.
B2’s, F15, F16, F18 and A10. That alone is better than the rest of the worlds military fighter/bomber aircraft, combined.
More importantly, what we have over our adversaries is a better breed of pilot. If Americans flown MiG30’s, that might be the best plane in the world.
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