Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

The 34th Fighter Squadron, known as the “Rude Rams,” of Hill AFB, Utah, is set to receive aircraft equipped with the final Block 3F software next month, which most critically will allow the fighter to employ its full suite of air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons. Luke AFB, Arizona, the Air Force’s primary F-35 training squadron, will be the next to get the 3F capability, also in September, according to service spokesman Capt. Mark Graff.

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Flyaway said:

Earl Howe, Minister of State for Defence and Deputy Leader of the House of Lords, has suggested that a change in F-35 variant may be on the cards after the first 48 F-35Bs.

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/government-suggest-change-uk-f-35-variant-order-first-48-f-35bs/

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Airplane said:

Flyaway said:

Earl Howe, Minister of State for Defence and Deputy Leader of the House of Lords, has suggested that a change in F-35 variant may be on the cards after the first 48 F-35Bs.

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/government-suggest-change-uk-f-35-variant-order-first-48-f-35bs/

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What happens to the UK carrier strike group?

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Flyaway said:

Airplane said:

Flyaway said:

Earl Howe, Minister of State for Defence and Deputy Leader of the House of Lords, has suggested that a change in F-35 variant may be on the cards after the first 48 F-35Bs.

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/government-suggest-change-uk-f-35-variant-order-first-48-f-35bs/

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What happens to the UK carrier strike group?

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It says in the article that the 48 so far ordered will be sufficient for that.

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48 is barely enough for one carrier. Do they plan to never have both carriers at sea at the same time?

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Dutch air force officers are updating their Canadian counterparts about their progress on the acquisition of F-35 fighter jets as the aircraft’s manufacturer tries to convince the Liberal government of the plane’s suitability as an interim replacement for aging CF-18s.

Lt.-Gen. Dennis Luyt, the head of the Royal Netherlands Air Force, said his organization has been providing updates to Canada on its F-35 purchase and aircrew training. “They are very interested in our experiences,” Luyt said in a recent interview.

“We’re on track,” he added. “It’s looking very promising.”

The Netherlands is purchasing the F-35A as the replacement for its F-16 fighter jets. The Dutch parliament approved an initial order of eight aircraft in March 2015.

The first aircraft are to be delivered in 2019 and Dutch pilots and maintenance crews are currently undergoing training in the U.S. The Netherlands will purchase up to 37 F-35s.

A Dutch air force F-35 was recently on display at the international air show in Abbotsford, BC.

Luyt said if Canada does eventually buy the F-35, that acquisition would further strengthen the user group of nations operating the plane. Having allied air forces capable of being interoperable with each other is important, he added. “If we operate the same platform it’s obviously a big thing,” Luyt explained.

In a June 1 letter, Lockheed Martin offered the Liberal government the F-35 as an “interim” fighter aircraft.

Last year, the Liberals announced a proposal to buy 18 interim fighter jets from Boeing to deal with a capability gap facing the Royal Canadian Air Force. But that multibillion dollar plan to acquire Super Hornet jets has been thrown into limbo after Boeing filed a trade complaint in the U.S. against Bombardier of Quebec. The Liberal government broke off discussions with Boeing on the Super Hornet deal.

Lockheed Martin has seen opportunity in the rift and has told the Liberals it can deliver F-35s on a similar schedule that was being considered for the Boeing planes. Lockheed Martin president Marillyn Hewson said in the June 1 letter to Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and then procurement minister Judy Foote, that Canada could acquire the F-35 at a cost of between $80 million U.S. and $85 million U.S. per aircraft.

Sajjan’s office stated that no decisions have been made about the interim fighter jet and that various options are being looked at.

Luyt said the Netherlands conducted an extensive process to purchase a new fighter jet. “The biggest thing we needed (was) to make a technology leap to a 5th generation” aircraft, he pointed out.

Part of the consideration in selecting the F-35 was interoperability with U.S. forces. If the Dutch air force goes into combat it will likely be with the U.S. “That (interoperability) is an important consideration but not the only one,” Luyt explained.

Work for Dutch aerospace firms was also a factor, he added. It is estimated that over 20 years, F-35 work for companies in the Netherlands will be worth the equivalent of $13 billion and create several thousand jobs.

Every F-35 contains components manufactured by Dutch companies, Lockheed Martin has noted. On Aug. 16, the U.S. Department of Defense announced the overseas warehouse and distribution centre for parts for F-35s in Europe would be located in the Netherlands.

Luyt said one of the other main attractions of the F-35 is that it will be constantly upgraded. “It will be state of the art for decades,” he added.

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Lockheed Martin has offered the Liberal government the F-35 as an “interim” fighter aircraft, a move sure to turn up the heat on rival U.S. aerospace firm Boeing still embroiled in a trade dispute with Canada.

Last year, the Liberals announced a proposal to buy 18 interim fighter jets from Boeing to deal with a capability gap facing the Royal Canadian Air Force. But that multibillion dollar plan to acquire Super Hornet jets has been thrown into limbo after Boeing filed a trade complaint in the U.S. against Bombardier of Quebec.

The Liberal government broke off discussions with Boeing on the Super Hornet deal.

But Lockheed Martin has seen opportunity in the rift between Canada and Boeing and has officially offered its F-35 as an interim aircraft to supplement the RCAF’s aging CF-18 jets. Lockheed has long contended the F-35 is more cost effective and more advanced than the Super Hornet.

Asked about the Lockheed Martin offer, Matthew Luloff, a spokesman with Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan’s office, responded that the federal government continues “to explore many options to provide an interim solution to supplement the CF-18s until the permanent replacement is fully operational.”

“We have not yet made a decision,” he added in an email. “Discussions must demonstrate that the interim fleet is appropriately capable and can be obtained at a cost, schedule, and economic value that are acceptable to Canadians.”

Lockheed Martin has noted that it continues to provide the Canadian government with updated information on the maturity of the F-35 program and the operational status of the jet.

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The UK remains on target to achieve initial operational capability (IOC) with the Lockheed Martin F-35B in late 2018, with its personnel training and testing activities gathering pace.

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Scores of US-owned Lockheed Martin F-35s would remain in the fleet with a software operating system rated below combat-grade under one of several cost-saving proposals under review by the Joint Programme Office.

Delays during the development stage caused Lockheed to deliver more than 108 aircraft with Block 2B software. Each fighter requires 150-160 modifications to be raised to the combat-rated Block 3 standard, says Vice Adm Matt Winter, the F-35’s programme executive.

The looming modification bills are threatening to suck resources from a looming production ramp-up with more than 900 aircraft projected for delivery over the next five years, Winter says.

“We’re looking at solution spaces to give our warfighters options,” Winter says.

One of those options is to keep a subset of the F-35 fleet at the Block 2B software standard. It would follow a practice used on the Lockheed F-22 programme, which has about 30 fighters maintained at Block 20 for training missions and about 150 fighters using the go-to-war Block 30/35 standard.

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NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland—The U.S. Air Force is making changes to F-35 flight equipment to make breathing easier for pilots, as the Pentagon continues searching for a root cause of five hypoxia-like cockpit incidents in the new fighter at an Arizona Air Force base this summer.

First, the Air Force reduced the weight of the F-35 flight vest by about 10 lb. by eliminating “redundant” survival equipment, Brig. Gen. Brook Leonard, commander of the 56h Fighter Wing at Luke AFB, Arizona, told Aviation Week in a Sept. 18 interview at the Air Force Association’s annual Air, Space and Cyber conference here. The vest originally weighed about 15-17 lb., so cutting survival equipment to a minimum reduced weight on a pilot’s chest significantly, he said.

“When you step out to the jet in 110-degree weather you absolutely feel [the change], and then under Gs you feel it as well,” Leonard said.

In addition, the team found that some masks had faulty exhalation valves, which caused the valve to “stick” during exhalation. This made exhaling much more difficult, Leonard said.

The Air Force has replaced all of the pilots’ exhalation valves, and instituted extra pre- and post-flight procedures to make sure each valve is operating correctly, Leonard said.

The Air Force also has asked the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) to install a cotton ring around the valve to avoid any moisture buildup—for instance, sweat—that might be causing the valve to stick. In addition, the team is looking at possibly redesigning other components with different materials to prevent the problem in future, Leonard said.

While the faulty valve did make breathing harder, it may not be directly linked to the five hypoxia-like incidents that caused the Air Force to temporarily ground the Luke F-35s this summer. Eleven pilots had faulty valves, but none of those pilots were involved in those specific incidents, Leonard said.

“So that’s not to say that wasn’t contributory, just at the time we didn’t know it was an issue,” Leonard said. “As a safety precaution we basically looked across our entire fleet.”

Identifying a root cause of breathing problems during flight is tricky, because so many physiological conditions have overlapping symptoms. Hypoxia—lack of oxygen—is often confused with changes in cabin pressure, contaminated air, or even too much oxygen (hyperventilation). Psychological factors also can induce changes in pilot breathing.

In this case, before the team discovered the faulty valve some pilots were attributing the difficulty they were having exhaling to a completely separate issue, Leonard said. The F-35, unlike most Air Force fighters, actually provides positive oxygen pressure—4 lb. of PSI—to the pilot through the mask to avoid contamination and help pilots breathe easier under high-G environments.

This “overpressure” means that instead of having to pull in air during an inhale, “in the F-35 to some small degree you can just almost open your mouth and you get air,” Leonard explained.

“What happens is if the cockpit got contaminated with air and you had neutral pressure you could actually get some of that contamination into your mask,” Leonard said. “So that’s an improvement on the F-35 where it actually pushes air into your mask, so if you had a contamination it wouldn’t go into the mask itself.”

The team concluded that the positive pressure to the mask did not contribute in a physical way to the five hypoxia-like incidents at Luke that occurred earlier this summer.

However, the fact that pilots believed the positive pressure was causing labored breathing may have contributed to the problem from a psychological standpoint, Leonard said.

To combat this, the team at Luke has focused on educating pilots about the aircraft, their flight equipment, the different physiological conditions, how to control their breathing during flight, and how to identify their own unique hypoxia symptoms, he said.

In terms of possible technical causes, the 711th human performance wing is examining the F-35’s Onboard Oxygen Generation System that supplies breathing air to the pilot from bleed air off the engine. That investigation is ongoing, Leonard said.

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Pratt & Whitney will offer a drop-in thrust or fuel efficiency upgrade for the Lockheed Martin F-35’s engine as the fighter’s joint programme office develops options for the Block 4.2 upgrade package now scheduled to enter service in late 2023.

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