Lockheed Martin F-35 Thread

The F-35 final assembly and checkout plant in Cameri, Italy, will reopen Wednesday after a two-day temporary shutdown meant to help prevent the further spread of the new coronavirus.
[...]
The other international final assembly and checkout plant, run by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and based in Nagoya, Japan, is also back to a normal work schedule after a temporary pause from March 9-13, the source said. Meanwhile, F-35 production at Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth, Texas-based plant continues without interruption.

 
What? Been working the whole time myself. We've hired several new engineers in the last couple weeks. (Finally.) They'd been requested months ago, finally narrowed it down and hired them. As many as can work from home. Those who can't exercise social distancing, masks, frequent cleaning of areas, etc. One person on another site tested positive and they sent the entire site, as well as anybody who'd been over there in the previous two weeks, home for paid 2-week self-quarantine. (Unless you were salaried. Then you worked from home.) Brother works in the business at another company. Somebody decided they had a tummy ache and they sent everybody home until he came back negative.
 
I am an elctrical engineer and officially laid off 3 weeks ago as why should the company pay so many people to work from home. Been battling the state unemployment office for 3 weeks and still not a single penny paid out. You guys are lucky. Rumor is June when they will start bringing people back but the other rumor I hear from my contacts is the company will make layoffs permanent and hire more people from India.
 
Rumor is June when they will start bringing people back but the other rumor I hear from my contacts is the company will make layoffs permanent and hire more people from India.

You can thank Mike Lee for that. Sorry I ever voted for him. Sounds like your company is just using it as an excuse to import cheap Indians.
 
What is non-MADL EA mech function? is it the acronym for electronic attack mechanism?

RclUR2V.jpg
 
How can such a construction issue apply only to B and C variants and yet be unsolvable? How come whatever was done on A variant can't be applied to other variants?
 
If you read the original set of DefenseNews articles that came out last year, the deficiencies for the B and C exist simply because they each individually had a single test flight where their tails were damaged from extended afterburner usage, at around Mach 1.3 or so, at high altitude. They tried to replicate the damage to identify the exact conditions that caused it, but they were never able to cause the damage ever again (this was all back 5+ years ago).

In the period since that tail damage was observed, they did put new coatings onto the tail surfaces that face the afterburner plume, and that might have helped, but because they couldn't replicate the damage, and yet the damage did happen (maybe there was some atmospheric condition like atmospheric temperature that they didn't record and haven't been able to replicate), they can't verify that the issue is well and truly gone.

So some ~200,000 flight hours later, with no further cases of tail damage, they're leaving it as an open deficiency with a pilot-enforced time limit on afterburner use within a certain part of the flight envelope where they speculate some pilot might one day run into the conditions that caused the damage. If an F-35C or F-35B pilot does one day have the need to use their afterburner beyond the current restrictions, there's nothing stopping them from breaking the time limits, it's just that they'll need to have a reasonable answer as to why they broke the rule during the debrief.

According to the JPO PEO they've also decided to leave it open, rather than file it as 'closed with an acceptable pilot workaround', just so that (eg) 15 years from now, some JPO or USN F-35 integration office manager will hopefully be able to recognise that a new stealth material used for a hypersonic stealth platform is going to be worth investigating retrofitting onto the F-35B and F-35C.
 


I read the article that was directly linked and it had none of the context you provided. Of course that would have killed the story showing why someone like you will never be hired by the media. The originating article allowed program officials to respond. It is illustrative that Defense News chose to dismiss their explanations and do another run minus their inputs (how many people click back to source references and that includes me on the first go).
 
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6 AMRAAM & Aft heavy weapons (for AARGM-ER/SiAW) - delivery begins in 2023

https://files.nc.gov/deftech/blog/files/FY2021-Navy-UPL-c2.pdf
 
 

Anything to deflect attention. The man says a lot of things. Few rarely come to fruition...

It’s a reaction, not a deflection; a reaction to the recently released GAO report which criticised the F-35’s supply chain and specifically highlighted the Pentagon’s initiative to remove Turkish companies from the JSF supply chain as something which could further exacerbate this problem.
 

Anything to deflect attention. The man says a lot of things. Few rarely come to fruition...

It’s a reaction, not a deflection; a reaction to the recently released GAO report which criticised the F-35’s supply chain and specifically highlighted the Pentagon’s initiative to remove Turkish companies from the JSF supply chain as something which could further exacerbate this problem.

An educated assessment by Defense News...
https://www.defensenews.com/air/202...the-f-35s-supply-chain-here-are-some-answers/
 
Daily stretch-out exercise... Today: zygomatics


How long did it take the McClaren to reach Mach 1 and did it pull 9Gs on the skidpad? That basically covers my thoughts on these videos.

Having said that, I would love to own a Speedtail, it's one of my favorite supercars.
 
A black week for stealth jets and particulary for Eglin.

Maybe the airframe isn’t a total right off, considering it “crashed upon landing”?

Is there another report, I didn't read anything in that article that said that's what happened.
 
I get the feeling home grown will want that one and come up with a conformal pasta making machine instead. Much better for relief/refugee ops.
 
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“I was flying out at 700 knots in the C model up and down the East Coast of the state of Maryland and Delaware — that’s where we fly at Pax River — and then out over the ocean, firing missiles at almost 1.6 Mach as we cleared out the weapons for the airplane. That’s extreme speed, and that’s repeated flights in those environments,” said Flynn, who has flown more than 800 hours in all three F-35 variants.
“Make a run at 700 knots, make another run at 700 knots, go to an aerial refueling tanker, get fuel for myself … and then race out again and again and again. Repeat this cycle for four- and five-hour missions,” he added.
Similarly, the flights for the B model involved aggressive maneuvering at the edge of the aircraft’s flight envelope for hours at a time.
 
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