The F-35 and who makes the parts

[Glenn E. Meyer]

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/203505/chinese_owned-uk-firm-making-parts-for-f_35.html

Well, we bluster about fire and fury and posture about what we will do to so and so, if they misbehave.

The F-35, our next front line wonder plane, will be a mainstay in such future costs. Well, who makes the parts:

1. From above a Chinese owned company. That's a plan
2. The Turks - if you have followed the S-400 debate, we will have to find a new source for parts if the Turks are booted out. Never understood why we we selling such a high end plane to such a fragile 'ally'.

Seems to me that our need for sales has led to compromises dangerous in times of real conflict. It also is weird that we refused to sell F-22s to the Israelis, Japanese and Australians as we thought they would leak secrets - then the Turks? Huh, the lack of F-22 sales was part of the number we purchased being dramatically reduced.

[Ed L]

Don't get me started . . .

Having a plane designed to fulfill the needs of the Air Force, Navy, and Marines was a recipe for a plane that would not do well for any for any of the services.

But the F-35 program has been a huge disaster for more reasons than just that.

The F-35 was put into production long before it should have been--long before it was fully developed

I can't help being suspicious that some people in the military and industry who had to know long ago that the plane did not measure up and kept quiet since pointing out a problem would have likely cost them their careers.

It was a huge problem when then secretary of defense Robert Gates cancelled buying more F-22s, claiming that the F-35 would fill its role even though the information at the time clearly pointed that the F-35 could not have filled the F-22's role, plus the F-35 was not developed enough to be able to say how capable it really was.

Hint, hint, it would be nice if we had a military category to have intelligent discussions about topics like this. We have some very knowledgeable people here who like to have intelligent discussion about military topics. The only problem is sometimes these topics drift to page 2 of the general discussion category and get forgotten. Just a suggestion. If it would be too much of a pain in the ass for the admins I understand.

[Joe in PNG]

If they ever make "Pentagon Wars II", it should be about the F-35.

[Duelist]

I’m not a pilot. I’m not an Airforce member or vet. But I have always loved military aircraft, especially fighters.

The F35 has always looked a little weird to me, and I can’t understand why, if it’s supposed to be the next-Gen air superiority machine, they have purchased so few (besides that it’s hella expensive - but what isn’t).

All that said, I saw one just absolutely tearing up the sky over Tucson a couple of months ago. OMG. What an awesome, awesome bird.

I know that’s not a technical analysis. Like I said, I’m the nerdy kid geeking out over staring at them through the fence and watching them fly in air shows, and once in a while I get lucky enough to watch an F16 or F18 or C130 or whatever fly the same manouvers over and over again on a training day.

But that was awesome to watch. Nearly made me wreck my car when I realized what it was, and I had to stop and stare at it for a while and try to get phone camera footage of it.

[JAD]

It's an interesting article. We have very robust rules that prevent that specific scenario in the US (ask me how I know). I am surprised that we don't cross-apply those rules to JSF partners. Maybe we do and these guys just got busted; or maybe we don't and we should. I don't usually think of the Brits as being fast and loose with their version of ITAR (that's more a French thing).

[farscott]

If the Chinese-owned company is producing printed circuit boards (PCB) that is one issue. If the company is producing printed circuit board assemblies (PCBA), that is another issue. The former is the bare board without components. While the manufacturing information may provide some information, especially if the ODB++ format is used, there is not a lot there. If the older Gerber RS-274X spec is used, very little data is provided other than that needed to fabricate the bare PCB. The board has all of the electrical connections and component package footprints but it is difficult to extract much information on how the PCBA performs from the artwork.

If the PCB vendor is given only what is sufficient to build the PCB, the security risk is minimal.

[gtae07]

The F-35 is a prime example of why people who know jack, shit, and fuck all about developing complex projects like modern aircraft do not need to have access to every development detail and report about “problems”. Because you see, every single program has problems. Every one. Apparently people seem to think that “well, now we have computers, and so everything ought to be perfect the first time around and if there’s any kind of issue at all it’s an indication that there are fundamental implementation problems with program-level implications and a sign that the designers are totally incompetent”. Yet, computer modeling is by no means a catch-all omniscient science.

For example, take cracks on a fatigue test article. They are going to be there, and if you aren’t finding them, that’s a problem because it means you either aren’t looking hard enough, you aren’t testing right, or you are way overbuilt. Every fatigue article ever tested had cracks. You test so you can learn where they’re likely to be and you figure out how to address them.

Avionics integration is similar. No matter how thorough you think you have been with your documentation and devvelopment, the first time you hook all your boxes up together to test them, it isn’t going to work. And then you’re going to find bugs and failure modes you never anticipated. That’s why you test.

The second problem is that people in the above-mentioned categories do not understand why the F-35 was designed the way it was. They read that the F-35 is supposed to replace the F-16, which was originally conceived as a super-simple lightweight visual-range day-VFR dogfighter that could outmaneuver everything else in the sky, and they then think the F-35 should thus be the super-duper-uber-dogfighter that can twist and turn and dodge and outmaneuver the F-16 for a visual-range guns kill, because we all “knnow” from Vietnam that missiles are useless and all air-to-air engagements in the future will be visual-range guns kills. But they forget that what made the F-16 so successful was not extreme maneuverability. Rather, it was adding all the “useless stuff” like a capable radar, improved avionics, targeting pods, radar missiles, guided bombs, etc. that made it so useful to the US and foreign air forces.

Basically, a lot of people look at the list of aircraft the F-35 is supposed to “replace” and expect it to do the original jobs of those airplanes the way they were originally conceived to do them—all at the same time. They thus expect a super-duper-uber dogfighter carrying a gigantic gun and stacks of armor that can hunt tanks in the weeds with a fixed gunsight, and simultaneously take off vertically with a Mudhen’s payload while keeping up with an F-22. It’s ridiculous. Frankly, it looks a lot more like someone sat down to rationally figure out “what jobs are all of these airplanes actually dooing, and how can we do them better”—and what you get is an airplane that can sneak around with loads of gas, a decent payload, God-mode situational awareness, and enough maneuverability to at least hold its own.

Third, it really points out the folly of “cost estimation”—or more accurately, the idea that somehow the budget and schedule forecasts of people who aren’t doing the work, regarding things that we haven’t done and don’t yet know how to do, somehow represent actual reality; and when the actual execution of doing those things doesn’t match the forecast, it’s reality that’s wrong. The accuracy of any cost estimate is inversely proportional to the maturity level of the thing being developed. The Super Hornet was on-schedule and on-budget because it wasn’t anything new—there wasn’t really any new technology challenge. The F-35 had a whole bunch of new stuff that hadn’t been done before, at least outside of a lab.

Finally, on the subject of “being put into production long before it should”. Frankly, the idea that you can build a handful of test airplanes, then shut the line down for years (or a decade) and test your handful of test planes, and then think that you’ve caught every bug and every problem and have a completely and totally ready airframe, then turn a key and start cranking out totally ready airplanes at full rate, is laughable. Hardware isn’t software. Starting production at a low rate, like the F-35 and pretty much every other modern military or commercial aircraft, provides you with several advantages. It allows you to work through your production processes (which have to be debugged just like the design itself) and start finding opportunities to optimize the process early, not to mention fixing small design issues at a low rate. It gets early models into the hands of your users where they can start trying it out under more real-world conditions, because no matter how thoroughly you think you’ve tested and how well you think you’ve thought of everything, the moment your users get their hands on the project they will find new and interesting ways to break it. From a budgetary standpoint, it likely costs less than making the facilities to build your prototypes and then letting the factory and the workers sit idle for years and losing institutional memory in the process.

The tradeoff of this “concurrency” process is, of course, that you’re going to have to go back and fix things on your early airplanes. In fact, they may never quite meet the full production standard. In the commercial world, you deal with this by selling those airframes at a discount to recoup most of your losses; on the military side, they become the trainer and operational test birds. In the case of the F-35, they’re aggressors.

[JAD]

If the Chinese-owned company is producing printed circuit boards (PCB)... If the PCB vendor is given only what is sufficient to build the PCB, the security risk is minimal.

They're a bareboard shop -- I visited them in the early oughties when they were DDI. Concur that .gov would generally consider that low risk and might approve it; wouldn't try to get it past .gov without permission tho.

[Grey]

The F-35 is a prime example of why people who know jack, shit, and fuck all about developing complex projects like modern aircraft do not need to have access to every development detail and report about “problems”. Because you see, every single program has problems. Every one. Apparently people seem to think that “well, now we have computers, and so everything ought to be perfect the first time around and if there’s any kind of issue at all it’s an indication that there are fundamental implementation problems with program-level implications and a sign that the designers are totally incompetent”. Yet, computer modeling is by no means a catch-all omniscient science.

For example, take cracks on a fatigue test article. They are going to be there, and if you aren’t finding them, that’s a problem because it means you either aren’t looking hard enough, you aren’t testing right, or you are way overbuilt. Every fatigue article ever tested had cracks. You test so you can learn where they’re likely to be and you figure out how to address them.

Avionics integration is similar. No matter how thorough you think you have been with your documentation and devvelopment, the first time you hook all your boxes up together to test them, it isn’t going to work. And then you’re going to find bugs and failure modes you never anticipated. That’s why you test.

The second problem is that people in the above-mentioned categories do not understand why the F-35 was designed the way it was. They read that the F-35 is supposed to replace the F-16, which was originally conceived as a super-simple lightweight visual-range day-VFR dogfighter that could outmaneuver everything else in the sky, and they then think the F-35 should thus be the super-duper-uber-dogfighter that can twist and turn and dodge and outmaneuver the F-16 for a visual-range guns kill, because we all “knnow” from Vietnam that missiles are useless and all air-to-air engagements in the future will be visual-range guns kills. But they forget that what made the F-16 so successful was not extreme maneuverability. Rather, it was adding all the “useless stuff” like a capable radar, improved avionics, targeting pods, radar missiles, guided bombs, etc. that made it so useful to the US and foreign air forces.

Basically, a lot of people look at the list of aircraft the F-35 is supposed to “replace” and expect it to do the original jobs of those airplanes the way they were originally conceived to do them—all at the same time. They thus expect a super-duper-uber dogfighter carrying a gigantic gun and stacks of armor that can hunt tanks in the weeds with a fixed gunsight, and simultaneously take off vertically with a Mudhen’s payload while keeping up with an F-22. It’s ridiculous. Frankly, it looks a lot more like someone sat down to rationally figure out “what jobs are all of these airplanes actually dooing, and how can we do them better”—and what you get is an airplane that can sneak around with loads of gas, a decent payload, God-mode situational awareness, and enough maneuverability to at least hold its own.

Third, it really points out the folly of “cost estimation”—or more accurately, the idea that somehow the budget and schedule forecasts of people who aren’t doing the work, regarding things that we haven’t done and don’t yet know how to do, somehow represent actual reality; and when the actual execution of doing those things doesn’t match the forecast, it’s reality that’s wrong. The accuracy of any cost estimate is inversely proportional to the maturity level of the thing being developed. The Super Hornet was on-schedule and on-budget because it wasn’t anything new—there wasn’t really any new technology challenge. The F-35 had a whole bunch of new stuff that hadn’t been done before, at least outside of a lab.

Finally, on the subject of “being put into production long before it should”. Frankly, the idea that you can build a handful of test airplanes, then shut the line down for years (or a decade) and test your handful of test planes, and then think that you’ve caught every bug and every problem and have a completely and totally ready airframe, then turn a key and start cranking out totally ready airplanes at full rate, is laughable. Hardware isn’t software. Starting production at a low rate, like the F-35 and pretty much every other modern military or commercial aircraft, provides you with several advantages. It allows you to work through your production processes (which have to be debugged just like the design itself) and start finding opportunities to optimize the process early, not to mention fixing small design issues at a low rate. It gets early models into the hands of your users where they can start trying it out under more real-world conditions, because no matter how thoroughly you think you’ve tested and how well you think you’ve thought of everything, the moment your users get their hands on the project they will find new and interesting ways to break it. From a budgetary standpoint, it likely costs less than making the facilities to build your prototypes and then letting the factory and the workers sit idle for years and losing institutional memory in the process.

The tradeoff of this “concurrency” process is, of course, that you’re going to have to go back and fix things on your early airplanes. In fact, they may never quite meet the full production standard. In the commercial world, you deal with this by selling those airframes at a discount to recoup most of your losses; on the military side, they become the trainer and operational test birds. In the case of the F-35, they’re aggressors.

Having been slightly involved in aircraft development (mostly hearing reports on progress and milestones) I agree 100%. There are reasons there is built in reserve to everything and then you don't expect to make brand new never been done before shit work on the first go round.

[Trigger]

Hint, hint, it would be nice if we had a military category to have intelligent discussions about topics like this. We have some very knowledgeable people here who like to have intelligent discussion about military topics. The only problem is sometimes these topics drift to page 2 of the general discussion category and get forgotten. Just a suggestion. If it would be too much of a pain in the ass for the admins I understand.

Ed, I fear that a discussion forum addressing airplanes, weapons, sensors and design, etc would stray too close to classified information for comfort. Perhaps it would work for other topics, boats, Marines, grunts, rifles, but not for the airplane side. In order to provide enough information to answer the “Why” question, we would need to provide more detail than prudent. Answering you by saying: “Trust me I know this, and I’m right” is bullshit.

That being said, the acquisition process is hopelessly broken. If it takes 20 years to buy an F-22 or F-35, then the requirements (what we want) change, the technology changes (the hardware specifications for processors, networks, etc...), the people in charge change, and the cost changes. And these changes to the specifications drive changes.

So costs spiral up, and the buyers try to create new ways to buy without breaking the bank. But the rules/laws of the acquisition process work against the buyer. We have to have lots of studies on what decision to make, and everyone has an opinion on that decision, which means the decision takes years instead of days. The requirements experts with the skill to decide do not control the money. The finance/programming people have $20 worth of needs and only $10 worth of funding. And Congress controls the money, and they are idiots.

Trust me, we don’t try to buy lousy compromises, but that is what we end up with. Yes, buying three versions of the F-35 was stupid, but Congress was not willing to fund three different fighter/attack designs simultaneously for the USAF, Navy and Marines. Yes, planning on 750 F-22s and only buying 183 was stupid. We were forced to accept that, or cancel the program. If I wanted to give the DOD and enema, I start with the JCIDS acquisition process. I spent 20 years flying F-16s (breaking things and killing people), and several more years in the Planning, Programming and Requirements world, and by the end of that experience, I was ready to go ballistic. I have a nice relaxing airline job now.

[trailrunner]

I have worked in DoD acquisition for 32 years. The Pentagon Wars was my life for 19 of those years. I’ve worked with every service on the largest programs including ships and aircraft. Spent time on the F-22, and I remember my first JSF meeting in Crystal City in February 1997 or 1998.

I could write a book on my thoughts, but the only thing I’ll say here is: don’t believe what you read. There are a couple hundred people who know how the F-35 really performs, and I’m certain they aren’t talking publicly. The rest (including the blogs and Defense Daily) are proponents or opponents, and have an agenda. The truth is there, but you don’t know who is telling it. And the history of warfare has shown that we don’t really know how a system will perform until it’s actually in no-shit combat. We (humanity) have been surprised over and over through the eons at first contact with the enemy.

Like TriggerF16, the system has worn me down. I’m going to retire in four years, then work as a kindergarten aide with my wife until she retires from teaching. I figure that my 35 year career in DoD will be perfect preparation for dealing with a bunch of 5 year olds.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[trailrunner]

--delete--

[ldunnmobile]

If I remember correctly, the F35 pulled a bunch of maneuvers at an air show in France that it wasn’t supposed to be able to do.

Also is interesting to me that the Israelis bought some. I doubt they would spend that kinda coin if it wasn’t very capable.