Thanks 'CK':
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CK commented on "Red Sea Is Now So Dangerous Even NATO Warships Are Avoiding It"
5 hours ago
An interesting FACT that many people ain't aware of.
The US air force is trying to fly its F35s from 250-316 hours each year. This would mean 1100-1400 hours each year on airframe maintenance and more hours on engines and systems. Each F-35 stealth fighter has over 25 critical failures every year. More frequent flight hours mean more number of critical failures & more frequent service & replacement of failed components.
At a hearing in Washington DC on April 28, 2022, Congressman John Garamendi, chair of the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness subcommittee, said bluntly: “We’re not going to buy more planes until we figure out how to maintain them.”
The US Air Force FY2023 budget proposal called for 48 F-35As, rather than the expected 60. A slowed procurement that reflects delays in the F-35 supply chain, contract negotiations and the Block 4 upgrade.
These uncertainties have shaped the future of F-35 sustainment. On fact - NO MORE F35 series jet fighters r in production currently. Many parts suppliers have closed shop, especially those specific parts designed solely for F35s.
The Israeli air force has been heavily relying on their F35 to carry out multiple attacks & bombings throughout the current ME conflicts.
Based on the service/maintenance requirements of the F35, many of these jet fighters need to have parts replacement & service maintenance due to their overly heavy usage.
Yet, the Israeli can still flying those jet, implying these planes r been fairly serviced/maintained.
The question is where do those replacement parts, especially those uniquely designed one, come from. The manufacturers of most of these service parts have closed shop. Thus, the only supply source is to cannibalize existing fighters in services.
US has the most F35, following by many of his allies. To date, the F-35 operates from 32 bases worldwide, with 10 nations operating F-35s on home soil. There are nearly 1,000 aircraft operational with 50% in combat ready mode.
How many of these F35 operators would willingly allow their working F35 to be cannibalized for parts, especially for the Israeli air force?
Most wouldn' - with the exception of US & Germany. Currently the US is removing servicing parts from their mothballed F35 to meet the requirements of the Israeli air force.
What is the tolerance of the US air force in allowing these actions to be taken such that their own F35 combat readiness would be compromised.
The time will come when the Israeli air force would lose the use of the F35 in carrying out their site space carnages throughout the ME.
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F-35 Joint Strike Fighter:Program Continues to Encounter Production Issues and Modernization Delays
GAO-24-106909Published: May 16, 2024. Publicly Released: May 16, 2024.
Fast Facts
After nearly 20 years, the F-35 program moved into full-rate production after conducting its final simulated tests. At this milestone, DOD determined that the F-35 demonstrated an acceptable level of performance and reliability and could be manufactured faster.
However, contractors continue to deliver engines and aircraft late—a trend that has worsened in the last few years. The program also faces delays in updating the aircraft's software and has been slow to modernize the engine and other aircraft components.
We previously made recommendations to help the F-35 program address these challenges, but DOD has only implemented some of them.
Highlights
What GAO Found
The F-35 program achieved full-rate production in March 2024. Full-rate production is the point when a program has demonstrated an acceptable level of performance and reliability. Further, the F-35 program completed development of its testing simulator and conducted its final simulated tests.
Even with this progress, the F-35's contractors continue to deliver the engines and aircraft late—a trend that worsened in the last few years. According to program officials, late deliveries were partially caused by manufacturing issues and parts shortages. The program and contractors are mitigating these issues.
Percentage of Engines and Aircraft that Contractors Delivered Late in Calendar Year 2023
Contractor | Parts delivered | Percentage delivered late |
|---|---|---|
Pratt & Whitney | Engines | 100 |
Lockheed Martin | Aircraft | 91 |
Source: GAO analysis of contractor data. | GAO-24-106909
Hardware and software delays—specifically those associated with Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3)—are another factor driving delays and hindering the program's progress in completing the Block 4 modernization. TR-3 is a $1.8-billion suite of hardware and software upgrades that are critical to the Block 4 modernization effort. TR-3 suppliers have faced setbacks including supply chain issues and software issues. The program and contractor are resolving these issues.
The program made some progress in its recent efforts to modernize the engine and other subsystems but has not awarded a development contract.
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Air & Space Forces Magazine:
Report: F-35 Struggled With Reliability, Maintainability, Availability in 2023
Feb. 8, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak
The U.S. fleet of F-35 fighters continued to be vexed by reliability, maintainability, and availability (RMA) problems last fiscal year, available for operations only 51 percent of the time—compared to a goal of 65 percent—according to the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation’s annual report.
“The operational suitability of the F-35 fleet remains below service expectations and requirements,” according to the report, published in late January.
Aircraft availability among all U.S. F-35s hit its high water mark in January 2021 but has declined since, the report authors noted.
“In [fiscal year 2023], aircraft availability was slightly below that in FY’22, after declining for most of FY’21,” the report assessed. “Available” means an F-35 can do at least one of its many assigned missions.
The RMA performance of the F-35 has been the subject of numerous congressional hearings and Government Accountability Office reports over the years, and the Pentagon has launched many initiatives meant to get mission capability rates up.
Newer aircraft—with more proven components—have tended to perform better than older ones across the 20-year-old program, and the Pentagon has argued that the complexity of the stealthy and computer-intensive jet means its availability shouldn’t be judged against less-complex earlier types of aircraft.
Even though the F-35 still has not met the developmental exit criteria to enter “full rate production,” the flying hours accumulated by the fleet mean it should be viewed as a largely mature system.
A total of 628 F-35s had been delivered to the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy by the end of September 2023, but that figure doesn’t include aircraft in developmental test or any of the F-35s completed but now in storage, awaiting completion of Tech Refresh-3 update testing. The report did not assess F-35 performance with foreign operators.
Aircraft that were combat-coded—which typically receive priority for spare parts and maintenance—achieved the best performance for availability, the report stated, noting that 61 percent were available on an average monthly basis. But that was still below the goal of 65 percent, and in only one month of fiscal 2023 did the F-35 fleet surpass the goal. Across all F-35s, the average was 51 percent.
Viewed in terms of full mission capability—which means an F-35 is “capable of executing all assigned missions”—combat-coded aircraft again did better than the overall fleet but fell well short of the goal. Across 2023, the combat-coded fleet achieved a monthly full mission capable rate average of 48 percent, versus 30 percent for the whole fleet. The full mission capable rate for the operational test fleet was only nine percent. Non-combat-coded aircraft include those down for maintenance, in depot, or being used as daily trainers.
Slightly more than half the fleet—51 percent, as of the end of September 2023—is now combat-coded, the report noted.
Aircraft dubbed “not available” are designated as such when they are in depot or unable to fly due to maintenance or supply issues. Rates of aircraft down due to supply was 27 percent; “relatively flat” but “slightly worse” than the fiscal 2023 rate, the report noted. It’s been on a worsening trend since July 2021.
Aircraft down because they were awaiting maintenance in 2023 was 15 percent.
“To improve aircraft availability, the program should continue to pursue maintenance system improvements, especially for common processes distributed among many different [Non-Mission Capable for Maintenance] drivers, such as low-observable repairs, adhesive cure times for attaching hardware such as nutplates,” and stocking enough of the “most critical” in-demand spares, the DOT&E report stated.
“The program should also focus reliability improvements on the components most often not immediately available in supply,” the report added.
Particularly for the Air Force F-35A version, “the significant shortage of fully-functional F135 engines contributed” to lower aircraft availability.
This was offset in part by “aggressive program efforts to lay in additional depot resources, improve depot efficiencies, and ruggedize key engine components,” and increasing “the number of spare modules ready for issue,” the report noted.
However, “other degraders such as canopy and egress system issues have contributed to stagnant, or slightly declining, availability.”
As a fleet, the F-35 still isn’t meeting the reliability and maintainability standards set in the Operational Requirements Document, the report noted.
“The F-35A meets two and the F-35B meets one of the three reliability requirements. No variant is meeting [all] the maintainability requirements,” it said.
The F-35A fleet was supposed to achieve a rate of 20 Mean Flight Hours Between Critical Failures after 75,000 fleet hours. But in 2023, it only achieved a rate of 10.5, despite having racked up more than 288,000 total flight hours since entering service. The F-35B variant, operated by the Marines, and the F-35C, flown by the Navy, both missed their goals as well.
The main drivers of critical failures were “troubleshooting (including software stability), attaching hardware (including nutplates), wires/tubes/ducts/ fiber optics, throttle grip, aircraft memory device, [low observability] repair, standby flight display, refueling door, position light,” the report noted.
The fix times for “critical failures” was double the operational requirement for the Air Force, nearly three times for the Marine Corps, and more than double for the Navy.
In the category of Mean Flight Hours Between Removal, all the variants did better, achieving 108 percent for the A model and 78 percent each for the B and C.
All the variants came close to or beat the requirement for “Mean Flight Hours Between Maintenance Events (Unscheduled),” with the Air Force and Navy F-35s besting the requirement by 110 percent and 120 percent, respectively, while the Marine Corps hit 80 percent of the goal.
DOT&E’s recommendations regarding RMA mirrored those of the fiscal 2022 report. It urged continued maintenance system improvements and more investment in spares, “especially for F135 engines, to reduce down-time for aircraft waiting [for] spare parts by developing alternate sources of repair, including organic repair.”
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