Archive for the 'Vehicles' Category
Mar 30, 2010, post by awatrobski
Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed confidence Wednesday that the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is on track and informed he does not expect more cost increases or schedule delays for the stealthy jets.
“There are no guarantees in any of this, but based on everything that I’ve seen, I have confidence that the range of cost estimates and timing that is being described and presented to me today will in fact be executed,” Gates told the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.
Gates said his confidence stems from a thorough review of the program by Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter, as well as the decision to rely on the independent Joint Estimating Team’s assessment of the F-35 rather than the program office’s estimates on cost and schedule.
“Part of the problem we have faced on this program are overly rosy forecasts by the program office itself,” Gates informed.
In recent months, the Defense Department has restructured its development and procurement of the F-35, the largest weapons system program on the Pentagon’s books. The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps plan to buy more than 2,400 of the fighters.
The restructuring was prompted by soaring costs, which grew from $50 million average procurement cost per plane in fiscal 2002 to between $79 million and $95 million, in constant dollars, today. Adjusted for inflation, the average procurement cost is projected at between $93 million and $112 million.
The cost increase means the F-35 has breached the 1982 Nunn-McCurdy cost-control law, triggering a congressional review and forcing the Pentagon to prove the program is critical to national security to protect the Lockheed Martin Corp. fighter program from termination.
To address the problems, Gates added 13 months to the development phase of the program, a move that delayed the initial operational use date for the Navy by more than a year and the Air Force by more than two years.
He also has fired the two-star officer who was its program manager and has nominated a three-star officer, Vice Adm. David Venlet, to replace him. And he withheld $614 million in award fees from Lockheed Martin.
“I think we got their attention,” Gates informed Wednesday.
During the hearing, Gates said the problems with the F-35 are not unusual in a major acquisition program, citing similar troubles early on with the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor fighter jet and the C-17 cargo transporter. He also emphasized that most problems have been managerial and not technical.
“It is important to remember that the F-35′s cost- and schedule-related issues — and I regard them as serious, to be sure — are problems primarily related to program administration and management, not the technology or capability of the aircraft,” Gates informed. “The Joint Strike Fighter will do everything the military services need it to do, and will become the backbone of U.S. air combat for the next generation.”
Mar 23, 2010, post by awatrobski
The flying debut of Russia’s answer to the F-22 Raptor isn’t wowing Air Force leaders.
Dubbed the T-50 or PAK-FA, the fifth-generation stealth fighter jet made its maiden flight Jan. 29 — 47 minutes over eastern Russia — and has flown at least twice since then. The twin-engine jet will replace the MiG-29 Fulcrum and Su-27 Flanker, both fourth-generation front-line fighters.
The first operational T-50s should be provided in 2015, the same year the Air Force expects its first F-35 Lightning II. Also a fifth-generation fighter, the F-35 has a single supersonic engine and stealth capabilities.
“I didn’t see anything … that would cause me to rethink plans for the F-22 or F-35,” Air Force Secretary Michael Donley told reporters Feb. 18 at the Air Force Association’s winter conference, held in Orlando, Fla.
“Russia has a robust [aircraft industry],” Donley informed. “This is not a surprise in that context.”
The PAK-FA resembles the F-22 — distinctive tilted rear tail fins and all — and has many of the same high-tech features, including digital avionics, a phased-array radar and communications equipment to link the fighter to command and control centers, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
The Air Force ordered the last of its 187 F-22s in 2009. Russia has not had a new fighter in nearly 20 years; the Indian air force is also sponsoring development of a version of the T-50.
“It looks like a plane we’ve seen before,” Gen. Roger Brady, the air boss for NATO and commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, said at the conference.
Gen. Gary North, commander of Pacific Air Forces, made clear his impression of the fighter: “I guess the greatest flattery is how much they copy you.”
Still, the four-stars wonder whether the T-50 will live up to its fifth-generation billing.
“I don’t know if it’s really a fifth-generation aircraft,” Brady said. “What I do know is that it’s very clear that they’re working on a fifth-generation technology.”
For Brady, Russia’s push on the development front signals that the U.S. cannot settle for the status quo.
“The key is, we must continue to do fifth-generation and sixth-generation research and put money against it because other people clearly are,” Brady said.
North added that the Pentagon must ensure fourth-generation jets such as the F-15, F-16 and F/A-18 are continually upgraded.
“If we’re not going to buy more, what we’ve got to have is the very best that our sons and daughters go out to fight with,” he said.
In tandem with the T-50 project, Russia is developing a long-range bomber.
“We won’t limit ourselves to just one new model,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said March 1. “We must start work on a prospective long-range aircraft, our new strategic bomber.”
Feb 24, 2010, post by awatrobski
Russia has begun flying a stealthy fifth-generation fighter to rival the U.S. F-22, but Western analysts question whether Sukhoi can develop and provide the aircraft by 2015 as promised.
Sukhoi’s T-50, which made its 47-min. first flight on Jan. 29 from the KnAAPO facility in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, is the prototype of the PAK FA “future front-line aircraft,” the first new-generation fighter for the Russian air force since the Su-27 Flanker entered service in 1984. India plans to co-fund development and co-produce the new aircraft.
The aircraft is clearly shaped for stealth, with the chined forward fuselage, planform edge alignment, internal weapons bays and small vertical tails. The T-50 shows resemblances to the F-22 Raptor, but also reflects its Su-27 heritage in the wide “centroplane” that blends the fuselage and wing.
Sukhoi informs “the T-50 will demonstrate unprecedented small cross section in the radar, optical and infrared range owing to composites and innovative technologies applied in the fuselage, aerodynamics of the aircraft and decreased engine signature.”
U.S. analysts are impressed, but not yet panicked by the T-50. “Don’t go overboard and call it the Raptorski,” informs a Washington-based official. “It is essentially a Flanker in the shape of a fifth-generation fighter at this point. It still needs supercruise engines, advanced radar and a lot more work before military planners can start saying how it’s going to compete with the F-22 or even the F-35.”
Work on the T-50 began in the early 2000s, and the fighter is somewhere between a technology demonstrator and a development aircraft. How much effort is needed to finalize the production aircraft is not clear. Sukhoi’s Su-27 was substantially redesigned from the T-10 prototype, which first flew in 1977; but despite some rough edges, the T-50 looks closer to a finished product.
The YF-22 prototype first flew in September 1990, and the first development aircraft in September 1997, but the F-22 was not declared operational until December 2005—a longer cycle time than proposed for the PAK FA. And there are only three prototypes: the T-50-0 static-test article; T-50-1, now flying; and T-50-2, which will be used for ground testing. The two YF-22s were followed by nine development F-22s.
