Sad state of affairs at AV week

What used to be recognized as a leading-edge aviation magazine now farms out its "reporting" on one of the most critical defense programs, to a person that is not skilled on the topic and at best, can rarely come up with anything better than industry talking points.

F-35 Blocks--2006 and today

2006-




Today-

Reuters continues its' effort as a proxy marketeer for LM

Pressure builds to get the F-35 into an "operational" squadron for the purpose of alleged image over substance:

The U.S. Air Force plans to start operational use of Lockheed Martin Corp.-built F-35 fighter jets in mid-2016, a year earlier than planned, using a similar software package as the Marine Corps, two sources familiar with the plans said on Monday.

The Air Force's decision to accelerate its introduction with a slightly less capable version of the F-35 software package means the planes will carry fewer weapons at first, although the software will later be upgraded to the final version, said the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

An industry marketing puke must have been the "source", because:

Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said a final decision had not been made and declined to comment further. A spokesman for the Pentagon's F-35 program office declined to comment.

Marines-check, USAF-maybe, what about Navy?

The Navy has set mid-2018 for starting operational use of its C-model F-35, which is designed for use aboard U.S. aircraft carriers. Its deadline or threshold date is early 2019.

Once it can trap reasonably well and pass an OPEVAL; pencil-whipped or otherwise.

"This decision gets that (U.S.) fifth-generation capability out on the front lines that much sooner," said one of the sources familiar with the Air Force's plans. "It also sends a message about confidence in the program to Congress and the international partners."

Not surprisingly, the "source" smells like a LM Marketing Puke.

The Air Force will have about 100 F-35s by 2016, when it plans to declare the planes ready for operational use.

Many without TR-2 hardware needed to run Block 3 software.

The big question is will 2B software allow for ROVER and Blue-Force-Tracker ability? If not, its' value to a joint operational commander will be nil.

Billions for a pet theory.

Analysis? Someone said; "We have to get this POS into a faux-operational squadron before a massive budget cut plan ...eventually strangles it."

Goals, priorities and the best use of your taxpayer dollars.

VTOL

The Marine Corps doesn’t intend for the aircraft to regularly takeoff vertically on operational missions. According to Lockheed Martin press release, “VTOs are required for repositioning of the STOVL in environments where a jet could not perform a short takeoff.  In these cases, the jet, with a limited amount of fuel, would execute a VTO to travel a short distance.”

And.... most important, it is another chance for a photo op to serve marketing.

Above all else.

Quick-leap, Quickstep, Quick-sand?

Quickstep is one of the hallmark industry poster-children for the triple-H (Hill, Houston, Howard) F-35 dream of 2002.

Quickstep and its' investors believed things like this from a 2004 Defence/LM sponsored brief.








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Hold that thought and consider  this article from today's The Australian.

In it, Quickstep Holdings chief Philippe Odouard states that the F-35 program is "very interesting and very controversial."

I guess it would be when investors thought they were buying such (alleged) technology at such a high speed. More old Defence slides:





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Today, those Blocks are watered down, the schedule is very late, and there are few jets being made. This is a lot of lost money.

Not long ago, Quickstep told its' investors this:

In The Australian article, Odouard says, "It's (the F-35) killing a number of other aircraft makers." True but maybe for not all the reasons he thinks?

The reporter for today's The Australian article states the following without attaching it to another person:

"Conspiracy theories aside, the Bankstown-based listed minnow has its' own skin in the JSF game as the producer of carbon-fibre skins and other components for the F-35s."

What "conspiracy theories"? Most of the delay and troubles in the program are due to a faith-based belief system projected by a group of people that didn't know, what they didn't know, and as it seems, couldn't be bothered to find out.

Also, there is this un-fact in the story:

"The top-guns' grievances ranged from their helmets causing headaches to design flaws that meant the $90m planes could be shot down too easily."

In regard to the F-35, there is not a "$90m" plane anywhere on the horizon.

Odouard says part of the problem of delays in buying aircraft is that Norway and The Netherlands "dithered". Maybe because they both start with "N" Odouard is confused. Norway went full throttle and believed a riduculous low price guess only to have it blow up in their face. The Netherlands has a variety of issues with the F-35 faith-based program management but they have bought two early F-35 mistake-jets only to see them parked.

Value !!!

Quickstep has fed off of the taxpayer pretty well for such a high risk project:

"Quickstep has also benefited from a flow of government grants: $4.2m last year and $5m in 2011, including a $4m NSW government relocation payment to prevent the company from being lured by the Victorians."

Also interesting is that we know the ANZ debt is guaranteed by the Fed.

In any event, SME's tied to the troubled F-35 program are high-risk.

In 2011, Australia's Production Parts, (who were not as diversified as Quickstep) died due to over-optimism. and/or belief in the Ponzi scheme.

I hope Quickstep avoids damage.

However, Odouard telling investors fibs, won't help.

"There's a lot of rhetoric about the aircraft. The fact is it's the best aircraft that flies."

Really?

Conflict meets interest

Williams Foundation (F-35 cheerleaders)

Board of Directors:

Air Marshal E.J. McCormack AO (Retd) (Chair)
Dr Alan Stephens OAM (Editor)
Air Vice-Marshal J. Blackburn AO (Retd) (Deputy Chair)
Air Vice-Marshal B. O'Loghlin AO (Retd)
Major General Jim Molan AO DSC (Retd)
Air Commodore Ian Pearson (RAAFAR)
Commodore Geoff Ledger DSC AM (Retd)
Air Commodore Graham Bentley (Retd)
Ms Katherine Ziesing
Wing Commander L.J. Halvorson MBE (Retd) (Exec Off)

Emphasis added.

Note the logo of the organisation is the F-35.




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The "about" section has this to say:

The Sir Richard Williams Foundation is an independent research organisation whose purpose is to promote the development and effective implementation of National Security and Defence policies specific to Australia's unique geopolitical environment and values.

At the bottom of the web page is this:



If interest is Quickstep. They received government sponsoring on the order of $10M plus for the F-35 program.

We have this:

Board of Directors:

Tony Quick (Chairman)

Philippe Odouard (Managing Director)

Mark Jenkins

Bruce Griffiths

Peter Cook

Air Marshal Errol McCormack (Ret'd) AO

David Singleton

David Wills

Emphasis added.

Ponder

Something to think about from the Defence section of "The Australian".

Our journalists

Brendan Nicholson is Defence Editor and Cameron Stewart the Associate Editor of The Australian. Both have covered defence for over 20 years, travelling extensively and winning a number of awards for their journalism.

Just not informing the public very well about a raft of Defence risks.

Little of what the Navy says about the F-35 can be counted on to be true

From the people that demand the taxpayer hand-over money for $25 dollar-plus-per-gallon fuel just to support a pet theory comes this very short but interesting piece of nonsense from the Navy.

The F-35 brings improved stealth and countermeasures, and incorporates the latest available technology for advanced avionics, data links and adverse weather precision targeting. It has increased range and includes weaponry upgrades which are superior to the weapons currently employed in the fleet. This state of the art aircraft will enable the Navy and Marine Corps team to command and maintain global air superiority in an increasingly dynamic and dangerous world. FY 2014 is the eighth Low-Rate Initial Production (LRIP) for the STOVL variant and carrier variant (CV) with six and four aircraft respectively.

As is, the Navy is well on-track toward fielding an obsolete-to-the-threat carrier air wing.

H/T-CDR Salamander


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-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Aviation Week (ARES blog) F-35 posts (2007 to present)
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)

Operation:BOVINE, an F-35 PR tour at Fort Worth

Here is a good look at a F-35 PR tour in Fort Worth. Make it a must-read.

The idea is not just to make everyone listen, but to prime for repetition – to turn every observer into an evangelical for the Church Of F-35, merely a conduit through which the product sells itself.

It’s not an unfamiliar technique. You’d probably face the same rhetorical mechanisms at any run-of-the-mill sales seminar for anything from a car to a timeshare, complete with the same kind of generalities, assumptions, repetitions, and immense timeframes that skew your ability to contextualize exactly what kind of money is at stake in the long run. It’s just rare that you have to face it for two straight days. Really, the whole experience was no different than watching the Shopping Channel selling the same product for 48 hours, receiving so much information at every possible moment that your senses are so overwhelmed, you’re finally incapable of deciding what bits are true, what might be useful to you right now, what might be useful in the future, and how much is probably just complete and utter bullshit.

It is also good that defence industry "journalists" help out too:

Flynn claimed the lag and jitter has been fixed. “The helmet works exactly like we wanted,” he said the first day. When another reporter and I asked Velazquez follow-up questions about the reports of flickering, one defence industry journalist from an aviation magazine actually stepped in to help him out, reminding us that the thing to remember was that the helmet was still in development. Twice. Some, it seemed, are more easily converted than others.

The reporter observes:

At more than one point, there was the suggestion that if anyone doubted the importance of stealth, one had to only look at what other global powers like China are developing. That is, perhaps one day, stealth might have to fight stealth. I found it strange, then, that when I asked a Lockheed simulator tech whether that computer program had ever been geared to train users how to fight other F-35s, the answer was no. It was possible, he said, but the concept of the Joint Strike Fighter was that only the U.S. and its allies would be using the planes. Quite the simulator.

The article is good with a few flaws: There is no $85M F-35.

Also; the reporter states some dumb things too.

There was a lot of talk at various points about the last stealth jet fighter, the F-22 Raptor, but none about how it still hasn’t seen a single combat mission. Ever.

In any event, it will be more interesting if journalists put more focus on this kind of a story.

The reporter has just seen their last trip to LM and will be put on "the list".

Touch and go

Touch and go...

ADF cost per flying hour estimates from the 2013 budget

The chart below shows ADF cost per flying hour estimates from the recent 2013 budget. These dollars are not for aircraft upgrades and refurbishment. Those jobs are handled under different fund-sites. For example, the C-130J software upgrade or classic Hornet refurb fixes.

Not all ADF aircraft are included.

Again these are estimates. The real figure will be known at the next budget. Some aircraft may do better, some worse.

This chart took a few extra minutes to prepare compared to a previous year cost per flying hour estimate that was already pre-prepared by Defence.

Sustainment dollars for each aircraft type are shown in the DMO portion of the budget. Authorized flying hours are shown in the service budget.

The chart is interesting for any number of reasons. I suspect the C-17 looks so good because the Boeing sustainment model happens to be tight. The Wedgetail cost per flying hour is improving. Helicopters? Basket cases and overly expensive.

ADF Cost Per Flying Hour Estimate for 2013-14

source: DMO/Defence 2013 Budget

Asked to resign

LOL.




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USAF says it could lose F-35s due to lack of cash:

This story just disappeared in less than an hour from Breaking Defense (Update-story back up):

F-35: Sequester May Cost Air Force 5 More F-35As; Air Guard, Modernization At Risk

ARLINGTON:  “I don’t have the exact number yet,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Edward Bolton said Tuesday, but to pay the bill for sequestration, the service might have to cut its fiscal 2013 procurements by “two, three, four, maybe even five F-35s.” “That money’s just gone,” sighed Bolton, the service’s outgoing Deputy Assistant Secretary for Budget,…Keep reading →
Tags: 2013 budget, air force, Air Force Association, Air National Guard, budget, f-35 joint strike fighter, F-35A, Gen. Edward Bolton, sequestration

Some history:

“It’s about $37 million for the CTOL aircraft, which is the air force variant.”
- Colonel Dwyer Dennis, U.S. JSF Program Office brief to Australian journalists, 2002-

A look at Collins sustainment from the new budget

The recent Defence 2013-14 budget projection for DMO submarine sustainment is only $574M.

I find that very impressive. I gather that 1 of the 6 Collins subs is pretty much in a semi-scrapped position. That leaves 5 others that are in various phases of periodic refurbishment or on-line for operations.

I am curious how many subs will be operational over this next budget period?

Defence--bloated senior staff numbers

Amazing that so many could feed at the trough. A quick summary of ADF personnel numbers:

Flag ranks

Navy 57
Army 77
Air Force 56
Total 190

SES 168

Total ADF Personnel

Navy 16,374
Army 45,047
Air Force 17,264

Civilian 21,217

The problem is that Defence could be run properly with a small handful of flag-ranks. It is difficult to believe that Defence is careful with our money when they have 190 over-fed flags and 168 SES doing exactly what?

Of anywhere in the federal budget, this one of the top examples of unneeded welfare payouts for so little return on the dollar.

Whenever Defence states it isn't getting enough money, suggest leadership by example. The flag ranks and SES need a serious cull.

How serious? Look at the Army.

It is about the strength of a Corps composing 3 divisions (in numbers not the true organisational table of the Australian Army).

For those numbers you need:

A Corps commander and their second in command: a 3 star and a 2 star.
Each "Division" of 15,000 or so troops needs a Division commander and a second in command: A 2 star and a 1 star.
Brigades wound need a commander and a second in command: A 1 star and a colonel.

So just on the numbers, the Army has no justification for 77 flag ranks.

I suspect a good-ol' boy network here: you scratch my back, I'll get you a jag.

Sickening. Disgraceful.