F-35 Lightning II developments

[Coati]

Nice Tally, Thanks!

LRIP-6 and LRIP-7 deals are finalized (for 71 jets)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/ ... PO20130729

UPDATE 1-Lockheed, Pentagon reach deal on 71 more F-35s -source

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON, July 29 (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp and the Pentagon have reached agreement on orders for the next two batches of F-35 fighter jets, a deal worth over $7 billion, a person briefed on the discussions told Reuters on Monday.

The deal covers 71 of the radar-evading planes, with 36 jets to be purchased in the sixth production lot, and 35 in the seventh. The total includes 60 F-35s for the U.S. military, and 11 for Australia, Italy, Turkey and Britain.

The agreement is good news for Lockheed, which generates about 15 percent of its revenues from the F-35 program, and its key suppliers: Northrop Grumman Corp and Britain's BAE Systems Plc. At a projected procurement and development cost of $392 billion, it is the Pentagon's biggest arms program.

The agreement was negotiated without factoring across-the-board budget cuts imposed on the Pentagon in March, said the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Lockheed officials last week said the Pentagon was trying to minimize the impact of the budget cuts on the output quantities in the seventh batch of low-rate production jets, which is funded under the fiscal 2013 budget.

A second source familiar with the negotiations said Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall had approved the broad outlines of the deal, which includes further reductions in the cost of the planes from the previous contract.

Neither source had details on the cost per plane.

The government negotiates separately with Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp, for the plane's engines. Those talks are also expected to wrap up soon.

Lockheed is building three models of the F-35 for the U.S. military and eight international partner countries: Britain, Australia, Canada, Norway, Turkey, Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands. Israel and Japan have also ordered the jet.

Lockheed Chief Executive Marillyn Hewson last week cited good progress in the negotiations and said the company expected to reach a deal in the near term.

Given the size of the program, Pentagon officials have been pushing for lower prices to ensure its future, given mounting budget pressures and mandatory budget cuts that could slice the Pentagon's budget by $500 billion over the next decade.

The Pentagon reached agreement with Lockheed on the fifth batch of F-35s last December, agreeing to buy 32 of the advanced warplanes for $3.8 billion.


FURLOUGHS TAKE TOLL ON TESTING

Furloughs of civilian defense workers will likely result in a month-long delay in flight tests of the fighter plane, according to Joe DellaVedova, a spokesman for the Pentagon's F-35 program office.

He said the program had caught up with its testing schedule after two separate flight grounding actions earlier this year, but he added the furloughs were taking a toll.

Civilian employees affected by the furloughs work on flight test controls at Edwards Air Force Base in California and Patuxent Naval Air Station in Maryland, so their absence is shaving a day per week off the schedule of possible flight tests.

"We don't know yet what the final impact will be," DellaVedova said. "We think we'll be at least a month behind."

He said the program office had planned some flexibility into the testing schedule for the year, but that had been used up by the two earlier groundings. "We are working hard to muscle through as best we can," he said.

The Navy is also resurfacing a runway used by government officials for "check out flights" when each jet comes off the assembly line at Lockheed's adjacent Fort Worth, Texas, plant. The work will close that runway for about a month, said Lockheed spokesman Michael Rein, beginning on Aug. 1.

The U.S. military is keen to complete flight testing of the already delayed F-35 program, the Pentagon's largest weapons program, so that it can begin to use the new jets for military operations. Other factors, including weather conditions, can also affect flight testing.

Civilian defense workers across the United States began taking unpaid leave on July 8 as part of an austerity plan that is expected to save $1.8 billion through Sept. 30, the end of the 2013 fiscal year. The furloughs are part of nearly $37 billion in automatic across-the-board budget cuts that hit the Pentagon this year as part of a process known as sequestration that is aimed at curbing the U.S. government's nearly trillion-dollar deficit.

[Coati]

And a drop in price of 4% for LRIP-6 and an additional 4% for LRIP-7.

F-35 Prices Drop 8 Percent In $7 Billion Deal

By Colin Clark on July 30
WASHINGTON:

The Pentagon and F-35 maker Lockheed Martin have agreed on the terms of a deal for the Defense Department to buy two lots of F-35s for $7 billion.

The big question now is the average price per plane for each tranche (LRIP 6 and 7). While we’ve confirmed with two sources that the deal is as Reuter’s Andrea Shalal-Esa has reported it, no one has yet squealed on the money question. This will be the number that JSF critics probably will fasten on. The last batch (LRIP 5) of 32 F-35s went for $3.8 billion.

While they didn’t release the price per plane, Lockheed did say this morning that the price will come down 8 percent from LRIP 5.

“Cost details will be released once both contracts are finalized; however, in general, the unit prices for all three variants of the U.S. air vehicles in LRIP-6 are roughly four percent lower than the previous contract,” Lockheed said in a statement. “LRIP-7 air vehicle unit prices will show an additional four percent reduction. The LRIP-7 price represents about an eight percent reduction from the LRIP-5 contract signed in December 2012.”

Perhaps the most important part of this agreement is its timing. Once the deal is inked that locks the planes in to the Pentagon budget and guarantees numbers for production and maintains the program’s pace for testing. At a time of enormous budget uncertainty, this commitment looms large as a sign of the Pentagon’s belief in the program as it now stands.

http://breakingdefense.com/2013/07/30/f ... lion-deal/

[tally]

10-5014/EG delivered to Eglin today. Perhaps more deliveries tomorrow due to runway repairs at NFW starting Thursday.

Tally.

[tally]

168729/VK-11 delivered to Yuma today. One more taxied out but had a ground aboard and remained at Navy.

[Typhoon3030]

http://rt.com/usa/pentagon-f35-stealth-bomber-963/

[Coati]

Second sea trial for F-35B has been executed. One more to go. Note the remarks on the difference with the Harrier.

Marine Corps F-35B Finishing Sea Trials
by Kris Osborn on August 29, 2013

USS WASP — The Marine Corps and Navy are close to wrapping up 19 days of Sea Trials for the Corps’ F-35B short take-off-and-vertical-landing, or STOVL, variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, service officials said.

The trails, taking place aboard the USS WASP Amphibious Assault Ship about 30-miles off the coast of Maryland, are designed to assess the F-35B’s ability to take-off and land vertically at night, maneuver and operate in high crosswinds and headwinds, among other things.

“There’s no better way to determine how an aircraft is going to operate in the fleet than to take it to sea,” said Navy Capt. Erik Etz, director of test and evaluation, F-35 Naval variants. “We’ve been pushing the aircraft out to the edges of its operational envelope.”

The Marine Corps F-35B variant, slated to reach what’s called initial operating capability by 2015, is a stealth aircraft specially engineered to land vertically, meaning without a runway.

This ability to land vertically without a runway is designed to give the Navy and Marine Corps the ability to use the aircraft from a smaller amphibious platform such as the USS WASP – without needing the catapult or large runway of an aircraft carrier, Etz added.

The ongoing Sea Trials have resulted in at least 90 successful short take-offs and 92 vertical landings aboard the USS Wasp, said Joe DellaVedova, spokesman for the Joint Strike Fighter’s Joint Program Office.

The JSF program developmental strategy is, in part, grounded upon a series of incremental software “drops” — each one adding new capability to the platform. In total, there are more than 10 billion individual lines of code for the system, broken down into increments and “blocks,” F-35 program office officials explained.
The F-35B is currently testing with Block 2B, which enables the aircraft to provide basic close air support and fire an AMRAAM [Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile], JDAM [Joint Direct Attack Munition] or GBU 12 [laser-guided aerial bomb].

In addition, the aircraft has conducted test flights with a full internal weapons load, including a GBU or Guided Bomb Unit and an Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile, or AMRAAM.

As what’s called a fifth-generation stealth or low-observable fighter platform, the F-35 is engineered with a suite of next-generation technologies designed to provide the pilots with more capability and more information.

When it comes to STOVL landing technology, the F-35B is a generation beyond its Harrier Jet predecessor, also Marine Corps plane designed for vertical landing.

“Harriers are all manual controls. With the F-35 we have computers. A ton of engineering goes into making it a low work load. The plane is literally sampling winds, sampling conditions and the parameters,” said Marine Corps Capt. Michael Kingen, an F-35 developmental test pilot.

The F-35 is also engineered to accomplish what’s referred to as “sensor fusion,” namely the technological ability to fuse relevant information from a variety of sources into one common operating picture for the pilot to view – such as digital maps, radar information and sensor information all combined into a single set of screens, said Marine Corps Lt. Col. Matthew Kelly, former F-35 test pilot.

For instance, the F-35’s Electro-Optical Target System, or EOTS, is an infra-red sensor able to assist pilots with air and ground targeting at increased standoff ranges while also perform laser designation, laser range-finding and other tasks.

In addition, the plane’s Distributed Aperture System, or DAS, is a series of six electro-optical sensors also able to give information to the pilot. The DAS includes precision tracking, fire control capabilities and the ability to warn the pilot of an approaching threat or missile.

“The ability of the aircraft to take in all that information, process it and then provide it to the pilot with the right information when he wants it in the right format – is really what makes this the fifth generation design for the next war and the war after that,” said Kelly.

The next Sea Trials for the F-35B are slated for sometime in 2016, DellaVedova said.

“F-35 is a growth platform and will remain so for the forseeable future,” he said.

http://defensetech.org/2013/08/29/marin ... ea-trials/

[Rockville]

The dutch party PvdA has agreed in buying the JSF. It is expected that the Dutch government wil take a formal decision by the end of this month.
Source: Dutch radio news.

[Stefan]

The dutch party PvdA has agreed in buying the JSF. It is expected that the Dutch government wil take a formal decision by the end of this month.
Source: Dutch radio news.

Total number of a/c that was mentioned; 35.

[Stefan]

All off-topic stuff went here: http://forum.scramble.nl/viewtopic.php? ... start=2850

[Piet Luijken]

The Air Force is expected to stand up pilot training at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., in November. Last month, two instructor pilots and six crew chiefs transferred to the base to get the program started. The squadron, the 61st Fighter Squadron, will start flying operations in the spring or early summer. The Air Force expects 144 F-35s to eventually be assigned to the training center. The base is currently the training center for F-16 pilots but will transfer its Falcons to Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., as the F-35s arrive.
As of early September, 36 Air Force instructor pilots had finished training on the 14 conventional takeoff models that have been delivered to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. The base in August surpassed more than 2,000 combined sorties on Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy variants. “We are safely operating the aircraft and continuing to increase operations because we have well-trained maintainers and well-trained pilots,” said Col. Stephen Jost, commander of the 33rd Operations Group at Eglin.
The Air Force also is expected to stand up the F-35A maintenance depot at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, at the end of the year. Around that time, the service will announce its primary and preferred bases outside of the continental United States.
Last month, Gen. Herbert Carlisle, commander of Pacific Air Forces, said Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, is the front-runner for the assignment.

[hammarö]

United States Air Force F-35A Operational Basing Environmental Impact

www.scribd.com/doc/93343414/F-35-Executive-Summary

I nice description of F-35 implementation on the first six bases. Each base is described with new building construction etc.

Deliveries to the USAF is also described and units replaced.

[Stratofreighter]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/ ... OQ20130917

Belgium considers Lockheed F-35 to replace F-16s - source

WASHINGTON | Tue Sep 17, 2013 7:31pm IST

- U.S. government officials have briefed the Belgian government about the capabilities of the Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) F-35 fighter jet,
as Brussels prepares to replace its aging fleet of 60 F-16s,
a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The source, who was not authorized to speak publicly,
said Belgium was considering buying 35 to 55 of the new radar-evading F-35 jets.

No decisions are expected until late 2014 at the earliest.

[Erik_7Xi]

The Air Force is expected to stand up pilot training at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., in November. The base is currently the training center for F-16 pilots but will transfer its Falcons to Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., as the F-35s arrive.

Unless something recently changed, the 56th FW will only transfer two of its F-16 squadrons to Holloman AFB, which in turn will transfer its F-22s and T-38s to Tyndall.
In December 2012, the 309th FS "Wild Ducks" deployed 18 F-16s to Holloman AFB to test its facilities as a future F-16 training base although it does not mean that the Ducks will be one of the squadrons relocating to Holloman AFB.

The 56th FW at Luke currently is hosting four USAF F-16 Squadrons and two foreign squadrons:
- 62nd FS "Spikes"
- 308th FS "Emerald Knights"
- 309th FS "Wild Ducks"
- 310th FS "Top Hats"

- 425th FS "Black Widows" (Singapore AF)
- 21st FS "Gamblers" (Taiwanese AF)

So even after losing two F-16 squadrons, Luke will still be home to four F-16 squadrons for the time being.
Again, unless something recently changed which is certainly possible.

[Stafsels]

For RNLAF it should break down to 35 F-35A new and both the test AC...
Wether both test aircraft will remain for operational use in the Netherlands or education/training in the States for the years to come (like the three CH-47F aircraft) I don't know.

Greetings,

Henk

[nils]

Walloon party PS opposes F-35 buy: "To expensive in these times of economic crisis".

http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/989/Binnen ... 16-s.dhtml