Posted on 01/29/2009 7:29:27 AM PST by Jet Jaguar
During the Greater Sumter Chamber of Commerce’s annual retreat this year attendees were given an in depth briefing by both Lt. Gen. Gary L. North of the U.S. Air Force and Charlie Savage, regional manager of Lockheed Martin, on the latest happenings at Shaw Air Force base and more specifically, the latest arrival date and progress update of the F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter to Shaw.
During the third day of the retreat held in Myrtle Beach, North, commander with the 9th Air Force, updated local business leaders on the status of the F-35 fighter, also known as AF-1, noting that the jet “is scheduled to deliver (to Shaw) in 2017.”
The fifth-generation aircraft will replace the fourth-generation F-16 and holds a hefty price tag of almost $80 million.
“There will be a release of the noise analysis that should be announced in March,” said Savage, who is based at Shaw Air Force Base.
Savage and North discussed upgrades that the aircraft will incorporate, such as stealth capability throughout the aircraft, including embedded antennas, aligned edges and special coatings and materials. The fighter will also conduct air-to-air and air-to-ground combat missions simultaneously.
Not only will the F-35 fighter’s capacity be upgraded, but construction and maintenance of the aircraft will be handled differently than that of the F-16. According to a release from Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer, “The AF-1, the first F-35 to have employed the moving assembly line at its full-rate production speed of 50 inches (127 millimeters) per hour … . The moving assembly line, designed to improve production quality and speed, is the first ever for a modern fighter. AF-1 becomes the first aircraft since World War II to use a moving assembly line at Lockheed Martin’s (formerly Consolidated Vultee, Convair and General Dynamics) Fort Worth factory.”
Also, according to Lockheed Martin, the F-35 will incorporate an “advanced aircraft sustainment, ‘maintenance’ concept, which not only employs built-in diagnostics to quickly identify the cause of malfunctioning parts so that the aircraft can be returned to service faster than in the past, but it also employs a prognostics concept that monitors all key components to assess their life expectancy so that maintenance personel can better predict failures, replace parts before they fail and better manage recources and time.”
At this point, Lockheed Martin is promoting the F-35 as “truly a generation apart from the F-16 due to advancements in technology and by meeting the demands of intensity in the battle space, scarcity of time and the demand of instantaneous interoperability, ‘fusion.’”
Lockheed Martin’s first successful F-35 flight took place on Dec. 15, 2006, at the facility in Fort Worth, Texas. Delivery of the aircraft to the armed services will not begin until 2010.
Nice, 17 years after the demonstrator first flew, over a decade after the first real model flew.
Good thing the program was fast-tracked.
prognostics concept = “Dave, I’ve just picked up a fault in the AE-35 unit.”
ping.
By the time these are operational and deployed (in inadequate numbers), the technology will require significant overhaul.
I am in awe of how fast we generated aircraft during WWII.
If Barky doesn’t cancel it as being “too costly.” It would cut into our ability to bail everyone out. Everyone but Lockheed Martin. He will want the Chinese to buy them out.
Remember when American industry could run-up a brand new fighter from drawing board to prototype to full-scale production in the tens of thousands in about 9 months?
Or Kelly Johnson’s skunk works. Good stuff!
Having Hitler and Tojo knocking at the door provided sufficient motivation - today we take lots of time to make sure the pork gets distributed to the "right" people.
NO. Can you? If so, you're pretty darn old!
(Even in WWII it took longer than that.)
“Remember when American industry could run-up a brand new fighter from drawing board to prototype to full-scale production in the tens of thousands in about 9 months?”
Well, let’s be honest here. The P-51 Mustang was a lot simpler fighter plane than the F-35 — no computers, no exotic materials, no interoperability requirements, simple structure, etc. The cause of these long lead times is the fact that everything is so complicated. These modern fighter planes so complex, it is amazing they work at all.
2017? Thats coming in way late
I thought so too. 2011 was the last report.
They are obviously much more complicated, etc. But then again, our engineering and production capabilities are worlds more sophisticated than they were in 1944.
If one follows the money (which is always instructive), one would be pretty tempted to conclude the aerospace manufacturers were making an everlasting meal out of the project at the taxpayers expense, no?
I don’t think they are going to be the first base to get them.
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