Posted on 07/07/2023 9:00:31 AM PDT by Fish Speaker
PALMDALE, Calif. — House appropriators don’t intend for the Pentagon to re-engine the F-35 with a new adaptive powerplant, the chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee (HAC-D) said this week.
“It states pretty specifically in the appropriation bill that we’re not looking or seeking to change out the Pratt & Whitney engine,” Rep. Ken Calvert, a California Republican, said in a Wednesday interview with Breaking Defense at the inaugural North LA Defense Forum hosted by Rep. Mike Garcia at Northrop Grumman’s facilities here in Palmdale. “Unless there’s a catastrophic failure on the part of [current engine maker] Pratt & Whitney, which I don’t foresee, I don’t see at this point that there’s going to be any change… Pratt & Whitney will continue to have that engine.”
Calvert’s comments come amid a public spat between F-35 maker Lockheed Martin and Pratt, after the head of Lockheed’s aeronautics division publicly backed a new engine that would be fielded through the Air Force’s Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP), as opposed to the tri-variant fleet getting an upgraded Pratt engine. (The new AETP engine would be compatible with the F-35A and F-35C variants but would not be compatible with the F-35B, which would need the upgraded Pratt engine.) Should the Pentagon pursue the adaptive powerplant, Pratt and GE Aerospace would compete to field it.
(Excerpt) Read more at breakingdefense.com ...
Don’t EVER throw cold water on a jet engine.
Modern military turbofan engines have two airstreams—one that passes through the core of the engine, and another that bypasses the core. The development of a third stream provides an extra source of air flow to either improve propulsive efficiency and lower fuel burn, or to deliver additional air flow through the core for higher thrust and cooling air should the need for supersonic flight occur.Being able to take advantage of a third stream of air that can be modulated to adapt the engine's performance across the flight envelope allows a fighter to have the best of both worlds by accessing an on-demand increase in thrust or to smoothly shift to highly efficient operations during cruise. This capability provides an optimal balance for combat scenarios requiring both high-end acceleration and increased range.
F-35 is the loudest aircraft I have ever heard.
They fly directly over my house every day from Eglin AFB.....................
How about we shut the whole thing down and make 1,000 more F-22s?
The F-35 is a solution looking for a problem, and it’s unreliable as hell. Overengineered with help from armchair pilots in congress.
Insanely expensive to purchase and operate.
Boondoggle.
Somebody didn’t pay off the right politicians.
As usual, the decision will come down to which Congressional District each manufacturer is in and WHICH ONE can supply the bigger donations (AKA BRIBES).
I worked on the ATF program back in the eighties. It’s a rotten shame that they only built 200 of them.
Hi.
“F-35 is the loudest aircraft I have ever heard.”
B-1 in my opinion. Worse than a B-52.
5.56mm
Unfortunately gubmint procurement folks - this is a DOD problem, but not just a DOD problem - don't understand technical risk and technical development and think that all problems can be solved by rigorous validation of requirements and mind numingly complex accounting and tracking. The power of the private sector in their view is their ability to deliver on contracts even if they have no idea how to execute the thing that is wanted.
“F-35 is the loudest aircraft I have ever heard.”
I thought it was supposed to be a stealth aircraft.
If say it was used for ground attack in Ukraine, the Russians could drop acoustic sensors by drones a few miles behind the lines. If a jet roared past the sensors could radio broadcast warnings to the Russians.
There’s nothing stealthy about the F-35’s noise profile that’s for sure as they fly in and out of JRB Fort Worth. We think of it as the Sound of Freedom.
Perhaps the Air Force should consider the use of a buddy aircraft for electronic warfare purposes. This might fly a mainly preprogramed course to the target area and back.
The F-35 has really turned out to be quite the turd.
The F22 can’t carry large munitions, not even an SDB. Its not a bomber. It would take a major redesign and lots of expense for that. Its not going to carry and launch SEAD (suppression of enemy air defense) jammers and anti-radar missiles. Its not going to carry antiship missiles of land attack cruise missiles,
And IIRC it’s radar is no match for the F35 and its electronics and systems integration (interconnection with other aircraft for use as targeting platforms say) are inferior.
And the F22 was more expensive than the F35. 150 million in todays $ vs 80-100. The US is already making almost as many F35’s annually as all the F22’s ever made. There have been about 1000 F35’s already delivered.
Meanwhile, to this day, no F-15 has ever been shot down.
“There’s nothing stealthy about the F-35’s noise profile”
And you said something there. Stealth (which the F-35 is not) is more than radar. It’s electronic, it’s radar reflectivity, it’s visual acquisition, and more. A reminder, the very first aircraft detection device before radar was a giant gramophone looking cone where the operator could listen for the drone of engines. They think noise isn’t a stealth parameter, but it can and will be detected and AI analyzed and put out in a usable product to missile defenses.
The F-35 is designed for superiority in exactly one environment.... the Congressional acquisition realm.
Mission accomplished! The new engine would be a further extension of it's primary mission.
I worked at L/M Fort Worth the whole winter of 2006. Not a lot of F-35s were flying yet, but I did learn that it required a complete re-engineering of hearing PPE for crew working around it. Not that it was louder, but the frequency profile was very different.
It’s been a long time, but I remember that the loudest fighters being flown at that time and place were FA-18s.
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