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The United States is happy with the overall state of Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 fighter program, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday after the Pentagon has twice overhauled the program due to technical and cost worries. The fifth generation stealth jet is highly complex and has run into delays and massive cost overruns. Eight countries are partnering with the United States to develop the F-35 at a total cost of $382 billion. Washington has committed to ultimately buying around 2,300 to 2,400 of the planes, which come in three models. "I'm fairly confident that we are making good progress,"...

A notice of intent will be published in the Federal Register Jan. 28 announcing the Navy's intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) that will evaluate the potential environmental effects associated with basing the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft on the West Coast of the United States. Under this proposal, a total of seven active-duty F/A-18C Hornet squadrons and one fleet replacement squadron (FRS), a total of 100 aircraft, will progressively transition from the F/A-18C Hornet aircraft to the more advanced F-35C JSF beginning in 2015. This transition will occur as a one-for-one replacement. During the initial planning...

The newest Pentagon restructuring of the $380 billion Joint Strike Fighter program will result in an overall cut of $6.9 billion through Fiscal 2016, according to F-35 program officials. This money was removed from the production portion of the program; 124 aircraft will be cut from the U.S. buy of F-35s through Fiscal 2016 if Congress approves the plan laid out by Defense Secretary Robert Gates early this month (Aerospace DAILY, Jan. 7). The $6.9 billion cut from the production profile is on top of another $4.6 billion shifted from that account into research and development. “After funding the JSF...

Canada's participation in a massive fighter-jet purchase is critical for all players involved, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday, amid suggestions that a Liberal government could jeopardize the project. Following a bilateral meeting in Ottawa with Defence Minister Peter MacKay, Gates said he didn't wish to interfere in Canada's domestic affairs but that he hoped, "for all our sake," all the partners involved in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program will "move forward" with it. Doing so, he suggested, would ensure the interoperability of allied fleets. "Obviously having all of our partners continue to be with us in this...

The Joint Strike Fighter program office has provided the detail behind defense secretary Robert Gates' Jan. 6 comment that issues with the STOVL F-35 "may lead to a redesign of the aircraft's structure and propulsion". There are no surprises on the list. The issues detailed by the JPO have been reported on before, and in most cases fixes are in design or in test. They are: lift-fan clutch heating, driveshaft thermal expansion, roll-post heating, lift-fan doors, bulkhead cracking and pilot-vehicle interface issues.Following the latest replan of the F-35 program, which adds $4.6 billion to development, the JPO tells Amy there...

Turkey may buy up to 116 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets, a deal that could be undermined by U.S. efforts to cut costs of one of the most expensive military programs ever. "We're planning to buy 100 aircraft with an additional option of another 16," Turkish Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul was quoted as saying by Defensenews.com. Turkey is a member of the U.S.-led nine-nation Joint Strike Fighter consortium, which is building three variants of the F-35. It had previously said it would buy 100 planes, with the Gonul statement for the first time indicating it could become a larger purchase....

The Pentagon's decision to delay buying 124 Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighters until after fiscal year 2016 saved $6.9 billion over the coming five years, a Defense Department spokesman said on Tuesday. On Jan. 6, Defense Secretary Robert Gates overhauled the Pentagon's largest weapons program for the second time in a year, slowing a planned ramp-up in production and adding $4.6 billion to the program's development phase. At the time, Gates said the move would result in net savings of about $4 billion over the next five years -- after subtracting the money needed to buy 41 additional Boeing Co...

Recently DefenseTech ran a piece about the Chinese J-20 “stealth” fighter that points out it may be less troublesome than the initial hype suggested. I put “stealth” in scare quotes for just that reason; we have no idea whether this is a legitimate stealth aircraft or just some fancy sheet metal and paint. We have no clue if they have managed to engineer the sensors and electronic systems needed to fly it or to allow it to go up against our frontline birds. But that really shouldn’t be giving us a warm fuzzy. If they had actually fielded an aircraft...

Shortly before making a final push to ensure that the Marine version of the F-35 fighter was not canceled, the service’s commandant, Gen. James F. Amos, called in a former Marine corporal for a frank talk. The onetime enlisted man, Robert J. Stevens, now heads Lockheed Martin, the giant contractor that has repeatedly run into difficulties in building the plane. And based in part on Mr. Stevens’s assurances that the problems could be fixed, General Amos was able to persuade top Pentagon officials to grant a reprieve — a two-year period to either save the Marine model or forget about...

Two weeks ago, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that the Marine Corps’ version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is in trouble. While “two of the JSF variants, the Air Force version and the Navy’s carrier based version, are proceeding satisfactorily,” Gates said, “by comparison, the Marine Corps’ short take-off and vertical landing variant is experiencing significant testing problems.” What are those testing problems? A recently issued Pentagon report details many of the problems that led Gates to put the Marine’s variant on “probation” and recommend its cancellation after two years if it does not get “back on track.”...

Deficiencies Found in American F-35 Fighter Jets by Avi Yellin The American-based weekly Defense News has reported that the United States Department of Defense has acknowledged deficiencies and technical shortcomings of some versions of the new F-35 warplanes, which Israel is buying. The DoD report, compiled by the Pentagon's Operational Test and Evaluation Directorate, noted problems with the F-35 Lightning II's handling and avionics, among other things. Lockheed Martin, the American manufacturer of the warplanes, is also reported to have delayed testing on the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft due to other qualitative shortcomings. It is currently unclear how recent revelations...

Turkey is seriously reconsidering the myriad agreements it has signed with the US, as well as its participation in an international consortium for the procurement of new generation fighter jets, due to rising costs and persisting problems originating from the American side. Turkey is now seeking new ways to sidestep difficulties in the procurement of F-16 fighter planes, which it has been jointly producing with the US since 1987, due to the delayed delivery by the US authorities of some of the planeÂ’s parts and accessories. There have been serious doubts as to whether TurkeyÂ’s plan to purchase 100 F-35...

The Pentagon’s top spokesman on Friday said that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates remains determined to eliminate funding for a $3 billion project contracted to GE, as the White House faced questions on the matter the day that President Obama named the company’s CEO to an uncompensated advisory post on economic affairs. Critics of the administration raised questions Friday about the timing of a continuation of funding for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Extra Engine, implying that GE CEO Jeff Immelt may have been named chair of the president’s new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness only after the White...

The appearance of two all new attack and defend aircraft at the beginning and end of the year just over have both raised issues of substance for the Joint Strike Fighter JSF or F-35 program, and reasons for the US and its allies to carefully review their plans to maintain air superiority. The first bookend for a poor year for the JSF program was the first flight last January of the Russian PAK-FA The last bookend was the appearance on Chinese internet sites of photos of its J-20 prototype making ground taxi runs. These aircraft provide western defence organisations with...

Canada’s top soldier is defending a multibillion-dollar deal to buy U.S.-made fighter jets even as the Liberals zero in on the issue as Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s potential Achilles’ heel in the next campaign. “From my perspective, the F-35 is the best aircraft with the best value for Canada,” General Walter Natynczyk said in a visit to the Globe and Mail editorial board on Friday. Canada released on Friday question the value of the contract to buy the jets. Gen. Natynczyk, the Chief of Defence Staff, argued that the state-of-the-art jet fighters are the best deal on the market, given...

A request by the Green Left party in the Dutch parliament for an emergency debate has been granted following the release of US cables revealing comments by the Ministry of Defense regarding the purchase of Joint Strike Fighter planes. The cables sent by the US embassy in The Hague in 2007 were uncovered by Wikileaks and passed onto Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad. The newspaper says the United States was better informed on the government's position with regard to the project than parliament. For instance in 2007, the US was aware that the ministry did not have enough money to buy...

It’s not often the Pentagon’s top testers use the term “screech” to describe a problem with a weapons system, but that’s just what they are calling a problem with Pratt & Whitney’s engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. “The [JSF] program began implementing plans to modify test aircraft to rectify the afterburner ‘screech’ problem, a problem that prevents the engine from sustaining full thrust. These modifications are necessary for the test aircraft to complete envelope expansion at the planned tempo,” said the annual report by Michael Gilmore, director of Operational Test and Evaluation. My colleagues at Defense News first reported...

BAE Systems has signed a $3.8 million contract to continue supplying the secure operating system that runs the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s mission-planning software. The company’s operating system collects data at different security levels and is used by the aircraft’s software to develop the mission plan, which includes intelligence, weather, communications and navigation. That information is then loaded on to the jet for mission execution. When it is complete and the plane has returned, the operating system parses the data according to its security classification. The process, known as a cross domain transfer, occurs within seconds. “The most advanced aircraft...

The U.S. F-35 will be delayed yet again, and one of the three versions may be cancelled. The new service date for the F-35 appears to be a year later now, in 2015, although the U.S. Air Force is being a bit vague on this point. Not so vague is the Department of Defense, which has put the vertical takeoff (F-35B VTOL) version on two years probation. If a growing list of problems with the F-35B are not fixed by then, the VTOL version will be cancelled. Meanwhile, it looks like the F-35A (air force) and F-35C (navy carrier) versions...

F-35B vertical landings are like buses, you wait ages for one then three come along all at once. Aircraft BF-2 did three VLs in one day - Jan 13 - taking the fleet total to 15 since March 2010 and moving the program closer to the target of 42 vertical landings required to clear the F-35B for initial ship trials.BF-2 was instrumented for STOVL-mode flight tests after the first F-35B, aircraft BF-1, encountered mechanical reliability issues that slowed testing. Ship clearance was planned by the end of 2010, with STOVL trials on the USS Wasp scheduled for March, but by...