It's supposed to have a lifespan of 8,000 hours but that may be wishful thinking. A "B" model airframe undergoing fatigue testing has sustained cracks in the rear bulkhead after just 1,500 hours. The F-35B is the short-takeoff/vertical-landing model being developed for the U.S. Marine Corps. In testing the F-35B is apparently faring somewhat worse than other models.
The Pentagon has been working for weeks to come up with ways to expedite testing and to fix defects in the aircraft.
New budgets and delivery schedules for the F-35 are expected to be announced on Monday after the Defense Acquisition Board meets to review the latest cost and test data.
3 comments:
Sounds good. Let's order up a bunch of them. What could possibly go wrong?
The British are not ordering the F-35's, decidedly stepping down, austerity, ya' know. And Harper, being the Dominionist he is, via Day; Kenney; etc; and the Calgary School,... is only too willing to pick up the slack.
It'll be interesting to see when and if the F-35 goes into service. Chalmers Johnson notes that the F-35 is far more complex than the F-22 Raptor superfighter. The 22 operates on just 2-million lines of code. The 35's systems require 9 million lines of code. What could possibly go wrong? Single engine, limited range, mediocre weapons load out, horrible maneuverability (can't out turn, can't out climb, can't outrun any of its potential contemporary adversaries), computer glitches galore, premature fatigue cracking. Oh wait, I know. The supposed 'stealth' quality is based on a past generation of Russian sensors and missiles. The newest Russian and Euro stuff can pick up the 35 far more easily.
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