How exactly? Will they have to replace some support Allue beams With Titanium Beam to get this right?
Something tells me its not just a matter of re-weld the struts and support beam..

Based on info on previous crack repair news, they will likely weld/epoxy/bolt a support plate around the crack or it could be something as simple as rounding a sharp inside corner.

They will do it when the F-35B is taken apart during a normally scheduled depot maintenance period when they have Concurrency fixes already planned.

F-35 still has 719 problems to overcome. It would be a miracle if F-35 can achieve IOC by 2016 as forecasted.

Old news, already resolved, and are by & large paperwork issues, not actual problems.

“A majority of the findings are consistent with weaknesses previously identified by the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) and the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO), and do not present new or critical issues that affect the health of the program,” DellaVedova’s statement read. “The assessment contains 363 findings, from which, 343 corrective action recommendations (CARs) were generated. As of September 30, 2013, 269 of the 343 CARs have been resolved (78%), with the remaining 74 still in work with Corrective Action Plans (CAPs) in development, or approved by not fully-implemented.”

Another article says that of the 22% left, all are in progress and only 10 items are waiting plan authorization.

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130930/DEFREG02/309300036/Pentagon-Report-F-35-Program-Struggles-Quality-Management

Second, not even the original 2001 schedule has IOC at 2010 for the F-35A, it was 2011.

Currently the plan is F-35B is IOC in 2015 and the F-35A is 2016. The “shutdown” will not affect that but any more software issues might.

Jokes aside, what helmet is the pilot talking about in Jacksters vid? Is i the TV helmet or the interim HMDS helmet?

Since he relates to his experience of over 120 flight hours in the F-35, it’s the HMDS Gen2 from VSI.

IIRC the Gen3 has not flown yet, certainly not outside of SDD.

Did you read the article?

No federal money was being spent on the airshow and in fact the proceeds from the airshow MAKE money for the base and it’s programs, not to mention the MILLIONs it brings to local businesses every year.

The only reason the show was cancelled was political and had ZERO financial reasons. They want everyone to “feel the pain”, even if it’s artificial. We have already seen multiple examples of this over the past week.

— Cancelling the Army-Navy game even thought no Federal money was being spent.
— Closing multiple DC monuments even though they are not staffed and are normally open 24/7.
— Telling private businesses on public lands that they must close, even though they have access to public roads that are still open 24/7.
— Closing portions of parking lots that are on federal land even thought they are maintained throughout the year by private funds.

The list goes on and on.

You are missing what a “winner” is and how the WH feels about them. When the airshow was in danger of cancellation earlier this year due to sequestration, private businesses and the community stepped up and provided their own cash to pay for the ENTIRE event. The WH view is that EVERYONE must depend on the the Federal Gov and if you can somehow do without, you must be stopped. There is no excuse for this behavior.

Why is it that this is happening when in previous “shutdowns” it did not? The answer is for purely political reasons.

So how is the Lot 27 cost explained then?

According to the FY2014 budget docs:
1. Lot 27 is the FY2013 order of AMRAAMs
2. Only Raytheon is paid as the Prime Contractor
3. The USAF ordered 113 AMRAAMs ($340 mil)
4. The USN ordered 67 AMRAAMs ($102 mil)
5. Oman and Saudi Arabia make up half of the contract (per the June announcement below)
6. They are combined into a single contract

Raytheon Missile Systems, Tucson, Ariz., has been awarded a $534,795,962 firm-fixed-price contract for AMRAAM Production Lot 27. Work will be performed at Tucson, Ariz., and is expected to be completed by Jan. 31, 2016. Fifty one percent of the production effort is Foreign Military Sales (AIM-120 C7s for Oman and Saudi Arabia). This award is the result of a sole source acquisition. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center/EBA, Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., is the contracting activity (FA8675-13-C-0003).

The main problem is that the announcement does not include the number of missiles so we do not know the final per-missile cost.

Why link to a short excerpt about an article instead of the article itself?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-25/lockheed-f-35-quality-failings-cited-by-inspector-general.html

Here is the MAIN part missing from Defense-Aerospace’s excerpt:

As of yesterday, 269 of the 343 “corrective action plans” have been fully implemented, according to data provided to the inspector general by the Pentagon’s F-35 program office.

All of the corrective action plans are scheduled to be in place by April

Most blurred messed up text ever for me at least, i restricted myself to some data table, i can see the thrill the pilots get out of it

Table 3-1. F-35A Aircraft Operating Limitations in Effect During OUE Period
Airspeed limited to 550 KCAS or0.9 Mach above 8K MSL. Below8K MSL airspeed is limited to500 KCAS
Angle-of-attack (AOA) limited tobetween -5 and +18 degrees andaircraft limited to -1 to +5.0 g’s
No rapid stick or rudder inputs
No Electro-Optical TargetingSystem (EOTS)
No Distributed Aperture System(DAS)

Those are Block 1 limitations that are no longer valid as Block 2 comes online (Blk2A already being used and 2B by the end of the year).