You would have to dig into each contract to see which block it goes into, and whether it is totally new spending or a mere release of money specified in an original contact as not all funds are allocated at the time of award. I wouldn’t rule that out since its POGO information that is being used here when all the author could have done is simply asked about lot spend through a FOIA request as organizations like Flight and Aviation use and then compared the two lists.
Instead the article you cite appears to source a POGO analysis and appears to get some basics wrong. It states that the JPO/LMA claimed LRIP – 7 costs at $103/109/120 Million whereas the F-35 website lists them at $98/114/116 – for the LMA contract alone. If one were to read this carefully these are not to total system URF’s. These are for the Lockheed contract signed in 2013 so you would need to add the P&W contracts to factor in engine costs as well. The JPO over the last years has released the URF’s for full systems together i.e. the recurring flyaway cost of the aircraft including the propulsion and fees. This was done for LRIP-9, and 10 and may have even been done in LRIP 8. They have supplied this number for earlier lots as well.
https://www.f35.com/news/detail/lrip-6-7-contract-agreements
The POGO lists even the sustainment contracts which would be strange since you are capturing O&S costs (and not production or acquisition costs) here since the contractor footprint in sustaining the fleet is quite large and will remain so for the next few years. While that may be helpful in figuring out the log term, life-cycle-cost of a lot of aircraft it does not factor into its acquisition cost which the three metrics (URF, APUC and PAUC) measure.
As far as CTOL URF’s, Defense One reached out to the DOD/JPO and LMA and developed a URF graph for the F-35A over its production lots –
The URF they received for Lot-7 is 12% higher than the author of your article has erroneously attributed as the “JPO supplied” URF for Lot-7. Could you check with him to see whether he even reached out to the JPO?
It is not POGO information at all. POGO is only cited when siad “costs have been discussed in press…” look at the tables below, there is the listing of the 3 main contracts and all the subsequent sub contracts from 2012 to 2016. and yes i’ll join him and i’m sure he’ll correct ASAP. Reading your link i suppose he quoted LRIP6 price tags instead of 7. If you read the article, as said above, the author says “cost perimeter is disputable”. This listing comes straight from USASPENDING.gov (that is Awarded money)
k, now comes the interesting part and thus the sole motivation that made me start this thread : the plasma stealth and flow control with help of plasma.
First, I will introduce u guys about a recent groundbreaking result of ADD’s R&D on plasma, which is, a flexible electrode and its application, a Wearable Plasma Fabric – its always something wearable or elastic these days ヾ(´∀｀○)ﾉ – or a WAPP(Wearable Atmospheric Pressure Plasma) fabric, which is a gas supplier independent system, therefore doesn’t needs a gas supplier to supply Argon or Helium unlike the legacy plasma producing electrodes in order to create plasma.
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As you can see here, the electrode necessary to create a plasma from the atmosphere is in a flexible fabric form.
Until now, it was seen impossible to create a 3 dimensional electrode but only a simple shaped flat-surfaced ones.Anyways, there are are various possible application of this WAPP such like wearable plasma anti NBC protective suit or detoxification blanket against hydro-soluble chemical weapons and so on.
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fig.2) dissection of plasma blanket – abstract from “100 new major patents of ADD ver. 2016”[attachment=0]1486907809 (1).jpg[/attachment]
fig.3) weaving of WAPP and fig.4) possible applications – abstract from “100 new major patents of ADD ver. 2016”Now, plasma, apart from its various useful characteristics, also acts like a very effective RAM, absorbing electromagnetic waves of an incomparable bandwidths/wavelengths with even higher energy. Applied on an aircraft, one may achieve a lower radar signature even compared to those 5th gen design without current aerodynamic-unfriendly stealth profiles but in a rather conventional and “more aerodynamic” 4th gen form.
Apart from plasma stealth, it is also known able to control the flow of a fluid through use of plasma, which means an unstable and unwanted flow of air caused by IWB or any other compartments of the aircraft can also be controlled by the plasma created by WAPP, stabilizing the flow and more over, improving the aerodynamic characteristics of the aircraft without major structural change.For now, the plasma stealth technology will only be applied on vital parts for decreasing the RCS, such like IWB of the KFX.
abstract from “core technology priority planning for national defense (ver. 2017)”. part in red box reads : IWB RCS reduction technology through use of plasma”
“Study of Aerodynamic Drag Reduction Using Plasm Flow Control” – 2012
“Flow Actuation by Plasma Actuator With Different DC Discharges” – 2015Well, above studies doesn’t emphasize the usage of WAPP due to the fact that those have been written before WAPP was revealed, though there are already research programs going on such like “flow control system using 3 dimensional surface discharge”
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(click to enlarge)In page 48, it states that WAPP can create plasma state oxygen and nitrogen. fig.1) shows the legacy atmospheric pressure plasma generator and its application, namely : [(dielectric barrier discharge and downstream processing), (Corona discharge and In-Situ processing of wafers), (plasma torch and In-Situ processing of textiles) and (atmospheric pressure plasma jet and medical sterilization & decontamination)]. As one may see, those legacy APP generators are not suitable for aircraft application and like what I said on the top, needs a gas supplier to supply necessary gases like Argon or Helium in order to create plasma.
In page 49 part 3, it states that WAPP’s TRL will reach level 5 by September this year, so there are long way to go for WAPP to reach TRL-9 but KFX still needs around 8 years to get fully developed so time-wise, there ain’t no problem regarding it. In part 4 are the listed further R&D programs and the possible application.
Its been applied for a international patent in the US and Germany so if you have interest on it, you may search for it few months later when it gets registered as a PCT patent.
Overall, unlike shady plasma stealth technology of PAK-FA which is still in the dark in the ocean of rumors, ADD has revealed quite a lot of information regarding the plasma stealth technology using WAPP which is to be applied on KFX. I guess DAPA may use this as a jack on their hands to get more out of the US like sensor fusion technologies as an offset for exchanging technologies. Well, that’s what Japan did in the 20th century developing FS-X or F-2 so why not Korea?
P.S – I’ve posted this also on the other forum and copied it here so if you find this post somewhere else, that’ss probably written by me.
Nice, but shouldn’t it be on a different dedicated topic?
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