Category: Aviation

Another Strike Against the F-35

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Rather unsurprisingly, it is the logistics and prognostics software, ALIS.

It has not been working right in tests, and even when it does, it means that there is effectively an off switch for any foreign buyer’s aircraft located in the United States.

Now we learn that they are intending to go live with the system before testing its vulnerability to hackers: (Paid subscription required)

The F-35’s Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) will deploy its next major software release—2.0.2—in July, but concerns remain about performance and security. A report by the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) released in January suggests delayed ALIS software may push back U.S. Air Force initial operational capability (IOC) and that the network’s cybersecurity has become a key concern.

Lockheed Martin’s ALIS program manager, Jeff Streznetcky, says a U.S. Marine Corps exercise at Twentynine Palms, California, in December and an ongoing Air Force test program at Mountain Home, Idaho, offer more representative indications of ALIS’s readiness than the report.

“By all accounts, ALIS performed exceptionally well” at Twentynine Palms, he says, “and the reports I’m getting out of Mountain Home are similar. ALIS is doing its job supporting the warfighter and ultimately turning jets.”

………

Leaked National Security Agency briefing documents confirm China obtained F-35 engine schematics and radar designs after compromising program systems in the mid-2000s. Less attention has been focused on the kind of information routinely moving through ALIS, which may represent the program’s biggest threat surface.

“The Chinese see ALIS as a fantastic opportunity to enhance and improve their own fighter-aircraft capabilities,” says Bill Hagestad, a retired Marine Corps colonel and expert on Chinese cyber competencies. “But ALIS data would also be of considerable operational and strategic value to the Chinese if they were able to take a look at the disposition and laydown of deployed combat aircraft.”

According to a 2015 report by cybersecurity vendor FireEye, it takes 205 days on average for network breaches to be detected. Even if all data are encrypted, content could be inferred through analysis of network traffic patterns. Attackers can remain undetected longer if they are leveraging previously unknown vulnerabilities.

ALIS’s security is not just dependent on Lockheed’s own software and network defenses deployed on the different national and corporate systems ALIS data transits. The system incorporates a number of off-the-shelf component programs to handle logistics management and other functions: This has cut development timescales and lowered costs, but any vulnerabilities in those products become ALIS vulnerabilities.

………

A comprehensive, ongoing cybersecurity testing regime would appear to be a necessity. Yet the DOT&E report states: “The program currently does not plan to conduct cybersecurity penetration testing during the development of this ALIS release [2.0.2], or any future developmental releases, but will instead rely on previous, albeit limited, cybersecurity test results.”

This has not gone over well with cybersecurity experts. “Suggesting that this should be deployed before it’s properly tested and then tested after it’s deployed is backward security,” says Adriel Desautels, founder of penetration-testing specialist Netragard. “I don’t have a word strong enough to describe the level of absurdity involved with that. You can’t possibly deploy something that’s this sensitive and just have blind faith that you won’t get hacked.

Of course, Lockheed-Martin and the Pentagon maintain that they will deal with any potential vulnerabilities as soon as they get a round to it.

They want to get the aircraft into the field and have a large captive market before people realize that the aircraft is an unaffordable dog.

Ship, then fix.

As any computer gamer knows, there is a a whole world of grief that comes from this arrangement.

Flies in 2018. Bankruptcy in 2019

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Terrafugia has announced that its flying car will take flight by 2018.

There is a long history of flying cars (or roadable planes), and it never makes it to the mass market:

When will we finally pilot our own flying cars? It’s a question that’s haunted anyone who grew up watching sci-fi classics, and one American company claims they’re coming sooner than you’d think. Terrafugia is building the first-ever unmanned prototype of its TF-X flying car. They claim the vehicle will be ready for testing in 2018 and available for purchase by 2025.

The TF-X hybrid electric flying car looks mostly like a high-tech 4-seat sedan, except it’s equipped with fold-out wings that have twin electric motors on each side. These motors, powered by a 300 horsepower engine, can assume a horizontal position for flight and a vertical position for takeoff and landing. After using propellers to rise into the air (eliminating the need for any kind of runway), the vehicle would be capable of cruising at 200 mph for up to 500 miles.

There would be no need for a driver to have a pilot’s license, given that the car will be semi-autonomous. The driver can simply input the destination and allow the car to steer itself. The vehicle operator will, of course, have final say over whether the car should land in a particular area, and can abort landing at any time if the area seems unsafe.

This has been in the works for a long time, and I am sure that the most of the tech will work as promised.

After all there have been a dozen or so flying cars over the years.

They’ve just never made the leap from prototype to product.

Reality: 1 – USAF: 0

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Because they have nothing else that can do the job, the the United States Air Force has declared a hiatus on trying to scrap the A-10 Warthog:


The U.S. Air Force has reportedly decided to temporarily call off its campaign to retire the long-serving Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II close air support aircraft. The service finally relented because the Warthog is in high demand fighting the Islamic State terrorist entity in Iraq and Syria.

With its distinctive, even ungainly design, the Warthog is nonetheless beloved by U.S. ground forces who have come to rely on the low flying jet to provide air cover during battles with militants in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the Air Force was — until recently — trying to retire the jet in favor of the stealthy, supersonic Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

“It appears the administration is finally coming to its senses and recognizing the importance of A-10s to our troops’ lives and national security. Since before I took office and after, I’ve consistently highlighted the A-10’s irreplaceable capabilities and worked to expose the administration’s flawed argument for wanting to retire it prematurely,” Rep. Martha McSally — a former A-10 squadron commander and current member of the House Armed Services Committee — said in a statement.

She added:

“With A-10s deployed in the Middle East to fight ISIS, in Europe to deter Russian aggression, and along the Korean Peninsula, administration officials can no longer deny how invaluable these planes are to our arsenal and military capabilities. But our fight does not end here. The administration has been persistent in its efforts to send our best close air support asset to the boneyard without a replacement. That’s unacceptable, and I’ll continue to lead the fight to ensure we keep these planes flying until we know without a doubt we can replace their capabilities.”

The facts on the ground are no surprise, but the fact that the USAF has acknowledged reality is.

They have been soft pedaling their close air support duties since at least the Korean war, when they refused to deploy the P-47 Thunderbolt, and instead deployed the P-51 Mustang, which carried less ordinance and was far more vulnerable to ground fire because of its aft mounted radiator. (And the fact that the Thunderbolt was built like a f%$#ing tank)

It Took Long Enough

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SpaceX has finally managed to safely land a first stage on their booster:

SpaceX engineers and on-board software maneuvered the first stage of a Falcon 9 launch vehicle back to a steady, tail-down landing at Cape Canaveral Monday, 10 min. after returning the kerosene-fueled rocket to flight following an ascent explosion on a mission to the International Space Station in June.

Success in recovering the stage, after two unsuccessful attempts to land on a barge in the Atlantic, marks a major step toward the long-sought dream of reusable commercial space launchers. While Blue Origin brought its liquid-hydrogen/liquid oxygen New Shepard vehicle back from a suborbital launch to space on Nov. 23, Monday’s SpaceX recovery was the first known landing for an unmanned orbital launcher.

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, an early SpaceX backer, tweeted “Congrats @SpaceX for landing the rocket back on land!!!! Incredible!!! One giant leap!”

The landing at a surplus launch pad on Cape Canaveral AFS, Florida, came in the middle of three significant milestones for commercial spaceflight. For SpaceX, it marked a return to flight for the Falcon 9 launch vehicle that is the linchpin of the company’s business in the near term. For its customer, Orbcomm, it completed launching of a 17-spacecraft low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation of second-generation Machine-to-Machine “OG2” satellites.

Although only a secondary test objective on the Orbcomm-2 mission, landing the Falcon 9 stage at Launch Complex 13 on Cape Canaveral — a surplus Atlas launch site designed “Landing Complex 1” by SpaceX — was a major achievement for the Hawthorne, California-based company.

I am dubious as to the ultimate significance of the reusable stage.

At least some of the potential savings is eaten up by the additional fuel that needs to be carried to fly home, as are any arrangements for a landing site, with its associated blockhouse and firefighting equipment.

We’ll see.

Oh Crap………

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Turkish Radar Track


Competing Russian Radar Track

The Turks just shot down a Russian SU-24 near the Turkish border:

NATO faced being thrust into a new Middle Eastern crisis on Tuesday after warplanes from member state Turkey shot down a Russian jet that Turkish officials said had violated their country’s airspace on the border with Syria.

 The incident marked a serious escalation in the Syrian conflict that is likely to further strain relations between Russia and the NATO alliance.

 Russian officials confirmed that a Russian Su-24 attack aircraft was shot down Tuesday morning but insisted it had not violated Turkey’s airspace.

 Russia’s Defense Ministry said one of at least two pilots probably died during the incident, and a marine also was killed by apparent Syrian insurgent fire during a helicopter rescue operation to retrieve the downed airmen.

 The downing brings renewed attention to a scenario feared for months by the Pentagon and its partners: a potential conflict arising from overlapping air missions over Syria — with Russia backing the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a U.S.-led coalition conducting airstrikes against the Islamic State.

………

Russian President Vladimir Putin had strong words for Turkey, calling the incident a “stab in the back.”

By way of scale, that little bit of Turkey is in dispute is about 2 miles wide, while the Russians are maintaining that the Turkish aircraft entered Syrian airspace during the shoot-down.

This is a F%$#ing mess, and the US is between a rock and a hard place.

The Turks are clearly providing tacit support to Jihadis, including (in the past, at least) ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/Whatever, but they are also NATO allies, which means that the US is treaty bound to support them.

Particularly when juxtaposed with the fact that the elements of the US military and foreign policy establishment are still aggressively supporting the idea of the violent overthrow of the Syrian government, (which worked so f%$#ing well in Libya) this has all the makings of a fiasco.

Why Northrop Won the LRS-B Contract

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Over at Aviation Week, Bill Sweetman has a very good analysis as to why Northrop-Grumman beat the joint Lockheed-Martin Boeing bid for the LRS-B bomber program. (Paid subscription required)

When one considers the relative sizes of the competitors, Boeing and LM both dwarf Northrop, it was a surprise when won:

Northrop Grumman won the Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) contest on cost; the question is whether it also beat its rivals on technology and risk. The immediate response from Lockheed Martin and Boeing was to query the cost and risk assessment behind the decision; Loren Thompson, a consultant to both companies, confirmed that they knew from the numbers announced on Oct. 21 that they had been underbid, quite unexpectedly and by a decisive margin, pointing to fatal flaws in their strategy.

Thompson’s later column in Forbes, focusing on Northrop Grumman’s ability to execute the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) contract, suggests that the winner undercut its rival on EMD. “I’d say Wes [Northrop CEO Wes Bush] bet the company,” Thompson said. One Wall Street analyst who had predicted a Boeing team win said: “I have an impossible time believing that this will be a financially attractive proposition if he underbid the only defense contractor who understands lean manufacturing.”

But Northrop Grumman did precisely that—relying on its operational experience with wideband, all-aspect stealth technology on the B-2 bomber and the still-secret RQ-180 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) unmanned air vehicle. Also, the winning formula was not just a question of delivering more stealth or greater range, but of meeting a complex set of requirements that stressed risk reduction, an open systems architecture, agile management and new manufacturing technology.

………


Northrop Grumman won the Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) contest on cost; the question is whether it also beat its rivals on technology and risk. The immediate response from Lockheed Martin and Boeing was to query the cost and risk assessment behind the decision; Loren Thompson, a consultant to both companies, confirmed that they knew from the numbers announced on Oct. 21 that they had been underbid, quite unexpectedly and by a decisive margin, pointing to fatal flaws in their strategy.

Thompson’s later column in Forbes, focusing on Northrop Grumman’s ability to execute the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) contract, suggests that the winner undercut its rival on EMD. “I’d say Wes [Northrop CEO Wes Bush] bet the company,” Thompson said. One Wall Street analyst who had predicted a Boeing team win said: “I have an impossible time believing that this will be a financially attractive proposition if he underbid the only defense contractor who understands lean manufacturing.”

But Northrop Grumman did precisely that—relying on its operational experience with wideband, all-aspect stealth technology on the B-2 bomber and the still-secret RQ-180 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) unmanned air vehicle. Also, the winning formula was not just a question of delivering more stealth or greater range, but of meeting a complex set of requirements that stressed risk reduction, an open systems architecture, agile management and new manufacturing technology.

The conventional wisdom is that Northrop significantly underbid LM and Boeing, and that they will unable to execute their extremely aggressive bid.

Sweetman notes looks toward Northrop’s experience with the RQ-180, which seems to imply that they may have made a breakthrough in incorporating aerodynamic efficiency and broadband stealth.

I think that it is something else, and I think that Sweetman buried the lede here, because the following requirements should have whoever made the decision fleeing from LM like Laurie Strode did from Michael Meyers:

LRS-B, too, is planned to be upgraded easily and competitively, “with space and weight provision for things we can’t imagine today,” LaPlante said. Open architecture, he noted, could allow the Pentagon to procure a new or upgraded subsystem competitively, “provide it to the prime and say, ‘integrate this.’” Along with the cost of maintaining the bomber’s low-observable systems, upgrades will account for a large proportion of the bomber’s life-cycle cost—which will be much greater than its procurement bill.

………

Lockheed Martin brought its experience with stealth systems integration to the party. But the history of the F-22—where upgrades have been constrained by a tightly integrated architecture, so that every change requires painstaking regression testing to ensure that other functions are not affected—was exactly what the LRS-B program’s open architecture is designed to avoid.

(emphasis mine)

Lockheed-Martin has been doing tightly integrated monolithic systems for years, which runs counter to just about every rule of both software and weapons development, where critical functions should be segregated from everything else.

L-M’s model, as shown in the F-22 and the F-35 is put everything in one box that no one can look into except for Lockheed Martin.

They make their money by placing a toll on access.

It’s great for Lockheed Martin, but it’s technically stupid, and bad for the end user and the taxpayer, and it appears that someone in the Pentagon has finally recognized this.

Blow Up One Mainframe, and Shut Down the Entire F-35 Fleet

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The US military, and Lockheed-Martin have structured the software of the F-35 so that the plane cannot fly without a direct connection to a L-M mainframe:

The unilateral decision by the United States to locate all F-35 software laboratories on its territory, and to manage the operation and sustainment of the global F-35 fleet from its territory, has introduced vulnerabilities that are only beginning to emerge.

The biggest risk is that, since the F-35 cannot operate effectively without permanent data exchanges with its software labs and logistic support computers in the United States, any disruption in the two-way flow of information would compromise its effectiveness.

All F-35 aircraft operating across the world will have to update their mission data files and their Autonomic Logistic Information System (ALIS) profiles before and after every sortie, to ensure that on-board systems are programmed with the latest available operational data and that ALIS is kept permanently informed of each aircraft’s technical status and maintenance requirements. ALIS can, and has, prevented aircraft taking off because of an incomplete data file.

Given that the United States hopes to sell hundreds of F-35s to allies in Europe, Asia and Australia, the volume of data that must travel to and from the United States is gigantic, and any disruption in Internet traffic could cripple air forces as the F-35 cannot operate unless it is logged into, and cleared by, ALIS.

For example, “Mission data load development and testing is a critical path to combat capability,” Pentagon OT&E director Michael Gilmore said in his fiscal 2014 report. “Accuracy of threat identification and location depend on how well the mission data loads are optimized to perform in ambiguous operational environments.”

Updating and uploading mission data loads depends on a functioning Internet, and as Wired.com noted in an Oct. 29 story, “undersea Internet cables are surprisingly vulnerable.” It quoted Nicole Starosielski, a media scholar at New York University, as saying that “people would be surprised to know that there are a little over 200 systems that carry all of the internet traffic across the ocean, and these are by and large concentrated in very few areas. The cables end up getting funneled through these narrow pressure points all around the globe.”

………

The fear is that an “ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent,” the article said.

Whatever the other repercussions, such an event would severely limit the ability of the world’s F-35 fighters to fly – due to a loss of ALIS link – and to operate effectively, as their fighting ability would disappear if their software and mission data files could not be updated.

………

Given that the ALIS mainframe is located at Fort Worth, Texas, operating the F-35 will require three very large data conduits to and from these locations, again using Internet cables as the volume of data is too great for satellite transmission.

In fact, if the F-35 performs as advertised, it should gather very argue amounts of tactical data during each mission – data that it will have to transmit to the software labs in the US so they can be used to update the mission data files, adding another large volume data flow in both directions.

They don’t need to cut internet cables.  They send some guy in with an explosives vest to the mainframe, and the fleet is grounded.

More important to our foreign “Partners” is that this also means that an F-35 fleet can shut down by Lockheed-Martin over a  billing or maintenance dispute, or by the US over a foreign policy dispute.

This is not a bug, this is a feature, and it is one that almost certainly came from L-M, because it creates a captive customer:  No one can maintain the aircraft without paying a toll to them.

Even if the aircraft performs as promised, the basic concept for its operation is untenable.

Run away from this clusterf%$#.

Canadian Defense Industry May See Immediate Benefit from F-35 Cancellation

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Specifically, Canada has two needs, to replace its tired F/A-18s. but it also needs to replace much of its navy, which is well past its “sell by date”.

It turns out that the money saved by cancelling the F-35 may well free up money to allow for new ships, which will have the effect of creating a net plus for the Canadian defense industry:

While Canadian firms stand to lose business with the country’s withdrawal from the F-35 program, its maritime industry is expecting a potential windfall from the change of direction in defense.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to put more money into Canada’s ailing naval shipbuilding program, including any savings from selecting a cheaper alternative to the F-35 fighter jet. Maritime industry officials said that could mean more ships and more work.

Trudeau promised the shift in defense priorities during the recent federal election campaign. His government was elected Oct. 19 and took power Nov. 4.

The previous Conservative Party government had launched the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy (NSPS) in 2011. That outlined an ambitious CAN $30 billion plan (US $23 billion) to construct new vessels for the Royal Canadian Navy and Canadian Coast Guard. NSPS would see construction of 28 major warships and 116 smaller vessels.

Conservative Party Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was defeated by Trudeau, had earlier dismissed the Liberal promise to spend more money on shipbuilding as unnecessary, noting that his government originally put enough funding into NSPS.

But the shipbuilding strategy has been dogged by concerns from industry. Defense analysts, the Royal Canadian Navy and the country’s Auditor General Michael Ferguson have all warned there is likely not enough money to build all the needed vessels.

Before the Conservative Party government was defeated, Defence Minister Jason Kenney acknowledged that the NSPS plan, supposed to build up to 15 replacement ships for the Navy’s frigates and destroyers, might actually only finance 11 vessels.

Trudeau may very well have backed himself into a win-win scenario for canada.

Chinese Begin to Market the F-35 Done Right

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The Chinese were at the Dubai airshow, and the manufacturer is aggressively marketing their FC-31 medium weight fighter:

China’s Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC) has stated plans to fly a production version of its FC-31 Gyrfalcon fifth-generation fighter by 2019.

Although reluctant to take questions, company officials also stated they are in negotiations with the Chinese government to offer the aircraft to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force, despite previous reports that the fighter would only be offered for export.

Speaking in Dubai, where the company is displaying a model of the FC-31 outside China for the first time as the company begins the export push for the Gyrfalcon, Li Yuhai, deputy general manager at AVIC, said the aircraft was demonstrating the “technological and management progress” of the program.

………

Peng said the aircraft’s primary armament would be the PL-9 short-range missile, the SD-10A medium-range air-to-air missile and small diameter bombs. He said the aircraft would be able to carry 2,000 kg (4,400 lb.) of weapons in its single internal bay and 6,000 kg (13,220 lb.) externally.

The company would not say which engine would power production aircraft but that it would be a “advanced medium thrust engine” producing 88.29 kN. (20,000 lb./9,000 kg) of thrust. The demonstrator aircraft is currently powered by the Russian RD-93 which powers the Mikoyan MiG-29.

What is notable here is that, because it does not carry the dead weight that the F-35 does, because it does not carry baggage associated with the STOVL F-35B.

Note the superior rear vision, and the fact that it has a single larger internal weapons bay, which provides greater capacity and flexibility, both of which are an artifact of not having to accommodate a lift fan.

Also, the wing appears a bit larger, probably because it does not have to shave weight to make vertical landings.

Also, the Klimov RD-33 engine has an 8:1 thrust to weight ratio, as versus the 6:1 ratio of the F135 because it does not have to carry around design features that are only needed for driving the lift fan.

Basically, the US Marine Corps requirement that there be a variant that has vertical landing capabilities is a large part of why the plane is broken.

The Chinese, in making what is a very similar aircraft, have avoided those pitfalls.

Northrop Grumman Wins Contract for New Bomber

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NG beat out a coalition of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. (paid subscription required)

My guess is that this was largely driven by the desire to make sure that all the primes had business. Boeing has the new tankers, LM has the F-35, and now NG has this:

Northrop Grumman is the winner of the Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) contest, beating a rival team with six times its annual sales.

 The U.S. Air Force announced Oct. 27 that Northrop Grumman beat a Boeing/Lockheed Martin team in a competition to develop and build 100 of the bombers, which are expected to reach initial operational capability in the mid-2020s. The Pentagon says the next phase of the work, engineering and manufacturing development (EMD), should cost $21.4 billion in 2010 dollars, including the delivery of an unspecified number of test aircraft.

 Another $1.9 billion has already been spent on risk reduction, bringing both competing teams through the initial design phase. In 2016 dollars, the estimated EMD cost is $23.5 billion, the Pentagon says. The B-2 cost $37.2 billion to develop in 2016 dollars.

 The Air Force also says that the average procurement unit cost for the Northrop Grumman bomber (which does not have a formal designation yet) will be $511 million in 2010 dollars, assuming a 100-aircraft buy ($564 million in 2016 dollars). This figure, the result of two independent Pentagon estimates, is lower than the $550 million (2010 dollars) goal that was set in 2011, when then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates approved the start of the program.

 ………

 For the time being, however, the make-up of Northrop Grumman’s team is a secret, as are most attributes of the program. Not even the engine subcontractor is disclosed, although the Air Force said today that all major subsystems have been selected. Although most analysts agree it is overwhelmingly likely that the bomber will resemble a smaller cousin of the B-2, a blended wing-body aircraft with two engines and an unrefueled radius of action of around 2,500 nm, no such details have been confirmed.

Note that the range is less than half that of the B-52 and the B-2, and 15 less than that of the B-1, which has been criticized for excessive use of tankers in combat operations.

The payload is not public, but given that it will have two engines, I would expect to be far less than that of the B-2’s 40,000 lbs (to say much less of the B-52’s 70,000 lb payload, and the B-1’s 75,000 lb payload).

My guess is that this would place around a 25,000 lb payload, which means that we are spending an awful lot of money for a similar payload and range performance of the B-47, a medium bomber that first flew in 1947. (FWIW, Aviation Week has pegged the payload and range even lower)

And you wonder why I lament US weapons development and procurement.

Details of the selection process also remain highly classified, but it is likely that the winning bid rested on Northrop Grumman’s operational experience with wide-band, all-aspect stealth technology on the B-2 bomber and the still-secret RQ-180 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) unmanned air vehicle.

 But the winning formula was most likely not just a question of delivering more stealth or more range. In LRS-B, the winner had to meet a complex set of requirements that stress risk reduction, an open systems architecture, agile management and manufacturing technology.

The USAF wants its strategic bomber, and because its first pass at this, the Next Generation Bomber, was expensive enough to make the B-2 look cheap, they trimmed away enough requirements to end up with something equivalent to the FB-111, which really isn’t a strategic bomber at all.

This is absurd.

Prodigious Puffed up Phallus Produces Peril for Passaic, Paramis, Packanack, Pascoag, Pelham, and Philadelphia*

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Everything the military does tends toward the phallic.
Compensating for Something?

Every time we drive north on 95 from Baltimore, we see some aerostats (tethered blimps}.

It’s all a part of the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) and today, a tether broke:

The U.S. military has two giant, unmanned surveillance blimps it uses to watch the East Coast from a base in Maryland. And one of them escaped its tethers Wednesday and floated aimlessly over Pennsylvania, downing power lines and cutting off electricity for tens of thousands of residents.

The incident started shortly after noon, when the blimp became detached from its anchor, NORAD said. Two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled to ensure it didn’t collide with other aircraft. By late afternoon, the dirigible had come down to the ground near Moreland Township in Pennsylvania — after drifting more than 100 miles — but not before leaving a trail of damage in its wake.

It was unclear how the aerostat got loose and how it came down, said John Cornelio, a spokesman for NORAD. He added it was possible that the aerostat’s helium could have run out.

………

The blimp wreaked plenty of havoc. Frederick Hunsinger, the public safety director for Columbia County, Pa., said in an interview that the blimp’s heavy tether dragged for 20 miles across his county. There were no injuries within county borders, but the damage caused 35,000 to lose electricity, he said. Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania canceled classes as a result; 911 phone lines were overwhelmed.

………

Known as the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, or JLENS, the blimp is technically an aerostat — a term for a lighter-than-air craft that is tethered to the ground. The $2.7 billion program is on a three-year test run to see whether it can help detect cruise missiles or enemy aircraft from 10,000 feet above ground.

………

The JLENS program “continues to drain money from taxpayers even though it serves no strategic purpose,” Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) said. “This incident is just another example of the problems inherent in an ill-conceived network of floating blimps that don’t provide any advantage over aircraft we’ve already bought.”

I am sure that the 35,000 people who lost power would agree with Representative Speier.

It does see  to be yet another DoD program where they are procuring without a meaningful need.

*What can I say? The juxtaposition of penis humor and alliteration are comedy gold., and yes, it is one of the reasons that I made this post..

Another Benefit to the Libs Winning in the Great White North

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It looks like the elections in Canada make it far less likely for there to be any purchases of the F-35:

British Columbia — Canada will see a major shift in defense policy with the election of a new Liberal Party government and its planned withdrawal from the Iraq coalition air campaign and the US-led F-35 program.

 Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau promised both during the election campaign leading up to Monday’s vote. Trudeau won a surprise landslide victory, forcing the ruling Conservative Party government into the opposition ranks of the House of Commons.

 Trudeau said Tuesday he talked to US President Obama about Canada’s changing role in Iraq and the battle against the Islamic State militant group.

 “I committed that we would continue to engage in a responsible way that understands how Canada has a role to play in the fight against ISIL,” Trudeau told journalists in a televised news conference from Ottawa, using an alternative acronym for the Islamic State group, also known as IS. “But (President Obama) understands the commitments I’ve made around ending the combat mission.”

 ………

 Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper said if he was re-elected, he would approve a long-term commitment to the Iraq and Syrian wars.

 Although Trudeau intends to end Canada’s role in the bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria, he has promised to boost the number of soldiers available to train Iraqi troops.

 ………

 Trudeau also has promised to move quickly on replacing Canada’s aging fleet of CF-18 fighter aircraft and to pull out of the F-35 program. He said Canada does not need a stealth fighter for its defense needs and that the F-35 is too expensive.

 The Liberal Party released its 88-page election platform Oct. 5, which included some details about how it would proceed with replacing the CF-18s. “The primary mission of our fighter aircraft should remain the defence of North America, not stealth first-strike capability,” the platform said. “We will make investing in the Royal Canadian Navy a top priority. By purchasing more affordable alternatives to the F-35s, we will be able to invest in strengthening our Navy.”

 ………

 Alan Williams, who signed the original memorandum that brought Canada into the F-35 program in 1997, said the planned withdrawal from the fighter jet project would be embarrassing for the US.

 But he said that Canada has to base its decisions on its own defense needs, and not only on the security and industrial concerns of its allies.

 ………

 The other potential contenders to replace Canada’s CF-18s are the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Dassault Rafale, Boeing’s Super Hornet and Saab’s Gripen.

 Williams said holding an open competition for a CF-18 replacement would ensure Canadian aerospace firms have the best chance at obtaining work on such a project.

 Trudeau has suggested that the F-35 would not be considered in any competition.

There is an interesting comparison of capabilities at this page, and you will notice that, apart from low observability performance (stealth), the F-35 does not seem to be a particularly good deal:


 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II Saab Gripen JAS 39E/F Eurofighter Typhoon Dassault Rafale Boeing F/A-18E/F/G Super Hornet
Crew 1 1(E), 2(F) 1 or 2(Trainer) 1(C,M), 2(B) 1(E), 2 (F,G)
Engines 1 1 2 2 2
Power 28,000 (43,000 with afterburner) 13,000 (22,000 with afterburner) 26,000 (40,000 with afterburner) 22,500 (34,000 with afterburner) 26,000 (44,000 with afterburner)
Thrust-to-weight ratio (with 100% fuel and A2A weapons) 0.87 1.06 1.07 0.99 0.93
Max speed (in mach) 1.6 2 2 1.8 1.8
Supercruise No1 1.2 (with 2 WVR and 2 BVR missiles) 1.3 (with 2 WVR and 4 BVR missiles) 1.4 (with 6 WVR/BVR missiles) No
Combat Radius (Air to Air mission) 1,100km (internal fuel only) 1,300km (with centreline 290 gallon tank) 1,389km 1,000+km 1000+km (internal fuel only)
Ferry Range (with external tanks) 2,220km (internal fuel only)2 4,000+km 3,790km 3,700+km 3,300km
Service ceiling: 60,000ft3 50,000ft4 55,000ft 55,000ft 50,000ft+
Wing loading (lower = better): 91.4lb/ft2 58lb/ft24 64lb/ft2 62.8lb/ft2 94lb/ft2
Rate of climb: Classified 50,000ft/min4 62,000ft/min 60,000ft/min 44,882ft/min
Radar: AN/APG-81 AESA Raven AESA CAPTOR-E AESA (planned) RBE2-AA AESA APG-79 AESA
Infrared Search and Track: AAQ-40 EOTS Selex “Skyward G” IRST PIRATE IRST, LITENING pod SAGEM-OSF IRST mounted in external fuel tank
Helmet mounted display System: HMDS (still in development) Cobra HMDS Eurofighter HMSS TopSight HMD JHMCS






Electronic warfare and countermeasures: AN/AAQ/37 DAS missile warning system, AN/ASQ-239 Electronic Warfare system, stealth design resulting in decreased radar and infrared signature. ECM pods, BOL advanced countermeasure dispenser, MAW (missile approach warner), Laser Warning System, towed decoy, internally mounted RF jammers. ECM pods, flares, IR decoy dispenser, chaff pods, radar warning receiver, MAW, laser warning receiver, towed decoy, Thales SPECTRA electronic warfare suite ECM pods, towed decoys, chaff, flares, AN/ALE-165 jammer pod, AN/ALR-67 radar warning reciever
Gun: GAU-22/A 25mm 4-barrelled gatling cannon 27mm Mauser BK-27 Revolver cannon (E model only) 27mm Mauser BK-27 Revolver cannon 30mm GIAT 30/719B autocannon 20mm M61 Vulcan gatling cannon
Hardpoints: 4 internal, 6 external 10 13 (4 semi-conformal) 14 11
Payload: 18,000lbs (using external pylons) 15,875lbs 16,500lbs 21,000lbs 17,750lbs
“X-Factor”: Stealth, advanced sensors Can operate from unprepared runways, low operating cost. Legendary air-to-air performance, twin engine. Ground strike ability, naval version available, twin engine. Naval airframe, easy transition, twin engine.
Problems: Troubled development, questionable performance, high operating cost. Smaller design, less payload. Troubled history, high operating cost. Proprietary systems and weapons. Old design, unremarkable performance.

1Unofficially, the F-35 can supercruise at mach 1.2 for a distance of 241km.
2External fuel tanks are planned for the F-35, but none have been flight tested yet.
3The F-35 has only been tested to 43,000ft so far.
4Gripen C information, Gripen E data is unavailable

I would note here that the F-35 is more than 50% more costly than any of the competition, and has a direct operating cost more than that of an F-15, which was never known as an aircraft that was cheap to operate.

Further, it appears that the use of external tanks in a combat configuration will not be something that we will see in the near future, the Pentagon has its eggs in the stealth basket, and adding a combat tank would require its cooperation.

This means that its range in a typical combat configuration will typically be no better than its competitors.

In an air to air mode, the F-35 either needs to carry missiles externally, negating stealth, or to limit itself to just two missiles, placing the aircraft at a disadvantage.

Furthermore, much like Donald Trump’s hair, it’s fat, heavy and slow.

Finally, the F-35 is a roach motel: Data goes in, but it does not come out until it reaches Lockheed Martin in Ft. Worth, which means that there will be a heavy rent collected for developing new weapons, which will suppress the defense industries in partner nations.

The inability to access the source code of the aircraft also means that there will be some serious tactical issues, as data collected on new threats cannot even be examined by anyone but LM and the Pentagon, which could make for lots of flaming debris when an opponent deploys a heretofore unknown air defense system.

I do understand why Trudeau wants to drop the program:  It is less a defense program than it is an industrial base preservation program centered on the US defense industry.

Scott Adams Called This Confusopolies

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In response to improvements in information and comparison shopping made available to the consumer through the Internet, the airlines have conspired to make their fare systems Byzantinely complex.

This may be why airlines are waging a war on travel websites. The tools available on these sites make it too difficult to f%$# the customers like a drunk sorority girl:

Once upon a time, there were reasonably well-known ways to pay less for your airfare. Airlines had rules governing ticket prices, those rules were consistent across airlines, and almost everybody knew what the rules were. (If you booked further in advance, the tickets were cheaper. If you stayed a Saturday night, the ticket would be cheaper. That kind of thing.)

 Those days, however, are long gone. Airline tickets are no longer priced according to simple rules: they’re dynamically priced according to insanely complex algorithms which, to the naked eye, make no sense at all. Cheap tickets still exist, of course—the problem is that there’s no reliable way of finding them. If you managed to luck into such a ticket a few weeks or months ago, good for you—but don’t for a minute expect that if you behaved exactly the same way today, then you would get a similar result.

 A recent paper by Symeon Meichanetzoglou, Sotiris Ioannidis, and Nikolaos Laoutaris sums up the current status quo: “complexity asymmetry,” they conclude, “defeated the web.” The paper is based on a massive database of 1,449,349 flight tickets involving 63 destinations and 125 different airlines—and finds that even the most common-sense rules of airline ticket pricing are regularly violated.

For instance, let’s say you want to book a round-trip flight from Brussels to Stuttgart. The researchers studied six different airlines flying that route, with 619 different fares, and found that 24.5% of the time, it was cheaper to buy two one-way tickets (one from Brussels to Stuttgart, and one from Stuttgart to Brussels) than it was to buy a round-trip. And when they looked at airlines rather than routes, they found similar outliers: one Dutch airline was cheaper more than half the time when buying singles rather than round-trip tickets. (Especially, it seems, on the Frankfurt-Zurich route.)

 ………

A few years ago, Delta got in trouble for showing higher prices to its frequent fliers than to everybody else; it blamed a “computer glitch.” Ever since then, conspiracy theories have abounded, especially among people who search for flights, find relatively cheap ones, and then find that the fares have suddenly increased when they decide to buy. Is it a good idea to use some kind of private browsing mode when shopping for tickets, so that the airlines can’t identify you and jack their prices accordingly?

 The answer, frankly, is that although it won’t hurt if you do that, you’re going to end up outsmarted whatever you do. The airlines and flight search engines have infinitely more information than you do, and that information asymmetry is always going to work to their advantage. If you find a cheap fare, good for you; if you don’t, it’s not your fault. The system is rigged against you. The battle of consumers against the airlines is over. And the airlines have won.

There are industries that hate their customers more than the airlines ***cough*** cable companies ***cough***, but this is a veritable rogues gallery of evil that they have joined.

This is a Feature, Not a Bug

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It turns out that Lockheed-Martin and the Pentagon are adding insult to injury, and requiring that F-35 customers fund software upgrade laboratories, because these will be the only entities capable of maintaining the aircraft.

So in addition to everything else, the JSF will be a “forever” source of revenue for LM, while ensuring that foreign operators will never develop expertise necessary to be a competitor: (Paid subscription required):

Foreign air forces using the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are being compelled to build and fund $150 million software laboratories, based in the U.S. and almost 50% staffed by U.S. personnel, that generate data crucial to the fighter’s ability to identify new radio-frequency threats.

This regime is more stringent and far-reaching than earlier U.S. fighter export deals. Those usually withheld key software — known as source code — from the customer, but in most cases allowed local users to manage their own “threat libraries,” data that allowed the electronic warfare (EW) system to identify radio-frequency threats, with in-country, locally staffed facilities.

For the U.K. in particular, the reliance on U.S.-located laboratories looks like a pullback from its earlier position. In 2006, concern over access to JSF technology reached the national leadership level, and prompted a declaration, by U.S. President George W. Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, that “both governments agree that the U.K. will have the ability to successfully operate, upgrade, employ, and maintain the JSF such that the U.K. retains operational sovereignty over the aircraft.”

That promise seemingly contrasts with the severe limits now being imposed on non-U.S. access to the system.

………

Another source close to the U.K. user community notes that Lockheed Martin has advertised the capability of the “fusion engine” — the software that combines inputs from different sensors and datalinks — to identify targets and implement rules of engagement automatically. But if the logic of the fusion engine itself is not understood at the U.K.’s operational level, he says, “You can imagine that this slaughters our legal stance on a clear, unambiguous and sovereign kill chain.”

The restrictions are also likely to be cumbersome. By contrast, “Swedish air force Gripens are often updated between sorties,” a Saab spokesman says. Signals intercepted and recorded by the fighter’s EW system on one sortie can be analyzed and the system updated in hours.

If this sounds like incompetence, it’s because you do not understand the goal of the program.

The goal is maintaining and extending US hegemony in the weapons market, so that they have money for overpaying retired generals as “consultants”.

I Did Not Think that You Could Use Roller Bearings for This

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There are a number of reasons why roller bearings (ball bearings, cylindrical roller bearings, spherical roller bearings, tapered roller bearings, etc.) find use.

They provide a low drag solution, and, particularly for low speed applications, like turret rings, they tend to be the favored solution.

For higher speed applications, things like crankshaft bearings and bearings though, they are not used, because they tend to shake themselves to pieces.

Instead, fluid bearings are used, where the bearing moves with respect to the journal supported on a thin film of a fluid, typically some sort of oil or air. (Think air-hockey puck)

There is more drag in the system, but it functions at much higher speeds.

This is why you do not see roller bearings in jet enginse, at least that was why until now: (paid subscription required)

A recent development in Germany by FAG Aerospace and MTU Aero Engines could affect turbofan engine operations in three key areas: oil consumption, fuel economy and power generation.

The companies designed a main-shaft ball bearing that exceeds, reportedly for the first time, an operational speed parameter of 4 million mm/min. (160,000 in./min.)—66% greater than the 2.4 million mm/min. generated by most conventional bearings during takeoff.

At maximum speed, the bearing reportedly consumes the same amount of oil and generates identical temperatures as conventional bearings. At normal speed up to 50% less oil—6 liters/min. (1.6 gal./min.)—is needed for cooling, temperature is 25C (77F) lower and power loss drops as much as 25%.

Peter Glockner, head of product design at FAG Aerospace, attributes the reduction in oil consumption to, among other features, outer-ring cooling technology and an “integrated squeeze-film damper” that mitigates vibration load. The benefits of lower oil consumption and reduced vibration include power-loss savings, which “increase[s] the mechanical efficiency of the engine” and thus lowers fuel consumption, he adds.

The fuel savings are low: FAG Aerospace estimates the technology could save 200,000 tons of fuel annually for global turbofan fleets. In 2015, total fuel consumption for all aircraft is forecast to be up to 230 million metric tons.

Nevertheless, the technology appears to have clear engine-power advantages, and even minuscule savings add up for large operators, including the military.

Assumign that the price comes down, I would expect to see this in automotive turbocharger bearings, and (eventually) main engine bearings.

When I was in E-school, this was the sort of application for roller bearings that we were basically told, “Don’t even think about it”.

And now someone is trying to sell it.

I am impressed

Son of the PT6

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Click for slide show


The PT6 Bass Ackwards Air Flow


No connection between the gas generator and power turbine


Note the adjacent engines


The reverse flow prevents one engine failure from taking out another

In my pre-engineering school days, I always wondered why the Pratt & Whitney PT6 turboprop had its intake in the rear, and its exhaust in the front.

I also could not understand why this arrangement, which has the airflow reversing course was so popular. as it seemed to add a lot of complexity, as well as losses into the system.

After the my time in engineering school, I actually understood that this.

The reverse airflow scheme allowed for the use of a free turbine, where the meant that the power turbine is not attached to the compressor, etc.

It makes for a simpler layout. You don’t need any concentric shafts, and starting the engine requires much less “oomph”.

Well, it now looks like a very similar arrangement for advanced airliner configurations. (Yes, this is a few months old. I came across this while doing digital housecleaning)

Not bad for an engine design that is over 50 years old:

As designers of future airliners look increasingly beyond traditional tube-and-wing configurations to meet the high efficiency goals of the 2030s and beyond, new territory is being carved out in the critical area of airframe-engine integration.

 Unusual features ranging from recessed inlets to pylon-mounted upper-surface engines have become familiar sights in wind tunnels, but even seasoned researchers are surprised by a new engine architecture proposed by Pratt & Whitney. The concept not only physically separates the propulsor from the gas generator, but also mounts the core backward and at an angle. This novel arrangement is aimed at overcoming installation challenges in new configurations like the D8 double-bubble airliner concept under study by NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

 Aimed at NASA’s N+3 performance goals for an airliner that could enter service around 2035, the D8 is designed to burn at least 60% less fuel than the current generation of narrowbody airliners. The secret behind this leap in performance is a configuration that clusters the engines together atop the wide tail of a flattened fuselage. Besides providing a clean high-aspect-ratio wing for low drag, this enables the engines to reenergize to slow-moving boundary layer flow over the fuselage, increasing efficiency.

 But such a configuration creates several issues. The engines lie so close to the upper surface of the fuselage their fans must be sufficiently robust to cope with flow distortion from ingesting the boundary layer. Fan size will also be large because the engines envisioned for the D8 will have a bypass ratio of at least 20:1, and be targeted at extremely low noise levels of -52 EPNdb below current Stage 4 limits. Scale tests conducted at NASA of a distortion-tolerant fan developed by United Technologies Research Center show the boundary-layer challenge has been met, but other key questions remain.

 Because engine cores are becoming more efficient and operating at higher pressure ratios, they are also shrinking and becoming disproportionately small compared to the propulsor section as bypass ratios increase. This leads to blade heights of 0.5 in. or less at the exit of the high-pressure compressor. At this small scale, tip clearances not only become harder to maintain, but there is little space within the core through which to run the driveshaft connecting the fan to the low-pressure turbine. Additionally, because the core is proportionately longer and thinner, designers face the issue of backbone bending which further affects clearance control.

 “So that’s when we had the breakthrough idea of turning the core backward,” says Pratt & Whitney Technology and Environment Vice President Alan Epstein. Air enters the engine through the fan as normal, but instead of continuing directly into the compressor, it is ducted around the side and back of the core to enter from the opposite direction. In an arrangement similar to Pratt & Whitney Canada’s PT6, in which air flows forward through the engine, hot gas will be discharged forward through a power (low-pressure) turbine connected to the fan via a gear system. The turbine, gearbox and fan will be connected via “a really short shaft, and because the core is not connected to the power side, you can take the core off easily for maintenance,” Epstein explains.

 The concept also overcomes another challenge. The idea of nested engines, as in the D8, does not meet current FAA certification criteria under the “1 in 20” rule. This states that there should be only a 1 in 20 chance of debris from an uncontained engine failure causing a second engine to fail. However, because the core and propulsor are no longer mechanically linked, “the designers have come up with an extraordinarily clever arrangement in which the cores are angled relative to each other,” Epstein says.

 “We cant them at around 50 deg. and the exit from the core turns via a 50-deg. duct to go into the power turbine. So now they are more than 90 deg. off from each other. It’s simple geometry,” he says. “It enables you to have a large bypass ratio, and you are not turning much of the airflow if you are turning just the core flow, so pressure losses are low.”

I love it when advanced technology goes all retro.

More Freedom Bombs………

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It looks like the US military launched an intense and sustained airstrike against a hospital in Kunduz, Afthanistan:

An airstrike apparently carried out by U.S. forces heavily damaged a charitable hospital in northern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing at least 19 people — three of them reportedly children — in an incident that a senior U.N. official equated to a war crime.

The airstrike occurred before dawn when a Doctors Without Borders trauma center in war-torn Kunduz was struck while doctors were treating dozens of patients. Hospital officials said they were assaulted from the air for 30 to 45 minutes, resulting in a large fire that burned some patients to death in their beds. Among those killed were 12 of the charity group’s staff members, the group said.

“This attack is abhorrent and a grave violation of international humanitarian law,” said Meinie Nicolai, the group’s president.

While the charity’s workers reported waves of bombs hitting their facility, the U.S.-led military coalition in Kabul issued a statement confirming one American airstrike that may have caused “collateral damage” to a “medical facility.” Authorities said it was launched against “insurgents who were directly firing upon U.S. servicemembers” who had traveled to Kunduz to advise Afghan security forces.

………

It was unclear how close Taliban fighters may have been to the hospital Saturday or whether the U.S. military didn’t realize the building was a hospital. Afghan security officials said Taliban fighters had been pouring into the facility in recent days seeking treatment for gunshot wounds and other injuries.

The charity and other international organizations reacted with outrage, and the hospital’s management said it had repeatedly informed the U.S.-led coalition of the facility’s precise GPS coordinates over the past few months. The location of the hospital was last conveyed to the international coalition three days before the airstrike, officials added.

………

“This event is utterly tragic, inexcusable and, possibly, even criminal,” said Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, adding that “if established as deliberate in a court of law, an airstrike on a hospital may amount to a war crime.”

Jason Cone, executive director of Doctors Without Borders in the United States, said hospital officials in Kunduz immediately reached out to U.S. military officials when the airstrike occurred.

“The bombing continued for more than 30 minutes after American and Afghan military officials in Kabul and Washington were first informed,” the organization said in a statement.

A U.S. military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk freely, said the strike appears to have been carried out by an AC-130 gunship, a heavily armed warplane.

I will make a point here: An AC-130, notwithstanding its bulk and lumbering appearance, is a precise weapon, arguably much more precise than guided bombs, if just because they engage at a fraction of the distance.

They hit what they were ordered to hit, and they did so for nearly an hour.

The only questions is whether their orders were an error, or if the the targeting was deliberate, either because MSF was treating members of the Taliban (a war crime by the US) or because the Taliban was using the hospital compound for military purposes (a war crime by the Taliban).

Rather unsurprisingly, MSF is demanding an independent investigation, but given the record of the US military on such matters, and the continuing cover-up of the Pat Tillman friendly fire incident, I would not hold my breath.

What actually happened is unclear at this time, but what is clear, and in fact is certain, is that this will be used by the Taliban for a long time as a recruiting tool.

Fail.

This is Significant………

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It turns out that the aircraft that Russia is sending to Syria are not Su-27s or MiG-31s. They are top of the line Su-30SM multi-role fighters:

The Institute for the Study of War had spotted four Russian fighter jets at Al Assad International Airport in Damascus. The Kremlin may have sent air-to-air missiles to Syria along with the aircraft, the D.C.-based think tank added.

But Washington area consultant and War Is Boring contributor Chris Biggers pointed out on the blog Offiziere that ISW had misidentified the jets. As it turns out, Russia sent its maneuverable and deadly Su-30SM multi-role jets.

Recent satellite imagery acquired by Airbus of al-Assad International airport in Syria shows four Su-30SM aircraft, not four SU-27 Flanker as originally reported by the Institute for [the] Study of War. The aircraft are easily mistaken for the SU-27 due to the modern variant’s use of the same airframe. The only predominant identifier on satellite imagery separating these aircraft from the earlier model is the canards positioned forward on the fuselage which assist with the aircraft’s thrust vectoring capability.

Located on the north side of the runway at Latakia, the Su-30SM multi-role fighters are one of Russia’s more advanced 4+ generation aircraft, often compared to the U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle. This variant is equipped with a passive electronically scanned array (PESA) BARS radar, fly-by-wire flight controls, modern ECM as well as thrust vectoring, making this a highly maneuverable and capable fighter.

In March 2012, Russia hired the Irkut Corporation to build a total of 60 Su-30SM fighters. While the new model was the first for the Kremlin’s air arms to feature the small canard positioned behind the cockpit, Irkut had already sold similar MKI and MKM versions to India and Malaysia, respectively.

The reason that this is important is because of the whole “Multi Role” thing.

The Su-30SM is not as well suited for the interception role as the MiG-31, top speed and ceiling are lower, but it can carry a much wider range of munitions, including the KH-58 anti-radiation missile, which has the capability to attack surface to air missile installations at ranges greater than 200 km, which could suppress NATO SAMs in Turkey that have largely prevented the Syrian Air Force from operating in the north of the country.

Syria is a complete clusterf%$#, (When the Assad regime is the best alternative, you know that you have completely screwed the pooch) , and now we are seeing increased Russian involvement in the conflict.

It’s a mess, and it’s getting scary.

F-35 Testing Beginning to Resemble Lance Armstrong Blood Tests

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It turns out that the recent “successful deployment of the F-35 in US Marine Corps exercises was nothing of the sort:

The Marine Corps triumphantly declared its variant of the F-35 combat ready in late July. In the public relations build-up, the recent demonstration of its performance on the USS Wasp was heralded as a rebuttal to the program’s critics.

But a complete copy of a recent memo from the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) — obtained by the Project On Government Oversight through the Freedom of Information Act — reveals that a number of maintenance and reliability problems “are likely to present significant near-term challenges for the Marine Corps.”

The Marine Corps named this demonstration “Operational Test One,” but it turns out it wasn’t actually an operational test, “in either a formal or an informal sense of the term.” To count as an operational test, conditions should closely match realistic combat conditions.

But DOT&E found the demonstration “did not — and could not — demonstrate that Block 2B F-35B is operationally effective or suitable for use in any type of limited combat operation, or that it was ready for real-world operational deployments, given the way the event was structured.”

The details buried inside the report’s annexes also show just how much trouble the crew faced in attempting to keep the F-35s selected for the demonstration flightworthy. Before the demonstration even began the Marine Corps had to swap out one F-35B with another “due to a fuel system fault that would have been impractical to fix at sea given the maintenance workload.”

In combat, not only would this kind of replacement be impractical, it would likely be impossible.

It goes on to state that the the WASP was emptied of other aircraft in order to facilitate F-35 ops, critical hardware and software not being present on the system, around 80 civilian contractors on board to keep the aircraft running, a prognostics and maintenance system that is basically non-functional, and a much lower operational tempo than promised.

This aircraft is a turkey, and I see no prospect of it being fixed.

The US Air Force is Desperate

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Because of the small number of ruinously expensive F-22’s, and the lack of performance of it’s equally ruinously expensive F-35, has the wild blue yonder brigade looking at extending the service life of the F-15 C until the 2040s:

The lack of an official retirement date for the U.S. Air Force’s F-15C is perhaps the strongest indication of a bright future for the platform.

This is not lost on the fighter’s manufacturer, Boeing, which is recasting its efforts to offer an upgrade plan for the air superiority aircraft after its earlier effort, dubbed the Silent Eagle, flopped.

 Most Air Force platforms have a retirement date on the books, even if just for planning. But the F-15C is in a peculiar position. It was to be replaced by a fleet of F-22s, but high costs prompted then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates to end production for the stealthy, twin-engine aircraft in 2009 with only 187 jets produced. This is far fewer than the 350 hoped for. So the F-15C fleet is likely to stay on far longer than expected, at least until an F-22follow-on—dubbed the Next-Generation Air Dominance aircraft—is designed and fielded.

 “They will not be producing another air superiority jet until the 2030s, and they will not be out there in sufficient numbers . . . until 2040 or beyond,” says Mike Gibbons, Boeing’s F-15 vice president

 Air Force officials will not go so far as to call it a “gap” in capability, but there clearly is a shortfall. This is exemplified by the shift in plans for the critical air-to-air mission. A decade ago, the service projected a “high-low” mix of F-22s handling all of the air superiority tasks, with the F-35 relegated to a multirole mission of suppression/destruction of enemy air defenses and close air support roles. The F-35 was equipped for limited air-to-air engagement, including for self protection, but not as a front-line air superiority fighter.

 Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh says that now, however, the limited number of F-22s has pushed the service to look at a long-range plan for the F-15C as well as pressing the F-35 into that role. The F-35 “is not intended to be an air superiority fighter. That was not how it was designed,” he told reporters during a Sept. 15 press conference at the annual Air Force Association Air and Space Conference. “When the F-22 buy was curtailed . . . we [decided we] have to supplement it with something. Near-term it is going to be the F-15C . . . and then as the F-35 comes on board it is capable of supplementing the F-22, but then it will not be doing its primary job.”

 Gen. Herbert Carlisle, who heads Air Combat Command, acknowledges the conundrum. The F-15C will require costly upgrades to stay relevant in the fight. And the service is already stretched for resources. Durability testing thus far—with more to come—suggests new longerons, wing spars and wings could be required on at least some of the F-15Cs. This will result in a “pretty significant bill,” he told reporters at the conference, adding it will total billions of dollars.

………

 Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh says that now, however, the limited number of F-22s has pushed the service to look at a long-range plan for the F-15C as well as pressing the F-35 into that role. The F-35 “is not intended to be an air superiority fighter. That was not how it was designed,” he told reporters during a Sept. 15 press conference at the annual Air Force Association Air and Space Conference. “When the F-22 buy was curtailed . . . we [decided we] have to supplement it with something. Near-term it is going to be the F-15C . . . and then as the F-35 comes on board it is capable of supplementing the F-22, but then it will not be doing its primary job.”

 Gen. Herbert Carlisle, who heads Air Combat Command, acknowledges the conundrum. The F-15C will require costly upgrades to stay relevant in the fight. And the service is already stretched for resources. Durability testing thus far—with more to come—suggests new longerons, wing spars and wings could be required on at least some of the F-15Cs. This will result in a “pretty significant bill,” he told reporters at the conference, adding it will total billions of dollars.

………

One of the 2040C loadout options would place four external air-to-air missiles on each of the CFTs. That doubles the loadout from the current eight to 16. Another option—available only if the Air Force opts to add fly-by-wire controls to the aircraft—would add more air-to-air missiles on the outboard stations as well. These options involve a new CFT design, though it would follow the existing CFT outer mold line, Gibbons says. The service does employ CFTs for the F-15E Strike Eagle fleet, but they are rarely used for the air superiority variant.

The goal of 16 air-to-air missiles is at the “upper end” of the need, based on a variety of scenarios being examined by the Air Force, Gibbons says. “It is very easy to envision that with our forces around the world enemy threats can get an advantage . . . because they have aircraft on station and aircraft at bases [close by]. It is just a matter of numbers. If you are anywhere near their country, they can launch a lot of jets pretty quickly.”

This is actually an area where the F-15 could outperform the F-22.

The F-22 will never fly with more than 4 AMRAAMS and 4 Sidewinders.

Pylons were never developed for the aircraft.

When flying against members of the Su-27 family, which can routinely carry  at least 10 AAM, and has the ability to carry larger missiles with superior kinematics, the F-15 might actually outperform the F-22.

Still, for the Air Force to admit this is a whole bunch of crow to eat.