{"id":190082,"date":"2010-01-09T06:41:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-09T11:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/01\/09\/f-35-news-1-good-2-bad\/"},"modified":"2010-01-09T06:41:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-09T11:41:00","slug":"f-35-news-1-good-2-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/01\/09\/f-35-news-1-good-2-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"F-35 News, 1 Good, 2 Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"
Click for full size<\/p>\n
\n

<\/a> Finally!<\/span><\/div>\n

On the good side, the F-35B, specifically air frame BF-01, has finally engaged the lift fan in flight<\/a>, and everything was, as the flight test people say, “Nominal”:<\/p>\n

The Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II stealth fighter engages its short takeoff\/vertical landing propulsion system in flight for the first time, near Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., on Jan. 7. F-35 Lead STOVL Pilot Graham Tomlinson said afterward that the aircraft flew smoothly with the STOVL system engaged and was very easy to control.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a good thing, though it is somewhat behind schedule, and Lockheed-Martin is thinks that it is necessary to add planes to the test program<\/a>, so as to reduce the test schedule slippage from 2 years (!) to 6 months:<\/p>\n

Lockheed Martin Corp. may add an aircraft-carrier model to a group of F-35 test planes as the company works to limit delays on the fighter jets to six months or less instead of the two-plus years expected by the Pentagon. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure that this would help though, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has just ordered a delay in deliveries of the aircraft:<\/p>\n

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered a delay in the Lockheed Martin Corp. F-35 program, cutting the Pentagon\u2019s planned purchases by 10 aircraft in fiscal 2011 and a total of 122 through 2015, according to a budget document.<\/p>\n

More than $2.8 billion that was budgeted earlier to buy the military\u2019s next-generation fighter would instead be used to continue its development.<\/p>\n

The delay is a setback for both Gates and Lockheed. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Setback is one way to put it.<\/p>\n

So is clusterf%$#, death-spiral, shambles, snafu, and many other words I’m not in the mood to look up right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click for full size Finally! On the good side, the F-35B, specifically air frame BF-01, has finally engaged the lift fan in flight, and everything was, as the flight test people say, “Nominal”: The Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II stealth fighter engages its short takeoff\/vertical landing propulsion system in flight for the first time, near …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1136,1008],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-breaking-news","category-defense-procurement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}