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Lockheed Martin F-35B  (Source: Lockheed Martin)
Lockheed Martin discovers an accounting error in regards to its F-35 program

No one will deny that the U.S. military's F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter program is an expensive one. The overall program is valued at $300 billion USD with the individual F-35A (Air Force), F-35B (Marines) and F-35C (Navy) airframes ringing up at $48 million USD, $62 million USD and $63 million USD respectively.

Lockheed Martin announced today that it overbilled the Pentagon in the amount of $265 million USD for the F-35 program -- enough to purchase five F-35A aircraft. The discrepancy was found during an internal audit conducted by Lockheed Martin.

"The government will be reimbursed within the next several days with the appropriate amount of interest," the company said in a statement. "We have initiated a thorough review to determine why the error was not detected sooner, to ensure that any possible future errors of this type are detected immediately, and most importantly to prevent any recurrence of this type of billing error."

The F-35 is destined to replace/compliment a number of U.S. military aircraft including the AV-8B Harrier, A-10 Thunderbolt II, F/A-18 Hornet and F-16 Fighting Falcon. The F-35A will be a conventional aircraft suited for take-offs and landings from an airport. The F-35B can take-off and land vertically or take off conventionally from short runways. The F-35C is destined for carrier duty.

Other variants of the F-35 have also been proposed including a pilot-less version that would be controlled from the ground.

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<no subject>
By Scabies on 8/9/2007 4:48:26 PM , Rating: 2
The Harrier, the A-10, the F/A-18, the F-16? Talk about a convergence device...




RE: <no subject>
By ThisSpaceForRent on 8/9/2007 5:03:56 PM , Rating: 2
The A-10 will be very difficult to replace. The thing is a flying tank. You could very well have F-35s backing them up at higher altitudes, but the A-10 will still be doing the up close, dirty work.

What will be funny about the A-10 is that it was a plane that no body wanted when it was first proposed, and it will be a plane that no body will want to let go of when it's time.


RE: <no subject>
By Fallen Kell on 8/9/2007 5:33:24 PM , Rating: 2
I agree with you there about the A-10 replacement. However, the Army/Air Force is going to replace them and stop using the A-10's. The "ground pounders" don't like it one bit, because the A-10, not only being a "tank" in the sense of the beating it could take, was also a "TANK" in the sense of the amount of fuel it held and could remain on station for an extremely long time making pass after pass after pass on the target area or patrolling the area.

The A-10 is amazingly good at what it does. Why? Because it was designed specifically to do what it does. The new "replacements" are of the omni-fighter mentality (i.e. all-in-one), but as a result, they will never really excel at anything. It is the "Jack of all trades and Master of none" type of problem. The A-10 was/is a Master of Air to Ground combat, close fire support, and overall ground war interdiction. Everyone feels a lot safer with one or three of them flying combat air support for the unit because everyone understands how much damage they can and will do to any enemy that is in the area. It would not surprise me if it takes 6 F-35's meet the same firepower and station holding time that a single A-10 could do.

But, I am not in charge of long-term military strategic goals. Maybe they don't want a machine like the A-10 so that we won't be tempted to place ourselves in ground wars in the future...


RE: <no subject>
By Chillin1248 (blog) on 8/9/2007 10:17:04 PM , Rating: 3
The Soviet SU-25 "Frogger" (or "Grach") was designed for the same CAS role as the A-10 "Thunderbolt II" and it performed it well. In fact there is a story of one being hit by three surface-to-air (SAM) missiles and several dozen 12.7mm and 20mm rounds and still being able to return to base. The SU-25 has an all-welded, 24mm titanium alloy cockpit for pilot protection.

The SU-25A carries 250 rounds for its 30 millimeter cannon. Typical external stores include FAB general-purpose bombs, laser-guided bombs, RBK cluster-bomb canisters, and unguided rockets, such as 32-round 57 millimeter rocket pods, 20-round 80 millimeter rocket pods, five-round 122 millimeter rocket pods, or 240 millimeter rockets carried individually. In principle, a heatseeking AAM such as the R-60M ("AA-8 Aphid") can be carried on the outer pylon of each wing, and the aircraft has been qualified for "smart" weapons such as the Kh-29L ("AS-14 Kedge") laser guided missile. In practice, the Su-25 has mostly been photographed carrying simple "dumb" munitions.

A set of pods were designed to allow the aircraft to carry its own maintenance support gear to remote airfields. Apparently a pod was designed to allow the Su-25 to carry a maintenance crewman as well. The Americans built a comparable pod for the Lockheed P-38 Lightning in World War II, and taking a ride in the thing was very unpleasant. It appears the Soviets recognized this and did not actually field their own man-carrying pod.

http://www.faqs.org/docs/air/avsu25.html

-------
Chillin


RE: <no subject>
By spindoc on 8/13/2007 4:28:11 PM , Rating: 2
Soviet Attack Fighter was sooooo fun.


RE: <no subject>
By Scabies on 8/9/2007 5:40:25 PM , Rating: 2
from Wikipedia (on the A-10)
quote:
The aircraft is designed to fly with one engine, one tail, one elevator and half a wing torn off.


Recent example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kim_campbell_da...

The A-10's durability is astounding... When I think of new technology, or things in general that are new, I think "delicate, temperamental, etc." Ancient as it may be, the dumb thing is near invincible. I really hope they wont be retired anytime soon...


RE: <no subject>
By SunAngel on 8/9/2007 5:41:23 PM , Rating: 2
Yes. The A-10 served its purpose well during its' era. Now, it can earn its rightful place in the museum. With GPS, I can lay a missle 3 inches in front of you, take a picture of you, and flash you a text message in the international language saying, "hence mankind unbestknown evil".


RE: <no subject>
By stromgald on 8/9/2007 6:05:59 PM , Rating: 2
How many missles does it take to kill a column of tanks and light armored vehicles? What do you do when after the first hit, they scatter into the trees? Pinpoint missles cost money, picture confirmation is easier said than done and is usually done by aircraft anyways.

Simply by cost alone, an A-10 justifies it's existance. It's much cheaper to strafe something with the A-10's disgustingly powerful nose cannon than use missiles.

For those that are wondering, A-10s have had their life extended until at least 2018. Boeing recently won a contract to do the engineering required to keep them flying until then.


RE: <no subject>
By chrispyski on 8/9/2007 6:23:00 PM , Rating: 1
Although I'm not an very well versed in these matters, I must say that replacing the A-10 will be a difficult task. I think the plane lived up to the old P-47 Thunderbolt namesake of firepower and durability amazingly well. But that said, it needs to be replaced.

I love seeing that insane gatling gun fire, but the depleted uranium rounds that thing uses has been proven to cause massive birth defects in the children of those who handle them (hence, Gulf War Syndrome). Although missiles undoubtedly cost more, at least the people handling them are not going to have to deal with aftereffects of dealing with radioactive ordinance.


RE: <no subject>
By stromgald on 8/9/2007 6:36:34 PM , Rating: 2
True. I'm not saying it shouldn't be replaced. I just don't think we have anything that's a good replacement for it, yet.

Another difficulty is that A-10s have very stringent pilot requirements. Because of the way it was designed, the pilot needs to be VERY precise in their shooting. Pilots are trained so that they can shoot off 1/4 second bursts consistently, which is very hard because once you pull the trigger, the whole plane shakes pretty violently. It's just hard to find pilots that can acutally use the damn thing accurately, and you hate to put those kinds of people so close to enemy weapons even with all the armor of the A-10.

A UAV would be nice, but I think they'd need to unload the strafing run work to the computer. UAV interfaces just don't have the necessary response time to make a strafing run with a gatling gun (which would obviously shoot something other than depleted uranium).


RE: <no subject>
By cbo on 8/9/2007 7:45:07 PM , Rating: 2
Also on the Island of Vieques there are reports of health problems due to the ammo.

But I not sure about the whole one plane replacing several. Sometimes we do stuff like this and find that the new item is like a swiss army knife. It can do a lot of things but none of them as well as a single item who was intended to preform that task. But I do understand the cost aspect of it.


RE: <no subject>
By Martin Blank on 8/9/2007 9:13:24 PM , Rating: 2
The F-15 pulled off that mission pretty well, replacing not only the F-4, but also the F-111. Using the two primary variants (Eagle/Strike Eagle), the only missions that it's not often used for are aerial refueling and recon, though I believe it can be fit with camera pods. It's just not really stealthy enough to pull it off.


RE: <no subject>
By CascadingDarkness on 8/9/2007 7:57:41 PM , Rating: 3
Not sure how many birth defects yo're directly linking to UD rounds, but it's likely way to high than real. Check this finding report on exposure risks similar to 'Gulf War Syndrome'.

http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/20...

I suspect health problems would be same or worse for using another heavy metal such as lead, but DU is 67% more dense. That equals good penetrating round.

I'm not sure if you can develop a good round based on say, home grown flowers? Don't think that will work.

quote:
In the 1970s, The Pentagon reported that the Soviet military had developed armor plating for Warsaw Pact tanks that NATO ammunition couldn't penetrate. The Pentagon began searching for material to make denser bullets. After testing various metals, ordnance researchers settled on depleted uranium. DU was useful in ammunition not only because of its unique physical properties and effectiveness, but also because it was cheap and readily available. Tungsten, the only other candidate, had to be sourced from China.


Not saying there are no risks, but that when they aren't blow out of proportion the low percentage of people effected is far less than number of servicemen saved by having effective weapons.


RE: <no subject>
By Martin Blank on 8/9/2007 9:05:55 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I suspect health problems would be same or worse for using another heavy metal such as lead, but DU is 67% more dense. That equals good penetrating round.

It's not just penetration. DU rounds are self-sharpening as they pass, and are pyrophoric once they pass through into the air inside the target, igniting into little fireballs that kill the crew and can detonate ammunition and fuel.


RE: <no subject>
By iNGEN on 8/25/2007 1:12:44 PM , Rating: 2
DU has a lot of really fantastic properties when considered as a projectile material. At muzzle temperatures it naturally affords a higher lubricity than other conventional materials. At impact temperatures the reverse is true and it becomes nearly pyroclastic. Those two properties coupled with its density so radically improve its effectiveness there simply isn't a suitable replacement.

Find a suitable replace that isn't radioactive and I guarantee you can get the DoD to reconsider the selection. At the moment, however, using DU is simply not an option.


RE: <no subject>
By ss284 on 8/9/07, Rating: 0
RE: <no subject>
By Martin Blank on 8/9/2007 8:52:26 PM , Rating: 3
Great number of losses?

Six A-10s (including two OA-10 aircraft flying FAC) were shot down in the 1991 Gulf War, and one was shot down in the 2003 Iraq War. That's only seven aircraft shot down while flying tens of thousands of hours in close air support missions -- the most dangerous mission for an aircraft -- while being credited with the destruction of thousands of enemy vehicles. I'm not sure what defines your measure of "great losses," but it's apparently very different from most others' idea of the concept.

As for price, the MQ-9 Reapers are currently settling in at $15 million each (based on a recent $60 million order for four) for a payload of 1700kg on up to four hardpoints. The A-10 is listed as an equivalent cost of about $10 million for a payload of 7200kg on up to 11 hardpoints. Survivability isn't even a competition; no UAV is currently designed that can deal with the fast-paced environment that is the CAS mission, and they can be brought down with the lightest of missiles, where the A-10 stands a good chance of surviving at least one hit, and possibly more.

Considering that the USAF has plans to keep the A-10 in service until probably 2025 at least, some 50 years after the first A-10s became operational, you seem to be in the minority of those who believe that the days of the A-10 are severely limited.


RE: <no subject>
By otispunkmeyer on 8/10/2007 3:48:10 AM , Rating: 2
cant the A-10 fly with pieces n stuff missing from its wings and body?

its a tough machine thats for certain.


RE: <no subject>
By steven975 on 8/10/2007 12:34:14 PM , Rating: 2
Actually, I hear the plan with the F-35A will be to put a laser device in the area that is basically empty behind the cockpit due to the absence of the lift fan that is found in the F-35B.

This laser device will be powered by the turbine and be capable of very accurate strikes from higher altitudes. Also, when the plane refuels it RE-ARMS AT THE SAME TIME!

Details are obviously closely guarded, but if they get this thing to work, the F-35A will be a better CAS aircraft than even the A-10!