Pentagon grounds F-35B (Reuters)

 

F-35B Flights Suspended Following Fueldraulic Failure (DefenseNews)

 

F-35B grounded after fueldraulic line failure (Flight Global)

Those things are usual in new types of planes, as Dreamliner, and I hate F-35 (and LCS), but we need F-35B!

Precautionary Suspension of [F-35B] Flight Operations

F-35 JSF Testers Report Progress, Problems (Aviation Week)

Production Error At Fault In F-35B Grounding (Aviation Week)

F-35 durability testing (Scribd)

Reduced F-35 performance specifications may have significant operational impact (Flight Global)

 

What's the operational impact of reducing the F-35's performance specs? (Flight Global, DEW Line blog)

Canada considering a short-term alternative (Hill Times)

All this stuff of the limited maneouvrability of F-35 was posted here some two years ago, F-35A sustained turn rate Gs is reduced in two years from 4.95 to 4.6, and 4.95 was a bad thing ... :

http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?/topic/8482-apa-assesses-the-sukhoi-pak-fa/

 

Quote (On reference to February 2010 article):

The expression

Quote:

"eating F-35s for breakfast"

remembers me from the previously mentionated article

http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2010-01.html

this disturbing paragraph:

 

Quote (February 2010 article):

“The sustained turning performance of the F-35A Lightning II was recently disclosed as 4.95 G at Mach 0.8 and 15,000 ft. A 1969 F-4E Phantom II could sustain 5.5 Gs at 0.8 Mach with 40 percent internal fuel at 20,000 feet. The F-35 is also much slower than the 1960s F-4E or F-105D. So the F-35A’s aerodynamic performance is ‘retrograde’ when compared with 1960s legacy fighters. The consequence of such inferior JSF performance is that its DAS might detect an incoming missile, but the aircraft lacks the turn-rate to out-fly it. As the F-35 also lacks the performance to engage or escape, repeated ‘freebie’ shots from the PAK-FA could inflict high losses. Expect the exchange rate to be of the order of 4:1 in favour of the PAK-FA, possibly much higher.”

 

No news for us, or actually even worst performances ....

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/reduced-f-35-performance-specifications-may-have-significant-operational-impact-381683/

Quote of the Flight Global article January 2012:

The US Department of Defense's decision to relax the sustained turn performance of all three variants of the F-35 was revealed earlier this month in the Pentagon's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation 2012 report. Turn performance for the US Air Force's F-35A was reduced from 5.3 sustained g's to 4.6 sustained g's. The F-35B had its sustained g's cut from five to 4.5 g's, while the US Navy variant had its turn performance truncated from 5.1 to five sustained g's. Acceleration times from Mach 0.8 to Mach 1.2 were extended by eight seconds, 16 seconds and 43 seconds for the A, B and C-models respectively. The baseline standard used for the comparison was a clean Lockheed F-16 Block 50 with two wingtip Raytheon AIM-120 AMRAAMs. "What an embarrassment, and there will be obvious tactical implications. Having a maximum sustained turn performance of less than 5g is the equivalent of an [McDonnell Douglas] F-4 or an [Northrop] F-5," another highly experienced fighter pilot says. "[it's] certainly not anywhere near the performance of most fourth and fifth-generation aircraft."

P&W Seals F-35 Engine Deal With Pentagon (Aviation Week)

Turkey Says Cost, Problems Prompted JSF Purchase Delay (DefenseNews)

Lockheed claims F-35 kinematics ‘better than or equal to’ Typhoon or Super Hornet (Flight Global)

Eurofighter test pilot disputes F-35's claims to prowess (The Aviationist blog)

F-35 programme may have to be restructured under sequestration (Flight Global)