Dr. Aaron Lerner – Take note of this important line in the item:
“Of course, some elements we may need to send to another place to fix. But in most cases, we should we able to replace them from what’s on the shelf …The important thing is that we will not send aircraft out of the country.”
Here’s the truth:
1. There are large key components of the F-35 that WE CANNOT TOUCH. We can only pull them out of the jet and replace with the spare on the shelf.
2. We are going to have very few of these spare large key components.
3. The SLIGHTEST problem in such a component that under normal circumstances might be addressed in a few minutes by an Israeli tech (replace a washer, filets, etc.) mmeans getting thatmuch closer to exhausting the stock of spare components.
4. If and when the day comes that someone in the White House wants to limit our ability to continue an operation it would be child’s play for supply delays to slash the number of combat ready jets.
5. In fact – even without malice, this set up can easily lead to a situation that most of the jets are out of service during the course of a majorconflict that drains our resources.
By: Barbara Opall-Rome, December 11, 2016
TEL AVIV — Nearly a decade of planning preceded Monday’s scheduled delivery of the first F-35Is to the Israel Air Force (IAF), but once they touch down at the stealth fighter’s desert base at Nevatim, another process will just begin, with vast implications on how Israel wields airpower near and very far from home.
From the single network that will support the IAF’s ability to use the fifth-generation Adir (Awesome/Magnificent) alongside fourth-generation fighters to hunt and fight in packs to the means by which it trains and maintains its combined force, the new F-35Is will be driving wholesale changes throughout the mightiest air force in the Middle East.
“The IAF needs to adapt itself to this fifth-generation plane, and not vice versa,” a general officer on the IAF Air Staff told Defense News.
“We need to look at all our existing concepts and to re-evaluate them as a result of this capability. We’ll ask questions we never asked before, because we’ve been used to training, operating and supporting according to fourth-generation concepts.”
From “Day 1” of the Adir’s arrival, the general officer said the new fighters will be co-located with an F-16I “escorting squadron” to allow the service to determine all it needs for seamless integration of its frontline fighter force.
“We need this quality team from Day 1 to live together, train together and learn all they need to speak the same language,” the officer said.
“We’ve defined the team’s mission as escorting the Adir and leading the way
to joining fourth- and fifth-generation elements of our force,” he said.
“Of course, this F-16I squadron will have other missions. It’s not a
dedicated team in the purest sense, since we don’t have the luxury of a
stand-alone squadron. But their mission is clear: As smartly and as quickly
as possible, we need to create a truly integrated force of fourth- and
fifth-generation assets.”
As an example of “refusing to be locked into old concepts,” the officer
cited the distances at which IAF fighters currently fly in operational
formation; distances now determined by visual contact.
“We shouldn’t be using this plane in visual range. So it’s likely that we’ll
fly differently in the formation,” he said.
Composition of force packages will also change, since the F-35I’s stealth
capabilities should lessen the need in many combat scenarios for beefed up
support and special mission aircraft.
All that, he emphasizes, is predicated on Israel’s ability to integrate its
own communication system produced by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries
(IAI) and electronic warfare capabilities by Elbit’s Elisra in the new Adir
force.
“At this point, it’s still theoretical. The F-35s that arrive here are basic
aircraft. We need to integrate all these capabilities so have
self-sufficiency with communications and electronic warfare. This is crucial
for us to allow the networked connection with our four-generation force.
“Otherwise, if the F-35 is detached from the rest of our force, it has no
significance in terms of networked operations force-wide,” he added.
In terms of maintenance, the officer noted that the new F-35I comes with its
own simulator for technicians; something that the service may seek to
replicate for fourth-generation fighters.
“Before, when we thought about simulators, we thought about pilot training.
But now there is a simulator for technicians, and we may want this for our
fourth-generation aircraft,” he said.
And unlike other partner members of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program,
where depot-level maintenance will be performed at designed depots, Israel
has been working with the US government and Lockheed Martin to ensure that
no F-35I aircraft will ever leave the country.
“The intention is that the platform stays here. That’s obvious, due to our
clear and compelling need for self-sufficiency,” the general officer said.
“Of course, some elements we may need to send to another place to fix. But
in most cases, we should we able to replace them from what’s on the shelf …
The important thing is that we will not send aircraft out of the country.”
He noted that because the aircraft are new, depot-level maintenance should not be relevant for years — perhaps more than a decade — to come, given the manufacturers advertised lifespan of some 50 years. But once it becomes
relevant, Israel hopes to have put in place a process whereby depot-level work will be done in-country.
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter, other top US officials and a cadre of Lockheed Martin executives are expected to participate in Dec. 12 acceptance ceremonies at the F-35I Adir’s home base at Nevatim.
In a Dec. 11 statement highlighting the “awesome/magnificent” meaning attached to F-35I’s chosen name of Adir, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman praised his Carter for contribution to Israeli security.
“It’s only symbolic that Carter’s tenure as Secretary of Defense is concluding with the arrival of the Adir to Israel … because like the aircraft, Carter’s contribution to the security of Israel was, indeed, awesome.”
http://imra.org.il/story.php3?
“The Official F-35 Price Tags Are Bogus: Pentagon statements do not reflect
real costs or original estimates
(Source: originally posted on War Is Boring blog on Dec 22, 2016)
By Winslow Wheeler
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/feature/5/179781/the-latest-official-f_35-prices-are-bogus.html
On Dec. 12, 2016, president-elect Donald Trump asserted that F-35 unit cost
was “out of control” through his preferred medium, Twitter. On Dec. 19,
2016, U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, in charge of the Joint Strike
Fighter project, gave the press his version of things.
Multiple media outlets passed along the officer’s comments, but with no
analysis of the completeness and accuracy of Bogdan’s assertions. The
reports offered no context or alternative views on the stealth fighter’s
actual cost per plane.
The general said each one of the Air Force’s F-35A would cost $102.1
million, while both the U.S. Marine Corps’ F-35Bs and U.S. Navy’s F-35Cs
would set the taxpayer back 132 million each. Those costs average to
approximately $122 million for a “generic” F-35.
Bogdan got these numbers from the funds Congress set aside in the 2015
defense budget for what the Pentagon called “Lot 9,” just one of a number of
planned F-35 purchases. In November 2016, the U.S. military was still
negotiating the final deal with plane-maker Lockheed Martin.
Needless to say, the unit costs Bogdan gave the media were incomplete. They
involve only the Pentagon’s existing contracts with Lockheed and
engine-maker Pratt & Whitney to build the airframes and jet motors.
The numbers do not, for example, include the cost to buy maintenance
equipment and other necessary support elements. They do not include money
the Pentagon will spend to fix design errors discovered in testing now and
in the future.
These figures are not the “sticker price.”
One could calculate a far more complete price from the appropriations that
Bogdan told Congress he needed to buy functioning airplanes. The difference
between what he is telling the press now and what he told Congress in 2015
is significant — it is also the difference between a factory simply putting
together an airplane and delivering an airplane that can actually fly and
operate.
For the 2015 fiscal year, the F-35 project chief petitioned Congress for
$6.4 billion to produce 34 F-35s for the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy.
This amount did not include separate funds for research and development and
other costs that the Pentagon asked for in its budget request.
With the production data, we can calculate that a F-35A has a price tag of
$157 million, not $102 million. It’s $265 million for a F-35B and $355
million for a F-35C, not $132 million for either variant.
On average, these F-35s cost $188 million apiece, not $122 million.
More basically, Bogdan says the F-35’s price has been coming down, and
indeed it has. The $188 million generic price in 2015 was less than the $250
million the Pentagon quoted in 2001.
For the 2017 fiscal year, Congressional appropriations showed us that the
total costs came down again to $128 million for a generic F-35. That’s $113
million for an F-35A, $142 million for an F-35B and $241 million for a
F-35C.
However, an old Congressional Research Service report on the F-35 tells us
that in 1994 the Pentagon was promising F-35As for $31 million, F-35Bs for
$31 to $38 million and F-35Cs for between $30 and 35 million. In 2017
dollars, those costs would be $53 million per F-35A, $53 million to $65
million for each F-35B and $51 million to $60 million for a single F-35C.
Put another way, in 2017, an F-35A costs about twice what the Pentagon
promised Congress more than two decades earlier. Compared to this initial
estimate, the F-35B costs more than twice as much now, while an F-35C is
about four times more expensive.
I suspect Trump can recognize when he is being scammed. In this case, the
Pentagon is telling him American taxpayers can get F-35s for only two to
four times what they originally advertised.
====================
In 2014, Winslow Wheeler retired as the Director of the Straus Military
Reform Project at the Project On Government Oversight. He worked on national
security issues for 31 years in the U.S. Senate for members of both
political parties and at the Government Accountability Office.”
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=71927
Lockheed CEO tells Trump she will work to drive down cost of F-35
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-defense-idUSKBN14C1QU
@ Birdalone:
Yes. That’s a scary thought. I wouldn’t put it past Obama to have ordered the installation of a hidden remote cut-off switch. In four or eight years there may be another hostile dem in power. Israel needs to seriously start building its own parallel systems. I read that Iran owns 5 percent of the German company that made the subs. Abu Dhabi is building a fleet of ships for Israel. Israel, like the U.S., needs to become as self-sufficient as possible when it comes to essential systems and energy. And that includes secrecy.
@ LtCol Howard:
I agree completely unless Israel is able to re-engineer everything so that every thing is done in house as the article suggests they are working on with U.S. cooperation. But, until such time, it would be foolish to make the F-35 the centerpiece of future strategy. It should be merely a dispensible adjunct. Moreover, Israel should never put all its eggs in one basket. There should be enough backup, parallel systems and redundancy that should one line of defense fail there will be others to quickly step up and take its place. And there should be continuous drills focusing on just those contingencies so the handover will be smooth. What happened during the Gaza War should never happen again. The show must go on but unless there are understudies waiting in the wings you pray will never have to go on but who must be prepared to go on stage at a moments notice, one is skating on thin ice. They don’t call them theaters of war for nothing. Performance is hell. I recommend the Mozart String Quartets Edition Peters, Band II. Should be good for wars and other large gatherings. There is sufficient redundancy that anybody can run to the bathroom and it will still work. Except the first violin unless the second violin is able to switch and play that part. Captain Kirk was able to man any or all of the stations on his ship if the need arose. Violins is a terrible thing but often unavoidable so best handled skillfully. On the other hand, it can be fun when the team work is good.
Better check those first two F-35s for Trojan horses
In view of the Obama administration having cut off resupply to Israel during the Gaza war and the Obama administration having embargoed Ben-Gurion airport [based on spurious safety concerns] this raises serious questions relating to whether Israel can trust it’s security by procuring the F 35 which makes Israel dependent upon continuous US support for missions planning and for re-supply logistics.