F-35 article

[sevenhelmet]

To be fair, CVW-5 has been doing their fair share of (to a layman) "OT" for some time now. Like the following repetitive conversation: "oh hey when does [xxxx] IOC/EOC again?"..."oh it's flying in Japan now"......"I thought it was still in DT?". I say that both as a person who used to work at NSAWC/NAWDC, as well as one who currently works at a prime Rhino/Growler contractor.

Until recently, those items were at least complete with DT, which at least ensured they were safe to fly with. With this new insanity, who knows what gremlins are still lurking in the machine? Recalling the types of deficiencies I found and reported on during my DT tour, I wouldn't want to be in those fleet squadrons trying to discern between aircraft problems and a developmental system problems.

But I'm biased, I suppose, since it's my chosen profession that the former Air Boss chose to flush down the toilet. I won't lie, I find this decision absolutely infuriating. It almost feels vindictive, the way they're kicking the test community's legs out from under it.

...Someone pitched that model to the bean counters because that’s how the SWOs do OT.

I knew the SWO community would come into this madness somehow. Great call.

 

[Pags]

One thing to also remember in this discussion is that the user gets a vote as to when they're ready to take something. In this case the user doesn't mean an O3 but means CNAF/TYPE WING. Community leadership can also accept what level of performance risk they're willing to accept from a new system. For a new major weapons system this is done via an IOCSR chaired by CNAF and supported by a mountain of documents that include DT and OT reports. For smaller systems and mods it's done at a lower level. At the end of the day it's CNAF (or DCA) who gets decide whether something goes to the fleet. PMA's job is to to manage the program to get it to the fleet on budget and schedule and with required performance. DT and OT identify different types of risk to different parts of the process.

All this comes back to the earlier point of things can go faster if folks accept more risk (aka performance issues). But at some point there's a good argument to be made that something is better than nothing and that a more modern and capable.system with issues may be better than an older system with better understood issues.

 

[MIDNJAC]

But I'm biased, I suppose, since it's my chosen profession that the former Air Boss chose to flush down the toilet. I won't lie, I find this decision absolutely infuriating. It almost feels vindictive, the way they're kicking the test community's legs out from under it.

Yeah makes sense, and I don't think you are biased.....you've seen both sides of DT/OT. This statement above^ If the boss mans want to fix the glitch, they need to restructure how contracts are written and who is involved (or not) in the process. I feel like just about every single problem child we have is the logical conclusion of the Navy/DoD writing a bad contract. From what I have seen so far, these people don't speak to the relevant end users nearly enough, and they certainly don't talk to the actual people on the contractor side who can call BS on a bad baseline/IMS/budget that they know can't possibly be met. A-12 is the story that we keep repeating (to a lesser degree), over and over and over again.

 

[phrogdriver]

The first step was to merge DT and OT to a greater extent. That happened a few years ago, and was fine, as far as it went.

But then when you get rid of professional OT and shift that to the operating forces, you've shifted risk to those less prepared to mitigate lit.

 

[Pags]

Yeah makes sense, and I don't think you are biased.....you've seen both sides of DT/OT. This statement above^ If the boss mans want to fix the glitch, they need to restructure how contracts are written and who is involved (or not) in the process. I feel like just about every single problem child we have is the logical conclusion of the Navy/DoD writing a bad contract. From what I have seen so far, these people don't speak to the relevant end users nearly enough, and they certainly don't talk to the actual people on the contractor side who can call BS on a bad baseline/IMS/budget that they know can't possibly be met. A-12 is the story that we keep repeating (to a lesser degree), over and over and over again.

It's bad on both sides. CTRs own their share of this when it comes to proposals and the parts of the effort they're responsible for. That's not say they're bad people (except you specifically, you're obviously a terrible person ?) as they also want to provide good products.

 

[BigRed389]

It was a decision about resources, and that’s where his axe fell. Don’t have more details, but as someone whose organization is going to be cleaning up the mess from that decision, we’re only now beginning to understand the repercussions. The idea of a fleet squadron performing OT-like functions while in Mx phase makes me shudder. They’re neither qualified nor resourced to do that work. Someone pitched that model to the bean counters because that’s how the SWOs do OT.

We do it that way because we have to, not because we want to.
The closest thing we have to a "VX" like OT is the DDG that is on permanent BMD test duty...but that's because it comes with big MDA/BMD bucks to keep it fully occupied with test events all year round.
It pseudo works because we also specifically carve out time in a ship's workups where they can be tasked to do stuff like DT or OT.

In practice, it absolutely has led to a complete cluster fuck with woefully underprepared crews or broken ships trying to pull off a big league event with the JV squad.

 

[Pags]

We do it that way because we have to, not because we want to.
The closest thing we have to a "VX" like OT is the DDG that is on permanent BMD test duty...but that's because it comes with big MDA/BMD bucks to keep it fully occupied with test events all year round.
It pseudo works because we also specifically carve out time in a ship's workups where they can be tasked to do stuff like DT or OT.

In practice, it absolutely has led to a complete cluster fuck with woefully underprepared crews or broken ships trying to pull off a big league event with the JV squad.

And the test LCSss

 

[BigRed389]

And the test LCSss

Sort of. It’s another “had to” and not “want to.”
We pretty much always do some DT and OT on the lead ship of a class.

Once that is done through IOTE, they should have nominally been able to roll LCS 1-4 out on deployment, and future hulls (or basically whoever else was available on the rotation) could also have been tagged for T&E duty.

Because LCS 1-4 was such a raging dumpster fire, even more than the class as a whole already was, and they were deemed too costly to bring up all the platform fixes going into the follow on hulls, they were designated prototypes/non deployers. Voila - now you have permanent test ships.

DDG-1000 will likely also end up pulling a lot of RDTE duty.

 

[Brett327]

We do it that way because we have to, not because we want to.
The closest thing we have to a "VX" like OT is the DDG that is on permanent BMD test duty...but that's because it comes with big MDA/BMD bucks to keep it fully occupied with test events all year round.
It pseudo works because we also specifically carve out time in a ship's workups where they can be tasked to do stuff like DT or OT.

In practice, it absolutely has led to a complete cluster fuck with woefully underprepared crews or broken ships trying to pull off a big league event with the JV squad.

All the more reason for NAE to not emulate it.

 

[A Day In The Life]

In general Title 10 is germane to INITIAL OT and becomes less so to follow on work for platforms.

As an aside, the F-35 has not completed IOT&E despite all three services having declared IOC for their respective variant.

 

[ChuckMK23]

NYT Editorial Board weighs in on JSF:

The Fighter Jet That’s Too Pricey to Fail https://nyti.ms/2Ok5U2m

 

[Hair Warrior]

They aren’t wrong.

As an economist, I am wired to think in terms of opportunity cost. Abstracting from the JPO JSF level, there are a couple things I think about:

Assumption: A peer conflict would be devastating to the US economy, global economy, the environment, and potentially end the US way of life as we know it today (if we lose outright or are nuked but “win”).

1. If we never get into a peer conflict in this century, and that ‘pax Americana’ is in some small part due to a perceived degree of deterrence/ superiority provided by the F-35 along with all our many other military capabilities, then the huge cost and performance troubles of the F-35 will still be totally worth the outcome of never seeing a world war in the 21st century. Even if it’s a “money pit” as some detractors call it.

2. If we so somehow stumble into a peer conflict in this century, and the F-35 provides some degree of success in prosecuting that conflict by inflicting losses/ costs upon the enemy in excess of the cost of the F-35 program, and/or the F-35 is part of what helps us prevail in the end and preserve our way of life as we know it, then the huge cost of the F-35 yadda yadda worth it.

3. If we stumble into a peer conflict and the F-35 somehow underperforms and is one of the many reasons we (god forbid) end up losing that war, and the American way of life is thus forever changed or diminished (think: German reparations after WWI except the US is paying Russia, or Ohio becomes the next Xinjiang province). Well, that would suck royally. And I think that is why some GOFO/ Cabinet/ Congressional level leaders have so much emotion invested in it, on both sides.

 

[robav8r]

NYT Editorial Board weighs in on JSF:

The Fighter Jet That’s Too Pricey to Fail https://nyti.ms/2Ok5U2m

Honest question here: what is wrong with the F-22? Apparently the Air Force has started taking delivery of F-15EX's, why can't the service(s) buy more Raptors?

 

[Notanaviator]

Honest question here: what is wrong with the F-22? Apparently the Air Force has started taking delivery of F-15EX's, why can't the service(s) buy more Raptors?

If memory serves, AF studied that about five years ago. Determined would be $10B in non recurring costs just to get the line back up, and a 100 aircraft buy would have been something like a $200M unit cost.

 

[wlawr005]

FWIW, the F-22 is awesome but it isn't perfect. It does its specific job very well. The F-35 does a different job, they are not the same plane nor is the F-35 designed to replace the F-22. There is some overlap in both of their capabilities but there are some things the F-35 brings to the table that the F-22 doesn't.