Entire U.S. Stealth Fighter Fleet Grounded

[Purveyor]

Source: Wired

In past few decades, the U.S. Air Force has spent untold billions researching and developing a family of stealth fighter jets that are supposed to be generations ahead of any dogfighters in the sky.

But after building more than 170 F-22 Raptors and a handful of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, not a single one is available for service. The Air Force currently has zero flyable stealth fighters. None.

The vaunted F-22 has been grounded with a possible faulty oxygen system since May. Production of the last few Raptors is even on hold, because the jets can’t fly from the factory.

Last week, test flights for the newer F-35 were suspended, too, because of a valve problem in the plane’s integrated power package. It’s the third time this year that JSFs have been grounded. Tests may resume as early as next week. Then again, they may not.

MORE...

Read more: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/08/entire-u-s-stealth-fighter-fleet-grounded/

[dtexdem]

1. But how do they know they're not actually flying?

I mean, they are, after all, STEALTH fighters. ;-)

Also, aren't F-117s still in the fleet?

[KeepItReal]

3. F-117's are bombers not air superiority fighters like the F-22

Nor are they multiple-role fighter-bombers like the F-35.

Air Force, Navy and Marines should be hopping mad over this

[FedUp_Queer]

17. Screw the Air Force, Navy and Marines

WE should be hopping made over this. If only we'd have had these plans, and Star Wars, on 9/11, it never would have happened. How about we spend this money on superfluous things like education, food, housing, assistance for people whom banks have preyed on or infrastructure. On the other hand, those things don't go "boom."

:sarcasm:

[pasto76]

7. The "F" designator for the F117 Nighthawk was part of the dis-information

shrouded in secrecy back then.

[neverforget]

8. F-117's were retired in 2008

[Tesha]

78. Wow, they lasted a long time!

Maybe we ought to just build a boatload more F16s or a shipload
more F4s???

You know: planes that actually work and can be built for less than
a billion dollars a copy?*

Tesha


*I'm exaggerating, but not by much.

[Kolesar]

64. Well played, dtexdem

:lol:

[arcane1]

2. But please don't cut military spending!!!

:eyes:

[Lasher]

36. Hell no, China has some super firecrackers or something!!1!11!!

We're all gonna die if we cut one penny from the meager Pentagon budget!!

[Kolesar]

65. They stole the plans for the M-80! ... eom

[FogerRox]

66. Actually china has a new stealth fighter, IIRC the J-20, its fairly good.

It wont be as good as the F-22, but its no slouch.

[Lasher]

74. Good, maybe someday they'll be borrowing money from us to police the world.

[valerief]

4. A good investment unlike Social Security and Medicare. Even better if they were built overseas.

In case a teabagger wants to plus 1 me:
:sarcasm:

[dgibby]

48. Don't worry.

Teabaggers can't spell plus 1.

[Electric Monk]

5. Thank goodness for that money back guarantee

Oops...

[Hubert Flottz]

6. There goes your Social Security and Medicare...to the junkyard.

Prolly just a few bad apples.

[fujiyama]

21. I was thinking straight to the pockets of the CEOs

of Lockheed and all its suppliers.

[Scuba]

9. We better throw some more money at this, and fast....

...let's just raise the SS and Medicare ages to 100.

[txwhitedove]

44. Ssshhhhh! Now you've made grandma cry. I want to retire BEFORE I die.

[femrap]

71. Better yet....Soylent Green. nt

[kenfrequed]

10. So...

The F 22 doesn't even work right and we are still going ahead with an F 35.

[Hubert Flottz]

12. Well, we can just let China repo the deadlined F-22s

And trade them Fort Knox and "123456756789098765432 baby boomers" for the F-35s.

[kenfrequed]

70. yeah

Maybe we can take a loan from social security to pay for the F-35's that we will be forced to buy because the f-22's don't work.

[JDPriestly]

11. Where do they make the parts?

Do they manufacture them in the US or in China?

[Hubert Flottz]

13. Chinese Junk ain't just about boats anymore.

Chinese JUNKS 4sale

http://chinesejunkboats.tripod.com/

[NewJeffCT]

51. I believe they're manufactured in many different countries

including the US. Might be part of the problem.

[jwirr]

14. MIC jobs program - billions of dollars, thousands of work hours, tons

of material resources and energy = nothing to show for it. I remember talking about the difference between military spending and other spending in the 70s. Military is only useful during an actual emergency vs building roads is useful for many reasons for everyone and at all times. Unless we have a justified war military spending provides not returns.

[plumbob]

15. So the bonus checks are forthcoming?

Thought so.

[stockholmer]

18. of course they are! the bigger the FAIL, the bigger the bonus, its the NEW MATH in the empiric zone

Mr Bubbles at last realizes the true impact of evolution

[dgibby]

49. OMG!

Mr. Bubbles! LMFAO! Thanks! I needed that.

[gtar100]

16. Maybe the need more money.

[mnhtnbb]

19. But..but...a stealth fighter flew over a football game before it started 2 years ago

in Chapel Hill.

Good for show? But not for military use?

WTF?

[wizstars]

41. How do you know?? Did you see it?? REALLY see it??

If you saw it, it wasn't really a STEALTH fighter. And if it WAS a stealth fighter, you didn't really see it, now, did you??



:rofl:

[thelordofhell]

20. Stealth fighters never believed in the Jeebus

Godless planes must be grounded in Jesusland Air Force

[Initech]

22. This is wasteful government spending!!!!

[lib2DaBone]

23. Have China build our fighter jets...

let's just close all factories and ship all remaining jobs to China. (not many left anyways)

The Republicans will be happy then.

[bulloney]

35. If there was a social program even remotely this wasteful, Repubs would shout for its cancellation.

[placton]

24. I know!

Let's design something else and build that for the military!!! And screw over the millions of us who dont benefit!

[marasinghe]

25. on the plus side: that's around 200 craft+pilots safe from Sunstorms the next couple of years. n/t

[SpankMe]

26. Downselect to one, fix it, and then no more for 20 years.

I can't believe they've spent almost $400B on this stuff over the last fifteen years and they've had no role in any war fighting whatsoever. Why aren't the tea partiers blowing a gasket over this? Talk about a defective government program!

Panetta bitched and moaned that cutting a mere $400B from the Pentagon over a whole decade would compromise our security. Well at almost $700B per year for our defense budget now, $400B over ten years represents only 5-6% of the defense budget during that period. We can't find 5-6% savings in one of the top three most wasteful departments of the government?

Panetta used to be cool. Now, he's turned in to a total war hawk. I wish someone could tell us what they know that's driving this madness. If they can't then they'll have to contend with guys like me bitching at them to reduce war spending and global hegemony spending.

[boppers]

59. "no role in any war fighting whatsoever"?

"no *current* role involving our publicly known piloted, stealth, fighter programs" would be much, much, more accurate.

We're still flying stealth, manned and unmanned. The JSF F-35 program itself has no "publicly known manned combat flights", and we've spent $18,000,000,000 less than $400B on it (was that the number you were referring to, the $382B??). Of course, the U2 and SR-71 (for two examples) never "officially" flew combat, or even existed, for years, (even when they flew combat, and existed).

That being said, it's supposed to be a program with 65 years of operational use (I kid you not), which is how they justify the huge cost.... I'm personally guessing that the cost is hiding an unmanned/B-2 project (stealth+bomber+drone), the many stealth+drone projects, along with maybe a next-generation fighter package, where all the avionics are being developed for a publicly "known" airframe, (I can get the profile off of wikipedia, FFS), but the same tech can work in airframes not publicly released.*

*So, about that asterisk: part of what makes stealth systems "work" is that they look like a flock of birds on radar (for explanation purposes). Thus, advanced radar ignores them. However, if you can detect the *exact* same flock of birds flying at 300mph in two locations that match a 300 mph flight path, you have a target... and it's not birds.**

**It is also not a coincidence, I think, that newer systems have more deploy-able semi-reflective surfaces. If "12 birds" turn into "17 birds" for a few minutes, then into "9 birds", it looks like..... birds, because planes aren't supposed to be able to change radar signatures.

[FogerRox]

68. Isnt the flying wing unmanned drone already tested in the public domain

Seen pix and video....... see BWB blended wing body

U2 and the Blackbird were never armed.

[boppers]

73. I've seen some wing drones. That doesn't mean I believe I've seen them all.

And "combat" mission doesn't always mean "armed". Both the A-12/SR-71 and the U-2 ran recon missions over "enemy" forces in times of both direct, and indirect, hostilities.

[FogerRox]

75. hmm, yes. IIRC the the Blackbird was tested as a missile firing platform....

Wing drones, certainly some very "public" activity around the Boeing 797 theme. Suggesting non public activity......

[MrScorpio]

27. I've been watching the development of this boondoggle for almost ten years

I'm not surprised at all.

[Karenina]

32. Do you remember the one that got shot down?

:rofl: Ah, technology, high and low! ;-)

[wxgeek7]

28. the more technical, the more chance of problems

I think, just as operating systems suffer from more software bugs, due to increased lines of code, these extremely technical aircraft have a higher likelihood for problems than their predecessors.

[ctwayne]

29. World War I Biplanes Would Do Fine

We don't need stealth fighters (which were developed to fight the old Soviet Union) to attack mud hut Afghan villages. World War I biplanes could easily do the job. The people we are blowing up don't even have electricity and indoor plumbing.

[A Simple Game]

31. Exactly, have we even had a conventional fighter or bomber shot down

since Vietnam? I know we have had some crash in war situations, but I don't know if any were actually shot down. Maybe the one in Bosnia or during the first Iraq war?

[PacerLJ35]

72. No they wouldn't

Stealth isn't required in Afghanistan, but your assertion is about as ignorant as any I've seen. The stealth technology isn't meant for a low intensity war against terrorists, it's meant for use against a *real* adversary. Just because there's nothing serious going on between other nation-states right now doesn't mean it'll be that way in 5 or 10 years.

As for the idea that WWI biplanes would do fine in Afghanistan, you obviously don't realize the equipment and tactics that al Qaeda and the Taliban use over there. They are a bit more sophisticated and equipped than you think.

[Enthusiast]

30. No problem, just build more.

Srsly.

[FlyByNight]

33. Nice to know that money hasn't gone to waste

:sarcasm: and :puke:

I'd like to say this is shocking but when it comes to the Pentagon, I'm just numb now.

[Bosso 63]

34. The Taliban have an aircraft with better stealth capabilities now ,

They call it a "kite".

[greymattermom]

37. kite fights

They coat the strings in glass and bring down other kites. War on the cheap.

[underpants]

42. or

a rock

well at least you can THROW a rock. Our junk is useless.

[Myrina]

38. So what's the big ugly one they fly over the Indy 500 every year?

:shrug: Is that the only one that works?

[The_Casual_Observer]

39. That would be the big stupid B2 "stealth" bomber

They waste money flying it over the rose parade every year too. A completely inappropriate foist of that piece of shit on the public. I don't want to be reminded about them, I don't want to see them.

[Odin2005]

40. The M-I Complex doesn't care if their shit works, as long as they profit from taxpayers' money.

[lovuian]

43. US Military Complex has sucked every dollar out of America

and looks for more
and America doesn't have anything to show for it

[Historic NY]

45. Build it, try to fix it, spend more money & guess what its still junk...

they will keep throwing money at it.......remember the B-1 which was canceled & then we got the
B-1B...nothing changes only administrations and greedy war mongering corporatist.

[julian09]

46. They are saving fuel

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

47. One of my friends is a Navy test pilot

He is pretty much of the opinion defense contractors and brass need to be executed Beijing style for the management of the F-22 and F-35 programs. Given the entire fighter force could have been replaced several times over with modernized F-15's, F-16's and F-18's for what has been wasted producing zero serviceable "fifth generation" aircraft.

[FogerRox]

69. The SuperTomcat was a real good plane

[Flatulo]

50. Well shit, these are only among the most complex machines ever built. They will have

teething pains. If you know anything about design engineering, then you would know that every single product of any complexity has technical problems during the development or manufacturing phase. The company I most recently worked for was 18 months late and millions of dollars over budget on a generator design whose salient features were perfected in the 1800s.

People have had fits over problems with every new military gadget from the M16 assault rifle to the M1 Abrams tank to the Apache gunship. They eventually get the bugs worked out.

I'm not saying I'm happy about all the money wasted, but this is the nature of developing extremely complex machines.

[tawadi]

52. What a waste of billions of dollars

:-(

[Jakes Progress]

53. Golly. Guess that means we need to spend another couple trillion on new ones.

[DemoTex]

54. Juniper MOA fighter operations on 7/21/2011 (Nellis AFB)

F-22s grounded? The lower left contrail is classic F-22, or so my fighter pilot friends say.

[eridani]

55. The contractor was supposed to build planes, and they did

Maybe someone forgot to specify that they should fly?

[FarCenter]

56. ICTURES: China's J-20 stealth fighter makes second test flight

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/04/20/355801/pictures-chinas-j-20-stealth-fighter-makes-second-test.html

Perhaps they'll sell us some. We should at least buy a couple, take them apart, and sue them for patent infringement.

[Grrrfun]

57. obviously

they weren't given enough money... super congress to the rescue!

[Kablooie]

58. OR ... they could be secret stealthily flying and this is a ploy to prevent military cuts.

[unhappycamper]

60. We've had $66 billion of F-22s sitting on the ground since May 3, 2011

The 40 $243 grand F-35s we bought are also on the ground for electrical problems.

[unhappycamper]

62. News flash!

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2011/08/af-navy-mc-f35-cleared-for-ground-operations-081011/

[Mosaic]

61. I'm sick of being a warmongering nation

We need to stop this madness. War planes grounded, good.

[krabigirl]

67. This x 1,000.

[Blue_Tires]

63. Maybe the Pentagon will try to dump them at rock-bottom prices

I could use a little upgrade for my morning rush-hour commute...:think:

[ATLdemocrat]

76. Am I living inside an M.C. Escher painting?

nt

[fujiyama]

77. In the typical "free market"

which conservatives love to fawn over, companies that are this far over budget and past schedule, simply don't survive. Shareholders lose confidence and the programs are eliminated.

The problem we have is that with increased consolidation of fewer military contractors there is little accountability and competition. And we see a constant revolving door between the Pentagon and these contractors. It's never ending. It's obvious there's a huge problems right now with the sourcing, purchasing and acquisition within the Pentagon. And nothing seems to be changing. Though, I think the Congress deserves an even greater share of the blame by sometimes funding stuff the Pentagon doesn't even ask for.

Also, unlike a dire situation like WWII (and to some extent the Cold War), with an adversary near parity, and maintaining an edge technologically is absolutely vital, there is little imperative for these companies to change their ways.

Yes, it's true that China in some ways may be that rival in the future, but considering the edge we have now, we're still spending a ridiculously high percentage of our GDP on this. Even China, for all the criticism the US gives them spends a lower % of their GDP on their military (well whatever numbers we see anyways). What we have now is a bloated military complex that is simply enriching the executives of those companies and I don't understand how anyone can defend the idea of spending this much money on fancy toys when you're this deep in debt. Don't get me wrong. I'm an engineer and I love fancy toys, but if I'm about to go bankrupt, I'd rather feed and shelter my family first!