The F-22 fleet has been grounded for three months. The problem is that the aircraft make their own oxygen (they don't have the old-style oxygen bottles) and the oxygen generators are fucked up.
Kind of a big problem.
The F-35s aren't flying, either.
Meanwhile, the Air Force is starting to think about the next fighter. Probably a good idea, since it took them over 20 years to get the F-22 off the ground. Each one should, by then, cost roughly a tenth of the annual defense budget to purchase.
What A Healthy Friendship
44 minutes ago
11 comments:
I have a suggestion for their next fighter. Take a F-16. Up-engine it with a more modern more fuel-efficient engine. Don't worry if it's a higher-bypass engine and you give up supersonic capability, it's just a bomb truck anyhow, it can't go supersonic with all that junk hanging out from under its wings anyhow. Sure it won't supercruise, but bomb trucks don't need to supercruise. Sure it's not stealthy, but the people it's bombing, generally various third-world turdballs, don't have anything that would shoot it down so who cares. Update the avionics suite to the latest and greatest. Devise some newer better weapons to hang off its hardpoints. Buy about 1500 of them for the price of a few dozen F-35's.
Problem solved.
Which, of course, is why it can't be done :).
- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
But BadTux.... does your approach make gazillions of dollars for the defense contractor industry? No?
Then it ain't gonna happen.
Better yet, revive the Grumman A-6 with some current generation construction materials and the engines of the F/G models. ~35K of on-target excitement.
Methinks the next fighter won't have an oxygen generator problem, since it's quite possible it won't have a pilot aboard in need of such luxuries. I know common sense dictates that it's always better to have real-time human eyes in the field and on-target, but since when has defense procurement been tied to common sense?
/Sarcasm/Especially cancel the F-35B, because we will always have friendly, unbombed 10,000 foot runways that need no defenses or unsinkable aircraft carriers that are immune to missiles and torpedoes./End Sarcasm/
As a non-active-duty Marine, I am particularly sensitive to the support needs of my ground-pounding brothers. It is wonderful to have air on call only a few minutes away, without the need for orbiting air tankers.
The F-35B will work just fine for the Marines, Dick, as long as they take off and land like normal airplanes instead of trying to hover. At which point you scratch your head in bafflement. But bear with me. The F-35 is a stealth jet. The air intakes for the jets are deliberately small slits in order to keep radar waves out of the turbofan, which otherwise has the radar signature of a friggin' 737. These slits are slanted and low on the body of the jet, unlike the gigantic intakes of the Harrier, which are tall and very far forward on the jet. The result is that the fundamental stealth design of the F-35 means you can't hover with the bloody thing because you're sucking in your debris field! Now, you can move your intakes forward and up like the Harrier's intakes, but then you have an entirely different plane with virtually no parts commonality with the other F-35 family jets (maybe the nose wheel is the same, ROFL!), and it's not a stealth jet anymore.
At which point one wonders, "if there is no parts commonality and there's no stealth anymore, why not just renovate the bloody Harrier or make whatever slight modifications are needed to create a new one that fixes whatever small flaws are in the old Harrier II design and create a Harrier III?" Because a Harrier III that was basically a Harrier II updated and perhaps slightly upscaled (in much the same way the Super Hornet was) would be literally HALF the price tag of a F-35B... and accomplishes the same damned missions. And already is mostly there and operational, unlike the F-35B, which is vaporware and is likely to *remain* vaporware until after the last USMC Harrier falls out of the sky from old age because the USMC insists that it *has* to be stealth, even though that utterly contradicts being a V/STOL aircraft.
- Badtux the Flightless Penguin
(Just like the F-35!).
The incidents that caused the grounding of the F-22 all several items in common.
1. Took place Elmendorf AFB Alaska, 3rd Wing.
2. It was cold
3. Engines starts initiated in Hanger, not in Ready/Quick Alert Hanger.
4. Minimal time between engine start and launch.
5. O2 Units from different production lots.
6. No sign of failure in O2 units when units were inspected and bench tested, by local AF shop and AF Depot
7. Manufacturer could not find fault with systems back at factory
8. No reported incidents at other AFB, they do not start the engines in the Hanger.
One theory is that the engine exhaust gas was recirculated through the fresh air intake for the O2 production unit, that combined with Human Physiology associated with the low exchange of Oxygen for Carbon Monoxide resulted in the pilot retaining a depressed PO2 level, which impaired their mental abilities. To my knowledge no PO2 measurements were obtained from the pilots involved, either confirm of disprove this theory.
All other operations of the F-22 occur in more temperate environments.
Each of P&W F119 engines in non after burner generate a max of 23,500 LB of thrust, but even at idle and low power settings that is a lot of air being sucked through those engines and exhausted into the hanger.
Can or will the Air Force admit that they almost lost several of their golden arrows because the it was too cold for the personnel to initiate their flights out on the flight line. Or is it possibly better to state that the 02 units were either defective, by either design or fabrication, or both, and that this had not been caught in all of the thousand of hours of design, testing, and qualifications associated with the program?
You do the math.
Bob, it appears that what you're saying is that if anybody wants to attack America once the F-15 is fully retired and replaced by the F-22, all they have to do is wait until it gets really cold outside and then the F-22 won't be able to fly. That's... problematic... from a defense point of view. Just sayin ;).
- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Great. So the Air Force built a warm-weather-only jet?
Yes, because of global climate change. They're ahead of the game, for once.
What I am saying is that if the USAF wants to start the engines of the F-22 in a Hanger to keep the pilot from getting cold, they need to do in an alert hanger which is designed to allow the engine exhaust not to get trapped in the building, rather than a maintenance or storage hanger which is not designed really designed to allow for the operations of the engines.
The incidences did not involve alert birds, these incidences involved scheduled training, qualification, and proficiency missions.
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