Students Design $1.25 Piece to Help Prevent B-2 Stealth Bomber Emergencies. Top response to the article: “Dumb students… they could have charged at least twice that much for that part… But seriously, there are parts of my aircraft like this that are thousands of dollars.”
“Because of the asbestos content in the aircraft, the Australian Defence Department had elected to bury the aircraft as a more economical method of disposal.” Good picture of F-111s getting buried.
DARPA’s Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) program. Basically a small satellite with a robotic arm to do on-orbit maintenance and possibly payload upgrades. It looks like the contractor backed out of the agreement. Some additional analysis on what it means for the industry. A couple interesting quotes from the last: “This is a painful turn of events for DARPA,” and “the RSGS failure is not likely to deter government agencies from signing OTA deals or from embracing on-orbit logistics activities.”
Germany wants to purchase 45 F/A-18s instead of taking the expected route of buying F-35s. The choice not only highlights issues with the F-35 — an independent consumer chose Boeing over Lockheed — it highlights the failure of the Air Force. After all, Germany and many other countries that operate the F/A-18 do not have aircraft carriers. And that was the mission set the F/A-18 was designed for. Yet again we see a Naval aircraft adapted to non-carrier-based operations.
Related… “Despite having the highest accident rate of any U.S. Marine Corps fixed-wing aircraft, the Marines will keep the AV-8B Harrier around longer than planned. The reason is simple: Marine F/A-18 Hornets are in far worse shape and need to be replaced sooner.” OK, it could be the F/A-18s fault, with readiness in poor shape. But the relevant comparison to make would have been the fact that the F-35B wasn’t ready. After all, the F/A-18 isn’t a S/TOVL aircraft.
Also related… in the above, we learned that the Harrier’s airframe life was 6,000 flight hours. How about the F-35B? “Each F-35B is supposed to have a service lifetime of 8,000 hours. But this operational test and evaluation report on the F-35 suggests that early-model F-35Bs could be limited to just 2,100 hours.”
Raytheon sells Patriot missile to 16 countries. “All around I think the Missile Defense Review was great for us.”
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