Thanks for the link William.
Yeah.
The fight has begun. News has it that the Republicans are looking to make deficit reduction and no "missteps" their agenda this year. That means sequestration might be eased but it will not go away.
The Navy will get upgrades to existing gear alot easier than buying new stuff. The Advanced Super Hornet looks more and more likely. We might not see the complete package but engines, maybe the fuel tanks and a few enclosed weapon pods here and there....it'll get done, but it'll be on the sly.
Note: Republican policy planning for the next year is outlined in this AP news story. Observe the lack of focus on boosting defense spending. I expect defense hawks like McCain and Graham to raise a ruckus but for nothing to be done. The focus on the deficit will calm the Tea Party while most issues and programs unchanged. Relief for the defense industry/budget will come with the next President...if it comes at all.
Rock & roll time Sol. Time to see Super Hornets with the thrust they should have always had, 50,000+ lbs.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right about "here and there" get it done ASH F-18. The CFTs are a no brainer and a bolt on item anyway, so the development is de-coupled. Same with the CWP, bolt on when ready.
"Rock & roll time Sol. Time to see Super Hornets with the thrust they should have always had, 50,000+ lbs."
DeleteWho-ho and we (USA via the Navy) will have to pay for overhauls every 24 months! GE does not advertise the part where the higher thrust of the F414 and F110 mean you have to overhaul them more often...
Of course give the entire combat element of the Canadian AF is less the Nellis AFB, you probably could afford it. Unlike the thousand+ of F414's the USN has.
Probably the best thing to do would be to program the 414 FADEC controls so that full thrust is not required for all use. i.e. de-tune the engine for general flight, but allow "war mode" for the full 26,500 lbs.
DeleteThe enhanced 414 engine development also really benefits the Gripen NG. If an enhanced 414 was put in this future variant it would be quite the inexpensive air superiority/dogfighter.
ReplyDeleteMan Boeing lobby really wants to have that Advanced Super Hornet program to lift off,dont they.
ReplyDeletewe're currently faced with two terrible choices. one is less bad than the other and gives us a chance. the worst choice. continue with the money draining F-35 program and watch every other part of our military wither and die. the better choice but not ideal is to kill the F-35, buy upgraded legacy platforms and fund a balanced military that can handle threats in the 15 to 20 year timeframe. additionally you begin work on a 6th gen with lessons learned from this debacle. first we do the Sweetman idea of sharing avionics but the plane can be different. we're already doing that with our helicopters. take the AH-1Z and UH-1Y. to different looking helicopters but they share the same cockpit. thats the idea we should take to the next gen Air Force and Navy fighter. they will look different, be optimized for different missions but will share the same avionics, sensors etc...
DeleteQuick defense of your Boeing paymaster Solomon.
Deletenope, i'm not on the payroll and recent decisions by the FCC require bloggers to report if they're taking money, receiving gifts or any other type of compensation from corporations. heck i even have to file a 1099 for the few ads (that i don't control but need to post so that google highlights my page and i get more views) that you see on this page. the pennies i get do help buy a few extra boxes of ammo so i really can't complain.
Deletei said all that to let you know,
1. i'm on no ones payroll.
2. if i was i would let my readers know.
3. if Boeing did say that they wanted to run ads i wouldn't refuse.
4. if LM wanted to run ads i wouldn't refuse. and then finally....
5. i would refuse racist, satanic, pedophiles and others that i consider undesirables from this page....other than that its a spot on my blog that people either ignore, are interested in or they're on the internet so much that they have ad blockers installed.
You do not have to be on anyone's payroll to see the merit in this.
DeleteYou don't even have to particularly like the F18 E/F.. I do not, since its performance is.. meager.. but still a lot better then the F35! Also, Canuck Fighter already kinda said it: with more powerful engines it could actually become very good.
Anyway, its all about choices and at the moment lack there off.
The thing with the Super Hornet...we can debate it's merits via itself, vs the F-35 or other. Most suggest that is equal or slightly better than the F-35. The thing is, there are over 500 current operational Super Hornets in the USN air arm and they will be there for some significant time to come. So more powerful engines, and with follow on bolt-ons like the CFTs or CWPs just enhance the "fight" capability of the air arm, for minimal $$.
DeleteEPE/EDE engines will change a lot of things but there are still going to be restrictions on what the Hornet can do.
ReplyDeleteIf you add 1,200lbs of irreduceable bring back weight, will Magic Carpet compensate? Power-on recovery management only works within the range of allowable speeds and alpha settings to hold the correct approach angle and glide slope.
If you've got a lot of unexpended ordnance plus the CFT weight that's going to be drag increases which require significant onspeed changes which means your autothrottle schedules will be higher. The thrustier engines may be able to supply more power on demand but they will also need added fuel to meet the naval reserve requirement and another 500-750lbs of fuel atop the other conditions is going to mean making a lot of calls to the direct lift system and it's 'flapping the flaps' with greater baseline extension angles and less reserve for excursion compensation.
The Delta Path burble penetration mode will also be more sluggish since you are dealing with more mass and when the aircraft sets down, more weight = greater pendant stress.
Thus it all comes down to how much lift margin the much heavier Super Hornet had at service entry on that 500 square foot wing as to whether it can make use of the new features without greatly increasing approach speed (F/A-18A/C were originally designed for 125 knots but now work at something like 145, an extreme jump and on the edge of unsafe). The alternatives: dumping reserve fuel and trusting to Magic Carpet to get you aboard or forcing the pilot to adopt manual approach with an unsafe combination of attitude and throttle spool-up as glideslope margin in making a final play for the deck without the coupled DLC to control scatter.
Now extend this to inflight performance. You have jets with maybe 15-17,000lbf per side (IRT) vs. jets with 12-14,000lbf (IRT), a 4,000lbf differential not dissimilar to that of the F-16A/C.25 and F-16C.30 in Desert Storm. The thrustier jets get nothing throttling back and the earlier Lot I/II Supers are pushed to hold formation pacing at a given airspeed/altitude throttle combination which leads to stacking errors as you try to time out routes so that both jets arrive at the fence on time with equal gas to make the target penetration and within a fixed carrier launch cycle.
The Advanced Supers will fly better at altitude, finally taking the air fight above Mach 1.31 and 25,000ft but with that engine, they will also be called on to do the strike mission with heavier ordnance loads. If you have a mixed deckload and give the heavyweight missions to the more sluggish jets (you are _not_ going to replace the entire Super inventor of F414s) you will age the airframes and compromise their penetration speeds more heavily.
ReplyDeleteIMO, the USN will need to make some cautious judgments about the number of fights it expects to carry, alone, from a given distance out on the target radial to avoid the ICD. If there are F-22 handling the OCA mission the costliest aspect of the ASH configuration as engine replacement may not make a lot of sense. Particularly if it comes without AIM-120D, CUDA, T3 or some combination thereof to give the jet back some pole reach.
If you're planning on having KC-46 tankers do the forward pass to get the range point, that's one thing. But if the airwing needs to supply it's own KA-18 tanking then reducing drag by eliminating external ordnance overall may be a better option, particularly if it allows you to shift to a different core propulsion system (and one engine vice two) as the F100 on an 'A-47A'.
Buy into UCAVs and your priorities change, in a good way, as now you can go with the cheap options as the JSF big screen cockpit, widepipe MADL or TTNT datalinks and say the CFT plus wing tanks which buys you a 750nm radius without refueling and 1,050nm with.
Let. The. Droids. Go. First.
And use the money you saved on the engines to buy targeting pods and better modes/reliability on the APG-79 so that you can standoff target for them without being compromised by your Non-LO configuration and tiny bypass ratio (.25 for the F414, .36 for the F100) as low military TSFC.
If the UCAV can get to the target area and back on a single tank of gas, then that is extra fuel for you.
If internal carriage allows a wider range of ordnance types and less flight hour carriage penalty for them in depot recertification fees, that's also a better solution because it's also no-drag and All-LO while still saving money.
Exactly how does this smash P&W?
ReplyDeleteIt hasn't hit the fan yet on the faulty F-35 engine. There has been complete silence for over two months, with not a word on the required engine redesign from JPO, LM nor Pratt.
ReplyDeleteOn June 23, 2014 a US Air Force F-35 Joint Strike Fighter caught fire when attempting to take off from Eglin AFB, Florida. The plane, which was assigned to the 33rd Fighter Wing at Eglin, the unit that trains F-35 pilots for the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and international militaries, experienced a fire in the aft end of the aircraft. The pilot (name unreported) reportedly egressed successfully and the plane (AF-27) was seriously damaged (extent unreported). This was the most recent -- and worst -- of many F-35 engine failures.
Later investigation by the safety board indicated that the plane that caught fire was damaged about three weeks earlier during two seconds of flight when the test pilot — operating well within the safety envelope of the plane’s abilities — put G forces, yaw and roll stresses on the plane all at the same time.
Right up front, there are two undisputed F35 engine design issues.
The root cause of the engine failure was probably excessive flex. Bennett Croswell, P&W president for military engines, said that “there’s more movement of the engine” within the F-35 airframe “than we thought when we designed it.”
The root cause of the plane destruction was lack of containment. The DOD Handbook MIL-HDBK-516B for Airworthiness Certification Criteria requires the applicant to "Verify that any uncontained failure of an engine control or subsystem component with rotating parts does not adversely affect the continued safe operation of the air vehicle." (p. 159, #11)
According to General Bogdan, the pilot was "flying well within the envelope of the airplane--wasn’t doing anything wrong. He put G on the airplane, he rolled the airplane, and put yaw on the airplane, all at the same time. Perfectly okay to do that--well within the envelope." --The program has these capability limits for enhanced training: - max alt 40K, max spd 550kt, 0.9machG, 18degAoA, wpns none.
General Bogdan described the failure situation. "When you put a fighter engine in an airframe, that engine actually moves around in a lot of different ways. Because the engine flexed so much, that blade--that titanium blade and that rubber touched each other deeper and faster than we ever expected it to. The blade liberated from the engine and went up through the fuselage, through a fuel tank in the left fuselage. That’s what caused the fire. And that’s where we had our problem."
problem.
ReplyDeleteBut officials have not yet outlined a clear path forward to address the design risks that led to an engine fire that grounded the fleet of F-35 single-engine aircraft this summer. The Pratt & Whitney F135 engine is the largest, heaviest and hottest high-performance fighter engine ever built, weighing 6444lb with consequently larger inertial and gyroscopic forces.(The STOVL engine & lift system is 10,342lb.)
Correcting the F-35 engine problem highlighted by the June 23 fire required a proper root cause analysis, which usually addresses various risks including design and operational hazards, deficiency reports, parts obsolescence, corrosion effects and reliability degradation.
A common misconception and program office practice concerning risk management of root cause analysis is to identify and track issues (vice risks) and then manage the consequences (vice the root causes). Risks should not be confused with issues (realized risks). And unfortunately that's what was done in this case. They only looked at the rubbing and not the affirmed design problems.
A proper root cause analysis is based on the belief that problems are more effectively solved by correcting or eliminating the root causes, rather than merely addressing the obvious symptoms. The 5 Why’s (p.25) is a simple problem-solving technique developed by Toyota* to quickly get to the root of a problem.
-- The 5 Why strategy involves looking at any problem and asking: "Why”? and “What caused this problem”?
-- The answer to the first “why” must prompt another “why” and the answer to the second "why” must prompt another and so on.
A 5 Why's approach in this case would have led back to the two F-135 engine design deficiencies, which they know exist, and have stated so. These are the excessive engine flex, at only 0.9 G, which caused the engine failure and the lack of containment which caused the plane destruction.
Bogdan: "What ended up happening is, because the engine flexed so much. . . .the blade liberated from the engine and went up through the fuselage, through a fuel tank in the left fuselage. That’s what caused the fire. And that’s where we had our problem."
That's where we had the problem -- but the JPO has instead concluded that that the June 23 failure was "Due to excessive rub between an engine fan and adjacent seal." (see chart 3 here) This was on October 10, 2014. They will create a trench in the engine housing to accommodate the excessive rub, but they will not address the basic design risks, excessive flex and lack of containment, which doesn't really solve the problems and remove the risks.
That was a bum engine analysis, leaving an unsafe airplane with major engine risks.
A single seat F/A-18E with a central fuel tank with Irst sensor, ALQ-218 sensors on the wing tips, two Amraams under the engines and 2 Aim-9X on single pylons under each wing will have enough range, speed, thrust to weight, low drag, low observability maneauverability and stealth detectiong capacity to do air superiority and artic patrol missions with the current engines. Today they defeat F-15/16, Mig29 with no problems.
ReplyDeleteThe F/A-18F with two gas tanks in asimetrical configuration can do strike missions with stand of weapons for day one.
I don't think the ASH version is needed to do what the cheaper current super hornets and can do today.
http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/0/2/1/2156120.jpg
http://images.gizmag.com/hero/8090_26090770610.jpg
2011 Fargo Air Show - F/A-18E Super Hornet Demo 2: http://youtu.be/OJI4tP88cEE
Super Hornet Air Superiority Fighter: http://youtu.be/1nNajPYghAw
To graphic my point about the non necessity of the Advanced Super Hornet version, this is what a cheap low observable Super Hornet with a thrust to weight of 0.93 can do up to a max speed of Mach 1.8
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/Uthdi30MZEE
And this is what an expensive Eurofighter with a thrust to weight of 1.15 can do up to Max speed of Mach 2
http://youtu.be/ZVwUwqR5l9Y