Fire X first flight...

BBC News on the Harriers final flight.

This guy gets it!

via DOD Buzz...

Incoming House Armed Services Committee Chair, Howard “Buck” McKeon, today laid out his stance on defense spending as the top man on the committee, backing the embattled F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, its alternate engine program and the Pentagon’s efforts to reduce costs.
While the U.S. Marine Corps’ F-35B short take-off and vertical landing version of the jet has experienced numerous testing delays over the past year and is unlikely to meet its scheduled operational date of 2012, McKeon said he doesn’t want to see it cut.

“If you take that away then what plane are the Marines going to have,” asked the congressman. “I would not be supportive of cutting that.”

This guy so gets it.  

 

I wondered why we have been fairly drowned in F-35 news lately and now I think I'm putting it together.  It seems like the critics of the program once again were organizing a drum beat of negative news in an effort to influence policy makers...and as usual they've lost again.

AWESOME!

Marine Air in Exercise Keen Sword.

Video of F-35C arriving at Pax River.

Same story...two different view points.

The F-35.  A controversial project with many detractors.

But when you have one story but two different takes on the same facts it should give pause.  We have in one corner Bjørnar Bolsøy of F-16.net and in the other we have Graham Warrick of Aviation Week....

First Bjørnar's take...

As the third F-35A test jet joins the test fleet at Edwards AFB, the F-35 program has logged its 400th test flight this year - still with two weeks to go before year's end. The program had planned for 394 flights, a goal acheived on December 9.

Some 300 flights have been flown since June. This is despite a fleet wide grounding in October due to a software issue with the jets fuel boost pumps as well as challenges with the F-35B STOVL jet, which has slowed the type's flight test progress. Overall the program has logged 531 flights to date.

And now Graham's...

Lockheed Martin, meanwhile, says it passed its 394-flight test target for 2010 on Dec. 6, taking the program total to 531 flights since the F-35 first flew on Dec. 15, 2006. Two F-35As, four F-35Bs and one F-35C logged 60 flights in November against a plan of 51.

That sounds like progress, and it is, but it's worth remembering that, in September last year, the JSF program office leadership was pojecting that 12 aircraft would be flying by now, each logging 12 test sorties a month. That goal is unlikely to be achieved until well in 2011.

If these two differing views of the same information doesn't give you pause then nothing in the world of procurement ever will.

It appears that we've reached a point in the development of this airplane where either you're a supporter or a detractor....that my friends is a shame.

Pic of the day. Dec. 13, 2010.

USS Halsey is underway in formation with the French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle.

101210-N-8824M-268
ARABIAN SEA (Dec. 10, 2010) USS Halsey (DDG 97) assigned to Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, sails in a formation with the French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle (R 91) during a photo exercise. The Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group is deployed in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility supporting maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts to establish conditions for regional stability. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Spencer Mickler/Released)