Por Tierra Mar y Aire
Moderadores: Lepanto, poliorcetes, Edu, Orel
por Pablo el Sab Jun 06, 2009 6:01 pm
Precio hipotético del F-22 para Japón (si no hubiera estado vetado): 250 millones de dólares.
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por Orel el Sab Jun 06, 2009 6:39 pm
por mack el Sab Jun 06, 2009 7:14 pm
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por champi el Mié Jun 24, 2009 9:46 am
About 2:30 a.m. June 17, the House Armed Services committee voted to spend $369 million to begin buying parts for 12 more F-22s. That would push the fleet to 199.
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If 12 planes are built, they would be delivered to the Air Force in 2013 or 2014, and would cost $234 million apiece, according to calculations by the House Armed Services Committee staff.
F-22s being built today cost about $175 million to $180 million apiece. The price would increase because costs would be divided among 12 planes.
por poliorcetes el Mié Jun 24, 2009 9:57 am
por champi el Vie Jun 26, 2009 3:45 pm
The Senate Armed Services Committee voted to fully fund seven F-22 Raptors for $1.75 billion in the fiscal 2010 defense budget, according to an industry and a congressional source who were not authorized to discuss the vote.
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the inclusion of the money on the House side a "big problem."
A letter from Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, to Japan's ambassador in Washington lists an estimated average unit cost of $290 million per aircraft for a theoretical export sale of 40 F-22 Raptors.
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" Procurement of long-lead materials would begin in 2011 with production to begin in mid-2014, The first mission capable aircraft could be delivered to Japan in 2017.
por Orel el Vie Jun 26, 2009 7:05 pm
por champi el Vie Jun 26, 2009 9:28 pm
Another senior U.S. congressman says he supports production of 20 more F-22s for the U.S. Air Force, and maybe Japan too, keeping the Lockheed Martin production line functioning for another few years.
Such an extension would allow Japan to raise the money for design of a version of the Raptor that can be exported, says Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.
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But the sale and Japan's funding of the project will take two or three years. And Murtha's staff calculates that preparing the F-22 for export will cost “substantially more”than $300 million.
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“We can reach a compromise,”Murtha says of Defense Secretary Robert Gates' proposal to end the program as planned. “The problem is, what we do [with F-22 production] in the meantime. The secretary — speaking for the White House — is adamant about not buying any more F-22s. The little bit of advanced procurement that the [House] Armed Services Committee put in didn't help us much with the $3 billion we need for 20 F-22s,”which is desired to keep the production line open.
“Maintenance of the F-22 has been a big problem,”Murtha acknowledges. “Cost has been as high as $50,000 per hour. You expect this because it's in the initial stages of deployment. The F-22 is 19 years old and improvements have been made yearly. That's one of the reasons why it's so expensive.â€
por champi el Mar Jun 30, 2009 8:51 am
Raptor Rising: So far in Fiscal 2009, the F-22's overall mission-capable rates have been rising. Not by leaps and bounds, but steady improvement, nonetheless. From Oct. 1, 2008 to April 30, 2009, the Raptor's MC rate among the combat air forces was 62.3 percent, according to information provided to the Daily Report by Air Combat Command. Through May, the number rose to 62.7 percent. And, as of June 26, the figure stood at 62.9 percent, ACC said. And during this fiscal year, contingents of Raptors have been on air and space expeditionary force rotations to Guam and Okinawa. Last year the F-22 program took some shots to the chin from then-Pentagon weapons executive John Young, who said Raptor MC rates were too low and the situation was getting worse. Conversely, Air Force officials told us in May that the trend line was positive, and the data we've seen now support that claim.
A stealth expert on the F-117 and B-2 programmes intends to file suit against Lockheed Martin later this week for concealing alleged deficiencies with the stealth coatings for the F-22.
The pending lawsuit accuses Lockheed of knowingly providing defective coatings used to reduce the aircraft's radar and visual signatures, and covering up the problem by adding 272kg (600lbs) worth of extra layers.
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The F-22 requires three layers of coatings to reduce its radar signature, according to Olsen's statements in his case.
A primer seals the surface of the aircraft skin and helps with the adhesion of the next layer. Next, a conductive coating with silver flakes mixed with polyurethane materials is applied to keep radar waves from bouncing back to the emitter source. Finally, a topcoat layer has properties, including metallic materials, to reduce heat, which lowers the risk of radar detection.
"If those coatings are not effective, the other stealth measures of the aircraft's design are negated," the lawsuit says.
por Orel el Jue Jul 02, 2009 3:06 pm
por eco_oscar el Jue Jul 02, 2009 4:32 pm
Orel escribió:Y expone que solucionaron el problema (problema conocido de antemano por Lockheed) añadiendo 272kg (600lbs) de capas RAM extra a cada avión (obviamente, encareciéndolo).
por champi el Dom Jul 12, 2009 4:40 pm
July 12, 2009: Congressional hearings over building more F-22s has led to the release of data about how much it costs, per flight hour, to maintain the aircraft. It's $44,000 per flight hour, compared to $30,000 per hour for the older F-15 that the F-22 is replacing. The F-22 per-hour cost is nearly twice what it is for the F-16. While it requires 19 man hours of maintenance for each F-16 flight hour, the F-22 requires 34 hours. The manufacturer originally said it would be less than ten hours. Most of this additional F-22 expense (and man hours) is for special materials and labor needed to keep the aircraft invisible to radar.
The main problem is the radar absorbent material used on the aircraft
The aircraft's radar-absorbing metallic skin is the principal cause of its maintenance troubles, with unexpected shortcomings -- such as vulnerability to rain and other abrasion -- challenging Air Force and contractor technicians since the mid-1990s, according to Pentagon officials, internal documents and a former engineer.
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"It is a disgrace that you can fly a plane [an average of] only 1.7 hours before it gets a critical failure" that jeopardizes success of the aircraft's mission, said a Defense Department critic of the plane who is not authorized to speak on the record.
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When limited production began in 2001, the plane was "substantially behind its plan to achieve reliability goals," the GAO said in a report the following year. Structural problems that turned up in subsequent testing forced retrofits to the frame and changes in the fuel flow. Computer flaws, combined with defective software diagnostics, forced the frequent retesting of millions of lines of code, said two Defense officials with access to internal reports.
Skin problems -- often requiring re-gluing small surfaces that can take more than a day to dry -- helped force more frequent and time-consuming repairs, according to the confidential data drawn from tests conducted by the Pentagon's independent Office of Operational Test and Evaluation between 2004 and 2008.
Over the four-year period, the F-22's average maintenance time per hour of flight grew from 20 hours to 34, with skin repairs accounting for more than half of that time -- and more than half the hourly flying costs -- last year, according to the test and evaluation office.
The Air Force says the F-22 cost $44,259 per flying hour in 2008; the Office of the Secretary of Defense said the figure was $49,808. The F-15, the F-22's predecessor, has a fleet average cost of $30,818.
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In late 2005, Boeing learned of defects in titanium booms connecting the wings to the plane, which the company, in a subsequent lawsuit against its supplier, said posed the risk of "catastrophic loss of the aircraft." But rather than shut down the production line -- an act that would have incurred large Air Force penalties -- Boeing reached an accord with the Air Force to resolve the problem through increased inspections over the life of the fleet, with expenses to be mostly paid by the Air Force.
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The plane's million-dollar radar-absorbing canopy has also caused problems, with a stuck hatch imprisoning a pilot for hours in 2006 and engineers unable to extend the canopy's lifespan beyond about 18 months of flying time. It delaminates, "loses its strength and finish," said an official privy to Air Force data.
In the interview, Ahern and Air Force Gen. C.D. Moore confirmed that canopy visibility has been declining more rapidly than expected, with brown spots and peeling forcing $120,000 refurbishments at 331 hours of flying time, on average, instead of the stipulated 800 hours.
* Of the 187 aircraft ordered so far, only the last 87 or so will feature the full range of planned missile and bomb armament, and data-link capability. That means AIM-9X, AIM-120D, Small Diameter Bomb, Electronic Attack and the new Multi-function Advanced Data-link. Thirty-four aircraft — training and test machines, mostly — cannot be economically upgraded with new systems. The balance of around 65 jets will receive some, but not all, upgrades.
* No F-22s will have Helmet-Mounted Cueing Systems, or the ability to fire air-to-air missiles in off-boresight situations. That seriously degrades the Raptor's dogfighting capability.
por champi el Lun Jul 13, 2009 12:05 pm
On Friday, Lockheed Martin, maker of the F-22, said in a statement that the MC rate “has improved from 62 percent to 68 percent from 2004-2009 and we are on track to achieve an 85 percent MCR by the time the fleet reaches maturity,”or 100,000 hours, which should take place next year. The company also said that the mean time between maintenance—the number of hours an F-22 flies before it needs service—rose from 0.97 hours in 2004 to 3.22 hours in Lot 6 aircraft. The Post claimed a figure of 1.7 hours. Direct maintenance man-hours per flying hour have dropped from 18.1 in 2008 to 10.46 in 2009, “which exceeds the requirement of 12,”the company added.
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The Air Force said the Raptor's cost per flying hour is not much greater than that of the F-15—$19,750 vs. $17,465—and the F-22 is a far more powerful and capable machine. The Post had claimed a cost of more than $40,000 per flying hour. Likewise, whereas the Post claimed the fleet had to be retrofitted due to “structural problems,”this claim is “misleading,”USAF said. Lessons learned from a static test model were applied to production of new aircraft and retrofitted to earlier aircraft; a normal part of the testing and development process. One problem the Air Force owned up to: The F-22 canopy's stealth coatings last only about half as long as they're supposed to. The service said the program has put some fixes into play and “coating life continues to improve.”The Air Force also confirmed Lockheed's contention that the mission capable rate had risen over the years to 68 percent fleetwide today.
por Orel el Lun Jul 13, 2009 12:26 pm
por polluelo el Lun Jul 13, 2009 1:11 pm
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