F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

[PuckChaser]

The F-35 is a complete redesign on how the avionics and sensors are integrated. Thats why there's so many delays, its revolutionary. You'd basically be rebuilding those older A/C, at likely double their original cost. The only thing you'd save from a F-18 is the engines and airframe.

 

[Lance Wiebe]

OK, thank you for the response, and I understand what you're saying.
Next question, can the sensor suite and computers be installed in a new build aircraft with minor engineering changes?
Say, for example a new build F15 or Super Hornet?

 

[PuckChaser]

OK, thank you for the response, and I understand what you're saying.
Next question, can the sensor suite and computers be installed in a new build aircraft with minor engineering changes?
Say, for example a new build F15 or Super Hornet?

We'd need an AVS or AERE to fully answer that. Problem is: Minor engineering changes = massive cost increases, we've seen this with our land vehicles.

 

[Good2Golf]

OK, thank you for the response, and I understand what you're saying.
Next question, can the sensor suite and computers be installed in a new build aircraft with minor engineering changes?
Say, for example a new build F15 or Super Hornet?

Not easily.  The F-35 is running a very high-speed (1 Gb/s) Fibre-Channel - Aviation Environment (FC-AE) optical avionics bus implemented on switched-fabric topology, vice the other legacy aircrafts' avionics interconnected via 'classic' 1553B twisted-pair, copper conductors (or fibre-optic cable for its 'stable-mate' MIL-STD-1773) with data throughput of the order of 1 to ~20 Mb/s (some work with 'FAST-1553' may yield throughput into the 100-200 Mb/s range, but not implemented.)

Even the F-22's avionics system is getting 'dated', in that while there were some fairly high data rates passing between the two main avionics processors (50 Mb/s to 400 Mb/s) and mission sensors, the rest of the aircraft systems were integrated in a hybrid manner using older 1553B technology (1 Mb/s).

Redesign and testing of an entirely new (and significantly) different avionics system topology and implementation is not done overnight and it would take years and years and years to retroactively design an FC-AE avionics system into an old/legacy aircraft...even a Gen 4/4.5 aircraft.

:2c:

Regards
G2G

 

[PuckChaser]

Science.

:goodpost:

 

[Lance Wiebe]

Not easily.  The F-35 is running a very high-speed (1 Gb/s) Fibre-Channel - Aviation Environment (FC-AE) optical avionics bus implemented on switched-fabric topology, vice the other legacy aircrafts' avionics interconnected via 'classic' 1553B twisted-pair, copper conductors (or fibre-optic cable for its 'stable-mate' MIL-STD-1773) with data throughput of the order of 1 to ~20 Mb/s (some work with 'FAST-1553' may yield throughput into the 100-200 Mb/s range, but not implemented.)

Even the F-22's avionics system is getting 'dated', in that while there were some fairly high data rates passing between the two main avionics processors (50 Mb/s to 400 Mb/s) and mission sensors, the rest of the aircraft systems were integrated in a hybrid manner using older 1553B technology (1 Mb/s).

Redesign and testing of an entirely new (and significantly) different avionics system topology and implementation is not done overnight and it would take years and years and years to retroactively design an FC-AE avionics system into an old/legacy aircraft...even a Gen 4/4.5 aircraft.

:2c:

Regards
G2G

Thank you, and seeing as how it's taking years and years to design the system in to the F-35, I can believe it!
It seems to me that this system CAN be designed in to another newly designed airplane, however, perhaps one with better capabilities. The primary problems with the F-35 seem to be all electronics, not the airplane itself. However, I still wonder why they designed the F-35 to be the all singing; all dancing airplane, instead of using the software in different designs. It seems to me that designing one airframe to be a fighter, a fighter-bomber and a STOVL has to result in compromises.

 

[YZT580]

If I can interject with another question?  Would not a smaller acquisition of Gen5 aircraft with their admittedly superior capabilities be combined with the purchase of a larger fleet of Gen4 or 4.5 aircraft featuring greater maneuverability, longer range and heavier armament;  with the Gen5 providing directions to the lesser in an attack provide us with greater bang for our bucks? 

 

[Kirkhill]

If I can interject with another question?  Would not a smaller acquisition of Gen5 aircraft with their admittedly superior capabilities be combined with the purchase of a larger fleet of Gen4 or 4.5 aircraft featuring greater maneuverability, longer range and heavier armament;  with the Gen5 providing directions to the lesser in an attack provide us with greater bang for our bucks?

I think the answer there has been stated previously:

Two Aircraft Types
Two Engine Types
Two Sets of Spares
Two Hangars
Two Tool Kits
Two Simulators
Two Trainers

The Aircraft is only something like 30 to 40% of the acquisition price.  The rest of the price is all of the other stuff. 

The Operating Costs, - fuel, consummables, aircrew, techs and managers - are going to be similar regardless of the aircraft.

Edit:  Operating Costs are going to be similar, unless, more aircraft are purchased because they are cheaper.  Then Operating Costs will increase because more aircraft with more pilots will be in the air burning more fuel and requiring more technicians.

 

[Ostrozac]

If I can interject with another question?  Would not a smaller acquisition of Gen5 aircraft with their admittedly superior capabilities be combined with the purchase of a larger fleet of Gen4 or 4.5 aircraft featuring greater maneuverability, longer range and heavier armament;  with the Gen5 providing directions to the lesser in an attack provide us with greater bang for our bucks?

That is exactly what many forces plan to do -- the RAAF, the RAF, the IDF, the USAF and the USN (among others) are planning to field F-35 as part of a mixed fighter fleet. Some other forces -- USMC, RN, RDAF, for example, are planning for F-35 to be their only fighter.

There is a strong argument that for a large air force it is worth having F-35 for the high-end threats while having cheaper aircraft for lower end operations in low threat areas, but for a small air force the extra costs of maintaining two fleets outweigh the cost savings of operating low end fighters.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Lance Wiebe: Lots more on problems with "joint" fighters here:

6th Generation USAF, USN Fighters: Don’t Try Joint Like F-35
https://cgai3ds.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/mark-collins-6th-generation-usaf-usn-fighters-dont-try-joint-like-f-35/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[HB_Pencil]

OK, thank you for the response, and I understand what you're saying.
Next question, can the sensor suite and computers be installed in a new build aircraft with minor engineering changes?
Say, for example a new build F15 or Super Hornet?

No, absolutely not. If it was "cheap" then Boeing would have just eaten the EMD costs and offered such a package on the Super Hornet to the United States Navy. Perhaps the most relevant antecedent is the F-22. Back in 2004 it was foreseen that to produce more F-22s (after 200 or so) they would have to build a new avionics suite. The original idea was to reuse the F-35's suite on the F-22 and save money.The initial EMD was estimated at 300 million, but that was quickly viewed to be excessively rosy. I seemed to recall the estimates are already north of $1 billion and continuing to rise. the UAE spent $3 billion on the EMD for the Block 60 F-16, which reused some of the F-35's technologies, but it did not have a true sensor fusion system. So its really just not economically feasible.

To add to G2Golf's comments, Certainly the hardware/databus side of the avionics is the first major challenge for transplanting this type of system over, howerver its difficult to understate all of the other areas that would need to be reworked. Any change in the sensor systems incorporated (or in some cases, the location of the same sensors on a different aircraft) will need an obscene amount of reprogramming for the system to alter how the aircraft processes and interprets that data.

I think its important to understand that a 5th generation aircraft utilizes data differently from earlier aircraft. In the current generation much of the aircraft's processing is hardcoded: The data is pushed through dedicated filters and processes and displayed to the pilot, who must interpret them and make a decision. They must develop a mental image of the scenario in their head, based on previous data displayed in order to develop a concrete course of action.

In 5th gen, the data is held and can be queried by a number of different processes at the same time, in order to provide a much better sensor picture. Moreover these processes are not hardcoded, but can (and in some cases do) incorporate true machine learning systems. You can take a segment of data, that may have developed over several minutes or even hours and test them against similar scenarios. Furthermore those algorithms can then be updated using the information gleaned from this instance to provide a better understanding later.

Returning to the question at hand, it really is a much much more complex system, which has a lot of variables that while not explicitly designed to operate on the F-35, is really not easily ported over to another aircraft. This is why the F-22 was never given the F-35's avionics suite, despite initial efforts to do so.

 

[Lance Wiebe]

Lance Wiebe: Lots more on problems with "joint" fighters here:

6th Generation USAF, USN Fighters: Don’t Try Joint Like F-35
https://cgai3ds.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/mark-collins-6th-generation-usaf-usn-fighters-dont-try-joint-like-f-35/

Mark
Ottawa

Thanks for the link!

 

[Good2Golf]

(Real) Gen 5 is the tipping point from focus on physical performance to that of the integration of sensors, low observability and self-launched or networked weapons.  That is why I wouldn't take the critique of the F-35's dog-fighting capabilities to mean that it is an unsuitable aircraft (system).  Perhaps one could consider how a Su-35 Flanker would fare against a group of (?) F-35 mixed with (?) X-47B UCAVs...and the Flanker pilot doesn't/wouldn't be able to tell which is which, because observability wise, they all look the same...i.e. darned near invisible.  Which one of the platforms he/she is lucky enough to identify with their (admittedly well-respected) IRST system is the greatest threat?  By the time they (the Su-35 pilot) figured it out, they'd have an AIM-120 heading their way from "one of the herd."

Gen 4/4.5 tarted up with a retro-fitted (and understandably a compromise) fibre-optic complex avionics system would still be an aircraft behind the dog-fighting/sensor-enabled smart-fighting tipping point, and that would only get worse in the decades to follow.

:2c:

Regards
G2G

Edit to add: HB_Pencil brought up another excellent point that I hadn't included in my past posts...integration of the aircraft's own (increasingly) smart components (first seen on F-22, using programmable bus elements [controllers, monitors, remote terminals (in 1553B parlance), actuators, etc...).  Even things as (previously) simple as control surface actuators (especially the move away from hydraulic to electro-mechatronic actuators) are becoming smarter (autonomously adaptive) as part of advanced flight control systems.  All of these things are very difficult to retroactively design into an existing aircraft.

 

[PuckChaser]

It's the difference behind picking up a Pentium 3 computer running Windows 95, and an i5 quad core running Windows 10. Light years ahead.

 

[HB_Pencil]

Thank you, and seeing as how it's taking years and years to design the system in to the F-35, I can believe it!
It seems to me that this system CAN be designed in to another newly designed airplane, however, perhaps one with better capabilities. The primary problems with the F-35 seem to be all electronics, not the airplane itself. However, I still wonder why they designed the F-35 to be the all singing; all dancing airplane, instead of using the software in different designs. It seems to me that designing one airframe to be a fighter, a fighter-bomber and a STOVL has to result in compromises.

The reality is that the idea of "roles" is starting to change significantly. Mark's links/comments really reflect the old thinking of programs that is less and less relevant to how the US Military perceives its future aerospace (and arguably battle space) operations. Arguably there are three different trends going on here. The first is what I outlined above with emergence of sensor fusion and networked operations. Aircraft like the F-35 will increasingly become decision making nodes that are linked to large networks of sensor and weapon platforms. While some of those platforms will continue to be manned (like the Super Hornet), they will increasingly transition to unmanned systems in the future. Many of those platforms will be disposable in nature and may even implement swarm tactics. The USAF has already made the first steps in this area with the loyal wingman concept. So if we're thinking about close air support aircraft's features (in a very general level), you'd probably want an aircraft that has persistence and great situational awareness of the battlefield. Basically in the future you'd have a MALE type drone circling the battlefield that is transmitting information to other nodes in the battlespace. A pilot of an F-35 can become intimately aware of the situation even before he's taxied out of a hangar, rather than having to arrive and develop that situational awareness.

Concurrent to this is a major shift in weapons' design. The reason why you see the push towards multirole is because ordnance is enabling aircraft to carry out more missions. Precision munitions have drastically reduced the need for an aircraft to carry a large payload of weapons, because fewer can achieve the same effect. To provide some illustrative numbers: it probably took a squadron of B-17s and 100,000+lbs of bombs to destroy a single building, can often be accomplished by a single F-16 or F-35 with a couple of 500lbs jdams. With the advent of missiles like the Aim-120D and R-77, maneuvering has become somewhat less important due to their very high kill rates. Aircraft are less and less able to outmaneuver threats because they are limited to the G-rating of a pilot and the aircraft's structure. This is the reason why the F-16 and F/A-18A/C,  have accounted for the majority of strikes, despite originally being air superiority fighters.

Two further points. Mark's post about "joint problems" rests heavily on an obsolete RAND study that used out of date data for the F-35's operational costs. That report employed the CAPE 2010 data (see page 7 note 2) that has been revised downwards significantly over the past five years. In 2010 they estimated that the F-35 program as a whole would cost $1.51 trillion dollars. Today that same number stands at $1.12 trillion, and that's with them adding five years of extra service time and additional aircraft. 

Second, large joint programs are rarely initiated organically. That is really not surprising, because the "normal" process is to have services identify requirements and then navigate the procurement process (this is particularly true after the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, which puts more power into the hands of the service chiefs for procurement). Moreover services have a general aversion towards joint programs: it takes control away from them and they will claim very specific service requirements to avoid participation. Instead large joint programs usually emerge from several disparate service programs that are amalgamated by DOD. The TFX/F-111 was an airforce project that Secretary McNamara combined with a Navy interceptor requirement. The F-35 was two or three (depending on how you define it) separate program that DoD amalgamated together for cost savings. So its really not like DoD creates these programs.

 

[MarkOttawa]

HB_Pencil: Further to your post, USAF seems to be rethinking 6th gen. fighter:

Beyond the Fighter Jet: The Air Force of 2030

In its quest to dominate the air battlefield of the future, the US Air Force may look to replace the traditional fighter jet with a network of integrated systems disaggregated across multiple platforms.

The Air Force on Thursday [April 14] rolled out the initial findings of a team tasked last year to explore options for maintaining air superiority in the future battle space. The group, the Air Superiority 2030 Enterprise Capability Collaboration Team, found that the best path forward is developing a “family of systems” to address the range of threats in a highly contested environment.

As near-peer adversaries like Russia and China continue to close the capability gap, building long-range missiles, anti-satellite and anti-aircraft weapons designed to foil US forces’ ability to penetrate, the Air Force must find new ways to dominate the air.

"The threat environment will continue to proliferate over the next 15 to 20 years, and we will face them in places and in spaces on this globe and above this globe that we don’t even anticipate right now," said Air Superiority 2030 lead Col. Alex Grynkewich on Thursday during an event hosted by the Air Force Association.

This family of systems, or “system of systems,” approach is the Air Force’s answer to the idea the US military is losing its advantage. The new strategy will include both stand-off capability and penetrating forces, with increased dependence on space and cyber to infiltrate enemy defenses and defend our own networks, Grynkewich said.

“What the adversary has done is built a whole bunch of different systems that are networked together . . . we learned over the years it takes a network to fight a network,” Grynkewich said. “It takes a network and an integrated system of systems or a family of systems in order to handle that highly contested environment in the future.”

The Air Force set aside money in its fiscal year 2017 budget request for experimentation and prototyping in the area of air superiority, Lt. Gen. James “Mike” Holmes, deputy chief of staff for plans and requirements, said during the event. The team will use this funding to explore concepts like the arsenal plane, hypersonic weapons, directed energy, autonomy, and electronic attack, the officials said.

But will the family of systems include a traditional fighter jet? Grynkewich seems to think not [emphasis added]...

The Air Force had planned to begin working on a joint analysis of alternatives with the Navy to explore a follow-on fighter jet solution, an F-X for the Air Force and an FA-XX for the Navy. But while the Navy went ahead with its AOA this year, the Air Force opted to delay the F-X effort, the service told reporters in February...
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/2016/04/08/beyond-fighter-jet-air-force-2030/82767356/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[GR66]

HB_Pencil: Further to your post, USAF seems to be rethinking 6th gen. fighter:

Mark
Ottawa

Makes sense.  A low-observable UAV sensor platform feeding info to a series of launch platforms which could also be UAVs, or if the range of weapons could be increased enough some manned "bomb trucks" or arsenal aircraft/ground launchers/ships.

Even if we do end up buying the F-35 we'll likely push the purchase far enough back that they'll be obsolete by the time we get them!

 

[dimsum]

HB_Pencil: Further to your post, USAF seems to be rethinking 6th gen. fighter:

Mark
Ottawa

"System of Systems" - that's RMA, right? 

As an aside, that just proves I actually learned something while doing OPMEs.

 

[HB_Pencil]

HB_Pencil: Further to your post, USAF seems to be rethinking 6th gen. fighter:

Mark
Ottawa

Yes, and that reflects what I've been saying and DoD's thinking. Its important to note that the Navy has said nearly the same thing as the USAF, and even suggested that they may consider teaming with them for the program.

Nevertheless, the US is on the cusp of this transition and the end state (for lack of a better word) is not exactly clear. I had part of my response accidentally clipped off above (the third change in the battlespace), but basically it discussed the proliferation of cheaper, limited-use drones to augment aircraft capabilities. So for a CAS type scenario, you would plug into Army data sources, and/or deploy sensors like low altitude drones, or even large numbers of ground sensors . The system of systems really moves away from single platform approaches and develops' solutions though multiple capabilities. Surveying the current state of the US Military's battlefield networking efforts, particularly the Air force, the only constant they have for the next 30+ years is that the F-35 will be in the centre of this transformation.

This is perhaps why there has been significant thought that a 6th Gen fighter may simply be the F-35 with ADVENT core, updated avionics or a number of other new features. Still the exact nature of the future force, which has affected current programs like UCLASS. It was under deep congressional scrutiny (significantly more intrusive than what the F-35 ever experienced), until its proposed role was pared down to an extremely limited range (basically aerial refuelling). So I think its really difficult to assess not only what capabilities are going to look like, speak nothing of where and how they will be developed.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

"System of Systems" - that's RMA, right? 

As an aside, that just proves I actually learned something while doing OPMEs.

"RMA", "System of Systems" .... all just fancy buzzword speak for Combined Arms Operations.

There is no "Revolution" we're merely improving our ability to do the above.