Interesting article that looks at the ongoing costs of utilizing the F-35.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenth.../#e5245b024664
An article from 1984 that talked about the development problems of the F-18 that made it develop cracks and limited how the fighter could fly
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/28/u...ign-flaws.html
Quote:
Mr. Snyder said that although these vortices are violent enough to have caused cracks in the F-18's twin tail assembly, they do not adversely affect the pilot's control. ''Pilots are aware of something going on,'' he said of the buffeting action.
Until the F-18's are fixed, a McDonnell Douglas spokesman said, they will be limited to climb angles less than 25 degrees above horizontal and dive angles less than six degrees below horizontal. At altitudes higher than 30,000 feet, however, there are no such restrictions because the vortices are weaker in thin atmosphere. Less Development Money
Asked why the problem had not been discovered early in the project, Mr. Snyder said that ''there was a real squeeze on development money'' because of the existence of a prototype aircraft. He said the prototype, designed by Northrop in the late 1960's and called the YF-17, was used to acquire the kind of stress information that might otherwise have been obtained from testing F-18 models in wind tunnels, for example.
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I also want to kind of state that when people talk about the development problems on the F-35, which by the way is the most complex aircraft ever made, they tend to forget that the development of the F/A-18 was fraught with a similar story line.
A article that talks about the development of the Onboard Mission library and how it works to fight the aircraft
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the...kill-any-25215
Quote:
Consisting of hardware and software, the mission data files are essentially a database of known threats and friendly aircraft in specific parts of the world. The files are being worked on at a reprogramming laboratory at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., Air Force officials said. The mission data files are designed to work with the aircraft's Radar Warning Receiver engineered to find and identify approaching enemy threats and incoming hostile fire.
Pleus said the service is working vigorously to speed up development and integration of new software engineered to widen the threat envelope of the mission data files to enable the now operational F-35 to better identify specific enemy threats.
While progress at the Eglin laboratory has been steady, the integration of the mission data files for the F-35 have experienced some delays, prompting the current effort to quicken the pace so that the operational aircraft has the most extensive threat library possible. The first increments of the technology will be integrated for training F-35s, Pleus explained.
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