Inside the Navy - 2/22/2010
Navy doesn¹t expect schedule delay
Official: Navy JSF Variant To Go Offline For A Month For Design Fixes
The Navy¹s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter carrier variant will be taken
offline "for about a month" to put design fixes in after problems with
load transfers during launch were discovered last year, but it will
not delay the aircraft's schedule, according to Capt. Lawrence Burt,
commander of Carrier
Air Wing Two. Lockheed has been fixing a structural weakness in the
variant that limits
the aircraft¹s launching ability since the problem was discovered in
July. Burt told attendees at a conference in Washington February 18
that the Navy has settled on a fix that will not delay the aircraft
reaching initial operational capability in 2014. "It was just the way
the load transfers from the launch,² he said. "They¹ve got a fix for
it. Right now, they¹re trying to figure out the plan on modding what¹s
already in the production line -- the SDD [system development and
demonstration] articles that are going through production."Right now,
the Navy is not concerned," he added. "The fix looks very doable, and
I think it¹ll take the aircraft offline for about a month to put the
mod in." Burt said that this type of problem "is not unusual when
you¹re at this stage of the development in an aircraft." "They¹ve only
got one CV variant that¹s through the production line at this point,
so there¹s going to be lots of discovery as they go through test on
things that have to get fixed," he said. The first CV variant test
aircraft, CF-1, is scheduled to begin test flights in the spring. The
JSF program has been pressured to start accumulating test data from
all three variants as Congress becomes increasingly concerned about
the cost increases and delays that have been rampant in the program.