As the best-selling stealth fighter jet, Lockheed Martin to date has delivered 800 units of various variants of the F-35 Lightning II to its customers, both for the needs of the United States military and its allies. It is projected that with a flood of orders from Western European, East Asian and Scandinavian countries, the F-35 production figure could penetrate 3,300 units. However, a number of serious problems are still facing Lockheed Martin.
Quoted from Bloomberg.com (5/8/2022), even though it has poured the first production lot of the F-35 to the current 14th batch, there are still "too many quality assurance defects" that have the potential to be a problem for the user community and a major concern that has an impact. negative on the combat readiness of the fleet This was stated by the Defense Contract Management Agency based at the Pentagon.
While it is known that some improvements have been made, the risk to Lockheed Martin's performance that it will substantially affect delivery schedules remains. So far, the 'rework' or repair of parts on the F-35 components has been reduced significantly.
"F-35 subcontractors, such as Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems have also been cited as having multiple manufacturing non-compliances," the Defense Contract Management Agency said. Remaining problems on the aircraft production line are a shortage of engine modules, inadequate depot facilities and rising costs for the hardware processors required for major software upgrades.
On the other hand, retrofit costs will be prohibitively high if major problems are discovered during the often delayed simulation exercises, while threats from Russian and Chinese stealth fighter jets are very much exposed in the future.
The Defense Contract Management Agency said several persistent quality issues were discovered after the official acceptance of the aircraft. For now it said they are working with the Pentagon's Joint Program Office to identify where these quality problems are coming from, the production cycle and making the necessary changes in oversight to mitigate these problems are also urgently needed.
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| F-35 Lightning II |
Meanwhile, the Pentagon's F-35 Program Office said it could not comment on specific defects affecting "fleet readiness for operational security reasons. Lockheed Martin said in a statement that it is committed to delivering quality products on time.
"During and post-Covid, we recruited and trained more than 500 new production line employees on manufacturing processes and quality, we are actively working on continuing to improve and presenting these plans to the Pentagon's F-35 offices and the Defense Contract Management Agency," Lockheed said.
“Quality passes” – defects that are not detected before final delivery – for the year are 0.28 per jet, “a 45 percent increase from 2021,” the company said.
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