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In what is becoming almost as consistent as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, the F-35—America’s trillion dollar joke of a fighter jet—has been grounded again. I don’t even know how many times the fighter jet has been grounded now, I’ve lost count. This time, it’s because of a crack in a turbine blade of the engine.
According to the Department of Defense, all F-35s in the Air Force, Navy and Marines have been grounded after an engine inspection revealed the crack on the engine blade.
Inspectors found the crack in an F135 engine installed in an F-35A Lightning II aircraft at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. This is the conventional take-off and landing version of the joint strike fighter.
The Air Force has shipped the cracked engine to Pratt & Whitney’s engine facility (it makes the engines) in Connecticut for further evaluation. It’s supposed to be only a precautionary measure but it’s yet another embarrassing failure for the F-35. Whether it’s parachutes being loaded the wrong way or power systems affecting the temperature or software bugging out in simulations, there’s always something going wrong with these planes. Maybe some things just aren’t meant to be.
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Joke of a fighter jet? Surely it’s one of the best aircraft around.
I agree. All aircraft have teething problems (just look at the dreamliner) – better to find them now than when its in a war zone.
This is still going to be one awesome aircraft.
I’m sure all the many thousands of people that have dedicated the last 5-10 years of their lives to this, frankly, incredible machine, would be delighted to see you describe it as a “joke” for being grounded as a precautionary measure.
Shoulda tried harder…
It’s vastly inferior to the F22 in practically every respect despite costing more. Frankly it’s even inferior to the F/A-18E/F. They screwed up the stealth part too so it will be easy to detect.
Look at what the Russians are building at a fraction of the price.
The issue is not so much how amazing the aircraft is (it is), but that most piloted aircraft are now obsolete thanks to drones and other advanced weapons systems coming soon, such as energy beams. Imagine if you no longer needed a flying machine at all, and simply fired a beam from secret location X? Where X is:
a) Space
b) Ground
c) Off shore stealth ship or boat
Aircraft are moving so any energy beam would be harder to target from, unlike a static or slower moving base.
I hope that when we get ours we rip out the american made ones and use RR ones instead.
I wonder how Taranis is coming on we might need them for our shinny new aircraft carriers if the F35 gets canned or refit the carriers with steam catapults and order a batch of Naval Typhoons. Looks like Taranis will be the cheapest and given its 21st century stealth characteristics the best option.
First flight planned for this year I believe!
Fairly normal occurrence for any high performance jet aircraft early in its life. Unless built with an existing engine they always have issues of one form or another and even then the airframe jump can cause problems. The idea of the long testing phase is so thing like this happen before mass rollout and foreign sale.
And grounding of the aircraft is just a standard procedure to prevent accidents that could cause loss of the aircraft.
We can’t say anything there is almost always at least one RAF aircraft type grounded every year. Right now our entire training aircraft fleet is stuck on the ground again because of problems with the latest batch of them.
The obvious thing to do is leak the design to the Koreans and the Iranians.That would destroy their airforce without firing a shot!
Given the F35 is based on a Russian prototype from 1975 (http://goo.gl/ucvV5), I guess Iran and North Korea probably had the blueprints even before Lokheed Martin.