Off Topic..but interesting..
Boeing engineers: We should have won F-35 fighter contract
Many Boeing engineers still grumble that Boeing’s design for the joint strike fighter, not Lockheed Martin Corp.’s, should have won the Air Force contract a decade ago to build the aircraft now known as the F-35.
Lockheed Martin’s October 2001 win cemented its lead as builder of the nation’s most numerous next-generation fighter.
Then touted as a $200 billion contract for 3,000 aircraft, the competition carried even more weight than the just-concluded fight over the Air Force tanker, which Boeing (NYSE: BA) did win.
The joint strike fighter was intended to be a low-cost fighter for all three branches of the military that was simultaneously stealthy and supersonic — and in the U.S. Marines version, able to land vertically like a helicopter.
Lockheed’s (NYSE: LMT) version of the F-35 has been riddled with cost overruns and technical difficulties, especially for the “short take-off and vertical landing” version, otherwise known as the STOVL.
High costs and technical issues have caused the program to be restructured twice in two years, and some expected overseas customers have been balking at the rising price tag. Last year Defense Secretary Robert Gates put the STOVL version on probation until issues could be resolved.
“Whenever we hear about Lockheed’s difficulties with the JSF, we all look at each other, and say, “They didn’t pick the right product,’” said Cynthia Cole, a former flight test engineer on the Boeing program from 1997 through 2002. Cole, now working outside Boeing, also was president of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace from 2006 through 2010.
In particular, Boeing engineers mutter about the STOVL version. They claim that Boeing’s design, which relied on rerouting the thrust of the main engine, would have been more trouble-free than the Lockheed Martin design, which also includes a central shaft-driven fan.
“I thought our vertical takeoff model was far superior,” Cole said. “The design was definitely cutting edge, it was new technology. We really thought it was going to win the day for us.”
Bill Sweetman, who reports military aircraft for Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine, does concede that the Boeing version was simpler and “eliminated some of the more complicated moving parts on the Lockheed design.”
But he contends that the Lockheed Martin design STVOL performed better on the test aircraft.
“If you look back to that competition, and you look at what was happening at the time, the only way it (the Boeing version) did a vertical landing was with inlet lip and landing gear doors removed,” Sweetman said about the Boeing design. “It would have been very hard to award to Boeing, because they hadn’t properly demonstrated vertical landing.”
But Cole disagrees, and adds that Boeing had finished its prototypes under budget and before deadline.
She said the announcement of Lockheed Martin’s win was a big surprise, because Boeing insiders in Washington, D.C. thought they were ahead.
“Everybody was really bummed,” she said. “We had the cafeteria filled, and once the announcement was made, everybody just walked away.”
In a way, that's the opposite of the recent Air Force tanker award, which most observers, even some within Boeing, had thought would go to rival EADS.
A consolation prize for Boeing has been that delays in Lockheed’s version of the F-35 have kept Boeing fighter assembly lines in St. Louis rolling, as the Navy has continued to order F/A-18/EF Superhornets.
Except of the EF (that might had showed the CESAR AESA demonstrator during the weapon trials in Europe), all fighters came with AESA installed to the trials in India.
