The F-35’s data is the ‘apple of discord’ between US Government and Lockheed

By Boyko Nikolov On Mar 13, 2020

WASHINGTON, (BM) – The US Department of Defense and the American company Lockheed Martin are fighting for access to the Failure reporting, analysis and corrective action system (FRACAS) data of the fifth generation F-35 Lightning II fighter, learned BulgarianMilitary.com citing Lenta.ru and Jane’s report.

Referring to the words of a former employee of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, in which the Pentagon leads the creation of the F-35 Lightning II, the publication writes that the military is interested in the FRACAS data set regarding the average time of failure of various components of the aircraft, in particular radars.

Jane’s writes that such information will allow the military to determine the list of fighter components whose service life is actually 5 thousand hours, although, according to the design documentation, should be equal to 10 thousand hours, and parts whose repair takes too much time.

The Pentagon does not agree with such requirements of Lockheed Martin, which considers FRACAS data to be its intellectual property. The military, however, claim that the company owns only the rights to the construction of the aircraft.

In March, Lockheed Martin delivered a five-hundredth serial F-35 Lightning II fighter to the customer.

In January, the company promised to produce 180 units of F-35 Lightning II each year by 2024.

The F-35 Lightning II family of fifth-generation fighter jets has been produced since 2001 by the world’s largest military-industrial corporation Lockheed Martin. The aircraft is offered in three basic versions: A (for the air force), B (with a short take-off and vertical landing) and C (deck). The unification of the components of the three modifications reaches 70-90 percent.

F-35 Lightning II should become the main fighters of the first half of the XXI century in at least 11 countries – the USA, Great Britain, Australia, Italy, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark, Israel, Japan and South Korea. The leading role in the development of the fighter belongs to the first two states (more than 50 percent of the components are produced by the USA, 15 percent – in the UK).

In total, it is planned to produce more than four thousand F-35 Lightning II.

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BulgarianMilitary.com
Editorial team