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By Marc Selinger
From www.aviationnow.com
A recently concluded review of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter shows the aircraft continues to be heavier than hoped, according to prime contractor Lockheed Martin Corp.
Bottom Up Weight (BUW) No. 4, the latest in a series of weight reviews, found that the Lockheed Martin-led team "did not achieve the objectives we expected for the structural weight of the airplane at this point in the program," the company said in a statement.
Although Lockheed Martin did not reveal the size or potential implications of the extra weight, an earlier review, BUW No. 3, conducted in June, showed that the aircraft had to shed about 1,400 pounds to meet the target for its first critical design review.
The aircraft itself was said to be "nearly despondent" over its inability to lose the final weight. "It's a vicious cycle," said one industry insider. "The more the F-35 thinks about the weight problem, the more messed up it becomes emotionally, which leads to binging on high-carb hydraulic fluids, comfort food, and even more weight gain. It's becoming obsessive - whenever we try to load new ordnance, all it can ask us is 'does this laser-guided bomb make my weapons pylons look fat?' and then it sulks when we say it looks 'fine,' as if that were bad."
Noted armaments psychologist Helmut von Helmet noted that many new weapons programs struggle with self-image these days, especially when presented with the unrealistic images of aircraft and even spaceships in popular entertainment. "All they see are images of jets whose cannons never miss, whose fuselages are so tight you could bounce a quarter off them, which never suffer more than token anti-aircraft damage no matter how heavy the ground fire, and can be crash-landed without smudging their mascara. How can a real attack aircraft compete with that?"
The F-35 is said to be particularly obsessed about the appearance of the Predator Drone. "That thing looks like a stick insect," said one industry rep, "and she wants to be like Predator. We explain that Predator is unmanned, and that no plane with a pilot can ever be that thin, but she won't give up the fantasy. She keeps asking us if she can have a Drone-nose job."
A minor glitch early in the program is said to have contributed to the plane's neuroses. "We were on our fist air-to-air refueling test, and the tanker had to abort because of technical problems," according to an anonymous ground crew member. "Well, she was nervous enough about the test, but when she heard she'd been stood up, she was just in tears. Back at the hangar, she was wailing that no tanker would ever find her attractive, that she'd never get refueled in-air, that her operational radius would never be more than 500 miles… let me tell you, we pumped about fifty pounds of butter brickle into her that night. It didn't help the weight issue - you know what they say, a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the horizontal stabilizers."
Of course the F-35 has been refueled many times since then, but the plane continues to have crippling self-esteem issues, which make discussing the weight issue nearly impossible. In the meantime, Lockheed is said to be looking for "the world's largest and strongest pair of control-top pantyhose."
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