gunnut

There's an air guard unit that flies the F-22.

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rj1

How does this make sense? Are we next going to sue the M-16 manufacturer everytime one jams in the middle of a gunfight?

Maxor

If it jams due to regular use wear and tear or misuse by the military no.

If it jams because the ejection port is machined wrong on over 1/3rd of them yes the american populace probably should.

Depends alot on the reason for the problem and in this case the reason is McDonald Duglas (now part of boeing) had shody quality control and machined an important structural part incorrectly, cause the whole fleet to be grounded and a vauleable pilot to loose his flying status.

Probably wouldn't have even been behind it if it had been this plane and maybe 1 to 5 others out of around 450 made but since its 149 out of just under 450 thats a significant number and not acceptable quality control in the least especially considering the way less major contractors get hammered in payment for meeting specs on much less important items.

Gun Grape

Doesn't the USAF have QC people checking stuff when they receive planes?
And if this plane had been through a major maint cycle, shouldn't that fault have been picked up? The Navy ID structural cracks in the A6 fleet. Do they do a more detailed inspection since they go through more abuse?

I don't know, just asking.

Maxor

Side note and issue something like this needs done due to lock-mart, raytheon, colt/usarms, and boeing with a few other major contractors seem to be slipping (or at least in my awareness from highschool student to military to contractor) in terms of quality delivery and specs. Now part of this is probably my being less idealistic and seeing it first hand alot more. The major contractors though seem to expect 1. that they are owed a new contract because of past greatness even though they may not be quite as good in this instance as the competition. 2 That a fair portion won't meet specs or just be shoddy. 3. That its ok to underbid the competiton who had a more realistic bid then halfway through delievery either raise the price or underdeliver. 4. Meet everything that they are supposed to other than the timeline and take half again as long as orginal estimates and qualifiy it this this was and estimate or a bid. Someone needs to call the major contractors on this crap. You don't see it a whole lot on continuing maintence contracts, or small special needs orders but on major deliveries it has become something to be expected and part of the status que. I have worked with and know alot of the field contractors for various companies and know most of these guys are hardworking and try their best to fullfill the contracts to the letter or above without serious delay or extra cost. Many of them are ex-military and in many cases work so closely with the military that they almost may as well be. The issue doesn't seem to me to be with these guys but with the people at the factories and yards and in management within the companies. (many of the field contracts are at minimum reuired manning or undermanned constantly and you have people working 12+ hour shifts for days on end). I also blame military procurement for part of the problem by 1 accepting somewhat unrealistic bids and 2 changing orders and requirements while in production throwing everything all to hell.


I personally probably wouldn't have picked a part on a 20+ year old airframe breaking because it was out of specs and within maintence and expected lifetime conditions but the line needs / needed drawn as to this type of crap and alot of people in the military proffesional field know that it needs drawn and handled to fix alot of arious messes throughout the armed services. I don't expect this lawsuit to be the final deciding factor in correcting this sort of mess but it will start to go toward showing that the military can stand up to the sacred cow contractors (the long time big names mentioned above and a few others) and that if the secondary or smaller contractors or even a new guy offers a better product at a realistic price or even a realistic price on an equally good product compared to a bid that will be raised from one of the major contractors they can either call the major multi level contractor on their BS and/or do with the competator without fear of political repercussions from the hill.

End of rant.

Oh and I realise that alot of this is long term ongoing and institutionalized but compare the 90's when I though militarymil-spec meant the best as a student to when I was in and realized that it was lowest bidder that met specs when the equpment was brand new. Till today when I see that in many instances it meant I made a mock-up product that was amazing and blew away the competions in a one -off custom product and estimated the price based on if there are thousand made best case senario and materials and labor don't go up in cost at all during the term of the contract and there isn't a single line stopage or part breakage while all of these are being made bid cost. Then after I get the contract for 1/4th of the number I used as my estimate (which I knw was likely when I made the bid) I go back and get the specs on the contract massaged to what I can do for the cost at this time, and then still raise my price due to labourmaterials and inflation. Type of meet specs.


Not sure where in the difference between contracts lies where the military bows to the company and not the other way around but on many smaller parts orders and support contracts it seems the company bows to the military and goes to the letter of the contract or beyond or faces stiff penalties that cut most if not all profit where as on the bigger ones and most esppecially with the more major contractors it seems that the military will bend to suit their needs timetable or money conerns I want to know where the difference lies and what the real difference is unless its just the power of legislatures and lobbies.

Maxor

The navy is a bit more indepth about structural stress at least on the shorter term maintence cycles than the airforce because the AF doesn't jerk them around by their landing gear/arresterhook quite so much. Most of this inspection is visual and centered on on looking for cracks or bending in anycase and centered mainly on wings and joins with the landing gear.


The airforce does have people that quality inspect and check equipment upon reciept I have never really been a part of this so I'm not sure how indepth it is and where along the manufactoring process whis is or would be on this type of purchase. Having been a part of a few phased maintence cycles and checks on various planes I know a bit more about that though being an electronics guy my knowledge of the tests that metals does are limited. I do know that a 1 year maintence cycle for a U-2 has the wingspars and wing root inspected for visible rips or crack in them and that they usually take off at least some of the paint on them and paint back over because I had to remove some of my wiring budles and one of my fiber optics connectors always gets painted over by whichwever new airmen they make crawl in the wing and paint it and the tech in charge always apologizes for my shop having to craw in there and replace it in a dark fuel smelling wing when it doesn't work after they get paint on it. There is an inspection for cracks on the joint where the landing gear meets the frame of that plane and for t-38 talons. Thats there on the 90 or 60 day inspection but not on the 30 day one of them for the U-2 is retarded and more or less encompasses chaging the coolant a couple of filters reseting all the nav equpment and changing the rear hard rubber tyres and is done on the flight line as often as on the phase dock don't remember which is which off the top of my head I think it is the 30 because it would fall in with the others and only when it did would they be taken into dock either the 60 or the 90 day is also very short and more time is spent removing everything equpment wise and the panels the turn around time on this maintence is expected to be something like 90 hours with 3 shifts going at it it comeing in on a mid getting panels pulled and drained days avionics pulls all their parts and starts wiring inspection. Crap in the engine bay can't be inspected yet because engines hasn't done their rollback. Tail may or may not be off the plane depending on how on top of things the crewcheifs are .. Swings comes in fixes wiring write-ups found by days and gets chewed by the crewcheifs that we are in their way because they didn't get eferything they were supposed to the night before at this time metals sends over their crew to fix all the screw plates bent panels and drill all the screws that the crewcheifs screwed - up (as often as not on the flightline because someone torc monkeyed them instead of having a brain. (yeah avionics probably actually did a fair number of them because the panels weren't off when we got there and why the hell would we wait on the crewcheifs when we've got screwdrivers and speedhandles.)
Then engines comes in and rolls back tests their engines we might be trying to run wiring along side it or not. Rush to put everything back together /finish fixing as soon as engines is done to try and not screw up the flight scheduale for the day after spend 3 hours hand spinning around the plane to set the inertial guidance system and another 3 hours balancing the weights on the control hours. (bastards made this electronic warfare troop learn guidance and control troop nonsense when they combined our carreer fields) Don't even really mind the control wire weights but no one else can be on the plane when its being done. The inertial guidance system spinning is retarded though becuase it'll update from GPS which is does every half hour anyways if it deviates more than 3 feet from GPS anyways but some-one (I know this guy he's a moron and deserves shot contractor now) decided to get the TO checklist updated to have it calibrated every 90 days to within 3 inches of where one of the markers on the base is as though when 15 guys are hand spinning the plane on its main gear they don't move it more than 3 inches in the 6 rotations it does during calibration. Refuel engine run connector check and so forth.

Mostly visual inspection and only of certain parts of the plane. By sheet metal on most phased maintence. Knowing that for long term structural stability a planes frame in this section under paneling needs to be 4.75 centimeters thick and both sides of it needs to be manufactored smooth not pebbled because vibrations induce stress at a pebbling point. I couldn't tell you and I doubt most of the airmen in the sheet metal (not really the case there are 3 or 4 used to be seperate shops and a couple of different afc's that fall under the auspices of that which we call sheet metal) section could. Its the sort of thing that doesn't show up on most to's or phased maintence their checklists but shows up on design prints and full maintence rips. I know that for phased maintence the average airment works off of a Checklist that would say something like . Inspect the 3 cross spars in the E bay for wear, chipping, cracking, or corosions. if needed remove excess paint. Step 2 inspepct welds rivits and joins for wear tightness and corrosion replace as needed. If in planes delivered over the course of 5 to 10 years about 1/3rd have pebbled surfaces and have been in the air for 10+ years I would probably figure that the manufactoring proccess changed part way through not sure if I'd have asked a TSgt. or SSGT about it and in my shop when I was in the AF one probably would have known 3 would have looked it up and the other 5 (whom in retrospect i consider shitbags) would have never bothered to look up in the actual tech drawings what is actually supposed to be and based on their own experiance say its ok some planes are pebled some aren't (there are alot of little differences on airplanes in the airforce especially in periphral electroncs systems like this between planes 2 and 3 tail years apart. not sure how true that is in metals and frames.). If it was caught on these planes It would have needed to be either on delivery (which I'm not sure how it is checked and in what depth per plane) or on a major upgrade like happened with certain planes being more or less remanufactored between Multistage Improvement Program and going fromone model designation to the next.


They would probably have been exrayed for internal cracks a few times as well but that wouldn't really show up mismnufactored parts and that is maily wing and wing root not body mainline where I am given to understand this was.

In many ways phased mainetence is mainly for upgrading because verything is taken off and making sure nothing is badly broken/replacing rubbed wiring. I know that most of the phase maintence checklists say look for cracks wear and brokenness on framework parts. I also know that no one on earth knows what the widths of every spar on a plane is supposed to be off of the top of their heads. So unless someone was going over everyone of these parts with a micrometer or ruler and checking width that would have been missed over and over on visual inspection and probably never checked the pebbled finish on the part is a bit more of a mystery to me but if over 1/3rd were pebbled especially if it was in some retarded hard to see location and especially since the only place its true specs were likely listed was on the sheetmetal frame documents for remanufacturing I can formualte how the people in phase missed it over and over no clue about acceptance though really.

Maxor

Sorry about a semi redundant really long reply with questionable writing ability and a pair of long posts of me being semi on topic and ranting about stuff that bugs me about the system.

Lots of things bug me and I ***** rather more than I should when given the forum to.


Anyways in short save for really early phased mainence and the inital inspection this wouldn't have been caught because phased maintence checklists don't really cover looking for manufactured width of the structural parts or seeing if they are made right just if what is there is cracked or broken.

I am also by no means an expert on this airplane I've touched as a maintainer maybe 3 or 4 of them and that was an extra pair of hands / wiring monkey during a fairly heavy ops tempo for them that was slower for us. Airframe wise I can say I've got extensive experiance on u-2 and enough to have a clue about the basics on t-38's and kc 135's everything else I've touched 130's, 15's C's (I think) and E's (I know), and a-10's and a little tiny bit more than that but not enough to say I've really got a clue on 71's and global hawks and that was also as a helper/gopher type of deal.

Gun Grape

Well, Thanks for the rant. Learned a lot.

Although I don't agree with the lawsuit I would think that the pivitol question would be, Did the planes perform for the original # of hours specified as built?

Its my understanding that most of these are higher hour F-15s with the problem.

Is Boeing at fault if a plane or more specificity a part that was designed for say 50,000 Hours of flight snapped on a plane with more hours? One that was flying because the USAF placed, what they thought, were prudent flight restrictions on the frame. Then upped the flight hours to say 60,000.

But I'm thinking thats for the lawyers to figure out.

Maxor

Boeing is only questionable responsible in any case since the planes in question were all built under McDonnel Douglas when it was its own company prior to the boeing merge. And the service life question is all kinds of up in the air the inital 4000 hour life is past on pretty much all but the least used 15's but about 1/3rd of the way through delivery that was upped to 16,000 hours based on what was then being flown (lots of ferrying and training missions) according to the manufactorer. In the 90's the AF said 8,000 and it pretty much comes down to is the plane being used mainly in combat missions and combat traing which really stress a plane or is it getting most of its hours flight training and ferrying which are maybe 1/3rd as stressful. All e's for their bomb carring duties have a beefier frame and are rated at 16,000 with 70% being combat hours. Earlier models are almost on a plane by plane basis with its logs of combat hours being the imporatnt question as to how severely stressed it is. There is a decent article about it on global security F-15 Eagle but its a fair ammount of reading for realitively little hard specifics will check and see if I can find anything publically availible from either Mc Douglas or Boeing or the AF.

Jimmy

Just to throw this out there, but the woman who sued McDonalds was actually justified in doing so. The "restaurant" in question had a history of receiving citations because of a variety of reasons, including multiple times where the coffee was under a rolling boil. That's how they were serving it. It was hot enough that it MELTED FLESH. That's a bit excessive, methinks.

Albany Rifles

Yup here in Virginia Our home town 192 Fighter Wing

They flew A-7s for awhile, then F-16s and then moved down to F-22s in 2006. They left the Richmond Airport and colocated withthe 1st Fihter Wing at Langley AFB. Used to be neat to be sitting in commecial airliner waiting oin line for takeoff (behind maybe 1 aircraft) and looking out the window to see 2 F-16s taking off together.


192d Fighter Wing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Blademaster

It's true. One time I saw a photo of a 11 year old girl whose 30 to 40% of her flesh was literally melted off her body by a coffee spill. It was so shocking and grotesque that I literally wanted to jump out of my chair and start looking for heads to roll.

By the way, the woman's award has been cut down to less around $200,000 from $3 million dollars or something. The reason why the jury gave out that amount because it was the amount of dollars earned in profit in one day from coffee sales by McDonald.

highsea

Ahem, It was McDonnell, not Boeing.

I highly doubt this is a case of intentional use of bad parts. All structural components get inspected when they are built, several times by several different people. If a part is outside of design tolerance, it gets MRB tagged and submitted to the engineers for evaluation. The claim is that the part was thin, but how thin? .001"?

It's possible that there was a run of parts that might have been at minimum material condition and were approved by engineering. Cracks on high-time frames are not uncommon, especially considering the service conditions these things get.

It's always a tradeoff between weight and performance.

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glyn

[quote=highsea;474550]Ahem, It was McDonnell, not Boeing.

You are quite right, dear heart, but Boeing took them over and they are now known as Boeing F-15s. ( I still can't bring myself to say Boeing C-47s though! )

I highly doubt this is a case of intentional use of bad parts.

Agreed.

All structural components get inspected when they are built, several times by several different people. If a part is outside of design tolerance, it gets MRB tagged and submitted to the engineers for evaluation. The claim is that the part was thin, but how thin? .001"?

Dunno!

It's possible that there was a run of parts that might have been at minimum material condition and were approved by engineering. Cracks on high-time frames are not uncommon, especially considering the service conditions these things get.

Again agreed. Cracks occur on airframes especially those tormented by high g usage.

It's always a tradeoff between weight and performance.

It was ever thus!

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LetsTalk

Agree