Amateurs Talk Tactics
By lex, on December 2nd, 2010
Professionals talk logistics:**
The jet engine of the F-35C, the naval variant of the Lightning II strike fighter, can’t be transported by normal means to U.S. aircraft carriers at sea.
Pratt & Whitney’s F135 jet engine can be broken up into five parts for transport, but the heaviest, the power module in its protective case and atop its special trailer, won’t fit inside the Navy’s C-2 Greyhound or the Marine Corps’ V-22 Osprey, the program office acknowledged in a response to a query from Defense News’ sister publication Navy Times.
The C-2 can ferry all of the components of the F404 and F414 engines that power the F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet, and frequently does so when a carrier’s stock of replacement engines is depleted by regular wear and tear or mishaps such as an engine sucking in a foreign object.
“That is a huge challenge that we currently have right now,” Capt. Chris Kennedy of the JSF program office said in September at the 2010 Tailhook Symposium in Reno, Nev. Kennedy, who was answering a flier’s question about JSF engine resupply, said the program office is working with the Navy staff and carrier systems planners to solve the problem.
It’s almost funny that a presumed junior officer can zero in on a critical logistics issue between beers at Tailhook, but our requirements definitions process could not.
Almost.
** 10-15-2018 Original link gone; replacement found – Ed.