Stealth aircraft repair

LM briefing slide

One more thing about the F-35 that is being claimed is that the aircraft's low observable material/skin, doesn't need that much repair. Lets hope this works and is true.

The USAF is engaged in some black world setup of a stealth bomber. There is lots of talk about it's advanced stealth requirements. Given that USAF personnel have to put in a lot of hours refurbishing the low observable materials to make the F-22 mission ready, one has to hope that the F-35 isn't basing it's low observable skin/material methods on the F-22. Note the B-2 bomber still needs a lot of stealth repair to be made mission ready even after several skin upgrades. Of the three big U.S. bombers: The B-1, B-2 and B-52, the B-52 has the best mission readiness rates and the B-2, the worst.

Recent F-35 briefings show that only 2% of maintenance actions require low observable refurbishment. This is getting worse. Two years ago, this claim was 1%. One of my top three things I want to see in an F-35 is easy to maintain low observable material. How the F-35 will some how be easier to maintain than an F-16 requires some serious real proof.

If the U.S. gets a bunch of new long range stealth bombers, they won't be very useful if their low observable material requires lots of maintenance to make them mission ready. Lets hope the advanced stealth the USAF wants in their next big bomber points more at significant ease of repair.