F-35’s Cooling Crisis: Design Flaws Fuel $2 Trillion Dilemma for Pentagon

[Timber Rattler]

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/f-35s-cooling-crisis-design-flaws-fuel-2-trillion-dilemma-for-pentagon-5761730

The Pentagon is facing a difficult decision regarding the F-35’s chronic, crippling problems with overheating brought on by its insufficient cooling capacity.

Should the U.S. taxpayers pay for a costly upgrade to the stealth fighter’s cooling that will handle its immediate needs, or should U.S. taxpayers pay for a far more expensive upgrade that theoretically could handle increased future cooling needs?

Before we briefly address the two options facing the Pentagon, let’s look at why cooling capacity is so important for the F-35 and why the most expensive weapons system program in world history produced a plane that was destined to have inadequate cooling from the very beginning.

Having adequate cooling is vital because a fighter’s avionics, radar, and other electronics-based systems generate heat. While air cooling is always part of the cooling solution, modern fighters cram so much heat-producing electronics into a relatively small space that air cooling alone is insufficient.

Various types of liquid cooling are necessary, especially for power-hungry radars. This is particularly true of the F-35, which is advertised as a flying supercomputer crammed full of heat-producing computers, communications, and avionics equipment. When it comes to heat production, its powerful AN/APG-81 AESA radar leads the way.

The bottom line is that it takes a whole bunch of electronics to produce a whole bunch of heat to give the F-35 its much-touted capabilities and make it the world’s preeminent fighter.

EXCERPT

[MeganC]

F-22B.

It's time.