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A comment on The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber. Parent comment

Re:The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its ... by tablespoon on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @03:40PM (#26334121)
I don't think this kind of thing is all that uncommon for military airplanes that have been long out of production. I recall reading a decade or two ago that our local air guard wing had to fabricate some of its own replacement parts for its F-16s (IIRC, then some of oldest that were still in service).

I also recall that Lockheed had to take special effort to preserve production know-how and tooling for the F-22 when they shutdown production early, so it would be possible to restart if needed. You can't capture everything you need to know in blueprints and documentation.

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Re:The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its ... by WalterBright on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @06:32PM (#26336390)
During the escalation of the Vietnam War, the Air Force ran short of jet transports and decided to pull a bunch of WW2 era propeller transports out of mothballs and put them back in service. The mechanics, however, complained that they followed the instructions to the letter on tuning the engines but could not get them to develop the power they were supposed to.

The AF finally hired a bunch of old WW2 airplane mechanics. Those mechanics never looked at the manual, they just listened to the engine, made few adjustments, and the engines were soon singing at full power.

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Re:The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its ... by WalterBright on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @06:21PM (#26336271)
A friend of mine looked into building a P-51 from scratch, as buying a real one was too expensive. He ordered the blueprints, which are readily available. But then he talked to some P-51 owners, who told him the blueprints wouldn't be much use. The airplane was defined by the jigs used to build it, and the blueprints were just drawn up later as documentation and never checked. The jigs were scrapped when the airplane went out of production.
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Re:The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its ... by benzene on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @03:45PM (#26334213)
>Long out of production.

The difference in technology likely plays a large role - these parts were designed without CAD and modern fabrication protocols have changed.

It reminded me of NASA's endeavor to reverse engineer the Saturn rockets

https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the...

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Re:The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its ... by hondo77 on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @05:54PM (#26335989)
> The difference in technology likely plays a large role - these parts were designed without CAD and modern fabrication protocols have changed.

Actually, the B-2 was one of the first military aircraft designed with CAD.

https://www.northropgrumman.com/wp-content/uploads/B-2-Spiri...

(search for "NCAD")

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Re:The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its ... by jyounker on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @05:26PM (#26335647)
Preventing the loss of manufacturing capability is one of the reasons for offering military aid to friendly countries. We give them money to buy weapons, but they are obligated to buy certain weapons systems with that money.

For example, the Saudi's really don't need all those M-1s they buy from us (with money we give them), but we offer the it keeps our production lines open and active.

It's a devious way of laundering military readiness expenses.

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