Is the F-35 Program at a Crossroads?
The latest annual Pentagon testing report on the F-35 details a simulation facility that doesn’t work, a leaking dam of design flaws, and a program that is still vulnerable to enemy hackers.
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In the case of the F-35, the developmental testing done to date has already revealed
major shortcomings, but the most serious flaws emerged once the F-35 was
in the hands of real operators in the field during operational testing.
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The
latest annual report from the Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) details how the failure to deliver a critical simulation facility has made it impossible to complete the initial operational tests required to make the full-rate production decision.
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And the program is nine years behind
the original 2001 schedule. (nine years late in 20 years ! congrats LM).
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the latest report again found that
when engineers fix one software problem they “often introduced stability problems and/or adversely affected other functionality.”
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Another significant shortcoming of the F-35 program is its
vulnerability to hacking.
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The F-35 is a notoriously
maintenance-intensive aircraft.
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the F-35 fleet as a whole
failed to meet the 70% mission capable goal.
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Even given the years of experience maintenance crews have with the aircraft, DOT&E reports it took them
longer to make repairs on the F-35 than it should have—sometimes more than twice as long.
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It costs
approximately $44,000 per hour to fly the F-35.
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the Autonomic Logistics Information System
(ALIS), the Pentagon finally threw in the towel in 2020 and will spend
$550 million over the next 5 years to build an entirely new one.
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As far as that goes, the
ODIN managers seem to be repeating the same mistakes the ALIS managers made. ALIS went through four separate versions in 2020 alone, including one urgent fix over the summer meant to correct a problem in an earlier patched version that generated
10 times the normal number of maintenance alarms.
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There can be little doubt that, after 20 years,
the F-35 is a complete boondoggle. DOT&E warns that many of the F-35s that were delivered early on in the cycle are
not combat-ready. It remains to be seen if these aircraft, which happen to be the
most expensive ones, will ever serve a purpose beyond being demonstration trainers or
spare parts repositories.
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It could signal that the F-35 program may about to face the
same fate as several other once-marquee 21st century weapon programs like the
Zumwalt-class destroyer, the F-22, and the Littoral Combat Ship. In other words, just like those disastrously failed programs, the F-35 may be dramatically reduced in scope due to a combination of technological failures and skyrocketing costs.
CONGRATS LM !!! a real masterpiece of shit.