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-Short Attention Span Theater-
Pentagon: The Latest F-35 Problem Will Delay The Program Another Year
2016-03-24
Radar software being tested for the F-35 stealth fighter jet made by Lockheed Martin Corp is not stable enough, Pentagon officials said in a written statement at a U.S. House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday.

The issue caused sensors to restart once every four hours of flying due to the timing of software messages from the sensors to the main F-35 fusion computer and the aim was to improve this to one in every eight to 10 flying hours, the statement said.

Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester, said the program would not be ready for operational testing until mid-2018, a year later than expected, due to delays in completion of the jet's software and other issues. He said more than 300 planes would have been produced by the end of fiscal 2017, when that testing is now due to start.

The software during flight test was not as stable as it needed to be, according to the statement by Sean Stackley, assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy, and Air Force Lieutenant General Christopher Bogdan, in charge of the F-35 program.

"We will be flight testing these fixes in the March-April timeframe," the statement said, adding that in testing the F-35C variant, cracking in part of the wing was found after a certain number of flying hours and efforts were being made to fix this.
Posted by:gorb

#12  Thank you for showing me the big picture, rammer. This has become a much better discussion than I anticipated.
Posted by: trailing wife   2016-03-24 23:29  

#11  BC, the plane flies fine. And the radar works fine for a few hours. How long is a mission for this plane? A few hours, and then it is out of gas and lands.

Is this a problem? Well with air refueling it could be. So we are going to fix it.

Is this a problem in real missions? No, not really.
Posted by: rammer   2016-03-24 22:34  

#10  The rest are 'trialing prototypes, working models and simulations'. We are building a air superiority strategy dependent on a platform that doesn't fly.
Posted by: Black Charlie Bourbon1513   2016-03-24 22:09  

#9  ..to include the maintenance teams trying to keep it out of red line. Given that maintenance and spare parts are among the primary cuts when cuts are due. That and training. (You got to pay the troops and make sure they're feed, they're use to ghetto housing and self repair cause that's another maintenance cut as well)
Posted by: Procopius2k   2016-03-24 21:43  

#8  tw, if you think about the airplane, then you have it about right. And it is boring. However, if you think about this as an international competition like the Olympics or soccer, it is much more interesting.

Our team has built 3 different version of this plane. They all fly, they are kind of expensive, but not more than the planes we have been using since the 70's. It is pretty good at most things, really good a some. All of our allies are going to buy a bunch of them, reducing our costs over time. And we are planning to build thousands of these things.

Next the Russian team is building the T-35. They have only flown test flights. If they can work out the bugs, it will be really good at some things and terrible at others. They can't afford to make very many, and almost no one else in the world wants to buy one. Even if they get a hundred of these some day, they will be hopelessly outnumbered.

Then there is the Chinese team. They are building prototypes of stuff they copied from the internet. It barely flys, and their engines are terrible. No one wants them. So, the Chinese are buying the Russian stuff and trying to fit it out with Israeli upgrades to sort of get a few planes that can hope to fight for a few days.

The European's don't have a team, except for the Swedes, who are just now getting to where we were 25 years ago.

The Israeli's are on our team.

Everyone else is watching on TV.

So, yes the F-35 is not an airplane that will make anyone excited. But it will overwhelm everyone else.
Posted by: rammer   2016-03-24 20:40  

#7  TW, I think that sums up the F-35 Lightning Bug quite neatly.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2016-03-24 20:27  

#6  I suspect the tooling for the 'vark has long since been turned into razor blades or Hondas. The F-111 was the JSF of the '60s
Posted by: Cheaderhead   2016-03-24 19:22  

#5  Open up the F-111 line.
Posted by: Shipman   2016-03-24 17:24  

#4  ...the graft (work in somebody's district/state), the medals for (un)service, and irrational fetish for 'the next big thing'. Perfect is the enemy of just good enough.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2016-03-24 16:56  

#3  I've become bored with the subject, I'm afraid. To summarize what I have read in these pages: Some people love the idea, some hate it. It is behind schedule, over budget, burdened by too many bells and whistles, and takes funding from a variety of other platforms some people prefer for a variety of reasons. Further delays and cost overages are highly likely, but some of the improvements are in the meantime being put into the next iteration of the current thing in use as well as retrofitted onto those machines currently flying, so the pilots are getting some benefit from it, despite not having got any of the thing itself.

Did I miss anything?
Posted by: trailing wife   2016-03-24 16:07  

#2  Umm, excuse my ignorance but haven't fancy radar systems been around in fighters for a long time now?

What's so different about this one?
Posted by: AlanC   2016-03-24 14:12  

#1  They're using the software problems as an excuse to not manufacture the hardware at an economical rate.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2016-03-24 13:15  

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