Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Refuses to Hand Over Fighter Source Code to UK
orbitalia writes "The UK is heavily involved in the JSF (Joint Strike Fighter program) but has recently considered abandoning the project because the US refuses to share the source code. The UK had intended to purchase $120 billion dollars worth of aircraft to operate on two new aircraft carriers, but is now seriously considering Plan 'B'. This is likely to be further investments in the Eurofighter Typhoon project." From the article: "It appeared that Tony Blair and George Bush had solved the impasse in May, when they announced an agreement in principle that the UK would be given access to the classified details on conditions of strict secrecy. The news was widely seen as evidence that the Prime Minister's close alliance with the American President did have benefits for Britain ... 'If the UK does not obtain the assurances it needs from the US then it should not sign the Memorandum of Understanding covering production, sustainment and follow-on development,' the MPs insisted."
the article clearly states that Britain was going to spend $12 billion, not $120 billion. Would would spend $120 billion for something like this?
Every country involved has been told the same thing. And more importantly, all co developers are PROHIBITED from installing their own avionics.
The Joint Strike Fighter isn't the F-22, it's the F-35.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
The Joint Strike Fighter is the F-35. Much less stealth, much lower price, and likely just a little below the EuroFighter, in my opinion.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
The UK doesn't have any F-117's and never will. Anyway, the JSF family of planes are intended to replace a number of others:
F-35A: F-16, A-10
F-25B (STOVL): Harrier, F-18
F-35C: F-18
By using a set of three planes that are mostly the same instead of half a dozen completely different ones it should in theory lower costs in terms of a better economy of scale on the planes and their parts and a lower cost of training for pilots, mechanics, etc.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
A few pointers:
1) The F-117 has no air-to-air capability. It also has a rather small payload (basically 2 bombs), high maintenance costs due to early technology and is (generally believed, though I think it is still classified) to be a subsnoic jet, in other words, slower. Stealth isn't everything. Also, as it only fills the one role, it is less economical than an all-in-one type aircraft.
2) Uh... since when did anything other than a super-precision ground strike become unpopular politically? The U.S. has certainly used "dumb" bombs in many campaigns, including Afghanistan and Iraq, to good effect under certain conditions and on certain targets. JDAMs - much more economical than laser guided munitions - are also quote popular and while they aren't as accurate, "close" is often good enough, assuming they're fired under certain conditions, of course. Furthermore, this particular aircraft is capable of using laser-guided weapons.
3) You know, there are areas without civilian populations present where Close Air Support could still be a concern... like, say, the mountains of Afghanistan perhaps? Or in the middle of nowhere in the Iraqi desert? Or hundreds of other battlefields? Not every battle in the future will occur in third world cities, you know.
4) A helicopter with a "chain gun" has a limited operational range and exposes itself to a great deal of enemy fire. Helicopters' armament tends to be lighter than what an aircraft can provide, focusing more on armor-piercing weapons (Hellfire missiles), and smaller weapons more useful against vehicles and lighter targets (rockets, canon, etc.). A strike fighter, on the other hand, can deliver 2000 lb. bombs on a target when necessary, enablig it to knock out, say, a heavily reinforced building or bunker than a helicopter would stand no chance against.
I mean, if you don't like this plane, that's cool and all, but there is still a mission out there for it.
>The American military machine, touted as the strongest, most efficient, lethal, modern and advanced, has just got a beating from AK-47 wielding thugs of IRAQ.
Only because of restraint. That really isn't relevant to modern fighter planes. No one is shooting f16s with ak47s. Get real.
You're crazy. The AK-47 is indeed a fine weapon, but every time somebody toting one engages our forces, they get shot/killed/blown the hell up.
You're comparing light weapons to aircraft? Rather have that, you say? How about you shoot at me and miss because your weapon, while reliable, doesn't have the accuracy to hit me from any farther than maybe 300m, 50m if you shoot like an average Iraqi. (It's reliable because of the tolerances built into the bolt mechanism but that makes it far less accurate. Marines have to qualify at 500m.)
Have fun with that while I'm calling in air support and deciding whether I want to just kill you or to drop the entire building you're in.
This will give you the idea.
~ some jarhead
Oh, and I'm pretty sure the Seals "submerge" themselves every once in a while. Marines? Well, we never get near water, right?
Yeah, let's dump all our aircraft, tanks, submarines, nuclear weapons, and ships because some soldiers got shot by AK-47's. Clearly the AK-47 is the ultimate weapon and will win all wars from now until the end of time.
Or maybe, just maybe, local insurgents killing soldiers on the ground in a country they're occupying has no relevance whatsoever to this topic. Maybe aircraft aren't meant to kill every enemy of the US in one foul blow. The ability to destroy any building, vehicle, or person whose location is known might just be enough to make aicraft like the F-35 worth investing in. You know, assuming someone with an AK-47 hasn't got there first and destroyed it with those new Bunker-Buster-Bullets I'm sure the Russians are about to release...
I for one welcome our new assault rifle wielding overlords.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Too many errors in your post, I think it's bullshit.
The F-117 is being retired as of 2008 (instead of 2011).
The F-22 replaces some of the F-15's (air superiority role). The F-22 can also perform some ground attack roles with the inception of the 250lb Small Diameter Bomb(SDB).
The F-35 replaces some of the F-16/Harrier ground attack missions. The USAF/Reserve/Air Guard will still have a bunch of F-15 and F-16 to go along with the F-22's, and the Navy/Marines will still have a bunch of Harriers to go along with the F-35's.
Yeah, Bush clearly wasn't involved with this at all. And why does everyone keep blaming him for this "Iraq" thing? Man, that Bush guy is just SOOOO a scapegoat.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
SU-27 is sooo last century. Meet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan_MiG-35 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mig-31 .
They both have phased array radar which just doesn't care about 'stealth' technologies.
Um, the JSF (actually its not the JSF anymore, its the F-35 Lightning II officially) has about the same radar crossection of the F-22 Raptor, which is markedly more stealthy than the F-117A. I won't even get into your lack of information about the weapon platform superiority the F-35 has over the F-117A, as well as it's ability to carry different weapons...
All the below information from GlobalSecurity.org.
The F-22 represents a significant design evolution beyond the highly successful F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter, with performance not achievable by today's front-line fighters. Low observable, or stealth, technology has advanced to the point where conventional aerodynamic configurations can be made incorporating low observability without compromising aerodynamic performance or increasing costs significantly. Design development risk was greatly reduced by the performance demonstrated in the dem/val program where angle of attack attitudes up to 60 degrees were flown. The validity of the low observability features of the F-22's design were confirmed by full-scale pole model testing. Why continue with the JSF?
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will be:
Four times more effective than legacy fighters in air-to-air engagements
Eight times more effective than legacy fighters in prosecuting missions against fixed and mobile targets
Three times more effective than legacy fighters in non-traditional Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) and Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses and Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD/DEAD) missions
About the same in procurement cost as legacy fighters, but requires significantly less tanker/transport and less infrastructure with a smaller basing footprint
This is not just about source code. In a system like that software, hardware and system integration are inseparable. You either give no information or have to give it all. These are the crown jewels of the platform. Revealing them also reveals any number of critical points for interested adversaries: thrust and manoeuvrability limits, reaction times, counter-measure schemes and logic, EMC-characteristics etc. all of which can be used to find weaknesses and design weapon systems to be more effective against it.
Also, since the UK is only conributing 10% of the development costs, its no wonder the US isnt keen sharing. Usually with mil-tech you only give a bad, incomplete user manual to the client so he can barely operate the thing and then wait for him to pay more for extra features that are already implemented by disabled in software or simply undocumented. You never ever allow the client to have exact specs, schematics or software which would allow him to reverse-engineer and develop his own extentions and applications to it.
Here in Finland we bought old C-model F18 Hornets. When the first upgrade cycle came, the US told us of these new fancy secure ground-to-air datalinks and avionics for combat close formation flying they wanted to sell us. We just told them we had developed our own by then, thankyouverymuch. But that was because the platform was getting old and most of the stuff in there was already open knowledge with multiple nations having purchased them years ago. Also with old-gen mil-aircraft there are a lot of avionics standards which were developed and adhered to during the cold-war to easy manufacturing, lower cost and allow inter-service operations. These JSFs will probably have special new-gen custom avionics to do with flight and weapon control, targeting, radar, stealth, communications and electronic warfare that the US definately wants to keep wrappers on.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
The contractors are giving it to the US anyway for review. That seems to be what the UK is asking for.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
EOR (End-of-rant)
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
Yes, it's a funny joke, but JSF is actually written in C++. The coding standards are available on Bjarne Stroustrup's website.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I hate to rain on your parade, but the US did provide loads of support to Britain during the falklands. Though, I suppose you could argue this was at a time when we "free nations" had to "stick together" to oppose the "red menace". I've read else where that other supplies were provided to UK forces for the conflict from the US, in addition to what wikipedia mentions, though the source escapes me at the moment (probably one of Jim Dunigan's books).
Ungh
The F-117 *has* *been* retired, as quietly as it entered service.
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123030185
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?p agename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid =1162421411280&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350 06
Agreed. This is, in fact, the whole premise of NATO. By unifying military command structures and forces, the security of every NATO member is linked to one another, and especially linked to the United States. It's already been that way for 50 years (except for France which withdrew under de Gaulle in the 60's).
One should note that a lot of /.ers are simply making this out to be a U.S. vs. UK thing, but it's more complicated than that. President Bush is fully in favor of giving the UK what it needs in order to certify and fully control the aircraft it purchases. It's principally Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) who has been blocking the source code transfer because of his concerns about "technology transfer." Essentially, this is not a Bush administration problem, but a Congressional problem. Since Hyde is retiring, a will be replaced on January 3rd, at least one roadblock may be cleared up.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
Aside from any code with the purpose of fascilitating a "shutdown" of the plane, the code for the radar data processing is what the US is most concerned to keep a well guarded secret. Also, 90% of the code for the F22 is written in Ada. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/air craft/f-22-avionics.htm
and this has what to do with the fighting on the ground? sorry but trying to cover over your wounded nationalist feelings and claiming you didn't lose vietnam doesn't change the point that all the technology in the world is no good to you if your enemy refuses to engage you in pitched battles.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Maybe for the missiles, but not for the subs themselves. But Britain never developed its own sea-launched ballistic missiles independent of the US, unlike France.
It's not restraint, it's using the wrong tool for the wrong job. Let's contrast the first gulf war with the current one.
In the first gulf war we did not plan to occupy iraq so we flew something like 300 sorties a day dropping an ungodly amount of bombs on the place. We targeted and destroyed all kinds of crucial civilian infrastructure such as bridges, electrical generation facilites, water treatment plants, roads, factories etc. Our goal was to make the iraqis suffer so much that they would rise up and overthrow saddam so we worked very hard at hurting as many common iraqis as possible. As a result of these efforts and the sanctions that followed we killed close to two million iraqis including hundreds of thousands of children.
That was using the right tool for the right job.
In the second war we wanted to occupy iraq so we didn't want to destroy any infrastructure that we wanted to use ourselves so we didn't target water treatment facilities, bridges etc. We wanted to keep saddams palaces so we could move into them and set up shop. Wrong tool for the wrong job. The US military is awesome at killing, destroying, and making millions of people as miserable as possible. It sucks at police work and occupying an angry populace.
Wrong tool, wrong job.
evil is as evil does
"Prime Minister Blair" is very much an Americanism, I'm fairly certain it's not a title that you would use as a prefix. Being British I'd call him Mr Blair if I was talking to him (well, I can think of a couple of other things to call him as well, but they would probably get me arrested saying them to his face). I think when he's announced it's something like "The Right Honourable Mr Tony Blair, The Prime Minister".
I know you are probably joking, but the UK would build its own nuclear warheads - the ones we operate currently are fully built and maintained in the UK, its the missile bodies that are shared with the US for ease of maintenance.
We do not fight to occupy and oppress or to steal natural resources or to subdue and destroy merely for own security.
t he_United_States
... the great ideological battle of our times...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_
For starters, I suggest you read sections "Early national period", "Continental expansion", "Indian Wars", "Banana Wars", "The Boxer Rebellion", "Russian Revolution", and "Panama".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_war
Then, for kicks, check out the "Cold War" section above.
Granted, this history is the sum of many imperfect people's actions. That said, believing the US only fights for noble causes is naive. The US has done some ugly things and allied itself with some ugly people in the past to further the agenda of those in the White House (be it good or bad).
Will they be satisfied with the restoration of the Islamic caliphate, the oppression of their women, and the brutal imposition of Sharia law...
There's a big difference between the present Middle East without US troops and a Middle East with a united Islamic empire. You're conveniently skipping several revolutions and not factoring other powers such as Israel into the equation.
Yes, theocracies are notoriously oppressive and intolerant. That said, what does that have to do with the "War on Terrorism"?
If we pulled out the Middle East now and allowed the cancer to grow unchecked then nothing would prevent that final terrible war...
Cancer? Final terrible war? Your post is littered with emotionally charged wording. It is full of black hats and white hats.
The reason for our struggle is
We're struggling to battle? You're not making much sense at this point. Did you mean Christianity vs. Islam, round n?
I see they're confused about the tab key too ;)
The press make sure they don't (and this isn't a US thing it happens in all wars).
So they're not people, they're 'insurgents'. In WW2 they weren't people they were 'nazis'.
On the other side I'm sure they call the US troops infidels or invaders or something - same principle.
Meanwhile if one of the US troops gets killed we get news reports about 'Joe from Ohio, and here's film of his greiving family'.
I'm sure the other side do the 'Joe from Baghdad' story as well.
The crazy thing is we've been falling for it ever since mass media was invented...
The US-UK "speicial relationship" is pretty much a walking shell. We have no influence with the US. The UK may have something like "favoured client status" with the USA but little more. There have been precious few times in the past 20 years when the UK has pursued it's interest *against the interest of the USA, or indeed, pursuaded the USA to act in favour of the UK's interests against it's own. 1982 is probably the only significant event in the last 50 years that this happened. The invasion of Grenada by the USA is nice little counter-example where Reagan rode rough-shod over the wishes and interests of the UK - Thatcher only found out about the invasion on the morning of the invasionb. Vietnam is one of the few occasions when a British PM went against US interests - Wilson refused to send British troops to support US forces in Vietnam. Blair has not changed or altered USA policy in a significant manner. Rather, as in "Yo Blair", he's acted as a courtier for the Bush regime. Indeed, it could be argued that Blair's delusion is that there is a "speicial relationship", allowing the UK to have an illusory place at the Big Table when it's clear that US Foreign Policy proceeds un-hindered by the UK or any other influence. It is bad for us that we have this illusion of influence - the UK ambassador to washington in the 90's/00s banned the phrase "speicial relationship " because of the delusions of grandeur and influence it fostered.
The point of the Suez, in "speicial relationship" terms was that the US was not going to forgo it's interests for that of the UK and France, even though the wiki article says (without support) that Eisenhower regretted his postition later. In contrast, and interestingly the only nation to come out "clean" from Suez crisis, the Israeli relationship with the US *is* a speicial relationship. It can be argued that Israel has convinced the US to act against it's own interests and for Israel. The US supply of military technology goes unchecked. This is the mark of a true relationship.
As for Da Bomb, in 1946, the British were denied access to US atomic secrets, even though we had helped develop the bomb. The subsequent treaties of cooperation have more than a little element of US control. For example, the UK *leases* the Trident delivery vehicles from the US Navy, and the war-heads are made from US designs. I wonder how the EULA on those missles reads?
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Frankly, you don't know what you are talking about. I work for one of the larger contractors. My company has a strict policy against using any open source, not just GNU. They are terrified of the whole SCO thing. They are even sensivitive to the use of GNU tools. I recently had to explain to the higher ups that, just because software is written with EMACS does not force it to be open souce. They were also shocked when I told them that the compiler we use--the one that comes with VxWorks--is GCC, and is also GNU. Although, a lot of the software people consider as GNU, is not under the GPL (zlib, bzlib, ncurses, GMP).
Anonymous Cowards suck.
1956. Suez.
Why do you think the French built the "force de frappe"?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Yes, and if you read my post, you'll see we use GCC also. Although, it has nothing to do with "maintaining the build environment." The tools you build with will ALWAYS be available. You don't necessarily upgrade or move to new tools just because they are available. We are using compilers that are 10 years old on some projects. A particular release is tied to its tools by your configuration management. If you need to rebuild a given release for some reason, it is always built with the same revision of the same tool.
Anonymous Cowards suck.
Um, says who? The EuroFighter was designed in the 80's with mid 90's technology. It can't even keep up technology and performance wise with the Superhornet.