Is the $400 Billion F-35's 'Brain' Broken? (cnn.com)

Zachary Cohen, reporting for CNN News: Almost 2,500 of the world's most advanced warplanes, with a total price tag of $400 billion, and they may not have a "brain" in the bunch? That's the fear of federal watchdogs who say problems with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's complex logistics software system could lead to a grounding of the entire fleet, not to mention future cost increases and schedule delays. Documenting risks to the F-35's Autonomic Logistics Information System, which Department of Defense officials have described as the "brains" of the fifth-generation fighter, an April 14 Government Accountability Office report says a failure "could take the entire fleet offline," (PDF) in part, due to the lack of a backup system. The report also outlines concerns related to the lack of testing done to ensure the software will work properly by the time the Air Force plans to declare its version of the aircraft ready for deployment this August and the Navy reaches that milestone in 2018. The Marine Corps declared the first squadron of its F-35 variant ready for combat in July 2015, with the intention of upgrading and resolving the software issues before its first planned deployment in 2017.

Comments

Re:Good Grief

[hyades1]

Aren't you the guy who was arguing with me a year or so ago about what a great plane this is, while I said it was a giant turd squeezed out onto the taxpayers of the USA and its clients?

The argument ended, if I recall correctly, when you vanished in the wake of a story that one of these pathetic trailer queens burned down to the landing gear while sitting on a runway, and they had to ground the whole fleet.

Re:giant boondoggle is giant boondoggle

[slashdot_commentator]

What happens when you jam a drone's signal? Expensive flying bricks that eventually crash in enemy territory.

What happens when you develop autonomous computer systems to take control of the drone when it loses the ability to signal its controllers? Skynet.

Its extremely unlikely that drones will ever fully replace humans in the air. When they are capable of doing so, that's when you'll have to worry about your weapons being used against you.

The problem is that its (probably) past the point of pulling the plug. The Pentagon is already decommissioning front-line weapons systems in order to "make room" for the F-35. The only justification for shutting down the F-35 now, is if it is certain it will financially collapse America to the point the military can'f face down foreign threats. Unfortunately, its not quite certain enough to justifying bankrupting Lockheed Martin and put the Western militaries into a 5 year disarray. So most western military services will be moving to this boondoggle, and hopefully it will function better than the national Obamacare computers did when put to the test.