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

Back in the 20th century when it began

[k6mfw]

as the Common Affordable Lightweight Fighter. I sometimes wonder about back in the days when fighter jets were being cranked out from the factories like Toyota cranking out Corollas. There was a time of where it took multiple flights to take out a target (most attacks on bridges fail along with a lot of friendly fire incidents), a time of Aces, test pilots that can list zillions of different aircraft to their resume, etc. These days just a few drones are needed. There was an article about new grads from USAF basic pilot school and waiting list for positions like F16 squadrons were lengthly. Some signed up immediately for drone piloting, one said though they don't get to fly the "real thing" but you don't want to be in the horse calvary when the tank comes along.

Re:Back in the 20th century when it began

[Harlequin80]

Drones are perfect for asymmetric warfare. The US pounding ISIS is the perfect example of this. The drones have a clear flight path, limited interference and nothing that is going to shoot them down.

Now lets start are conflict with a first world military power, but assume it doesn't go nuclear. ASATS take out your communication birds, high powered jammers lower your radios range by at least a magnitude, advanced AA systems come on line & missile strikes start hitting your home base drone control systems. Right now how well do you think your drones are performing.

A manned aircraft allows you to bring weapons to bare with an advanced intelligence system (the pilot) having full autonomy of when to fire and when not to.

You need to change your thinking about aircraft. Aircraft are weapons platforms, they bring weapons into effective range of a target. At one end of the spectrum the b52 brings a load of weapons to the table, but its radar signature and flight characteristics means its a sitting duck. The f-35 is meant to be able to get close to the target under fire, drop a small but significant load of weapons and get out.

Re:The end of manned aerial combat

[rickb928]

Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) is the 'maintenance' software system, stuff like parts inventories, maintenance and airframe systems status, scheduling, blah.

Unnecessarily complex. It does not do targeting, battle communications, flight control, or pilot extension, something that is described as handled by 'sensor fusion software'. However, it is issuing false alarms for radar system capability, which occurs during flight, including combat. This impacts the pilot...

Also, the parts management system misorders parts, which seems inexcusable. Your Chevy dealer does better, by all accounts.

Since 2014 this software has been described as having so many problems and being so complex that "it needs to be treated “like its own weapon system.”"

Maintainers have said 80 percent of issues identified by ALIS are "false positives."

And then this tidbit:

"The ALIS system is currently computer racks totaling about 1,000 pounds, and was too big to be used during carrier testing. The program is developing a deployable, two-man portable version of the system that will be ready in July."

Woot. I thought 70s era systems were big.

Sheesh.