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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.
Yes it's broken. It's broken in a dozen ways, but most of all it's broken on the most basic measure: Performance.
The inevitable end of the F-35 won't happen due to budget, and it won't happen due to tests, wargames or software testing. It will happen in combat where it will underperform and rapidly go extinct.
Which is a good thing. The subsequent generations of unmanned aircraft will outperform at levels that human piloted aircraft never could. They will be smaller, more agile, capable of higher-G maneuvers, and vastly cheaper. They will have vastly superior response times and less susceptible to pilot-error.
Let's hurry up and get these things into combat so we can bury this disastrous and embarrassing chapter in Air Force history, and get on with the actual next-generation.
Yup. A large part of the problem with the F-35 is because it's multi-service and multi-national, that everyone kind of got to slide their stuff into it. There's literally no reason for a super-advanced brand-new logistics software for the fighter. But to get support for it, some Congresscritter or whomever tacked those requirements onto it. So now you have a brand new plane, and a brand new logistics operation to support it. They happened all over the place on the F-35 program, where we ended up with "brand new" everything around it -- logistics, maintenance, support, training, mission planning, post mission de-brief, etc, etc. Really too many new things at once.
I say it's the answer to a question never asked.
It can't really replace the A-10, because it can't be Low, Slow and Ugly. In fact the USAF is shopping around for a real A-10 replacement, that project is just getting put together now. I wonder what a new real ground-pounder will look like.
F-35 is a shitload of money, when an F-16 will do the job quite nicely albeit not as stealthily.
It is a shitload of money, when an F22 - currently the most unfair airplane in history - will do the job better
It is a shitload of money, when even the F15 - the former most unfair airplane in history - will do the job better, albeit not nearly as stealthily. The Eagle is still formidable, the Mudhen has proven to be just as good.
It's a shitload of money, when the brutal truth is it, and the F-22, are likely the last two manned fighters we make. =o( Drones this, drone that, those who have tasted flight cannot be content driving a drone. I wouldn't.
This thing is an El Camino, it doesn't know if it's a muscle car or pickup truck.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Estimated to cost approximately $16.7 billion over the aircraft's 56-year lifespan, the logistics software system is considered one of the three major components that make up the F-35, along with the airframe and engine.
Unlike the airframe and engine, however, the software is not built into the plane itself. Instead, it runs on ground computers to support operations, mission planning, maintenance and sustainability.
So...
1. Unlike when you take your car to the shop, they won't be able to have the plane tell them what's wrong.
2. If CSC updates the servers and breaks it (like the usually do to ours), there are no backups.
The "Brain" is actually the pilot and the software that displays threats, targets and kills them is apparently working correctly.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
http://obex.parallax.com/objec...
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Sure, we bullied 54 nations into signing defense pacts, and we bullied Europe into sticking us with a huge bill for NATO. We bullied every other Nato country except for Poland and Britain into not paying the 2% of their GDP on defense that the treaty requires, so we could sociopathically pay for the gaps in their budgets, in addition to providing such a huge military force, that Germany, for instance, only needs to have available one light brigade of combat troops for NATO operations. Oh, and they can't legally fight on foreign soil. We also bullied them into using things like our Satellites for navigation and such.
It never ever happens that when shit goes down, any number of other nations look to us for help, because they were all bullied into an agreement they didn't want. Oh, and of course, other countries don't do their own bullying or have complex bundles of purposes guiding how they interact with us.
We're just thugs doing everything entirely for our benefit, because were sociopaths.
I also want to seriously commend you on the brilliant insight that military contractors, being businesses, are focused on making profits. If only we could be like the Norwegians or the French and have our missiles hand-rolled in the laps of our mothers at home!
And yes, all we have to do is "fire" politicians who supported bad ideas. I mean, it's not like the political class is powerful and resilient or that actual information on the specifics of what they do are hard to come by. I mean, if the average citizen only spent 20 hours every week digging up information on government contracts, lobbying, and a few thousand pages of legislation, it would be easy.
In other words, you are one seriously obtuse motherfucker.
You're just demonstrating your ignorance... Software on a weapons system is used to improve the weapons system's performance. It automates tasks which once required a human to do. It also determines whether a component of the plane is not working properly, which means it improves maintenance, thus effectiveness and longevity of the plane. Just like sensors do in your car now.
Ironic that you write about the parent "demonstrating ignorance", when you haven't taken the trouble to understand that the topic is *logistics* software. This software is NOT part of the aircraft at all; it is basically doing the job that an experienced store-room manager used to do back in the days when weapons systems were simple enough to be understood by human beings. From TFA:
"Unlike the airframe and engine, however, the software is not built into the plane itself. Instead, it runs on ground computers to support operations, mission planning, maintenance and sustainability".
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.