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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.
Amazing how that isn't clear to everyone by now.
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.
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.
mfwright@batnet.com
Brains? ALIS is ground support diagnostics software for use by maintenance techs. It's not even needed to fly the aircraft. This is the least of the F-35's problems.
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.
Actually you were more right the first time when saying the problem was created by Congress. It isn't the industry's fault at all and certainly isn't the CEO's faults. Congress said thou shalt build one plane to rule them all. One plane to find them, one plane to bring them all in and in the darkness bind them.
The industry is simply bidding on the contracts that Congress is making. And in this case, then dealing with all the feature creep that Congress has caused by telling the Air Force, Navy, and Marines that they all need to use this one plane to replace all their existing needs.... There was a reason we had specialized planes for specialized purposes. A plane that is carrying several tons of bombs will not do so well when having to dog fight against other planes. A plane that has VTOL capability will have a lot of space taken up by all the extra power plant requirements needed for having enough thrust to lift straight off the ground and/or hover for landing. A plane that has short, foldable wings to be able to fit more onto an aircraft carrier will have more structural drawbacks than airframes that do not have foldable wings.
It is all the feature creep to make a single plane that does everything which is the problem. Don't blame the industry. The industry didn't invent these requirements. Someone who has zero technical ability said to someone else wouldn't it be great if all our planes were the same because then we could save on maintenance and training costs because it is all the same platform, and a bunch of other people which no technical ability looked at the numbers for projected cost savings over the lifetime of the airplanes and said yes, that would save money. But none of those people looked at the technical challenges and costs involved in engineering a single plane that could do everything that 5-6 existing planes do when they said replace all those existing planes with just a single one which does all the same roles that those other planes could do, only better...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
For 400 billion dollars they could have bought about 1,330 F-15 Strike Eagles.
Yes, yes, I know the F-35 is supposed to be more advanced, blah blah blah. Except it's a piece of shit that can't fly, can't turn, can't fight, and won't do half the shit it's supposed to do. It won't start in hot weather and apparently doesn't worko well in the rain either.
On the other hand, if you fill the sky with 1000 F-15 Strike Eagles, there ain't gonna be a goddamn thing that lives through that onslaught (and you'd still have 400 waiting in the hangars). Hell, probably just 100 F-15 Strike Eagles acting in concert would solve any conceivable airborne opposition, even today.
Shit, for 400 billion dollars you could buy 1000 F-15 Strike Eagles and the fucking airfield to launch them from, with enough left over for a few mil-spec hammers or toilet seats.
The F-35 has the distinction of being the most expensive boondoggle in recorded history. In comparison, Bernie Madoff only bilked his clients out of $65 billion or so.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
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.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
These F-35 FUD writers are getting desperate.
They call it the "brains" of the plane. It isn't. The brains are the sensor fusion computers. This is the Autonomic Logistics Information System. Key word: Logistics. It's a maintenance system. They say the whole program is a failure because the fancy maintenance system could ground the fleet. Except most of the USAF flies just fine without this type of system. Oh, and the problem isn't that it doesn't work, it is working. It's that it hasn't been thoroughly tested. Why? Because it's still in testing. Then they complain that there is no backup system if it doesn't work.
So they cry that the program is too expensive. Then cry some more because there is no redundant replacement for a non-critical system. Of course if there were a backup system they would be complaining that the program spent millions on duplicated efforts. It's just stupid.
Actually you were more right the first time when saying the problem was created by Congress. It isn't the industry's fault at all and certainly isn't the CEO's faults. Congress said thou shalt build one plane to rule them all. One plane to find them, one plane to bring them all in and in the darkness bind them.
The way the US gets new weapon systems is a straight-forward, three step process.
Step one: Congress announces the defense budget for the fiscal year.
Step two: The DoD announces the requirements for new weapons systems.
Step three: The DoD reviews bids and awards the contract.
The US defense industry spends tens of millions of dollars ($74M in 2015) making sure that they have somebody in a position to influence every step in this process. You are definitely right about the pathological requirements, but their source is the industry itself. Here's how you get expensive fails like the F-35, by the numbers.
Step one: Help paranoid Republicans and hawkish Democrats sell Congress on the (false) idea that we face a serious threat from somebody, anybody. The Russians can do this, the Chinese can do that, and fucking ISIS is gonna eat our lunch. Yay, the pool of funds available to fund the DoD stays the same, or gets larger. Step one, check.
Step two: You can ignore the rest of my post, if you just understand this part right here. Tell the DoD what they want to hear. Need a plane that can dogfight, land without a runway, and deliver a metric fuck-ton of bombs halfway around the planet without being seen by radar? We can do that, we promise! Step two, check.
Step three: Hire ex-generals and ex-admirals who know whose ear to whisper in when the DoD is evaluating bids. It is way cheaper, for example, to convince a former aide or deputy who took over for you when you "retired" to down check a competitor's evaluation than it is to actually earn an up check on your company's evaluation by actually providing a provably superior product (largely because step two above hosed any chance of actually meeting contract requirements.) Step three, check.
If you ever have a chance to attend the Paris Air Show, do so. That will remove any doubt you have about how the defense industry influences every step of the acquisition process, not only for the US DoD but every defense ministry on the planet. So, in a bucket, it's the industry's fault we have programs like the F-35, and nobody elses. BTW, you know there is a problem with the F-35 if *Wikipedia* uses it as an example of a boondoggle.