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The first contracts to design what became the F-35 were handed out 20 years agone. Lockheed'southward Ten-35 won the contract in Oct, 2001. Fifteen years later on, the aircraft is in terrible condition — a fact driven habitation past the DoD's own official report on the state of the F-35 and the bugs that continue to plague it.

The report was released two days ago, simply a number of links to the PDF take died; you lot tin can access the HTML text via Google cache if the above isn't working. It discusses all variants of the F-35, but focuses on the F-35B, the curt-takeoff-and-vertical-landing version of the aircraft adult for the US Marines, and adopted by the Majestic Navy every bit well as the RAF.

F-35 wind testing

The F-35 undergoing wind testing

There'due south a line of thinking that argues criticizing the F-35 has become "fashionable," and is based on a desire to bulldoze Web traffic rather than an objective evaluation of the aircraft's shortcomings. The government'south own report on the F-35B's readiness refutes such arguments.

The land of the F-35

Earlier we swoop into the written report's findings, we need to cover some of its terminology. The Air Strength uses block numbers to denote differences in an aircraft's capability. Sometimes these block numbers are specific to an entire aircraft (e.k., the F16A/B Cake twenty). In the F-35's case, at that place are also block numbers for many of its subsystems.

The Us Marine Corps declared the F-35B Block 2B had reached Initial Operational Adequacy (IOC) in July, 2015. As the DoD notes, however:

If used in combat, the Block 2B F-35 will demand back up from command and control elements to avoid threats, assistance in target conquering, and control weapons employment for the limited weapons carriage available (i.e., 2 bombs, two air-to-air missiles). Block 2B deficiencies in fusion, electronic warfare, and weapons employment upshot in cryptic threat displays, express ability to respond to threats, and a requirement for off-board sources to provide accurate coordinates for precision attack. Since Cake 2B F-35 shipping are express to two air-to-air missiles, they volition require other support if operations are contested by enemy fighter aircraft.

Block 2B's limitations aren't going to be solved at any bespeak in the near hereafter. One major problem with the F-35 is that solutions to existing software problems are being punted down the route into time to come blocks in order to meet evolution timetables. Block 3i development testing began for a third time in March 2015, afterward two previous starts in May and September 2014. Once again, from the report:

Cake 3i began with re-hosting immature Block 2B software and capabilities into avionics components with new processors. Though the program originally intended that Block 3i would not introduce new
capabilities and not inherit technical bug from before blocks, this is what occurred. The Air Force insisted on fixes for five of the most severe deficiencies inherited from Cake 2B as a prerequisite to use the final Cake 3i capability in the Air Force IOC aircraft… Withal, Block 3i struggled during developmental testing (DT), due to the inherited deficiencies and new avionics stability bug.

Block 3F also began development in March 2015, 11 months behind schedule. It's far backside where it'south supposed to be; the DoD states that Block 3F developers spent about of 2015 squashing bugs in Cake 3i.

Originally, the F-35 was expected to enter Initial Operational Exam & Evaluation (IOT&E) past August 2017. The DoD declares this "unrealistic." Cake 3F development and flight-testing isn't expected to exist completed until January, 2018.

For want of a boom

The F-35's buggy flying software is scarcely the only trouble. The F-35 loads specific profiles for every mission information technology flies. These profiles are designed to "to drive sensor search parameters and to identify and correlate sensor detections, such as threat and friendly radar signals."

F35-Availability

The F-35'south availability by deployment location

Currently, the US Reprogramming Lab is plagued past "significant deficiencies that preclude efficient development and adequate testing of constructive mission data loads for Cake 3F." Despite existence given a $45 one thousand thousand budget in financial year 2013, the USRL has non engaged in the necessary upgrades. The estimated time to finish the upgrades is ii years. Without them, the DoD estimates the F-35 faces "pregnant limitations" to its combat capability against existing threats.

Weapon delivery accurateness (WDA) tests have been pushed back to the bespeak that they can no longer be completed by the original mid-2017 Initial Operational Adequacy target date. Of the fifteen tests scheduled for the Cake 2B F-35, iii were pushed dorsum into Cake 3i / 3F testing. Here's another fun quote:

11 of the 12 events required intervention past the developmental test control team to overcome system deficiencies and ensure a successful event (i.east., larn and place the target and engage information technology with a weapon). The program altered the event scenario for three of these events, also as the twelfth event, specifically to work around F-35 system deficiencies (e.g., changing target spacing or restricting target maneuvers and countermeasures).

The laundry list of problems continues. There'south no Verification Simulation in place for the F-35, despite 8 years of piece of work and $250 one thousand thousand in funding. The average availability of the F-35 for operations was 51% in 2015, well below the sixty% availability goal. (This metric has, at least, improved in recent years.) The F-35 spent 21% more time downwards for maintenance and waited 51% longer for parts than anticipated. Between x-20% of the armada was grounded at whatever given fourth dimension, due to the need to rework the aircraft to install upgrades or for repairs.

The F-35's logistics and maintenance needs are supposed to exist governed past a next-generation organization, codenamed ALIS (Autonomic Logistics Data System). The report notes that "many critical deficiencies remain which require maintenance personnel to implement workarounds to address the unresolved problems."

Ejecting might kill you

Ejection tests on the F-35 are troubling, to say the least. The third-generation helmet display arrangement for the F-35 is heavier than its predecessors, which may exist causing issues for the aircraft. Pilots weighing less than 136 lbs are prohibited from flying the F-35, because the ejection seat tests testify stresses that'll snap the neck of regular human beings.

EjectionSeatTesting

Ejection seat testing on the F-35

Pilots between 136 and 165 lbs are cleared to fly the F-35, despite a formal "serious" adventure rating. Once more, here's the DoD: "The level of gamble was labeled 'serious' past the Program Role based on the probability of decease being 23 percent, and the probability of neck extension (which will outcome in some level of injury) being 100 percent. Currently, the Plan Part and the Services have decided to take this level of chance to pilots in this weight range, although the basis for the decision to accept these risks is unknown."

DefenseOne has a list of additional errors and flaws with the aircraft worth perusing. ALIS doesn't runway new versus used parts correctly. Its integrated system for measuring whether or non the aircraft exceeded design limits during flight doesn't work. Information technology can't load mission profiles without straight back up from Lockheed-Martin.

The failure of concurrency

The F-35's issues are at to the lowest degree partially the result of assuasive Lockheed Martin to pursue concurrent flying design and active deployment. The thought backside concurrency was that Lockheed Martin could begin edifice an shipping while still fine-tuning various aspects of its blueprint. In theory, applied to much simpler vehicles, it might take worked, especially if the F-35 had been a small-scale evolution of an existing aircraft.

Applied to the F-35, concurrency has been a disaster. Right at present, every single F-35 already built will need to be extensively overhauled to come across its minimum performance targets. Information technology'due south one thing to overhaul a ship or aircraft to better its baseline capabilities, and something else entirely when the shipping as delivered tin't execute its mission.

The written report argues strongly confronting the use of a so-called "block purchase" strategy in which up to 270 aircraft would be purchased in bulk to attain theoretical savings. If F-35 production continues at its current charge per unit, more than 500 aircraft will accept been built by the time the blueprint is finalized — and all of them will need to exist refitted to one degree or some other to "provide full Cake 3F combat adequacy."

The F-35 isn't merely the near expensive fighter airplane ever built, with total program toll estimates over the lifetime of the aircraft at present between $320 – $400 billion, depending on how you count. It's also expected to spend the longest in development.

Just for fun, I pulled data on a number of other high-profile US aircraft over the concluding forty years. The F-16 and F/A-xviii took half-dozen and eight years to go from get-go flight to combat-certified. The B-2 Spirit stealth bomber first flew in 1989 and was fully certified only in 2003, some 14 years afterward. The F/A-18E (Super Hornet) had a quick bring-up time of just 5 years, while the F-22 Raptor took a decade between first flight and full certification. Clearly the trend has been towards longer development times; the F/A-18E is an outlier in that regard.

With that said, the F-35 is in a course of its own. Offset flight took identify in 2006. Co-ordinate to the DoD, total WDA testing on the Cake 3F software won't exist complete until 2021. Past that point, the Block 4 software should be in the field. It'southward not clear from this report which milestones must be passed to certify the aircraft as fully operational. Merely if the WDA tests are part of that process, it'll be some other five years before the F-35 is "done" — a total 50% longer than whatever aircraft has taken before.

Everyone else thinking unmanned drones are looking really useful — and inexpensive — right most at present?