US military finds F-35 software is a buggy mess The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) remains the problem child of the US military, with some operational tests abandoned in 2014, and buggy software proving a headache. The US military's Office of the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) has released its latest annual report, and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter chapter …
ppl dont understand F35 is a heldback design for export. whtever be done with it the cross-section is fat enough to provide only a half hearted stealth.. U.S also want to keep economy running. A very deep thought news cam few weeks back that canada will buy F35 after 2 yrs. If u read between the lines .. it means a block-2 is in works. Also the crappy code certainly is not a fail. look how much drones have matured... Also the bugs identified certainly would also be improving F22's code... So first no matter how much stealth coating applied to F35 and no matter how much sourcecode is matured... it will not stand chance against FLIR (Fwd Looking InfraRed sensor) ... so the era from now on is just not manned.. hell even darpa is going for unmannad buggy shaped fast running tanks.
On a $110+ Million dollar piece of hardware? And one that can carry a 340 Kiloton nuke? Are they goddam suicidal? Hopefully they do a better job testing the software (when they get around to it) than they did for the F-22 Raptor where they lost Avionics by crossing the International Date Line and had to get to dry land using only their eyes and dead reckoning...
We can't even get by with skipping a single test on a $1 million dollar project at work, how in the hell are they allowing tests to be skipped on a $1 Trillion project?
How familiar is that then?
We're running late, what's next of the schedule?
Testing.
Oh, let's skip that we don't want to miss a project date.
What happens if this critical system doesn't work then?
Oh, that'll be a new project
So we'll have to fix it later then?
Well someone will, I'll have got promoted because I brought this project in on time and on budget, so fixing it will be someone else problem.
When you already know there are a shed load of gnarly cat 1 bugs in the system that are going to cause the test suite to abort in seconds, whats the point in even starting? Particularly with hardware involved where deliberately running the system into a known, 100% guaranteed bug is liable to physically destroy/damage stuff you need to verify the fix once you have one.
We had a test scheduled last week. The outcome was guaranteed to be: "PSU overheats and fuses in 9 minutes, potentially giving off toxic fumes". We skipped the test.
Once upon a time, my project schedule was being reviewed by my boss's boss's boss. He ask me why the schedule included a two week post-test rework and retest segment. I replied that test failures were likely and it made sense, in a realistic schedule, to allow time to deal with them.
He said that "We Can't Plan for Failure!" ™
So I replied that I would remove the rework and retest segment, as well as the testing phase itself. I explained that if we were going to assume a Pass, then there was no need to test in the first place. Right? [pretend-innocent blink-blink] [smile]
I got my two weeks back, but we had to bury it under a false description.
re: "how in the hell are they allowing tests to be skipped on a $1 Trillion project?"
By the time something goes horrifically wrong (see icon), those who OK'ed the test skipping will have retired, changed jobs, or otherwise moved on and away leaving the pail of fail to some hapless successor.
Uh... not if the software controls the ejection seat too*. Right now, I'm betting that the air and ground crews will be calling this thing the "Widow Maker" as they have on certain other aircraft.
* I realize that ejection seats and ancillary equipment like the charge that blows the canopy should be mechanical in nature and failsafe.. but given the way this POS has worked to date, nothing would surprise me. In spite of this, I'm still betting on the new nickname especially since they've canceled so many of the tests.
But unfortunately Armourers** take them apart and "service" them completely unnecessarily all the time.
The death of at least 1 Red Arrows pilot(on the ground) was the result......
**The fabled Amrourer's song:
"A....I'm an armourer,
B...I'm an armourer.", etc.
(they're not the sharpest tools in the box).
I look forward to (running away and hiding on the moon) a drone/weapon system/aircraft system developed using Agile. what about all those Features and Stories still in the backlog, that add no Business Value, like exception handling, navigating around buildings, how to hover.
Remember when the F35 was supposed to be cheap and cheerful?
Wonder when that thing will fly and wonder if non-US forces will take the hint in time and bail on that disaster. Canada for one doesn't seem to be able to say no and our government has been caught lying about lifetime costs.
Besides the waste, one problem is that this is gonna plug up procurement for decades. 20+ year dev cycles are a lunacy nowadays. Who knows what the air threat will be like 25 years from now? But this thing will be in its "prime". It has the potential to be as if Britain had a whole massive fleet of obsolete biplanes going into WW2 and refused to take up Spits and Hurricanes because of sunk costs.
I think this just shows that it's only about filling the pockets of the military-industrial complex. There's not even a hint of trying to come up with something that just works.
On top of that, what's the actual use of an "advanced" fighter plane? As other people have noted, what you actually need in this day and age is something that is relatively cheap, sturdy and can deliver ordnance effectively. The A-10 Warthog is just such a plane, but the Top Gun loving Air Force really hates it.
They probably are cheap and cheerful, but the number of snouts in the miltary industrial trough means a piece of perspex ends up as a "stealth pilot/environment ocular interface device".
Meanwhile in the UK we've got pointless £6billion aircraft carriers with no aircraft to carry. Should have bought a fleet of Rafales instead.
It wouldn't be the pilots who said "skip the tests"... it's probably some paperpusher who thinks the schedule is more important than anything else.
I would hope that they just cancel the damn thing, eat the cost, roll a few heads, and figure something else out, like maybe upgrade the F-15/F-18/F-117 and perhsps buy a few more. But then again, these are the same chuckleheads who believe that the F-16, etc. are better at close air support than an A-10.
>these are the same chuckleheads who believe that the F-16, etc. are better at close air support than an A-10.
I agree, but to be fair, the A-10 is very good at what it does partially because of its 30mm cannon's depleted uranium shells.
Firing those shells might still be acceptable in a full-out war with armored targets, but they seem to cause enough environmental and collateral health damage that they don't fit well with current low-intensity warfare/counter insurgency deployments.
On the other hand, those counter insurgency wars also call for aircraft that can fly slowly, close by, and assess the situation before shooting up possible civilians. The A10 can't help but fly slowly and it is tough enough that it can survive doing so.
My guess is that the A10 is just not an aircraft the USAF has that much interest in flying. It's just not sexy!!! Enthusiastically delivering close air support for the grunts? Requires more inter-service altruism than I suspect the USAF is capable of, at the top of the military hierarchy (pretty sure the troops look out for each other more than the the Pentagon desk jockeys).
The main other dedicated ground-attack assets, the Apaches, are flown by the Army.
This might also be the reason why the Marines insist on their own pet VTOL F35 version - they just don't trust the Navy or the Air Force to deliver the goods on their behalf.
"I agree, but to be fair, the A-10 is very good at what it does partially because of its 30mm cannon's depleted uranium shells."
As you mention, DU is nasty stuff, so tungsten is increasingly used.
The cannon can also fire anything else put up its spout, however the reality is that whilst it looks impressive going in against a bunch of insurgents it fires too fast and in too concentrated an area to be of much use.
Afghan fighters on the receiving end reported it completely missed the targets more often than not.
The AC-130 gunship is generally more effective, at much greater range and can carry a LOT more munitions for longer on-station times, with the ability to select different munitions for different targets. (Yes, someone really was nuts enough to turn a Hercules into a gunship, but it actually works) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_AC-130
It would be interesting to see if a A400M version ever shows up.
Interesting about the cannon narrow-beaming. Wikipedia's entry stated that the gun originally had 2 selectable rates of fire - 2k/rpm or 4k/rpm but that was dropped to high rpm only. Wonder if that could help with the problem.
AC-130 is an evolution of an even older beast, the AC-47 Puff the Magic Dragon, IIRC.
In both cases, I wonder how well the planes would fare on a hi-intensity battlefield against well-armed opponents with SAMs and AA guns? The A10 could benefit from flying low, but wouldn't an AC-130 be one big sitting duck? Also, I would guess that an A10 could be scrambled somewhere faster than an AC-130.
Not to criticize your post, it raises very valid points.
And in a way, retiring the A10, which is due to budget pressure, is a positive sign: the US keeps way too many weapon systems alive due to congressional pork, manufacturer lobbying and the like. Unfortunately, there is one system crying out for a cull which is verrrry safe.
>battlefield against well-armed opponents with SAMs and AA guns?
Which is why it was generally used against unarmed villages to prevent them becoming bases for insurgents. Nothing like having your village wiped out by a gunship to convince you of who is the right side to join.
If it doesn't work, then you skip the test so that you don't have to report that it doesn't work.
Let everyone believe that it does work and get cracking on the 'new' Mk II project that hopefully will work.
This is how £10 million contracts end up as £60 million final cost projects which by the time it is ready to enter service as a Mk VI. Hey It's obsolete! and you realise that instead of trying to get the original design to actually work, you should have been designing a new project to catch up with how the world has moved on while you weren't looking.
THAT'S Military logic and nobody really gives a damn because the tax payer is footing the bill and as it's covered by National Security nobody will ever know.
Now, on to the new computer system, the 2016 spec has decided to adopt the tried and tested 486 SX core and work on improving the capacity of the floppy disk so as to be able to handle the access keys. ... Well, maybe we'll re-designate it as the Mk VIII project and introduce the laser disk system in time for the 2017 release...
I don't have to, I'm living it right now.
OK, technically it isn't a skyscraper or a bridge, but it is a public building. It's supposed to be a transit center (combination taxi, bus, passenger train, light train with limited commuter parking). At the moment it is 4 years behind schedule, 54% over budget (current cost $141 million) and it still isn't clear that the county is going to accept possession of the facility from the builder without it being torn down and rebuilt.
According to the article I can find at the moment The deficiencies in the facility include poor-quality concrete and lack of steel supports for roadways that are expected to support hundreds of buses arriving and leaving each day.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/cost-of-silver-spring-transit-center-repairs-jumps-another-21-million/2014/12/04/a87cf0bc-7bee-11e4-b821-503cc7efed9e_story.html
My recollection from a dead tree article I read about a year ago is that it is worse than described in this article. In some places the concrete was not only improperly reinforced, it was also too thin. So to make the concrete numbers work out correctly, they made it thicker in other areas. I'm not an ME, but I've been told by someone who works with similar issues that is the worst of all possible worlds.
Word has it that Microsoft wrote the code. If this is true, and it would not surprise me it it were correct, then what else do you expect?
However: If not, and, knowing the job ALWAYS goes to the lowest bidder, then one can be assured, that, as is ALWAYS the case, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
I would look closely at the features of the programmer's face (just make sure he is not of another country), that is, of Chinese decent, made up up to look as if he-she is of Japanese decent.
There again, if the Chinese can look about inside the CIA; MSA: the Pentagon; the White-House and play about, then uploading duff software to replace the original would be child's play to a good Chinese hacker. Well done China, You topped America again.
#American code:
if
$wheels_up
$altitude > 100
$weather = sunny
$ipod_track = VanHalen
$coffee_mug_heater = on
$speed = ludicrous
then
$weapons_armed = true
----------------------------------------------
#Chinese code:
if
$airborne
then
$weapons_armed = true
---------------------------------------------
#American code:
if
$wheels_up
$altitude > 100
$weather = sunny
$ipod_track = VanHalen
$ipod_artist = Molly Hatchet + $ipod_song = Flirtin' with Disaster
$coffee_mug_heater = on
$speed = ludicrous
then
$weapons_armed = true
----------------------------------------------
#Chinese code:
if
$airborne
then
$weapons_armed = true
rem arm missiles from mechanical cockpit switch
Completely lost the plot through mission creep and the inclusion of cool sounding 'potential tech' and capabilities it clearly can't deliver on.
As has already been mentioned, 20-25yr development time is ludicrous. I know back in fifties the operational lifespan of cutting edge jets was on occasion less than a decade due to the pace of change in fighter, radar and missile tech, but the circus of the F-35 is not the way to protect oneself from built in obsolesce. I'm not a military type at all, and do not pretend to hold a vast knowledge of such matters, but since the early nineties it's looked like robust and survivable hardware that operated in more than one theatre of operations was needed.
Buying jets, choppers and carriers for the last 20 years should have been so much simpler.... such as buying proven cost effective hardware and adapting it to specific needs rather than always going ‘off plan’
I’m sure I’ll get flamed and down voted for this, but surely buying for the war next month and not the next decade is probably the way to go here?
It was a politically muddled failure before it even begun. People at Boeing clearly saw the writing on the wall and presented their ugly, obviously half-arsed concept demonstrator and de-facto self-eliminating themselves from the tender at the early stage.
I actually work for one of the companies responsible for testing the JSF code. Numerous times did my managers attempt to point out that what was needed was to revisit the code with the developers and a rather large club as their coding efforts tended to result in more buried bugs--think inlining for the sake of inlining and having to test/analyze it as such because of the safety criteria. Good to know they've taken us seriously by skipping us altogether simply to avoid the deployment of the aforementioned club.
The RN was going to fit a catapult which was going to be bought from the US, but had to bin that plan when the new American electromagnetic catapult project turned into a spectacular fiasco which makes the F-35 project look well managed by comparison. They couldn't fit an old fashioned steam catapult, because there's no steam boilers on the ship (they use modern gas turbines). The RN has gone away from steam engines because they can't get people qualified in them, since there are no transferable skills to civilian life, and nobody wants to train for a dead-end career (the specialist crew shortages for the nuclear submarines are getting pretty dire as it is without adding steam powered aircraft carriers to the mix).
The back-up plan was to go with the vertical take-off F-35B. It's actually the low risk option at this point. Even if all the "I want the moon on a stick" features the Americans want out of the F-35 don't work, the RN will still end up with something that works at least as well as what they need. They can sail about the world bombing the shit out third world countries and then sail home again afterwords. The UK isn't going to take Russia or China head on, that just isn't in the cards no matter what sort of plane is bought. The F-35B will be good enough and it's off the shelf.
The people who are really in a bind are the Americans, since they have no "plan B" for catapults for their own new carriers.
@MrXavia - "BAE offered a STOBAR version of the Typhoon to India a few years back"
Sure, BAE may have offered to develop it, but it doesn't exist at this time. Developing it would cost loads of money since lots of bits and pieces would need to change in order to handle the stresses involved, plus lots more bits and pieces changed to handle surviving the environmental conditions, particularly the salt spray. All that engineering work would then be amortized over just a few dozen planes. That's a recipe for "very, very, expensive".
That was never a realistic option, given the severe budget problems the RN has been going through. The Treasury was not going to cough up the extra cash, and the UK armed forces in general are already going through mass lay-offs of personnel in order to meet the current government's post-Afghanistan budget targets.
For conventional take-off and landing, there were three options - F-35C, F-18, and Rafale. Saab talked about a carrier version of the Gripen, but like the sea Typhoon, that doesn't actually exist.
If you go to develop a carrier version of either the Typhoon or the Gripen, then you face all the same development risks as you would with developing the F-35B. However, the F-35B is flying today and it was designed from the start to fly off carriers. The problems at this point are like I said, the Americans may not get all their "I want the moon on a stick" features. If not, then it's no big deal for the RN. Unlike the US, the UK is not planning to take on China or Russia single handed.
And like I said, the American electromagnetic catapult project is all screwed up at this time. They think they can eventually sort the bugs out, but not on a time scale that is acceptable to the UK. The UK does not want to spend loads of money on new carriers and then have to mothball them for years while waiting for the catapult problems to be solved. They want the pilots trained and flying the planes when the first ship is ready to go to sea.
The UK flew Harriers off carriers for years (most memorably in the Falklands war), and so is quite used to the idea of VSTOL aircraft. The Harrier is obsolete and the few remaining ones the US have are falling to bits (they bought the ones belonging to the UK to strip for spare parts) so that particular plane pretty obviously isn't an option for today. The Harrier wouldn't survive long today against an enemy with a modern air defence system anyway. That history though means the RN is pretty comfortable with the F-35B.
"The F-35B will be good enough and it's off the shelf."
History lesson: F111B - this was the last time a joint effort was tried.
The lift fan makes the F35 rather tubby, which in turn compromises both stealth and handling.
The only way it can be usable is to be the only aircraft in the skies (it's outmanouvered by just about everything made since the 1960s) and is a sitting duck for anything coming at it from behind.
Is French. So obviously out of the question! Despite being:
a) Actually available, now, and for a reasonable price
b) Available in a carrier version. Now.
But - it has a major downside. It's French and no British politician can be seen to be favouring Those Frenchies(TM) over our masters across the pond, especially with the rampant and stupid Euro-xenophobia that's currently fashionable[1].
Ho hum.
[1] And old people like me can remember the 70's when it was "all those commonwealth brown types coming here taking our jobs". Ironic that now the racists^wUKIP types are now focussed on "Commonwealth good, Euro bad" schtick - same language, different target.
For a little risk, the SAAB Gripen - BAe helped work on it (so PC), already capable of short take off in adverse conditions, so probably wouldn't take much to navalise.
Of course, with the carriers we have, with no catapults, and nor are they likely to, it needs to be ski-jump capable, which somewhat precludes the Rafale or the F/A-18. Perhaps some mice Russkie numbers might work though...ha ha ha ha...!
- ULYSSES, this is ROCKSTAR, feet dry at 25000
- Copy ROCKSTAR, please advise your ingress ETA
- ETA 30 seconds ULYSSES. Negative, now I'm getting 45 seconds...
...
- ULYSSES, this is ROCKSTAR, visual on target, 10 clicks, no, 15 clicks, erm now it's 10 clicks again
- Status update please ROCKSTAR
- Weapons are hot, target locked, do I have permission to engage, ULYSSES?
- You are clear to engage, ROCKSTAR
- Copy ULYSSES, engaging. What the...? I'm getting multiple mudspikes in my tactical display, where did they come from?
[KLAXON ALARM]
- Shit, shit, multiple SAM launches ULYSSES. Going defensive, deploying CHAFF.
- Please confirm, ROCKSTAR. Eyes in the sky are seeing zero ground radar spikes, zero ground launches
- You're not going to believe this ULYSSES. How am I supposed to deploy air-to-ground to munitions onto my target when the bunker is now at 18000 feet doing 900 knots?
- What the hell? Please confirm, ROCKSTAR
- HUD is now rebooting, ULYSSES. Tactical displays have died. I'm hearing hip-hop on the ATC channel, and apparently I'm doing MACH 9. Please advise, ULYSSES
- Copy ROCKSTAR, wait one.
- Erm, ROCKSTAR, have you tried turning it off and on again...
makes translation flight a low speed affair. Unlike the Harrier, which could and did use thrust vectoring for VTOL and enhanced dogfighting capability to extreme effectiveness in the Falklands, the F35 is not going to slam the nozzles on to tighten a turn, nor possibly engage vertical lift to deal with loss of lift due to damage.
As an American I'd rather have seen an updated "Super Harrier" (which was kind of what Boeings much uglier entry into the contest was) which used the front engine intake in both modes and simply swivelled nozzles. With independent nozzle movement, computer controlled, some really odd flight maneuvers could have been done at any speed the airframe could support. Could've made the SU-27's Cobra Maneuver look like a skate-park trick.
But politics not need choose our defense systems on both sides of the Atlantic. And our bad decisions force yours. double down :(
"Unlike the Harrier, which could and did use thrust vectoring for VTOL and enhanced dogfighting capability to extreme effectiveness"
This is true. But I don't think the Pentagon brass ever 'got' the Harrier and its capabilities. The spec writers* said "vertical takeoff and landing" and that's what they got.
*In many cases, specifications are co-written by the suppliers. This is what we want to sell you. Write your requirements accordingly. Boeing was an underdog in that competition. So instead of taking an assertive position and telling the Pentagon what to buy, they did something that exposed their weakness, like asking a Marine pilot what they wanted.
and see who was in charge of Appropriations approval for the military when this aircraft was chosen, what state the primary contractor was in, what state (or whose relatives worked for) the primary avionics manufacturer for this aircraft over the competing designs, and then ask yourself why there is no personal responsibility for their efforts in choosing poorly or approving something that was obviously not acceptable in its current state?
And no, defenders, because the "other system" might have had flaws, does not mean going ahead with the "lesser". There was no absolute need to choose one program, both could have been rejected until a proper contender was entered. Any "need" to rush was political and financial, and personally beneficial to those who made the choice,
Maybe that is why they were reluctant to share the code with the UK a few years ago....
When the UK partnered with the USA on a fighter, you just knew it was going to end badly...
I say lets dump the F35 and go with BAE's navel version of the Eurofighter.. Sure they've only made one.. but its a STOBAR, perfect for out new Carrier... PLUS we already fly the Eurofighter, so plenty of already trained engineers/pilots and spare parts....
Of course we should have kept the harrier or partnered with Europe on a VTOL fighter rather than waste money on the F35 project...
Maybe I am speaking out of turn but... Of late, we seem to be moving away from conflict comprising of armed and uniformed nations squaring up to each other and attempting to obliterating each other, and towards the more subtle hiding-among-the-civilians unidentifiable combatant that melts away as soon as you look in their direction type nuisances.
Obviously, we still need an anti-opportunistic armed defence force to deal with the likes of Argentina, but increasingly, we will be needing more capability along the lines of the helicopter gunship and (unfortunately) boots on the ground resources to deal with this type of threat.
Maybe it's a case of back to basics, but the thought of deploying multi-billion pound weapons against armed thugs is not the most sensible use of available assets.
But the idea of off-shore airfields that two carriers would provide is ultimately a good idea as long as we re-think what we fly off of them. A variant of the A10 for smaller targets might be a good place to start.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could develop some kind of sonic weapon that renders everyone within a given crowd radius instantly unconscious, this would allow forces to move in and remove all armed and hiding combatants before everybody else wakes up.
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