F-35s failed 'scramble test' because of buggy software The F-35 warplane still needs reboots to get the aircraft airborne, a US Senate committee has heard, and troubling problems persist in the project's security. US Department of Defence director of operational test and evaluation J Michael Gilmore's latest evaluation of the project is in this written evidence (PDF) to the US …
"...achieving one “stability event” every 15 hours. "
Umm, to a mere mortal like yours truly, I read this as being that it managed to be stable once every 15 hours.
Shirley this might be better termed an 'instability event'? However, reading the test results to date, it might really be that it manages to get airborne once every 15 hours.
Tell me again why Australia is participating in this farce? With the capability so far demonstrated, even our trans-Tasman cousins could overfly us with impunity with a flight of Plastic Parrots (CT/4 Airtrainers).
Make a crappy plane that's sold all over the world, with plans undoubtedly stolen by the Russians and Chinese. Then the F22 that actually works and is superior to the F35 in every way, that we don't sell to anyone, is still king of the skies! Well, unless China stole the plans for it, too.
> I'd say the US isn't so certain about air superiority against anyone but stone throwing desert dwellers.
Anybody that has a chance of matching the US in the skies already has ICBMs. Drones will rule the skies about the time the F35 becomes truly combat ready as well.
>Drones will rule the skies about the time the F35 becomes truly combat ready as well.
Completely agree, look at taranis, and the french version... they will produce combat ready drones before the F35 is ready...
That is what I think is the secret plan for the aircraft carriers.. don't buy many F35's, just load up the decks with drones! still need the support crews, still need the pilots, but you don't loose the pilots when the drones get shot down, or a 'software failure' brings it down!
You do realize that there is more software involved in a drone than in a fighter jet right?
If the US can't get the software right for a jet, what makes you think that they can fix a drone?
Also food for thought.
Remember the F-4 Phantom?
Maybe it was before your time.
The Air Force decided that air to air combat would use missiles and would occur at ranges before guns would be effective. So the F-4 had no guns, just missile rails and rocket pods....
Then Viet Nam hit. the long story short... a gun pod was created ASAP.
Got the point?
>You do realize that there is more software involved in a drone than in a fighter jet right?
Yes of course.
>If the US can't get the software right for a jet, what makes you think that they can fix a drone?
What makes you think it will be the US AF that gets it right? Some countries defense contractors and employees are actually required to be competent (some countries might actually for example hold a billion dollar failed virtual fence against Boeing). If the F35 has proven anything its that even nearly infinite resources can't polish a turd.
>If the US can't get the software right for a jet, what makes you think that they can fix a drone?
What if the drones are designed more simply? If they are cheap enough and no living pilots, why not throw up a swarm? You lose a lot maybe but if you take the enemies pilots down you're on a winner.
"What makes you think it will be the US AF that gets it right? Some countries defense contractors and employees are actually required to be competent (some countries might actually for example hold a billion dollar failed virtual fence against Boeing). If the F35 has proven anything its that even nearly infinite resources can't polish a turd."
I wonder if you realize who are the defense contractors working on the F-35.
And if we look at what the EU has put together over the years... it makes the F-35 look like a wonder plane.
The issue is that the current school of Agile development doesn't work well when it comes to building
One would think that drones would be superior.
However, there is this thing called c.
Its a silly little constant that represents the speed of light and its a nasty little constant that means that when you take the man out of the loop and make him a remote pilot... sitting halfway around the world, you have a delay that while flying a surveillance drone, may not be much of an issue, it would mean life or death in an air to air fight.
Then there's putting a pilot in theater but not in the aircraft. You have other issues like radio jammers...
The point is that it will take a while for the AI to replace a pilot. Not to mention that your drone will end up costing more than putting a man in the machine.
Wasn't there an Australian defence report, where they simmed current airforce with F35's versus the Chinese? I seem to remember AWACs, Airborne Tankers had a life span in a few minutes, and then it came down to you only have so many aircraft, and threfore missiles versus a horde of Chinese aircraft, scale that up with drones as well.
It's not about air superiority, it's about budget. The F-35 program will gradually be shut down (with no blame) and the next generation, even better, Top Gun fighter will start development. The promised cost reduction over the F-35 will vanish before the first prototype and by the first flight test overruns will be estimated at 90% (because 100% looks bad on paper). It's problems will never be solved either.
Sometimes one wishes for a Russian solution - shoot the military project manager and vanish some culpable civilian contractors.
As far as "air superiority", stand-off munitions can clear the skies far better and cheaper than pilots. Unfortunately, they don't make for heroic movies or inspiring recruiting ads.
<snip>
" I'd say the US isn't so certain about air superiority against anyone but stone throwing desert dwellers."
Having said that, the sons of the desert are very good with unorthodox weapons such as RPG 2s, RPG7s and various other projectiles that one would not necessarily consider as anti aircraft weapons.
Do not forget that a suicide bomber is just a smart bomb made flesh. Different technologies but similar results.
Ahem. The Sons of the Desert is the international Laurel & Hardy appreciation society.
Also, I think that suicide bombers classify as 'not-so-smart-bombs'.
F22 isn't good for say close air support. The F35 was supposed to be a jack of all trades but its just a trillion dollar albatross empathizing why the Air Force is irrelevant these days (another great thing given to us by the cold war) and should be folded back in the Army where it belongs. Yes other services were involved as well but its the AF that is king of lobbying for pork projects and the one service that doesn't need to be standalone.
While the F22 isn't a close support A/C, I note that the life of the A-10 has been extended, surprisingly. The AF loves fighters, ICBM's and close support.... not at all. If it weren't for certain political types and the Army/Marines howling, the AF would have been out of the close support business back in the 60's. But, they didn't want the other services to get some of the pork or control. God forbid, they might have done a better job than the AF.
The F-35 is destined to be a very expensive laughing stock around the world.
Close support is a mission the Air Fraud generals hate because it reminds them they exist to protect the army and navy. It and air superiority are the only two missions that ever mattered. Strategic bombing w/o nukes has been very expensive and not particularly effective.
<snark> It does not matter the country, air fraud general is a synonym for traitor.</snark>
Strategic bombing is a joke because the WH doesn't want collateral damage.
Guess what? In war, shit happens. That means collateral damage happens.
The Russians using dumb bombs were more effective than the Americans in their Syrian campaign. Costs a lot less considering that a dumb bomb is cheaper than a smart bomb.
Were the Americans to bring in the BUFFs and carpet bomb the enemy strongholds... you will see hell on earth looks like. And the US could do this if they didn't care about the human shields used by ISIS/ISIL.
This is a major difference between Russian and US policy planning.
indeed Mark. I also note that updated versions of the F15 are being offered.. If Cold War era fighters are being offered as cheaper alternatives, what does that say about insiders hope of making the F35 workable .
A-10 life extension being pushed for, F15, F16 and F18 developments being developed by manufacturers all indicate a widespread scepticism about the new albatross. How about an updated YF12 dropping kinetic weapons at Mach 3 as was suggested once ?
Heh heh, you're only laughing if your country isn't buying that shit buzzard.
Fails in fighter-intent aircraft happen. See P37, Typhoon, F106/104/111... Some of those achieved brilliant service in other roles (Typhoon). But it still required the acquiring nation to do a Plan B and use another fighter design.
The F35 has that ugly stink of gangrene all over it. The diff is a) no one in charge is owning up to the mess and b) it doesn't look like it will be usable in _any_ role. Save perhaps as the VTOL version which caused the whole mess.
"should be folded back in the Army where it belongs"
If you're folding anything, then everything should be shuffled so there is a Navy, an Army, and an Air force. It it moves on Air, it goes to the Air Force; if it moves on water, Navy; if it moves on dirt, Army. There is no reason why every service needs planes, especially since all the services have their own weird planes that aren't compatible with those of any other service. All of the services also have special forces divisions for some reason. And there is also the redundancy between the Army and the Marine Corps.
Really, everything should be shuffled so that we end up with 4 services: Air Force, Army, Navy, and Special Operations (SpecOPs divisions, cyber warfare, space, etc)
Fun fact about the USA. The original Constitution only authorized the Navy/Marines, it forbid a standing Army and of course the Air Force wasn't even imagined.
A Civil war, some amendments and technological advancements later and the USA now has everything their Founding Fathers didn't think a good country should have.
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> There is no reason why every service needs planes,
Except for the fact that historically the Navy pilots have been the best (that whole having to take off and land on carriers thing). Naval aviation is just as much about the naval as the aviation which is why they have their own planes. The Air Farce obviously takes off and lands on land which is why they are the Army Air Corp. As for redundancy between Marines and Army all I will say is somebody has to be able to deploy in 48 hours with lighter gear and fight the battle and somebody needs weeks to deploy with heavy gear often not needed, always fighting the last war, botch it, and have the Marines fix it anyway (cough Fallujah). As for the Army Air Corp's other mission based on what a half ass job the Air Force has done with the ICBM crews lately (see cheating scandal, and drug dealer ring) they should be fine under the Army.
I hate to burst your bubble. but land-based aviation is inherently more capable than naval, since it is not limited to a short runway (or need the strengthening/equipment for carrier ops).
You don't see many B-1s, B-2s or B-52s on carriers, for instance.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid
>'nuff said........
James Harold "Jimmy" Doolittle (December 14, 1896 – September 27, 1993) was a reserve officer in the United States Army Air Corps,
Ok again what about this raid says we have to have a stand alone Air Force? Oh yeah because its still 1964 and we are still fighting the cold war.
>I hate to burst your bubble. but land-based aviation is inherently more capable than naval, since it is not limited to a short runway (or need the strengthening/equipment for carrier ops).
Which is why we still need the Army Air Corp. The Army I guarantee can handle all the strategic roles of the Air Farce for a hell of lot less pork.
No actually the Air Force came into existence at the start of WW2. Probably made sense at the time due to facing an immediate existential threat from nearly equals (often better) in technology and more so after WW2 when aircraft was the only game in town for delivering strategic nuclear weapons. That was a very long time ago though. My whole premise is the Air Force is run by incompetent shit birds and exists today solely as pork trough for the Pentagon, defense contractors and their lackey enablers in Congress. They are a relic of the cold war and what value they do bring to the modern battle field with the goat herder foes we face today would be enhanced under Army leadership thus my premise for them to be once again the Army Air Corp. Granted we may face more capable foes in the future but again my belief those foes will have ICBMs and or drones (or swarms of) at least as combat efficient as this shitty aircraft means the Air Force will probably just embarrass themselves or be irrelevant anyway. The days of massive manned dog fights are over. More likely our hypothetical advanced technological foe will just make our crappy electrical grid shit itself anyway and wtfpwn all the SCADA devices we have put out on the internet for convenience.
If we were going to bring the hurt on an advanced foe would probably be using ICBMs (in extreme cases) or cruise missiles launched from ships, subs or perhaps aircraft (likely off a carrier) but even if it needs be aircraft off land the Army could handle that.
"everything should be shuffled so that we end up with 4 services"
You need to work out the purpose of the various services and their machinery. Eg, what are naval ships used for? Troop transport? Guarding the shipping lanes? Intercepting an adversary's fleet? shipping? Likewise, the Army - are you aiming to prevent an opponent's army from invading? Or just keeping them on their toes? Air Force? What's its purpose? Pounding an enemy's industries ie strategic bombing? (Good luck when your adversary doesn't have any heavy industries.) Close air support? Maritime patrol? Maritime strike? Denial of air support ie air superiority?
The F-35 seems to me like someone never bothered to ask those questions of it, and in consequence no one bothered to answer them.
Please don't give up your day job.
Army / Marines both need close air support as well as rapid deployment capabilities and rapid extraction capabilities.
So you have helicopters, Ospreys, and the Marines have jump jets and Naval jets.
Navy requires air support to protect the ships. Maybe you didn't learn your lessons from a certain WW I pilot who bombed some old ships to prove a point and pushed for the creation of the aircraft carrier?
No?
Please learn your military history before making such daft statements.
Unfortunately the politics don't really work out if you try and do that. The Army has been hugely reliant on the A-10 for ground support (given it has significantly heavier armour than any helicopter so can do low pass attack runs with minimal risk), but the Air Force has been trying to get it scrapped for decades because it doesn't fit what they see as their remit (air-to-air combat) and they think it's too old a design to be useable, instead wanting to scrap it and funnel the money from it into even more work on the F-35 (which has ended up not being finished anywhere near as early as it would have needed to be to take the place of the A-10)
"If you're folding anything, then everything should be shuffled"
Take a look at how many military forces the USA has, none of whom talk to each other if they can avoid it and not counting the subunits within each one (who also don't talk to each other).
$HINT: It's a lot more than 3
At some point the whole mess is going to collapse simply because the GDP spend on military systems is unsustainable.
>IIRC the US Marines are really to blame for the F-35 being a dog,
Actually whomever thought one airframe could handle all services should be the ones shot (looks like as usual it was a merger of several small clusterfscks into one giant clusterfsk to make it easy for the pork politicians). Still even on the V/Stol stuff you can't totally blame the Marines.
In 1992, the Marine Corps and Air Force agreed to jointly develop the Common Affordable Lightweight Fighter, also known as Advanced Short Takeoff and Vertical Landing (ASTOVL).
The JSF program was the result of the merger of the Common Affordable Lightweight Fighter (CALF) and Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) projects.
IIRC the US Marines are really to blame for the F-35 being a dog, since they weren't going to buy into the JSF project unless it had V/Stol capability?
I'm thinking that they never figured that someone in DoD would say...."Ok.. we'll do that, and how many would you like?".
The Air Force and Pentagon is being run by a bunch of bean counters who look at the logistics and costs of running a fleet of aircraft.
Specialty role fighters cost more to maintain because your maintenance crew has to be trained specifically for each weapon system as well as the parts are not interchangeable. So the idea is to find an aircraft that can do multiple missions.
The other issue is that when you put a specialty role aircraft in theater, you also need another specialty aircraft to maintain control of the airspace. (e.g. the A-10 needs someone to watch the skies above it.)
Seems that they didn't learn their lessons from world war II. P-47 Thunderbolt vs P-51 Mustang in a ground support role. P-51 was an overall air superiority fighter yet the P-47 could take more abuse and provide better air support of ground troops.
The F-22 is the best plane on paper because its a generation ahead of the competition. The Russians aren't going to put their aircraft up against it any time soon and they won't sell their latest tech to a third world nation any time soon.
The F-22 was used for air strikes in Syria. I don't know what they learned from that experience....
>The Air Force and Pentagon is being run by a bunch of bean counters who look at the logistics and costs of running a fleet of aircraft.
Then they have failed epically at their jobs as this will be a case study for how not to do a weapon system for a very long time. As much as I do blame the AF and the Pentagon a clusterfsck this epic takes a significant number of elected ass clowns to pull off.
The F22 has a Chinese made equivalent with moniker of F20. Its engines are not as powerful or reliable, but the Russians may be able to help there for a suitable big fee if the next engine development models aren't up to scratch.
What is significant is how the merkin strategy and the rest of the advanced aviation world diverge. Could be a rerun of Korean atrial combat initial stuffup. Merkins think long range weapons, advanced radar and small numbers of bomb trucks will win day. Every one else is building lots of very highly manoeuvrable aircraft with not much effort in stealth. Chinese do have a stealth fighter under development and flying. It does not break Area Rule so it may perform quite well.
It is _very_ significant that Chinese and Russians have been doing a lot of aircraft search radar development to "spot" stealth planes. No doubt Russian cold war era Woodpecker OTH radar will be renovated and updated.making even F22 vulnerable. Is this why merkins are working on a B3 ?
Time for Oz to dump merkin make work toys, buy some Sukhois fitted with Israeli weapons, decent radar control and abandon the expensive dangerous and futile "US alliance". More than overdue for Oz to pull trousers up and stand straight, not bent over as has been defence posture since 1/1/1901
> I think this translates to "on average, one blue-screen-of-death every 15 hours".
Funny.. The way I read it was "on average, one BSOD-free bootup every 15 hours"
I thought the whole idea of super-expensive "military grade" (lol) software was that it is supposed to be deterministic!
Why do you assume that VxWorks or QNX would be any more reliable or secure? These were not designed with security in mind and not even particularly reliability. They had a hard job trying to persuade the world that they could approach the 99.999% reliability they claim, which is a long way from civil aviation, or even your traffic lights.
Most of JSF is written C++, purely due to perceived availability of programmers, because that should reduce the pressure on salaries. More programmers with C++ on CV than Ada equals more competition for the work, so lower cost to employ, simples. But even if you had an infinitely secure and reliable RTOS, you still need the applications to have correct behaviour.
This is the same advanced warplane that lost a dogfight to an F16? And now it seems it may struggle in EMF-messy environments? And, IIRC, we've bet the farm on this for our naval strike capability? Suspect we'd have lost the Falklands if it happened today.
You have missed the biggest reason.
The software stability is the least of the F35 zingers. The biggest zinger is the fact that its misssion control and planning software is integrated with its spares supply and is a USA only system hosted in the USA. Mil-Cloud based maintenance and mission planning software
Now the really interesting question is - How the hell can this be an export model? How the hell can for example Queen Lizzy enter combat if it does not have parts, logistics and mission planning software for its fighter wing as it sits with someone else?
Well In a few years time we'll have the F35s with the type 45 destroyers. So as long as the Argies give us a phone call to say reboot your planes and ships now we're on our way, everything should be hunky dory. Good job MoD procurement.
(BTW the Type 45s have a nasty habit of tripping their main "fuseboxes" if you turn all their kit on at once.)
>The F-35A is just a money pit with no bottom.
It's certainly not a warplane.
Meanwhile, China has successfully tested a hypersonic cruise missile.
China Successfully Tests Hypersonic Weapon System
The US needs to get its STEM and military contracting shit together.
It's taking technological superiority for granted in a world where it just isn't realistic to do that any more.
China Successfully Tests Hypersonic Weapon System
Different cattle of fish. That and its Russian Bulava equivalent are the result of George Shrub pulling out USA out of the missile defense treaties as well as deploying anti-ICBM interceptors next to Russian (in Poland) and Chinese borders.
US expected both Russia and China to invest into maneuvering re-entry vehicles resulting in an arms race which USA was projected to win based on improvements to anti-ICBM missiles and control software.
Well, wrong - neither one took the bait. They both invested into hypersonic glider warheads instead which will enter the atmosphere outside the AEGIS and other anti-ICBM system defence perimeter and go for the kill on a glide trajectory.
This nullifies pretty much all investment USA has thrown into this area after Shrub reopened this arms race and in fact puts both of them ahead by 5-10 years.
The other way around... The AF doesn't like drones as they don't need "real" pilots. But, the procurement types seemed to have gone overboard on wishes and expectations. Multi-role anything isn't always the best idea. Look at flying cars, cars that go in the water like a boat for good examples.
Aircraft that are good at air superiority really suck at close support. No armor, no loiter time, no large capacity for armament, and too fast. I really wish someone would get a clue that a "jack of all trades" aircraft isn't going to work well.
Mark 85 "Aircraft that are good at air superiority really suck at close support. No armor, no loiter time, no large capacity for armament, and too fast."
I once heard a story about a drug runner frequently bringing large amounts of weed into NT from possibly PNG in the early 1980s. He was using a Cessna or similar, and landing on old WW2 airstrips which were pretty common along the Stuart Hwy in the NT back then, from where goods could be conveniently loaded onto a truck.
Police had word of his runs and wanted surveillance, hopefully to grab him on the ground. RAAF got the job but only had F111s available. Job consisted of F111 at its slowest overflying Cessna which was not going anywhere its fastest, turning around to get behind Cessna, overflying again, and so on. Natch, the runner worked out what was going on and managed to time his landing for a turnback. Landed, got his gear onto a truck, job over.
I mean I always wonder where the really good people work. The people who have understood how to solve problems.
At least now I know they don't work for such companies. It's good to hear that they are not dedicating their minds on how to kill people more efficiently. I cannot tell whether that's because of choice or because they have been driven out by really bad management, but at least they don't seem to work there.
So it is written in C++. That explains it...
(C++ is one of my least favourite languages: combines all the pitfalls of C with several of its own, pretends to offer higher-level abstractions, which however cannot be protected by the language, and are easily broken by accident.)
"http://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf"
Bloody hell! 221 Rules (plus a few extra .1 versions)!
Is it irony on Bjarne's part that there are more "rules" than the maximum number of lines of code allowed in a function or method?
Good grief it's a wonder that any software has been developed at all.
"Good grief it's a wonder that any software has been developed at all."
Haven't you been paying attention? No working software has been developed at all.
Google 'Bjarne Stroustrup interview' for a really entertaining and informative read, and although it is claimed that the interview was a spoof, I would suggest the the progress of the F35 software suite proves otherwise.
Yeah but the Chinese at least didn't borrow the money to do that (I think). Our pivot to China was a big fail because first rule of war is don't borrow money from the country you want to go to war with. Second rule is don't go to war with the country that makes all your stuff. Makes your tough guy posture look pretty p_ssy.
Well, *somebody* at F-35 HQ didn't read 'Superiority', by Arthur C. Clarke.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, George Santayana (circa 1905).
Those who don't read Science Fiction fail to avoid the obviously-predictable dumb mistakes in the first place, Me (just now).
After the collapse of communism and the liaison of former Eastern European armed forces with NATO, one former East German military officer was asked if he thought that the Soviet Union could have won a war in Europe. "Of course," he said "you would all be showing one another Powerpoint presentations while we got on with the invasion."
Seemingly reboot is the new Powerpoint.
>Soviet Union could have won a war in Europe.
Yeah but they would just now be able to occupy it. Pretty amazing how many in the 1960s US defense establishment not only accepted a nuclear war was imminent but were almost looking forward to it.Mr. Vice President, Mr. Secretary, the missiles are flying Hallelujah. Hallelujah
Of course that means 1 and 9, so about 19%. Or maybe 1.9%. Or was that .19%? Something like that, anyhow.
Paris 'cause she's smarter than the crooks who are in charge of this inanity. They can't even seem to PRETEND to be providing a useful service here. The clowns who call with the "This is MS Technical Support, and Your Windows has a Virus, but WE CAN HELP!" scam manage a much more convincing job of pretending to do something useful.
Nah Gen X is just now entering upper management roles and will design the next generation (if there is one). The Boomers maybe can take credit for the production of the F-14 but not its design. They own the JSF design and are still most of the politicians that have sunk money into it.
"Someone is looking at the F-14 Tomcat's, then looking back at the F-35 monstrosity and is wondering where it all went wrong.
Well the F14 was built by Grumman in NY state.
The F35 is built by LM Corp. The ba**ard child of a myriad of mergers in the US aerospace industry sanctioned (and I'm fairly sure encouraged) by the DoD to create a "national champion" because of fears individually they couldn't complete in the world arms sales market.
Much like what was BAe System was created by active encouragement of the MoD in the UK.
It's no surprise how well these companies like to work together.
Sometimes it seems the customer/contractor model needs a major reset.
Like, hire a bright professor and some of his better students. Even if the total job is 1000 man years, you will get a useful prototype out of them. Most contractors can follow a prototype but are incapable of original design.
Some decades of moons ago, just before the iron curtain came tumbling down a then successful defence company in sunny southern county recently mentioned on el Reg decided that it would be a good wheeze to flog a HF frequency hopping radio system around the 3rd world (to the sort of countries that could barely afford the paper for an outside bog, let alone overpriced combat gear - but uk foreign aid was more generous than, and if your neighbour's just got it ...) Think of a black rectangular finned ally hedgehog and you've got some idea of the thing.
Well, the 100W HF amplifier was designed by an old, experienced, cynical RF engineer. It was, well, bulletproof in every war. Met it's specs easily over the full military temperature / humidity ranges etc easily.
The built in power supply boards were designed by a bunch of young inexperienced apprentoids. Worked fine at room temperature ...
My guess with this flying turd the apprentoids were in charge of the project?
Ah, so that's probably another reason the USA demanded the project be disbanded, and the Canadian government of the day (that bastard Diefenbaker) gladly acquiesced. The only place Canadian scientists and engineers are allowed to work effectively is American companies and organizations.
I guess they're afraid that if Canadians are allowed to actually do something useful they'll burn down the White House. AGAIN.
My dad keeps telling me about planes you allegedly could just start, and then fly them for a couple of hours. Does anybody know whether that's really true?
:-)
Vulcans on QRA were pretty good for a quick scramble - they would be airborne within two minutes. Not too shabby for a 4-engine bomber...
Vic.
Maybe they should buy a Sukhoi Su-27 Flankers from the Russian Federation and copy the Avionics.
>>"The key question is get what done which is also the answer in this case."
>Is English your second language asdf? Please find a translator, I'm intrigued, you might actually have a serious point there!
Others spell it out for me but basically it boils down to you seem to be saying quick go get the requirements while I start coding.
True and from experience I can tell you that you can't write good code unless the spec is clear, complete, correct & unambiguous.
.. which is exactly where IMHO the problem lies. The first thing that happens in such a project is to produce a spec that is deficient enough to yield lots of change control because that's where the money is recovered that was lost by being the lowest bidder during procurement..
So how is it possible to screw up software that badly? Every aspect of the craft is controlled by a single company, and there are only three variants. Operating System developers somehow manage to get their code to run on an uncountable number of permutations of hardware and environments, so how is that very highly paid developers that have access to full documentation fuck up so badly...
1. Do they demand all code meet adequate coding standards?
2. Do they require all software modules to meet specific documentation standards?
3. Are the testing requirements sufficient? When they run the test suite, what percentage of the software actually get executed? It is amazing how often the software test suite does not execute some of the error handling code.
4. Are the specs any good? If there are requirements that are ill-defined or not defined at all, I can guarantee that different people will interpret them differently. Example - the NASA Mars lander that was lost because one group interpreted the unit for distance be feet while the other group assumed that the unit was meters. Oops.
5. With a software project as enormous as this, program management becomes absolutely critical. The programmer is totally dependent on the spec being clear, correct & unambiguous because they may not know or have access to the person writing the modules that connect to their module.
This is what happens when the project size exceeds the capability of the company/management to manage a project.
Add some random cost cutting within company to increase profits (competent people tend to be expensive) and you'll get the picture.
But one thing is sure: LM is making record profits from this project. In the end, that's the only thing that matters for LM.
It could be someone else has made a similar post... TL;DR, it's "late" here, etc, etc.
WTF? Who wrote this "software"? Microsoft?
Just send me a bit of money (say, 10%) of what's been spent... I can "not deliver" with the best of them, and I'll quickly bow out (and retire in a manner to which I would like to be accustomed).
this is what happens when you try to make a jack of all trades fighter plane and design it by committee to fit all branches of service. We did this with the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II back in the late 50's and 60's. we even go super dumb and didn't even put guns on it to begin with, just missiles. no amount of technology will ever solve this problem. you cannot take an inferior design, throw some software update at it and make it better aircraft. the truth is there is no money in building fighter planes, the money is in developing them, producing just enough to make the taxpayers feel like ley got something out of it to justify the initial cash outlay (F22), or make the project so expensive that it will eventual be canceled (F35).
Apart from the virtual "see-through-your-plane" helmet software, which is kinda new (but not in itself a terribly hard problem), the rest of the F-35's systems should be pretty simple as it's nothing new. Artificial stability? Been done for years, indeed it was trialed in the '80s (BAe Jaguar ACT flew with "relaxed stability" in 1981, IIRC). Weapons launched from internal bays at supersonic speeds? F-22 got that covered. AESA radar is pretty old hat too. Integrated coms with encrypted links to external sources? The old Tornado ADV could manage that. And even the VTOL bits are not exactly ground-breaking (even the Ruskies managed it with the Yak-36 and -38). I suspect the issue is someone had the "bright idea" of ignoring decades of avionics development by actual avionics engineers and decided to hire some whizz kid programmers with zero experience in the field. Lockheed Martin are making themselves look seriously incompetent.
" Lockheed Martin are making themselves look seriously incompetent."
Yes, but the money will flow and profits are high, so who cares? The real profit is made in design phase.
Also one failed project doesn't mean a thing to Pentagon: LM will not be excluded from future projects.
And the reason/s why the f-35 can't be simply cancelled, as it should be?
Lockheed's got parts manufacturers in as many of the 50 states as it can, so effectively they've bought out Congress. And they've got most of the Western and West-aligned powers signed up to buy it.
Wish their product matched the standard of their advertising.
Two stories from 30-odd years ago:
1: I worked on a naval missile targeting radar. Spec called for target acquisition within one second of missile coming over ships horizon. That was achieved. Trouble was, it overheated so couldn't be run continuously. It took 20 minutes to start up. Captain to enemy: "Hold on, we aren't ready yet. Wait, wait, OK, you can shoot now--"
2: Colleague worked on the Titan ICBM system. By the time the deployment was complete they reckoned they could get 5% of the missiles off the pad in an emergency. You know the sort of emergency--.
"1: I worked on a naval missile targeting radar. Spec called for target acquisition within one second of missile coming over ships horizon. That was achieved. Trouble was, it overheated so couldn't be run continuously. It took 20 minutes to start up. Captain to enemy: "Hold on, we aren't ready yet. Wait, wait, OK, you can shoot now--""
I actually worked on a feasibility study for a system that would pulse a target acquisition system and calculate how long it could safely wait before the next pulse, to prevent overheating. The bit slice processor looked like real fun to work with, especially as it too had to power up and down frequently. It followed a little panic in the South Atlantic. But someone assured the MoD that the French hadn't sold Exocets to anybody else who might conceivably be an enemy, so it was cancelled.
.. they should have used the ENTERPRISE version of Windows. All it takes is a pilot accepting the Win 10 upgrade from the GWX prompt and they're down for hours - or even forever.
On a more serious note: given the shocking fortune this software costs, how the flaming forklifts can it still be this bad?
They almost blow my windows out last night
They almost blow my windows out last night
Someone at Air France is in trouble...
But Typhoon is a one-trick pony, so there's a much higher chance of getting it working. Multi-role is much harder.
That said, even TSR2 wasn't plagued by the sort of problems that F-35 has.
Vic.
"That said, even TSR2 wasn't plagued by the sort of problems that F-35 has."
Oh yeah? I worked with someone who worked on the TSR2. Apparently a major problem with the avionics was any kind of debugging because the moment you put most of the boards on an extender, they overheated. Now imagine someone trying to attach scope probes to a board while a high speed fan blew air over it at 50lfpm.
He described the avionics as "over-ambitious".
"That said, even TSR2 wasn't plagued by the sort of problems that F-35 has."Oh yeah?
Yeah.
TSR2 had many, many problems - which was why I mentioned it. But it didn't have five out of six aircraft unable to fly during a test...
He described the avionics as "over-ambitious".
The whole aircraft was over-ambitious; it is an object lesson in why dumping every rôle you can think of into an aeroplane does not generally make for a useful plane. But the F-35 team had a dentist's appointment that day, and didn't catch up for homework like they were told to.
Lots of great aviation expertise came out of the TSR2 project. But no[1] planes.
Vic.
[1] There were, of course, developments based on what was learnt. But those were not TSR2s.
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