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The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II multirole fighter plane has numerous software and hardware flaws. So many, in fact, that it won't be ready to deploy before 2019:
The F-35 multirole fighter won't be close to ready before 2019, the US House Armed Services Committee was told on Wednesday. The aircraft, which is supposed to reinvigorate the American military's air power, is suffering numerous problems, largely down to flaws in the F-35's operating system. These include straightforward code crashes, having to reboot the radar every four hours, and serious security holes in the code.
Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation, reported that the latest F-35 operating system has 931 open, documented deficiencies, 158 of which are Category 1 – classified as those that could cause death, severe injury, or severe illness. "The limited and incomplete F-35 cybersecurity testing accomplished to date has nonetheless revealed deficiencies that cannot be ignored," Gilmore said in his testimony [PDF]. "Cybersecurity testing on the next increment of ALIS [Autonomic Logistics Information System] – version 2.0.2 – is planned for this fall, but may need to be delayed because the program may not be able to resolve some key deficiencies and complete content development and fielding as scheduled."
He reported that around 60 per cent of aircraft used for testing were grounded due to software problems. He cited one four-aircraft exercise that had to be cancelled after two of the four aircraft aborted "due to avionics stability problems during startup."
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Friday March 25 2016, @03:23PM
Drones do everything an airforce was ever meant to do. They can boom and fight enemy boomers autonomously without reliance on satellite targeting or communication already.
I think I'm having a Poe's Law moment; you're either trolling or misinformed, and I'm not certain which. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and a straight answer just in case; I like assuming the best about people.
Why are you playing into the Airforce's outdated debate points?
Why does the Air Force keep parroting these same tired arguments? Trust me, I'd love to let this drop; it's the Air Force that keeps bringing it up in perjurious testimony to the U.S. Congress.
The Army and USMC use some harriers for ground support but their own reports suggested helicopters work just as well.
You are mistaken on this point. The AH-64 attack helicopter is a great platform, but is essentially defenseless in contested air space. It relies on stealth to avoid enemy aircraft, by which I mean literally staying hidden in trees/behind hills (it is not considered a "stealth" platform technologically). Like any other helicopter, any damage to engine or rotor is incapacitating; in contrast the A-10 can lose 1/2 of it's tail, 1/4 of its wingspan, and an engine while still remaining operational. If you need close air support in contested air space you don't call an Apache, you call a Warthog. Remember that it's the Army demanding that the A-10 program continue; if the Apache was good enough at the CAS role to replace the Warthog then they'd stop making mission requests to the Air Force for it.
Really, even if the F35 was perfectly operational and quarter price, it would still be the equivalent of the cavalry charge facing the machine gun. An obsolete design that can be countered or substituted by a ~50k$ drone.
You have far too much faith in the air-to-air capabilities of UCAVs; real life isn't like what they show in Hollywood. [imdb.com] The global community is still struggling with the ethics of allowing armed combat drones autonomy and clearance to fire independently; neither the United States [wikipedia.org] nor anyone else in the world [wikipedia.org] has an autonomous AI-driven air-to-air strike drone, and those that can carry anti-air missiles cost significantly more than $US 50k (closer to $2 million [wikipedia.org]). A hellfire missile by itself costs $70k, so unless your concept for an Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle is a low-speed kinetic strike munition your budget is blown on ammunition alone.
I agree that someday in the future Moore's Law will let us put a robotic brain into a cheap airframe that will (if deployed in large numbers) pose a significant threat to a high-tech fighter airplane. This is inevitable, and will be a great battlefield equalizer when it comes. This is a terrific argument for abandoning the F-35 and supporting development of less costly, more reliable aircraft. It is not an argument for dropping the A-10 platform, however, and won't be until we get much better at building combat drones.
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(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday March 27 2016, @04:48AM
I think I'm having a Poe's Law moment; you're either trolling or misinformed...
Note I said meant to do... Not does. NORAD's patrols are already done by autonomous planes anyhow they just didn't arm them to appease the legislators. In the Airforce's defense, in 2015 they trained more drone operators than pilots so they at least aren't in complete denial.
Air Force that keeps bringing it up in perjurious testimony to the U.S. Congress.
And they'll keep doing so since they have a monopoly on the data. For every report they publicly disclose, they classify 10 more with lies, damn lies and statistics and present those in close hearings. So, they say the same nonsense, you argue a fact based on a report, they say, "hey, we have new data, but it classified so the public will have to leave the court room" and then they just lie and lie and lie without any fact checking possible.
You are mistaken on this point...
First off, that's neither my personal opinion nor the report's point. Their claim was that the current generation of surface-to-air missiles that proliferated in the middle-east and Afghanistan can target anything low-altitude, slow-flying, circumventing any "stealth" claims, so prolonged close air support itself is losing viability. That's to say, the A10 could still workout since it drops it's loads \ clears it's barrels in a fly-run and circles back home so it might be less vulnerable... Or not. Really, that not what the report, or my point, was about. It was about harriers and helicopters not taking heat nor pulling off stealth... It wasn't a procurement report, it was an operational review recommending less reliance on air support while focusing on maintaining support lines... Real We Were Soldiers vibe with artillery and mortars subsection and everything.
neither the United States nor anyone else in the world has an autonomous AI-driven air-to-air strike drone
They're called missiles. Seriously now, the distinction is trivial. The tech been there for at least a decade. If you can make an autonomous surveillance drone, you can add a radar to identify anything big that isn't carrying a transponder and release a missile. Hypothetically, someone like NORAD could even deploy surveillance drones like these while making sure patrols are cut in half so there's always enough on board fuel for a kamikaze run if they can't scramble a jet fast enough... It doesn't even have to be autonomous, the operator hitting enter is enough to pass the legal restrictions.
Overall, the F35 vs. A10 debates are reminiscent of the battleships vs. dreadnoughts debates post WW1's German U-boat campaign. A typical preparing-for-the-previous-war deadlock.
It's not that I don't agree the A10 has it's uses, or that it will continue to have it's uses for decades to come. It's just that I don't think it's at all relevant to the current\future of the F35. While the A10 will slowly phase out as more surface-to-air missiles and air-to-air drones get introduced over the years, or not, the F35 won't even have that to say for itself. If drones aren't already there, they will be before the F35 ever reaches anything remotely reminiscent of justifiable by strategic, economic, or really any measure.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Monday March 28 2016, @04:08PM
Glad I gave you the benefit of the doubt, you seem sincere here.
Do you have a link to the report you're referencing? I'd really like it read it, it sounds like good analysis. I think I'll need that for context to understand where you're coming from in this conversation. If the prolonged close air support mission is just evaporating in the real battlefield, that changes the discussion significantly.
I think we're still talking past each other a bit, and ending up in violent agreement :) I think the F-35 should never have had CAS as a mission requirement, and that's turning it into a poorly-built multitool that will never do any of its many jobs as well as purpose-built platforms will do at their only job. And while we may disagree about the modern cost/availability of practical combat drones, their future adoption in warfighting is inevitable. It's just a matter of time, time which the F-35 is spending far too much of on the drawing boards and not enough in the air.
Eventually the F-35 will be facing swarms of (relatively) low-cost adversaries and not have enough bullets to intercept them all before being shot down. At ~100M/F-35 that's not a high bar to clear; 50x $2M armed drones (available today) would certainly fit that bill. So, agreed, obsolete before manufacture. Good job, USAF.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]