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The first contracts to design what became the F-35 were handed out 20 years ago. Lockheed's X-35 won the contract in October, 2001. 15 years later, the aircraft is in terrible condition — a fact driven domicile past the DoD'south ain official study on the land of the F-35 and the bugs that continue to plague information technology.

The report was released two days ago, but a number of links to the PDF accept died; yous tin admission the HTML text via Google enshroud if the above isn't working. Information technology discusses all variants of the F-35, but focuses on the F-35B, the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing version of the aircraft developed for the Usa Marines, and adopted by the Royal Navy likewise as the RAF.

F-35 wind testing

The F-35 undergoing wind testing

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

The land of the F-35

Before we dive into the report's findings, we need to comprehend some of its terminology. The Air Force uses block numbers to denote differences in an shipping's capability. Sometimes these block numbers are specific to an entire aircraft (due east.k., the F16A/B Cake 20). In the F-35'south example, there are also block numbers for many of its subsystems.

The US Marine Corps alleged the F-35B Block 2B had reached Initial Operational Capability (IOC) in July, 2022. As the DoD notes, however:

If used in gainsay, the Block 2B F-35 will demand back up from control and control elements to avoid threats, assist in target acquisition, and control weapons employment for the express weapons carriage bachelor (i.e., 2 bombs, 2 air-to-air missiles). Cake 2B deficiencies in fusion, electronic warfare, and weapons employment outcome in ambiguous threat displays, express ability to respond to threats, and a requirement for off-board sources to provide authentic coordinates for precision attack. Since Block 2B F-35 aircraft are limited to 2 air-to-air missiles, they will require other back up if operations are contested by enemy fighter aircraft.

Cake 2B's limitations aren't going to be solved at any signal in the near future. One major problem with the F-35 is that solutions to existing software problems are being punted downward the road into futurity blocks in club to meet development timetables. Cake 3i development testing began for a third time in March 2022, after two previous starts in May and September 2022. Again, from the report:

Block 3i began with re-hosting immature Cake 2B software and capabilities into avionics components with new processors. Though the plan originally intended that Block 3i would non introduce new
capabilities and not inherit technical problems from earlier blocks, this is what occurred. The Air Strength insisted on fixes for five of the almost severe deficiencies inherited from Cake 2B every bit a prerequisite to employ the final Block 3i capability in the Air Force IOC aircraft… Even so, Cake 3i struggled during developmental testing (DT), due to the inherited deficiencies and new avionics stability issues.

Cake 3F too began development in March 2022, 11 months behind schedule. It's far behind where it's supposed to be; the DoD states that Block 3F developers spent most of 2022 squashing bugs in Block 3i.

Originally, the F-35 was expected to enter Initial Operational Test & Evaluation (IOT&Due east) by August 2022. The DoD declares this "unrealistic." Cake 3F development and flight-testing isn't expected to be completed until Jan, 2022.

For want of a smash

The F-35'southward buggy flight software is scarcely the merely problem. The F-35 loads specific profiles for every mission it flies. These profiles are designed to "to bulldoze sensor search parameters and to place and correlate sensor detections, such every bit threat and friendly radar signals."

F35-Availability

The F-35'south availability by deployment location

Currently, the US Reprogramming Lab is plagued by "significant deficiencies that prevent efficient development and adequate testing of effective mission data loads for Block 3F." Despite being given a $45 million budget in fiscal twelvemonth 2022, the USRL has not engaged in the necessary upgrades. The estimated time to cease the upgrades is two years. Without them, the DoD estimates the F-35 faces "meaning limitations" to its gainsay capability against existing threats.

Weapon commitment accuracy (WDA) tests have been pushed back to the point that they can no longer be completed past the original mid-2017 Initial Operational Capability target engagement. Of the xv tests scheduled for the Block 2B F-35, iii were pushed dorsum into Block 3i / 3F testing. Hither's some other fun quote:

11 of the 12 events required intervention by the developmental examination control squad to overcome organisation deficiencies and ensure a successful event (i.e., learn and identify the target and engage it with a weapon). The program altered the upshot scenario for three of these events, as well as the twelfth upshot, specifically to work around F-35 system deficiencies (e.yard., irresolute target spacing or restricting target maneuvers and countermeasures).

The laundry list of problems continues. There'southward no Verification Simulation in place for the F-35, despite eight years of work and $250 meg in funding. The average availability of the F-35 for operations was 51% in 2022, well below the 60% availability goal. (This metric has, at least, improved in recent years.) The F-35 spent 21% more fourth dimension downwards for maintenance and waited 51% longer for parts than anticipated. Between 10-20% of the fleet was grounded at any given time, 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 be governed by a side by side-generation organisation, codenamed ALIS (Autonomic Logistics Data System). The written 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 brandish system for the F-35 is heavier than its predecessors, which may be causing problems for the aircraft. Pilots weighing less than 136 lbs are prohibited from flying the F-35, considering the ejection seat tests show stresses that'll snap the neck of regular human being 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" gamble rating. Again, here's the DoD: "The level of run a risk was labeled 'serious' past the Program Function based on the probability of death being 23 percent, and the probability of neck extension (which will event in some level of injury) being 100 percent. Currently, the Program Part and the Services accept decided to have this level of risk to pilots in this weight range, although the basis for the decision to accept these risks is unknown."

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

The failure of concurrency

The F-35's bug are at to the lowest degree partially the result of allowing Lockheed Martin to pursue concurrent flying design and active deployment. The idea behind concurrency was that Lockheed Martin could brainstorm building an aircraft while nevertheless fine-tuning various aspects of its blueprint. In theory, applied to much simpler vehicles, it might have worked, particularly if the F-35 had been a modest evolution of an existing shipping.

Applied to the F-35, concurrency has been a disaster. Right now, every single F-35 already built volition need to be extensively overhauled to encounter its minimum performance targets. It'due south ane thing to overhaul a send or aircraft to improve its baseline capabilities, and something else entirely when the aircraft as delivered can't execute its mission.

The report argues strongly against the use of a and so-called "block buy" strategy in which upwards to 270 aircraft would be purchased in majority to attain theoretical savings. If F-35 production continues at its current charge per unit, more than 500 shipping volition accept been built by the time the blueprint is finalized — and all of them volition need to be refitted to 1 caste or another to "provide full Cake 3F combat adequacy."

The F-35 isn't just the most expensive fighter plane ever built, with total plan toll estimates over the lifetime of the aircraft now between $320 – $400 billion, depending on how you count. Information technology's also expected to spend the longest in development.

Only for fun, I pulled data on a number of other high-profile US aircraft over the last forty years. The F-16 and F/A-eighteen took vi and eight years to go from first flight to gainsay-certified. The B-2 Spirit stealth bomber commencement flew in 1989 and was fully certified only in 2003, some xiv years later. The F/A-18E (Super Hornet) had a quick bring-up time of just five years, while the F-22 Raptor took a decade between outset flying and full certification. Clearly the tendency 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 class of its own. Start flight took place in 2006. According to the DoD, total WDA testing on the Block 3F software won't be complete until 2022. By that indicate, the Block four software should be in the field. It's not articulate from this report which milestones must be passed to certify the shipping as fully operational. But if the WDA tests are part of that process, information technology'll be some other five years before the F-35 is "done" — a full 50% longer than any aircraft has taken before.

Anybody else thinking unmanned drones are looking actually useful — and inexpensive — right about now?