(Luft) Lockheed Martin F-35 - Lightning II

[Quintus Fabius]

Zu den immer noch bestehenden Problemen deren ernsthaftere allesamt Software-Probleme sind:

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Inside-the-Beltway wisdom holds that the $1.4 trillion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program is too big to cancel and on the road to recovery. But the latest report from the Defense Department’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) provides a litany of reasons that conventional wisdom should be considered politically driven propaganda. The press has already reported flawed software that hinders the ability of the plane to employ weapons, communicate information, and detect threats; maintenance problems so severe that the F-35 has an “overdependence” on contractor maintainers and “unacceptable workarounds” (behind paywall) and is only able to fly twice a week; and a high-rate, premature production schedule that ignores whether the program has demonstrated essential combat capabilities or proven it’s safe to fly. All of these problems are increasing costs and risks to the program. Yet rather than slow down production to focus resources on fixing these critical problems, Congress used the year-end continuing resolution omnibus appropriations bill—termed the “cromnibus”—to add 4 additional planes to the 34 Department of Defense (DoD) budgeted for Fiscal Year 2015. The original FY2016 plan significantly increased the buy to 55, and now the program office is further accelerating its purchase of these troubled planes to buy 57 instead.

At some point, the inherent flaws and escalating costs of a program become so great that even a system with massive political buy-in reaches a tipping point.

Ein interessanter Artikel zu den Verflechtungen welche LM zum größten Teil geschaffen hat damit die F-35 zwingend ein Erfolg wird:

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One reason why the project has become such a boondoggle is that many states and countries are significantly invested in the plane, relying on its production for income and jobs and making it politically untenable to kill or scale back the program.

Every US state but Alaska, Hawaii, Nebraska, and Wyoming has economic ties to the F-35, with 18 states counting on the project for $100 million or more in economic activity, according to primary contractor Lockheed Martin.

All told, the project is supposedly responsible for 32,500 jobs in the US. Globally, another nine countries have major ties to the F-35, which means that US allies are not only set to receive the F-35 but depend on it for economic stimulus and prestige as well.

One way or another, America's Multirole fifth-generation fighter is coming — even as the setbacks keep coming.