(Illustration: Renzo Velez / POGO)
“THE PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT (POGO)”
“As the most expensive weapons system in history, the $1.727 trillion F-35, enters its twentieth year, program officials have delayed the important full-rate production milestone indefinitely because the program still can’t complete the initial operational testing phase.”
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“The long-anticipated full-rate production decision that would have allowed the F-35 to move beyond testing and development and into mass production was scheduled to be made by 2020. Coronavirus-related travel restrictions hindered some development fixes in 2020, but any such impacts were minor compared to the many long-standing issues with the program that predate the pandemic.
Weapon programs undergo operational testing to see if they are effective in combat and suitable for use in the hands of the troops. This is different from the developmental testing that engineers and developers conduct to determine whether the weapon meets the engineering specifications of the manufacturer’s contract. The difference between the two processes can roughly be compared to field and laboratory experimentation. In the case of the F-35, the developmental testing done to date has already revealed major shortcomings, but the most serious flaws emerged once the F-35 was in the hands of real operators in the field during operational testing.
The latest annual report from the Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) details how the failure to deliver a critical simulation facility has made it impossible to complete the initial operational tests required to make the full-rate production decision. The report also questions the program office’s amorphous management plan for future deficiency fixes and upgrades needed for the F-35—an aircraft that remains in every official sense nothing more than a massively expensive prototype.
Highlights of the report include:
Engineers can’t complete the Joint Simulation Environment facility. Taxpayers are paying a premium for the F-35 to be capable of defeating any adversary’s defense and anti-aircraft systems. The only way, short of war, to see if the F-35 can perform as promised is to simulate a modern threat environment. The contractor never delivered a functional simulation facility despite having had 14 years to do so, and the facility is still incomplete six years after the Navy was given the project.
Program officials continue to struggle against a tide of F-35 design flaws. Nearly every time the engineers solve one problem, a new one is discovered. The F-35 still has 871 unresolved deficiencies, only two fewer than last year. Ten of these are the more serious Category I deficiencies that “may cause death, severe injury, or severe occupational illness; may cause loss or major damage to a weapon system; critically restricts the combat readiness capabilities of the using organization.”
The F-35 program made some reliability improvements in 2020, but is still failing to live up to its maintenance and sortie requirements, despite the fact that those expectations were set very low. When aircraft are unable to fly often enough for adequate training, it can result in diminished pilot skills, increased peacetime accidents, and degraded combat effectiveness.
For years, one of the biggest weaknesses of the F-35 program has been the deeply flawed maintenance and spare parts computer network called the Autonomic Logistics Information System, known as ALIS. Pentagon leaders finally admitted defeat in 2020 and pulled the plug on ALIS. It will be replaced with the cloud-based Operational Data Integrated Network (ODIN), but the report warns that program officials are repeating many of the same mistakes made with ALIS, which would saddle the troops on the maintenance line with another flawed product.
The F-35 program is approaching a crossroads. The U.S. taxpayers are paying a premium for an aircraft that is supposed to be able to do it all. It is being tested to see if it can live up to the lavish promises made to sell the program. But that testing is revealing significant deficiencies. It’s bad enough that at least 563 F-35s have already been produced under the so-called “Low-Rate Production” loophole that authorizes production before operational testing has been completed. What’s worse is that we will continue to pay for more of the aircraft even as the program office is reducing resources for the tests that would reveal the remaining design flaws so they could be corrected.
And the program is nine years behind the original 2001 schedule. All of this has forced the services to resume buying legacy aircraft like the F-15EX and the F/A-18E/F while extending the life of legacy A-10s and F-16s. With the prospect of level Defense Department budgets in the coming years, it is not surprising to hear more and more service officials talk of cutting the F-35 buy well below the planned 2,400.”
READ MORE AT POGO ON THE F=35
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