Just the opening paragraph should make one wonder.
"The military may deploy the F-35 joint strike fighter before the tri-service combat jet formally achieves initial operational capability, top uniformed officials told Congress earlier this week."
The F-16 became a largely successful program. The F-35 appears to be not only one of the most expensive but one of the most complex and faulty programs. When the F-16 was officially put into an active squadron at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, it was still significantly under-tested. Various documentation provided by the test community was incomplete and not always very clear. The pilots of the first operational squadron of F-16s became test pilots by any other name even though they were not qualified in that special skill. Pilots died in that first squadron simply because the USAF was in a rush to get the jet into service.
What do you think will happen if the F-35 is rushed into service before proper testing is done? The officials mentioned in the article of course claim it will be safely done. That was probably the same claim used by those that made the decision to rush the F-16 into service. CYA; in words anyway.
The F-35 program doesn't have a working helmet visual interface and does have a stack of other non-trivial problems.
What else is different in this F-16/F-35 comparison? Back then we had way more capable and qualified engineers working on USAF problems. Think about that as the DOD tries to make the F-35 flying piano work.
DOD has too many flag ranks. I suggest we start by getting rid of those guys. They are too dangerous to feed and house.
4 comments:
The usual fanatics are probably over the moon
Really should we be surprised that the F-35 will start service in this manner?
This is just a continuation of the same reality dysfunction that has become the norm with the JSF Program.
Eventually they'll kill some pilots with this nonsense, but fighter program that's to big to fail will continue
Back then we had way more capable and qualified engineers working on USAF problems.
not really, the tech back then was much simpler and most of all - there wasn't an intention to develop the 3-service airframe. if that wouldn't be a requirement (or at least only af-n), it would already be flying supercruise.
Forgot to mention that we had more of them too. After the Cold War, the USAF got rid of whole engineering shops including real electronic warfare skills which are no esta in la casa.
That and now we have almost a lost generation of not growing enough new engineers, well in part because we now have a slim manufacturing base. Add what is left--leadership by groupthink-- and fact-free analysis and well, here we are.
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