A review of F-35 problems

The F-35 program will be discussed for decades to come on how not to develop and field a combat aircraft.

Also, it seems that the concept of low-rate initial production is being abused by program leadership:

As a result of lessons learned from disasters with concurrency, in the 1960s and 1970s, procurement law was changed to prohibit full-rate production until testing was complete. Low-rate initial production (LRIP) was permitted during development. U.S. law stipulated that the LRIP total should cover no more than one unit of production-configured aircraft and be no more than 10% of the total.

A January briefing by Lockheed Martin shows how the rule-makers’ intent was set aside in JSF planning, with no fewer than 11 LRIP batches totaling 882 aircraft. Long-lead procurement was expected to start this year for an LRIP-7 package of 70 aircraft—which would have been the world’s largest fighter production program—in advance of full envelope exploration or the completion of fatigue testing. JSF leaders argued through 2009 that the concurrency risk was acceptable because improved modeling and simulation (M&S) would reduce the number of problems discovered in physical testing.