DOD rejects F-35 operational test plan

In a meeting last Friday, the U.S. Department of Defense rejected a comprehensive operational test plan for the F-35. Depending on your point of view, this is either a sign of sanity or more meddling by the U.S. government on an important defense program.

Operational testing normally assumes that the airframe has the basic flight envelop figured out, that the aircraft has some way of employing weapons via already complete tests and is safe enough to fly for go-to-war operations. The F-35 program has not met any of these requirements.

The flight envelop is still limited. The operational gear on the aircraft is not ready; guns, bomb-dropping, missile firing, sensors and there seems no indication that this will get done any time soon.

Almost 6 years after first flight.

A former LM official tried to make a case for his team. He even mentioned the U2 and SR-71. The problem with this is that in that era, the company had innovative engineers that ran the show and not marketing / management pukes that have no idea about the definition of a "quantum leap."

The former LM guy also mentioned the F-16. A few points. The F-16 was originally designed as a throw-away jet to be built in affordable numbers to meet a Soviet threat. The F-35 camp keeps throwing out terms like 30, 40, 65 years of program life. Whatever.

And, in the late 70's the newly operational F-16 won a NATO tactical bomb competition in Scotland against the likes of the A-7, Jaguar and F-111. The F-16 was not only a dead accurate day-dumb-bomber, it could defend itself reasonably well and egress...fast.

The news also reports that LM is having trouble meeting earned value management metrics (EVM). This has been a challenge for a few years.

What are we spending to develop and produce the F-35? Well, according to EVM, we might not know.

The Pentagon's Defense Contracts Management Agency also gave an update on its work monitoring Lockheed's Earned Value Management System after announcing in June that it would withhold 5 percent of the price of the fifth lot of production planes due to continued shortcomings with the system.

The United States Marketing Corps boss is quotable about the troubled F-35 helmet that is a critical piece of man-machine interface. If only that were the only fixable F-35 problem to get it toward operational viability.

Our politicians are a problem with the F-35 for sure. Mixed messages. For example, McCain states there are serious F-35 troubles and then when on his home turf, those things are glossed over and well, he is trying to get reelected.

So, without a credible operational testing plan, the F-35 program office will have to do more work. And there are all those wasted resources at Eglin which at this time, might produce some trained pilots that can perform an equal number of take-offs and landings with the aircraft but not much else.