F-35 JPO Wrestles With Balance Of Maturing Engineering, Reliability Rates

The F-35 aircraft is not anywhere close to being ready as a combat system. Reliability rates are still low. Many aircraft that have been recently delivered to the services have to go right back into a hanger for weeks to have upgrades done. This far into the program, the leadership is still unsure how many engineers are needed; where they are needed and when they are needed to fix various problems, reports Inside the Air Force ("F-35 JPO Wrestles With Balance Of Maturing Engineering, Reliability Rates"--04/25/2014--subscription).

The Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) which is the heart of the maintenance process for the aircraft, continues to hinder aircraft repair and availability rates. Upgrades to this system billed as supposedly solving a lot of issues will not be available until next year.

There are small areas of improvement in the maintenance method here and there however significant mission systems still are not combat effective. For instance, the helmet cueing system doesn't work which means no gun capability. Weapons dropping and firing is still in its infancy which is not helped by a limited flight envelop.

The flight flight envelop is still in the crawl portion of crawl, walk, run.

How the maintenance process, the bad idea of concurrancy and a future hope of an expanded flight envelop effect aircraft reliability is unknown in a high-volume software change-management environment.

All of these systems have to work resonabily well and be reasonabily reliable before an operational test unit can write manuals on how to use the aircraft as a weapon of war.

Until then, F-35s delivered to operational test units, have a very small sandbox to play in because the F-35 is still more prototype than a true, low rate initial production aircraft.

Finally, even if the F-35 works to specification years from now, it will be too weak to take on emerging threats and too expensive to own and operate for lower threat work.


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-Time's Battleland - 5 Part series on F-35 procurement - 2013 
-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Aviation Week (ARES blog) F-35 posts (2007 to present)
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)
-A look at the F-35 program's astro-turfing
-F-35 and F-16 cost per flying hour
-Is this aircraft worth over $51B of USMC tac-air funding?
-Combat radius and altitude, A model
-F-35A, noise abatement and airfields and the USAF
-Deceptive marketing practice: F-35 blocks
-The concurrency fraud
-The dung beetle's "it's known" lie
-F-35's air-to-air ability limited
-F-35 Blocks--2006 and today
-The F-35B design is leaking fuel



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