F-35 May Never Be Ready for Combat

CENTER FOR DEFENSE INFORMATION AT POGO ^ | September 9, 2016 | By: Dan Grazier & Mandy Smithberger

[US Navy Vet]

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is the most expensive procurement program in Pentagon history. It’s been plagued by schedule delays, gross cost overruns, and a slew of underwhelming performance reviews. Last month the Air Force declared its variant “ready for combat,” and most press reports lauded this as a signal that the program had turned a corner. But a memo issued from the Pentagon’s top testing official, based largely upon the Air Force’s own test data, showed that the Air Force’s declaration was wildly premature.

Dr. Michael Gilmore’s latest memorandum is damning. The F-35 program has derailed to the point where it “is actually not on a path toward success, but instead on a path toward failing to deliver the full Block 3F capabilities for which the Department is paying almost $400 billion.” The 16-page memo, first reported by Tony Capaccio at Bloomberg and then by others, details just how troubled this program is: years behind schedule and failing to deliver even the most basic capabilities taxpayers, and the men and women who will entrust their lives to it, have been told to expect.

The Pentagon’s top testing office warns that the F-35 is in no way ready for combat since it is “not effective and not suitable across the required mission areas and against currently fielded threats.” (Emphasis added) As it stands now, the F-35 would need to run away from combat and have other planes come to its rescue, since it “will need support to locate and avoid modern threats, acquire targets, and engage formations of enemy fighter aircraft due to outstanding performance deficiencies and limited weapons carriage available (i.e., two bombs and two air-to-air missiles).” In several instances, the memo rated the F-35A less capable than the aircraft we already have.

[TXnMA]

Would some F-35 fan please explain how 181 of the top rounds -- fired from a gun mount that yaws the A/C to port (missing the target and endangering nearby friendlies)...

...comes anywhere near doing the CAS job done by 1100 of the bottom rounds -- fired by the proven-deadly GAU-8 in the A-10?

[octex]

Every weapon system has these problems. If you wait until it’s perfect to field it, it will be in testing for 50 years and be long-obsolete before it sees its first deployment.
*******************************************
Exactly! My boss left Bell to be VP of Quality on the F-111 program and then held the same position on the F-16 program for a few years before retiring. ...By pure coincidence, we ended up seated next to one another on a flight to San Diego for a multi-day international Quality conference. He said most of the problems those programs had involved trying to match the avionics with the designed airframe control surfaces.