Posted on 05/26/2011 9:42:24 AM PDT by decimon
U.S. is loosing stealth technology lead according to top officials
The F-35 Lightning II will fly with three different branches of the military in the U.S. and while the Marines have previously stated that it would field the F-35 with interim Block 2B software, the Navy and USAF have noted that they will not consider the jet formally operational until software Block 3B in the past. However, the USAF and Navy are now going back on that statement.
According to testimony given by leaders of the USAF and Navy before Congress, the F-35 could be considered operational and put into service with the Block 2B software in all branches if needed. That would be assuming that there were no safety concerns with the aircraft and that software.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Herbert Carlisle said, "If the combatant commander said, 'bring me this capability,' then we clearly would provide it."
Along with Carlisle, Navy Rear Adm. David Philman said, "I don't see any reason we wouldn't be able to be told to go into theater, assuming all the safety considerations have been taken care of."
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytech.com ...
For that matter, so did Eurofighter with the Typhoon. When the Typhoon was first declared operational, it only had Air to Air software, nothing for ground attack.
F-104........drawing board to flight in less than a year..why can’t this be done now???? Unions..
Union software writers?
Unions dont write software.
I watched the F35 doing touch and goes yesterday at JRB with an F16 as a follow plane.
Neat looking bird, and loud!!!
The biggest cost is testing. You have to develop this very robust, flexible, stable platform that must demonstrate that it performs through test all environments and with all those variables, it becomes a mammoth task to track them all through every little upgrade to to software that is made. You find a software change that needs to be made in ECM, you have to go back and regression test everything to ensure that change did not break something somewhere else.
Its painful but necessary if you want the war fighter to know his platform wont choke on him in some unanticipated condition.
I misspoke, and hit post before I could recall it...sorry...my point is, how long has this thing be in design, and it still has problems even flying? software development is a very real concern, but you cannot stick software into an aircraft that is being redesigned every other month....make it fly first.....
“You find a software change that needs to be made in ECM, you have to go back and regression test everything to ensure that change did not break something somewhere else.
Its painful but necessary if you want the war fighter to know his platform wont choke on him in some unanticipated condition.”
That is done intentionally so the manufacturer can make more money. There is no operational requirement for it. On one aircraft, if you wanted to simply change the symbol displayed on the RWR, you had to change the aircraft OFP. There was NO REASON for that other than the manufacturer wanted extra cash...so the RWR figured out what the threat was, told the aircraft computer, and the aircraft computer told it to display it as “X”. It slowed things down, made it vastly harder to update the RWR software, but the manufacturer got his cash bonus.
There's a world of difference between getting an airframe in the air, and developing a complete weapons system capable of being sustained for 20+ years.
They are planning triple redundancy in the flight control computers.
Time to rethink re-manufacturing F-14, A-6, F-16 for the heavy lifting, after the exotics achieve air dominance.
Just my 2 cents, but I might be prejudiced.
“Unions dont write software.”
Boeing’s Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) don’t write software? (I actually do not know)
I’ve worked in IT for almost 20 year now, and to my knowledge, there is no union for us.
I’ve worked in business, and now higher education (private university), and I’ve never encountered a union. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one, just I’ve never heard of it.
ping
The F-104 was like a ‘60’s muscle car... simple & powerful (for the day). Today’s fighter aircraft are like flying mainframe computers. If the software doesn’t work, there’s no point sending it up.
Then you're familiar with this music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfQgCVxgD1E
No, this is usually done because the govt customer requires it. I see a lot of contractor bashing on the forum here, but if you understood the contractor/ customer relationship better, you would know that in a great many cases, the govt has a track record of mishandling the system requirements and contract management to the point of program cancellation.
Its funny how its never the governments fault when it comes to DoD, but so many see how its the governments fault when it comes to so many other issues that are of interest on FR. The ineptitude of big government does not stop at DoD contracts.
and you get what you pay for...
When it’s 30-to-1 odds in favor of the Chinese, what you pay for matters a whole lot less.
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