F-35 Replan Adds Time, Resources For Testing

Aviationn Week and Space Technology ^ | 2/7/2011 | Graham Warwick and Amy Butler

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Details of the revamped F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program are emerging and showing that, despite more than nine years of work, almost six years of challenging development and testing still lie ahead for the Lockheed Martin-led project.

Both flight testing and software development have been replanned using industry-standard productivity rates rather than the aggressive—and unachievable—assumptions on which the original program was built. This means many more sorties to refly flight-sciences test points and for regression testing of mission-system software changes.

The replan adds 2,000 flights to the program—for a total of 7,800, just 600 of which have been completed—and extends development testing to October 2016. In addition to more refly and regression flights, the new plan adds sorties for test-pilot training and builds in a 500-flight margin for unexpected flight-sciences and mission-system issues.

For the mission system, the replan means more software development engineers, more integration laboratory capacity—and more time. The final software standard, Block 3C, is scheduled to be released to flight test in June 2015. Of the 8 million lines of code on the aircraft, “we have 4 million to do, but we still have four years of development,” says Eric Branyan, deputy general manager of the F-35 program.

Software development has undergone a significant change with the decision to “sunset” the Block 0.5 standard originally planned to be released for training. Numerous issues with the software led to the decision to move early to the Block 1 standard, which includes new processing hardware, says Branyan

[rbg81]

Both flight testing and software development have been replanned using industry-standard productivity rates rather than the aggressive—and unachievable—assumptions on which the original program was built.

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This is probably a good thing. I’ve been on programs with overly aggressive schedules before. The Government PM is usually a can-do type who only wants to hear “good news”. As a result, of these the [inevitable] missed milestones, the Government is frequently forced to go back and request a replan ECP from the Contractor. Contractors luv this as they basically get paid for pushing paper instead of producing results.

[bmwcyle]

No war system has ever worked well until it is deployed. The MK-48 adcap torpedo took one submarine and one year of going out a firing the thing until it work correctly. Putting it in the users hands finishes the job.

[maddog55]

A total waste of taxpayer money...

[benewton]

And the F-22 was killed because?

[maddog55]

Limited Weapon Set,Low Usefulness in “Small Wars”, Low Usefulness in “Small Wars” and $44,259 per flying hour in 2008.