{"id":179473,"date":"2018-01-27T20:21:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-28T01:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/01\/27\/more-mistake-jet-follies-2\/"},"modified":"2018-01-27T20:21:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-28T01:21:00","slug":"more-mistake-jet-follies-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/01\/27\/more-mistake-jet-follies-2\/","title":{"rendered":"More Mistake Jet Follies"},"content":{"rendered":"
It’s supposed to dominate the skies, it’s supposed to provide close air support to the troops on the ground, and it’s supposed to have unparalleled reliability and availability.<\/div>\n

Not so much<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Efforts to improve the reliability of Lockheed Martin Corp<\/a>.\u2019s F-35 are \u201cstagnant,\u201d undercut by problems such as aircraft sitting idle over the last year awaiting spare parts from the contractor, according to the Pentagon\u2019s testing office.<\/p>\n

The availability of the fighter jet for missions when needed — a key metric — remains \u201caround 50 percent, a condition that has existed with no significant improvement since October 2014, despite the increasing number of aircraft,\u201d Robert Behler, the Defense Department\u2019s new director of operational testing, said in an annual report delivered Tuesday to senior Pentagon leaders and congressional committees.<\/p>\n

The F-35 section, obtained by Bloomberg News, outlined the status of the costliest U.S. weapons system as it\u2019s scheduled to end its 16-year-old development phase this year. Starting in September, the program is supposed to proceed to intense combat testing that\u2019s likely to take a year, an exercise that\u2019s at least 12 months late already. Combat testing is necessary before the plane is approved for full-rate production — the most profitable phase for Lockheed. <\/p>\n

Pentagon officials including Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and chief weapons buyer Ellen Lord have highlighted the need to reduce the F-35\u2019s $406.5 billion projected acquisition cost and its estimated $1.2 trillion price tag for long-term operations and support through 2070. Still, the Defense Department is moving to accelerate contracting and production for the fighter despite the persistence of technical and reliability issues disclosed in the current phase of development testing.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

16 years in development, and it still does not work.<\/p>\n

This has all gotten so dysfunctional that I’m waiting for a horse to be appointed to the Senate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s supposed to dominate the skies, it’s supposed to provide close air support to the troops on the ground, and it’s supposed to have unparalleled reliability and availability. Not so much: Efforts to improve the reliability of Lockheed Martin Corp.\u2019s F-35 are \u201cstagnant,\u201d undercut by problems such as aircraft sitting idle over the last year …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[384,381,588,379],"class_list":["post-179473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-aviation","tag-defense-procurement","tag-fail","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179473"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}