{"id":182443,"date":"2015-09-19T22:29:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-20T03:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/09\/19\/f-35-testing-beginning-to-resemble-lance-armstrong-blood-tests\/"},"modified":"2015-09-19T22:29:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-20T03:29:00","slug":"f-35-testing-beginning-to-resemble-lance-armstrong-blood-tests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/09\/19\/f-35-testing-beginning-to-resemble-lance-armstrong-blood-tests\/","title":{"rendered":"F-35 Testing Beginning to Resemble Lance Armstrong Blood Tests"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out that the recent “successful deployment of the F-35 in US Marine Corps exercises was nothing of the sort<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Marine Corps triumphantly declared<\/a> its variant of the F-35 combat ready in late July. In the public relations build-up, the recent demonstration of its performance on the USS Wasp was heralded as a rebuttal<\/a> to the program\u2019s critics.<\/span>

<\/span>But a complete copy of a recent memo from the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) \u2014 obtained by the Project On Government Oversight<\/a> through the Freedom of Information Act \u2014 reveals that a number of maintenance and reliability problems<\/a> \u201care likely to present significant near-term challenges for the Marine Corps.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>The Marine Corps named this demonstration \u201cOperational Test One,\u201d but it turns out it wasn\u2019t actually an operational test, \u201cin either a formal or an informal sense of the term.\u201d To count as an operational test, conditions should closely match realistic combat conditions.<\/span>

<\/span>But DOT&E found the demonstration \u201cdid not \u2014 and could not \u2014 demonstrate that Block 2B F-35B is operationally effective or suitable for use in any type of limited combat operation, or that it was ready for real-world operational deployments, given the way the event was structured.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>The details buried inside the report\u2019s annexes also show just how much trouble the crew faced in attempting to keep the F-35s selected for the demonstration flightworthy. Before the demonstration even began the Marine Corps had to swap out one F-35B with another \u201cdue to a fuel system fault that would have been impractical to fix at sea given the maintenance workload.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>In combat, not only would this kind of replacement be impractical, it would likely be impossible.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It goes on to state that the the WASP was emptied of other aircraft in order to facilitate F-35 ops, critical hardware and software not being present on the system, around 80 civilian contractors on board to keep the aircraft running, a prognostics and maintenance system that is basically non-functional, and a much lower operational tempo than promised.<\/p>\n

This aircraft is a turkey, and I see no prospect of it being fixed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It turns out that the recent “successful deployment of the F-35 in US Marine Corps exercises was nothing of the sort: The Marine Corps triumphantly declared its variant of the F-35 combat ready in late July. In the public relations build-up, the recent demonstration of its performance on the USS Wasp was heralded as a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,970,1008,1051,1006],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-corruption","category-defense-procurement","category-hypocrisy","category-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182443"}],"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=182443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}