Air Force Calls Lockheed’s F-35 Jet Ready for Limited Combat

[Purveyor]

Source: Bloomberg

The U.S. Air Force declared its version of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 ready if needed for limited combat operations, a milestone for the $379 billion program that’s the Pentagon’s costliest.

The service’s announcement Tuesday that the combat jet has an “initial operational capability” reflects progress after early years marked by development setbacks and rising costs. But the F-35 is still in development, with flawed software among its biggest challenges, and won’t have full combat capability for at least another three years.

The Air Force announced the initial milestone at the start of a five-month period it had set aside to make the decision. Lockheed’s fortunes ride on the F-35, the biggest source of revenue for the world’s largest defense company. The advanced fighter accounted for 21 percent of Lockheed’s $12.9 billion net sales during the second quarter, according to a regulatory filing, and its impact should grow as the jet moves to full production.

“The F-35A will be the most dominant aircraft in our inventory, because it can go where our” older aircraft “cannot and provide the capabilities our commanders need on the modern battlefield,” General Herb “Hawk” Carlisle, head of the Air Combat Command, said in a statement, referring to the Air Force version of the fighter.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-02/air-force-says-its-lockheed-f-35-is-ready-for-limited-combat-use

[pangaia]

1. Designing a fighter jet with 'flawed software'

is about as stupid as designing an SUV with such poor rear/side vision it needs a back-up camera.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

13. Except they were forced to remove the rear drive trannie

Because of weight concerns, and the fact that they could not get it to go in reverse. Oh, and the trams uses flammable transmission fluid which explodes, eh, "rapidly oxidizes" when it reaches average operating temps.

[uawchild]

2. The F-35’s Terrifying Bug List

The Pentagon’s top testing official has weighed and measured the F-35 and found it wanting.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programs the most expensive military program in the world, is even more broken than previously thought. The jet can’t tell old parts from new ones, randomly prevents user logins into the logistics information system, and trying to eject out of it will likely result in serious neck injury and maybe death. A Pentagon office is warning that the plane is being rushed into service.

The Pentagon’s office of testing and evaluation on Monday released a report detailing major problems, or “deficiencies” with the aircraft. The report follows the release of a December memo by Michael Gilmore, the Department of Defense’s director for Operational Test and Evaluation, or OT&E. The report goes on to question the logic of pushing other governments to purchase large blocks of the aircraft until the issues are fixed.

The Air Force is currently scheduled to announce their version of the plane is ready to begin flying, known as “initial operating capability,” in August or December at the latest. That follows the Marines declaring their version flight ready last summer. After that, the next F-35 milestone is the initial operational test & evaluation phase, scheduled for 2017, in which program watchers test of the plane is operationally capable but also effective. That 2017 projection is unrealistic unless the Air Force takes some serious shortcuts in testing, according to the new report.

So what’s wrong with the F-35? Below are some of the report’s key findings.
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/02/f-35s-terrifying-bug-list/125638/

[longship]

3. Limited combat?

What they mean is firing their guns from the ground.

[cstanleytech]

4. No, more likely it can fire blanks from the ground at gnats. nt

[uawchild]

5. Pentagon Wants a Plane Packed With Hundreds of Missiles to Beat Putin’s Air Force

The U.S. Air Force is short hundreds of fighter jets. To make up the gap, the Pentagon has come up with a wild concept: stuff hundreds of missiles into Cold War-era heavy bombers.

The next time America’s high-tech jet fighters fly into battle against a major foe, they might have some serious backup—heavy bombers, newly modified to haul potentially hundreds of missiles and fire them at the fighters’ command.
The upgraded bombers have picked up a cool new name: “arsenal planes.”

That’s right, the next global air war could involve the U.S. military newest, smallest warplanes—its “fifth-generation” stealth fighters—working in teams with the military’s Cold War-era heavy bombers, its oldest and largest warplanes.

It’s an unprecedented and seemingly unlikely combination born of budgetary and strategic desperation. But for all its counter-intuitiveness, the fighter-bomber pairing—which could bring to bear overwhelming firepower—might be just the thing that the U.S. Air Force needs to stay ahead of the rapidly-modernizing Russian and Chinese air arms.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/10/pentagon-wants-a-plane-packed-with-hundreds-of-missiles-to-beat-putin-s-air-force.html

Trying to make a salient point out of this article, is the implication that fighter jets are becoming obsolete as missile technology improves? I mean if any old lumbering strategic bomber can be loaded to the gills with so many new generation stand-off capable missiles, why ARE we spending so much money on such a small number of F35 fighters?

[Plucketeer]

6. The whole thing is just plane stupid.

How many truly hungry Americans could eat and/or eat better AND have a safe and secure abode to live in for the cost of these idiotic boondoggles???

[mahannah]

7. Limited combat is a worthy goal.

[GreydeeThos]

8. Send them to Libya; let's see what they can do

F-35 is supposed to have ground attack capabilities superior to the A-10. It is time to test that claim.

[Sherman A1]

9. I can think of another desert place for them.

A nice facility in the SW of the country with a large area to store unneeded aircraft, where they can be turned in scrap.

[Nihil]

10. "Limited combat"? As in "shoot unarmed civilians who can't defend themselves"?

Do the pilots have to return to base as soon as a threat appears?

So glad that there are no other potential uses for all of taxpayer money being
wasted on boosting Lockheed's fortunes ...

[warrprayer]

11. "Limited" Combat?

[reddread]

12. your check is in the mail...