Sunday, March 25, 2012

Our Buggy Stealth Buggy

Okay, the F-35 isn't a buggy, it's a bomb truck - a very buggy flying bomb truck.

The F-35 has had more than its share of lurches, stumbles and controversy along its path to become the most overpriced, overdue and underperforming fighter aircraft in history.  Originally intended to be operational in 2010, it's now faintly hoped the F-35 will be combat ready in 2018.

A story that didn't get much attention in Canada is a report of new bugs or major flaws, thirteen of them, have have surfaced in the F-35.   These flaws were outlined in a report leaked just before Christmas.   One of these is described as a "classified deficiency" which some aviation types are sure means the F-35's stealth performance.    The F-35 might just not be nearly as stealthy as Lockheed promised it would be.

The late Chalmers Johnson presciently forecast that the F-35's elaborate onboard computer software, all 10-million lines of it, would plague the airplane.   It has.  The previous software record holder, the highly capable F-22, has just 5-million lines of onboard software.   The US General Accounting Office zeroed in on the F-35s software glitches in its recent scathing criticism of the project.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Buggy software? Structural cracks on brand new airframes? The Harper crowd may know something about electoral machines, but they know dick about flying machines.

The F-35 is, by most informed accounts, an accident waiting to happen. The Super Hornet might be the best choice for Canada at this point.