F-35 Falls Behind Schedule, Again

Testing can become costly and time-consuming when you're building an aircraft before you know if it will actually work as advertised.  It defeats the whole notion of schedules and target dates when you're working in the dark.

Lockheed's overdue, over-priced and under-performing F-35 stealth light bomber is the poster child for a bad idea gone wrong.  Just when development seemed to be going right it began going wrong - again.

The F-35 programme has once more fallen behind on testing.  It's not that Lockheed hasn't been churning through the flight test programme, it has.  The latest delays concern glitches in systems like the sophisticated helmet display technology.

The root of the software delays is that the program has been forced to add tests at a rate that more than offsets better-than-scheduled testing performance. The main causes, Gilmore says, are the helmet-mounted display system (HMDS) and regression testing—which ensure that changes have not caused problems in areas previously vetted. Regression testing alone has already forced the addition of 366 test points in 2013.

Flight-testing of Block 2A, the last non-combat software release, started in March 2012 with the goal of finishing in February, but was only 35% complete at the end of May.

Buffet and transonic roll-off—wing drop in high-speed turns, associated with asymmetrical movements of shock waves—still affect all variants of the JSF, despite control law changes. The program will conduct flight tests this year to assess the problem, but has now reached a limit on what can be done with control laws, Gilmore reports. Further changes would degrade maneuverability or overload the structure.

Earlier DOT&E reports have been critical of the F-35's ability to tolerate accidental or combat damage, and the new report follows that pattern. Gilmore observes that lightning-tolerance testing is yet to be completed and that even then, the fighter's airframe will have to be inspected after known lightning strikes—including skin penetration—because it does not use lightning-tolerant fasteners, Conventional fasteners were selected to save weight. Lockheed Martin says that inflight lightning protection has been approved and the critical design review is closed, with more tests due later this year. On the ground, the current plan is that ground crews will purge the fuel systems of parked aircraft with nitrogen, repeating this process as often as once every 24 hr.

Gilmore also notes that the prognostic and health monitoring system, currently, is unable to provide timely detection of combat damage to the F-35B lift-fan system, which “might fail catastrophically before the pilot can react” during transition to vertical landing. Lockheed Martin comments that “in the remote chance of a failure, the pilot would auto-eject.” 

It's always worth noting that the gremlins that plague the F-35 are not really Lockheed's fault.  It was the Bush-Cheney administration's decision that Lockheed should build the aircraft first and then test it and then go back and fix what doesn't work and then test it some more and then fix whatever next turns up and then test it some more...   you get the idea.

Meanwhile there's a reluctant acceptance that the F-35 project has become, like Wall Street, too big to fail.

Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) posed the question to the Senate Appropriations Committee as to whether Lockheed Martin's latest stealth fighter development program is "too big to fail." The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet program is fraught with high financial demands and structural issues, yet is still expected to continue forward despite the issues.

The aircraft has been designed to try and meet the needs of the Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Basically, it looks like Lockheed Martin might be trying to unrealistically make the perfect aircraft that fits the needs of three branches of the military, per the request of the government. The CATO Institute's defense expert Ben Friedman told the Daily Caller that this was the first mistake: "One of the main problems with having too many chefs in the kitchen generating requirements for this thing is that it became impossibly complex." The Marine Corps' version of the aircraft is facing the most trouble and has been placed on probation.  

The investments have been made and it seems that improvements or continued modifications to the program will provide the best outcome and use for the already invested funds. Modifications to the goals of the project might also alleviate some of the strain. Creative pressure on Lockheed Martin and implementing some of O'Hanlon's suggestions sound to be the best option to preserve the investment.

It looks like the investment into the new F-35 has made it "too big to fail."

Actually "too big to fail" is a misnomer.  Too big to stop is more like it.   Whether the F-35 succeeds or fails won't be known until it goes into combat against a sophisticated enemy force.