F-35 STILL a Problem Child

It baffles me on why other nations are buying the F-35.
I just hope Russian & Chinese generation 5 fighters are as crappy as ours.

https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2022/03/f-35-program-stagnated…
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program appears to be in a state of suspended development, with little progress made in 2021 toward improving its lackluster performance. The latest report by the Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) reveals stagnation and even backsliding in some fleet reliability measures.

And that’s just the public DOT&E report.

In an unprecedented move, DOT&E is concealing many of the key details of the F-35’s poor performance. For the first time ever, the testing office created a non-public “controlled unclassified information” version of its report

Despite more than 20 years and approximately $62.5 billion spent so far on research and development alone, program officials still haven’t been able to deliver an aircraft that can fly as often as needed or to demonstrate its ability to perform in combat, which places military personnel in jeopardy. Most of the important details can only be found in the non-public version of the report, but some key findings are available in the public version:

The F-35’s availability rates “plateaued” over most of 2021 and then declined in the final months of the year.
Program leaders abandoned the efforts to complete the troubled Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) and instead decided to build a new network called Operational Data Integrated Network (ODIN). The new system, meant to anticipate maintenance problems and track parts and repair processes, runs faster and is more deployable than ALIS but is already behind schedule and has some of the same cyber vulnerabilities.
The Joint Simulation Environment, meant to be a high-fidelity and fully validated and verified simulator to test the F-35’s high-end capabilities, is now more than four years behind schedule. A full-production decision can’t be made until the planned 64 tests in the simulation can be completed.
The F-35 program’s modernization effort, an effort to complete the delivery of capabilities that should have been included under the original development contract, is behind schedule and has done little to reduce the high number of unresolved design flaws.

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It baffles me on why other nations are buying the F-35.
I just hope Russian & Chinese generation 5 fighters are as crappy as ours.

It is the crap box replacement for the older F15 and F16. It is not as good as the F16.

It is prefect for export.

We will create a generation of planes for our usage next.

The F-35 program’s modernization effort, an effort to complete the delivery of capabilities that should have been included under the original development contract, is behind schedule and has done little to reduce the high number of unresolved design flaws.

As offered before, seems the objective of the US defense industry is to milk the “development” phase, not ever get anything produced and deployed.

How many B1s did we get, for all the "development? 100?

How many B2? 20?

How many Zumwalt class DDs? 3.

The LCS program has been a cluster too. The first ships of both classes have been retired as too fouled up to repair. The latest Navy budget proposal recommends junking 8-10 more Freedom class ships as, also, too fouled up to repair.

Littoral Disaster: Navy Wants To Retire 10 Littoral Combat Ships According To Report

Last September, the Navy decommissioned the USS Freedom, leaving it with only nine other Freedom class LCSs in service. All of the remaining ships were delivered between 2015 and 2020, making the entire fleet extremely young.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44811/littoral-disaste…

Dick Jones speaking to the potential profit from military contracts, spare parts, and training support for ED209: “who cares if it doesn’t work”.

Steve