Monday, February 22, 2016

F-35 magical, mythical, "all is well" selling tour hits the road in Australia


Ya know what I so hate about the current stance taken by military leadership toward the F-35?  Instead of rolling up their sleeves and getting to work to fix the F-35, they're instead reduced to traveling salesman to prop up the program.

If the plane is the world beater that they contend it will be then the customers will come.  If it delivers all that they say then you'll have to beat nation state air forces off with a stick to keep them from pushing cash in your face to buy it.

But no.  Instead they're acting like slimey used car salesmen.  Check this out from ABC.Net.Au
The American head of the global Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program has acknowledged the software in the aircraft is "a big risk" ahead of a Senate inquiry into the Federal Government's acquisition of the jets.
Australia is spending $17.8 billion on buying 72 US-made aircraft and associated systems, with the first expected to arrive in Australia in 2018 and enter service in 2020, replacing the F/A-18 Hornet fleet.
US Lieutenant General Christopher Bogdan, the head of the JSF Joint Program Office, is set to appear before an Australian Senate inquiry into the Federal Government's acquisition of the F-35A jets in Canberra on Thursday.
So what do we have?  Bogdan is in Australia attempting to keep them from doing a "Canada" and thinking twice before they spend a metric assload of money to buy a plane that they will have to fix, update and then fix again in order for it to equal the Super Hornets that they currently have on deck.  But wait..it gets worse...
"I can tell you software on the program is a big risk, our maintenance information system called ALIS — that's an acronym for Autonomic Logistics Information System — is troublesome," he said.
"It's behind schedule and it's got problems that cause the maintainers to do a lot of things they don't want to do."
In a submission to the Senate inquiry, Australian defence analyst David Archibald said F-35s would have trouble operating out of northern Australia.
"The F-35 uses its fuel for cooling its electronics," he wrote.
"The aircraft won't start if its fuel is too warm, making deployment in northern Australia problematic."
But Lt Gen Bogdan said the issue with fuel was no different to legacy fighters.
"There are limits on any engine including the F-35 as to how hot the fuel can be before you put it in the plane," he said.
So he's laying out the issues and still wants to say that this is the plane that the Australians need (not even gonna touch on my anger with the cactus rape that the USMC is taking over the thing)?

Simply amazing.

We're seeing institutional delusion.  The entire DoD is behaving as if they're in some drug induced haze that prevents them from seeing reality.  Almost 20 years later, major problems exist but we're suppose to believe Bogdan in the middle of his magical, mythical, "all is well" selling tour?

I don't fucking think so.

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