The Pentagon will continue to pay Bugatti prices for Yugos until the morale improves.
Software upgrades have haunted this flying circus since its “full operational status” was fabricated years ago.
The combination of a severely Sovietized acquisition system married to the trillions spent on “defense” makes for a witches brew of chaos avalanches that keep on giving. And remember, the GAO further highlighted that the defense contractor’s liability cap is $100,000 per F-35 jet, despite each aircraft’s price tag ranging from $82.5 million to $109 million.
Not only is the aircraft idling at a roughly 30 percent readiness rating (35B/C models) for the fleet, cost in excess of 40,000 an hour to fly and a relatively short combat radius but no one has lost their job, faced a tribunal or gone to jail over this trillion[s] dollar cock-up.
The delays in the Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3) hardware and software upgrade, originally set for completion by July 2023, have left newly delivered F-35s parked at an airfield in Fort Worth, Texas, exposing them to the risks of severe weather. That delay is now a year and counting.
Blocks 1,2, and 3 were initial capabilities with Block 3 providing basic combat capability. Block 4 is the full combat capability. Many of the planned Block 4 capabilities have now been pushed into the indefinitely-delayed-to-some-future-date category which means they’ll never happen.
Blocks 1A and 1B – initial pilot training and multi-level security
Block 2A – improved training capabilities
Block 2B – basic air-to-air combat capability; basic air-to-ground combat capability
Block 3i – Block 2B plus new hardware to support USAF Initial Operating Capability (IOC)
Block 3F – full flight envelope and baseline combat capabilities; began 2018 and completed 2023
Block 4 – full weapons (17 new weapons) and ESM capabilities; pending; requires TR-3
The delays in delivery to the Pentagon were linked to the lingering issue with the TR-3 tech refresh, which refers to a series of software and hardware improvements to the F-35, giving the jets better displays, computer memory, and processing power. But now, as is a DoD habit, the forces will accept the “training” birds which are NOT combat capable according to the DoD.
COMNAVOPS avers in his splendid fashion flensing the corpus of bureaucratic bungling:
About a year ago, the Pentagon put a freeze on deliveries of new F-35s pending fixes for the TR-3 implementation. F-35s have been piling up in warehouses awaiting a resolution of the software issues.
Honestly, the freeze on deliveries has been more symbolic than effective since the Pentagon has continued payments for the new aircraft with just a $7M withholding per aircraft.[1] That means that Lockheed has still been getting around 91% of the contract price for aircraft that don’t meet spec and can’t be delivered. That’s not a bad deal if you can get it!
Financial aspects aside, I’m not sure any of us fully appreciate just how badly broken the software side of things are in the F-35 program. The Pentagon has just caved to various pressures and announced that the delivery freeze has been lifted despite the software problem remaining unresolved. Hmm …
Bowing to operational demands, the Pentagon has lifted a year-long freeze on accepting new F-35 stealth fighters — even though the problem that prompted the standstill has not been fully resolved.[1]
Persistent problems with TR-3 prompted officials to eventually capitulate to an interim software fix …[1]
Read this next quote slowly and carefully and fully grasp the meaning and implications.
… jets will be delivered with interim software that facilitates training, but a second software drop that enables combat capabilities likely won’t be available for at least another year.[1]That’s right. We’re delivering training jets but not fully combat capable jets. We’re decades into this program, have built a thousand aircraft, and still don’t have a fully combat capable aircraft. Someone should face a firing squad for this.
https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2024/07/f-35-software-problems-continue.html
Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me.
