News of the Gold-Plated Turd - AKA the F35 - quietly made the rounds the past few days.
In the rush to build as many F35s as possible before people start asking too many questions, the fleet is outrunning the supply of engines.
https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/202...t=su&or=btn_tw
F-35 fighter plane engines are in short supply, with the solution months away, causing the Defense Department to reduce its schedule of exhibition flights and to start planning for a shortage as soon as 2022.
The Defense Department's F-35 office has advised that about five to six percent of the U.S. F-35 fleet could be without useable engines by 2022, and up to 20 percent of the plane's fleet could be sidelined by 2025.
And then the USAF's top officer chimes in..
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidax...h=4a1724211b16
The U.S. Air Force’s top officer wants the service to develop an affordable, lightweight fighter to replace hundreds of Cold War-vintage F-16s and complement a small fleet of sophisticated—but costly and unreliable—stealth fighters.
F35 Program delays and stumbles continue:
https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2021/0...-a-crossroads/
DOTE Annual Report
https://www.dote.osd.mil/Portals/97/...rP-qB0QQ%3D%3D
Highlights of the report include:
- Engineers can’t complete the Joint Simulation Environment facility.
- Program officials continue to struggle against a tide of F-35 design flaws. Nearly every time the engineers solve one problem, a new one is discovered. The F-35 still has 871 unresolved deficiencies, only two fewer than last year.
- For years, one of the biggest weaknesses of the F-35 program has been the deeply flawed maintenance and spare parts computer network called the Autonomic Logistics Information System, known as ALIS. Pentagon leaders finally admitted defeat in 2020 and pulled the plug on ALIS.
Contractors love "spiral development" as it allows them to put flawed shyte with minimal capabilities like the F-35 in the field and then get paid to fix it. Over and over and over again.