Lockheed Risks $800 Million Withheld Over New F-35 Software (bloomberg.com) 141
Lockheed Martin may see more than $800 million in payments withheld through next June until it wins approval for the software powering its most advanced version of the F-35, according to newly disclosed delivery figures. From a report: The No. 1 US defense contractor is on tap to finish production of about 52 of the upgraded TR-3 model fighter jets by Dec. 31 and approximately 12 per month after that, or 72 more by June 30, for as many as 124 jets, according to the data released Monday by Russ Goemaere, the Pentagon's spokesman on the F-35.
The Pentagon is withholding $7 million per aircraft until the new software is validated because the aircraft are being placed in storage until then. At 124 jets, that's $868 million. Last month, the Defense Department withheld $7 million on each of the first four upgraded F-35s. The aircraft needs the delay-plagued software upgrade to function fully with new cockpit hardware before it can carry more precise weapons and gather more information on enemy aircraft and air defenses. The upgrade will increase processing power 37 times and memory 20 times over the F-35's current capabilities.
The Pentagon is withholding $7 million per aircraft until the new software is validated because the aircraft are being placed in storage until then. At 124 jets, that's $868 million. Last month, the Defense Department withheld $7 million on each of the first four upgraded F-35s. The aircraft needs the delay-plagued software upgrade to function fully with new cockpit hardware before it can carry more precise weapons and gather more information on enemy aircraft and air defenses. The upgrade will increase processing power 37 times and memory 20 times over the F-35's current capabilities.
Do not fret, Lockheed will be ok (Score:5, Insightful)
They will get their $868 million dollars ...and probably get interest or bonus fees on top of it.
About $40 billion per year according to this site.
https://www.defense.gov/News/R... [defense.gov]
Also surprising/not-surprising is that the State of Virginia gets the most spending at the state level. Not CA, not TX, not NV (cough cough).
I guess that's Arlington and/or Langley depending on whose books you are looking at.
Aside from all the political theatre, it'd be nice if a group of bi-partisan legislators just made it their primary jobs to: /robo calls forever
-Simplify the tax code...flat tax, whatever. But start phasing out all the wacko deductions...even the ones I like.
-Get the freakin' defense contractor welfare scam under control.
-Destroy telemarketing
Is there anyone of any political stripe that objects to these (whose not in the pocket of the corp beneficiaries)?
Once those are resolved we can move onto the FoxNews/MSNBC circus issues
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There is no both sides anymore with cable news. MSNBC has never been sued multiple times for billions because they lied repeatedly.
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So: if you make $0 a year, you get $24k.
if you make $10k a year, you get $19k in UBI, plus the $10k you made, making you a total of $34k.
If you make $48k a year, you get no UBI.
You just get your salary. and so on and so fourth until you buy something. Anything. Everything.
Then, adjust that 22% based on the prior years' spending vs forecasted G
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So you want a 50% income tax on top of existing income taxes for incomes above $10k, until you hit $48k, where the tax rate drops by 50 percentage points.
This creates exactly the problem that UBI was invented to solve: that lower incomes experience high effective taxation, sometimes above 100%.
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Idk, I'm not opposed to some sort of UBI, but I'm not crazy about the idea either. My way just seems simpler.
The idea of a VAT is intriguing as well, if you were to exempt things like food/clothing/utilities I'd be on-board. Basically, the entire driver behind my plan is to remove the tax burden as much as possible from the lowest earners, and simplify our tax code.
Re: Do not fret, Lockheed will be ok (Score:2)
UBI is very much simpler than solutions which don't include it because it replaces many programs. Social security (which is really a whole bunch of programs under one banner itself), SNAP, TANF, SDI, UIB, GR, and a whole host of others can simply go away. It takes a huge number of people to administer these programs, and many of them are paid by the feds even when they work in your state. Excess payments will be recovered naturally via taxation and the IRS already exists, so the total required manpower take
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Make the standard deduction 25k for single, 50k for a family and that's it.
So if a family with four kids all file separately, they get $150k in deductions?
Other than that, scrap every damn deduction, credit, and write-off on the books.
You just put 99% of companies out of business. A grocery store can't operate if it can't deduct the wholesale cost of the goods sold. No factory can operate if it can't deduct the wages it pays employees.
Oh, but that isn't what you meant. Of course they can keep the reasonable deductions! But who decides what is reasonable and what is not? Congress? You're right back to where you started.
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So if a family with four kids all file separately, they get $150k in deductions?
Where are you getting that? I said 25/50, and that's it. No more child tax credits, no more additional deductions. (I could have been clearer by saying " 50k for married", not "family") If the kids have their income, they report it just like they do now, but with a 25k (or 50k if they are married) deduction.
You just put 99% of companies out of business.
I was talking specifically about personal income tax, not businesses. That's a whole other ball of yarn that needs to be de-tangled.
Oh, but that isn't what you meant
Not my fault your reading between the lines doesn't match my opinion.
But who decides what is reasonable and what is not? Congress? You're right back to where you started.
W
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I said 25/50, and that's it. No more child tax credits
Nobody will use child tax credits anyway if the kid can get a $25k deduction by filing a separate return.
I could have been clearer by saying " 50k for married", not "family"
Marriage rates will immediately fall, while divorce rates soar.
If the kids have their income, they report it just like they do now, but with a 25k ... deduction.
So can I pay my kid $25k to mow the lawn?
I was talking specifically about personal income tax, not businesses.
Most businesses are sole proprietorships. They are individuals, not corporations.
Not my fault your reading between the lines doesn't match my opinion.
Tax advisors earn a lot of money by reading between the lines.
Would starting over really be that bad of an idea?
Perhaps not. But that's not what you're proposing.
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Nobody will use child tax credits anyway if the kid can get a $25k deduction by filing a separate return.
I'm confused by the pushback on this. If your kid has an income today they have to file a tax return. (I'm aware you CAN include their income on your return, but it seems extremely limited.) There's already a $12,950 (2022) standard deduction. All I'm proposing is increasing it, and canning other deductions.
Marriage rates will immediately fall, while divorce rates soar.
Lol, wtf are you talking about? You're gonna divorce your wife because your standard deduction went up? I genuinely don't understand the thought process here.
So can I pay my kid $25k to mow the lawn?
Can you do that today? No? Then why bring
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There aren't enough rich people to make a dent in the entitlement bill and you can only confiscate all of their wealth once.
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Why not just tax the rich a lot more?
Rich money is mobile money. Raise taxes and it will flow out of the country, taking spending and jobs with it.
Corporations more?
Much of the taxes on corporations are passed on as higher prices, lower wages, fewer jobs, and lower returns to middle-class 401k accounts.
If you want higher prices, a sales tax makes more sense. If you want lower wages, then higher payroll taxes make more sense. If you want to hit shareholders, then raise taxes on dividends and capital gains.
But a direct tax on corporate profits makes little sense.
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A carbon tax makes more sense than anything you listed.
A carbon tax makes no sense, and you pointed out why.
Rich money is mobile money. Raise taxes and it will flow out of the country, taking spending and jobs with it.
The rising cost of natural gas in Europe has the same effect as a carbon tax, it makes business in North America look cheaper. There's factories being torn down in Germany right now, getting boxed up for a boat ride to Canada or USA, to get built where the natural gas pipelines are in place. Entire industrial sectors are moving out of Europe because the price of energy is climbing there. There are apologists for high energy prices in some parts of Euro
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The rising cost of natural gas in Europe has the same effect as a carbon tax,
Nope. A carbon tax hits coal, oil, and gas at the point of extraction. But it also hits imports that are taxed on the carbon used to produce them.
So there's no benefit to shipping jobs overseas to produce products that are transported back.
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Nope. A carbon tax hits coal, oil, and gas at the point of extraction. But it also hits imports that are taxed on the carbon used to produce them.
So there's no benefit to shipping jobs overseas to produce products that are transported back.
Who says that the products have to be transported back?
Make it expensive to do business in the USA then then jobs leave the USA, the wealth leaves the USA, and we just see people making money somewhere else in the world to buy the products that could not be sold in the USA because the taxes got too high.
You want to see carbon emissions lowered? Then maybe we need to do like so many other nations are doing and lift the self imposed ban on new nuclear power. There's no lack of people willing and able to bui
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Well you are going to have to think real hard on which scares you more, global warming or nuclear power.
Speaking for myself, neither. There may or may not be any significant global warming, but if there is it is not being significantly caused by human activities.
And nuclear fission is obviously the best way of generating massive amounts of power cheaply and safely - if politicians would remove their heads from their colons and cut all the wholly unnecessary panic spending.
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Why not just tax the rich a lot more? Corporations more?
Because the corporations (owned by the rich) own Congress, both parties, and pretty much everyone in Washington.
The US government works for the corporations. One of its main tasks is to minimise the amount of tax they pay.
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Simplify the tax code...flat tax, whatever. But start phasing out all the wacko deductions...even the ones I like.
...Is there anyone of any political stripe that objects to these...
Yes, the rich people who got the deductions inserted in the first place.
I wonder how much that is per line of code (Score:2)
That's a lot of money for a USB stick full of javascript with some ADA thrown in.
Does anyone have a link to a schematic or block diagram of the overall jet that might explain what the hell all that software does and where it runs? This article has me curious now.
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might explain what the hell all that software does
F-35s have $500,000 virtual reality helmets. There is stuff on an F-35 that you'll be lucky to experience before you're dead.
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might explain what the hell all that software does
F-35s have $500,000 virtual reality helmets. There is stuff on an F-35 that you'll be lucky to experience before you're dead.
And much of that development dates back to the early 2000s. You think I'm lying dontcha?
Nope. Been there and saw the special badges, the man-trap'd work area for the engineers, and heard people talking about the waay cool simulators.
And not a teabagger in sight in that massive building way back then.
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ADA = America Dental Association
Ada = The programming language named after Ada Lovelace
The F35 is programmed in C and C++, not Ada, and certainly not ADA.
Re:I wonder how much that is per line of code (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong (Score:2)
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I can't tell if this is honest ignorance or trying to make a joke...
I suppose if the original author loves lace, I'll be able to tell.
We need a Truman-style purge of the MIC. (Score:3)
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I don't know about a near peer, but in Vietnam a while ago, a bunch of little guys in black pyjamas, armed with second rate cast-off Russian and Chinese weapons, managed to give the US all it wanted and then some.
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Actually, they knew they couldn't realistically win that war before they even started it. The amount of troops and money needed to actually win the war was so untenable that it would have caused a political crisis in the US that made the actual anti-war protests look like a tea party! So they decided to cause trouble because they chose to partner with Russia (after we snubbed and humiliated Ho Chi Man) because that was a no no in our books. The hubris on display during that whole war was remarkable. We
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Excellent points.
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The US failure in Vietnam wasn't a military failure. The weapons systems worked fine for the most part. What happened was a failure of political will.
If the North Vietnamese had made an unprovoked attack on (say) a US naval base, before the US got involved, such that the entire US populace was behind the war effort, the USA would have rolled over North Vietnam with relative ease.
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I'm not so sure about that. As has been demonstrated repeatedly elsewhere, creative use of simple technology can wreak havoc with sophisticated weapons. Remember when the Serbs figured out US targeting systems had difficulty discriminating between SAM radar and unshielded microwave ovens?
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Yeah - my pizza wa ruined
Re:We need a Truman-style purge of the MIC. (Score:4, Interesting)
there is practically no chance that a war against a "near-peer" would go in our favor.
Haven't been paying attention to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, have you? Between Javelins, Stingers, HIMARS, M777 artillery, counter-battery radar, to name just a few, they've been wiping Russian equipment off the map. And that's just the American side. Throw in what the Europeans have developed such as the British Storm Shadow and the joint venture NLAW, and it's been no contest in head-to-head situations.
The only reason Ukraine hasn't been doing better is because they can't get the equipment they need fast enough and in enough quantities. Zelensky is right when he said they wanted to go on the offensive in the Spring but couldn't because they lacked sufficient equipment. Had Ukraine been given what they needed, in an amount closer to what they needed, they would be through the Russian lines and at, or nearly at, the Crimean border. He and his staff either learned or did speed reading on Russian military tactics and knew they needed speed to overcome quantity. Since they don't have the necessary amounts they need they have to rely on quality and as we've seen, that quality outstrips what was the second largest army in the world.
If Ukraine can inflict this much devastation while having to learn on the fly, imagine how fast things would be over if the U.S. had gone up against the Russians using all the resources at its disposal. The Black Sea fleet wouldn't have existed past the first day.
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Hard to argue the point on the Black Sea Fleet but that isn't where the war will be won or lost. Unless one side loses political will, which doesn't currently seem likely, it will be won or lost with the logistics supplying the boots on the ground.
No Black Sea Fleet = way less bombing (missiles, drones) over Kyiv, Odessa, Danube ports, airfields, Western parts of Ukraine in general, so more resources available for them to counter boots on the ground in the East.
If the Russian Army had a land border with CONUS and tried it here, do you think we'd do appreciably better than Ukraine on the ground? Against an adversary willing to treat its own men as disposable? I'm not sure we would.
With the long range weapons the US is withholding so far, much less Russian troops and ammunition would reach the battle lines. In a ground conflict, US would use long range weapons right away. The same about planes, Ukraine is still waiting for F16. They are also waiting for Abrams tanks and
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the war has exposed a pretty nasty fact about western defense production.
You are absolutely right, but I think the lesson is slightly different from what you are saying. I think the real lesson is: fancy, high-tech weapons are slow and expensive to produce. Western Europe plus the US are exhausting their stocks of weapons in a small conflict against an out-of-date, technologically backward Russian military.
"Quantity has a quality all its own"
The West seems to have forgotten this aphorism, but it is very true. The Russians are buying cheap Iranian drones by the hundreds, wh
Re: We need a Truman-style purge of the MIC. (Score:2)
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The US government, and the Republicans in particular, need to realize that the free market isn't the answer to everything. Emergency preparedness requires reserve capacity sitting idle. That's an anathema to the free market. And the Ukraine war has shown us that we need a mix of low-quantity high-tech weapons that can out-fight your enemy and high-quantity low-tech weapons that can be quickly and cheaply manufactured to out-last your enemy. And no free market solution is going to get us there. Now, I'm
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None of those wonder-weapons you mention have had any impact against Russia at all, otherwise Ukraine wouldn't be constantly begging for ever more and different wonder-weapons.
Re: We need a Truman-style purge of the MIC. (Score:2)
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None of those wonder-weapons you mention have had any impact against Russia at all
Really? Is that why Russia never made it to Kyiv in 3 days? You think those javelins and NLAWs were sent just for show? Those two weapons alone brought Russian columns to a halt because of their devastating capabilities.
Stingers and the Polish variant have prevented Russian air superiority for a year and a half. You don't think they have an effect [youtube.com]?
Right now, as Ukraine moves toward Tokmak, a recurring complaint from interc
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The problem is that NATO has entrenched their manufacturing and industry to fight a war according to their doctrine, which is heavy on high-tech air support, and not so much on conventional artillery. Ukraine, even with the small amounts of western equipment they have, has the capability to fire over 350,000 155mm shells per month. The US currently has the capacity to produce a measly 15k/mo, and all of the EU can only do something like 50-75k/mo, IIRC. We just can't keep up with that rate of expenditure. I
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The US wants Ukraine to win, they don't need a prolonged conflict to weaken Russia. Nothing will weaken that regime more than losing and Ukraine getting back it's territory (especially if they are able to take back Crimea).
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No matter what you can say about "Western media" fact is the Russian and Chinese media are state-controlled making them de-facto the least trustworthy sources of information for a war, especially when Russia itself is in that war.
Say what you want about media in the US and how consolidated it is but at the end of the day they are private entities and that is a world of difference.
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If you believe western media, yes, the mighty and just Ukraine military is about to steam roller the inept and evil Russian military. Any minute now.
No, I will believe eastern media, according to which Ukraine was supposed to be defeated in 3 days. /s
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They were hard to deal with in the Korean War when their armament consisted of Soviet castoffs and their leadership was practically nonexistent. The near-peer modern version of China can only be managed when we're on our game. This bullshit where we spend a major fraction of our entire economy on paper weapons while the ground truth is a bunch of barely-functioning
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Also as a percentage of GDP the US is still spending "only" 3.3% which is not too out of whack with other nations and actually less than Russa (4.1%)
But as you mentioned, with the American economy as it is that 3.3% is nearly $1T versus Russia at around $85B
Not that money wins wars and America does overspend quite sloppily at times but what no other country has that the US military does is a global coordinated logistical machine capable of putting material nearly anywhere in the world in short order. Hell
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We have glorified Maginot Lines in the air and sea, managed by stuffed-shirt generals promoted to that position because of their politically desirable mediocrity in low-intensity conflicts.
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If the choice is between giving Lockheed Marti
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LCS are effectively non-functional. Zumwalt destroyers, too expensive and temperamental to do anything they were designed for. F-35 and F-22 were delibe
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The potential adversaries also have their own share of corruption and incompetence, as russia are demonstrating every day.
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And here's the kicker: They all know how incapable they've made the system, so it may not even come down to failure in battle. Our "leaders" might simply surrender beh
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I don't believe it (Score:2)
Accountability? From a military contractor? I'll believe it when they prove the money being withheld isn't quietly paid in full, with interest and "forgive me" gifts, a little down the road.
Perfectly normal process (Score:3)
There's nothing wrong with that: that's a normal acceptance process. As long as whatever needs accepting isn't accepted, payments to the supplier are withheld.
When I worked as a quality engineer, I would travel to our suppliers and perform acceptance tests on batches of products they made for us, and I remember they sweated waiting for me to sign the acceptance test report or grant a waiver in case of deviation, because if I didn't, some of them literally couldn't pay wages the next month. And quite a few times, when the acceptance tests would span several days, the supplier's CEO invited me to suspiciously expensive restaurants in the hope that it would help me sign on the right line.
Delayed software (Score:2)
I mean, whoever heard of a software project running late?
"Lightning" (Score:3, Interesting)
Switzerland has, unfortunately, decided to order F-35s. We just recently were notified that the F-35 cannot fly within 40km of a thunderstorm, because it cannot survive a lightning strike. Which, for those who may not know, is a pretty basic requirement even for commercial aircraft.
Sounds like they need to withhold a lot more than $800 million...
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"We just recently were notified that the F-35 cannot fly within 40km of a thunderstorm"
Then the order for F-35 is clearly a sabotage of Switzerland air defense force.
I mean, this has been known for like, 10 years already?
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There has been a fix in the pipeline for a while and it was supposed to have been implemented by now, but the restriction hasn't been lifted yet. Maybe the Swiss were told "we'll have fixed it by the time you take delivery" and now they are being told "it's not fixed yet".
Re:F35 can't handle lightning (Score:2)
The Swiss can recoup their costs by selling lightning-making equipment to NATO enemies. Just call it an "outdoor entertainment venue strobe light" for plausible deniability.
Co's knew to sell Turing-complete calculators of the late 1960's as "advanced calculators" instead of "computers" because there were many export restrictions on computers. The inspectors probably didn't know the difference, as long as it looked like a calculator.
Download more RAM? (Score:2)
Wait, so the MIC actually managed to download more RAM onto the F35???
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YoU wOulDn'T DowNLoAd MoAR RaM
fantastic software upgrade. (Score:2)
Hey where can I get a software upgrade that will increase my laptop's processing power 37 times and memory 20 times over current capabilities"?
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They are 5th generation multirole jets, but not air superiority fighters. That said, they are probably about as capable as 4th generation air superiority fighters while also able to handle attack and ground support operations, and (if they get it working, it seems) their sensor integration and battlefield networking systems makes them much more capable than even the early 5th generation air superiority fighters in CAP and interception roles.
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The F-35 Lightning is (probably) more like a 4.5th generation fighter.
For something better, look to the F-22 Raptor.
Re: Are these "5th generation fighters"? (Score:4, Informative)
The F22 is a total air superiority jet just for the Air Force but that's really all it does. It's great at it but limited which is why the US is only going something like a hundred total.
The F35 is a multirole aircraft that can fill many roles on a common platform with 3 different variants for 3 different branches and the US is going to have north of 500 units.
Any question of it's capability is answered by the fact that every nation that can buy them wants them, badly, even over their homegrown jets. Lockheed has enough export orders for a decade.
Re: Are these "5th generation fighters"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is the software not right and how does this "software" fix suddenly 20x the memory and 37x the CPU power? Sounds to me like they are upgrading a processing unit, not software.
Sounds to me like they are upgrading both the hardware and software.
Why ground the jets if they can fly with the old software? It's probably because they can't fly with the old software any more, they had their hardware upgraded. Why install the hardware if the software isn't done? Likely in an attempt to keep development and downtime to a minimum. By putting in the hardware while the software is getting finished they likely expected to minimize time spent in development by overlapping hardware and software work. What likely happened is an unexpected bug or something in the software and its taking them time to fix it. Until then the jets are sitting in storage since the hardware is all done but they can't fly until the software meets some minimum testing requirements. To make sure the work gets finished the DoD is withholding payment until the jets are operational again.
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Probably spot on. It doesnt feel like it but the first F35 was delivered in 2011, so the platform is over a decade old and pretty sure the platform has provisions for it's systems to be upgraded since these things are supposed to be in the fleet for some odd 30 years.
Re: Are these "5th generation fighters"? (Score:5, Informative)
The latest upgrades, called Technology Refresh 3 (primarily hardware) and Block 4 (primarily the software) add huge improvements to the F-35. More processing power, improved sensors, updated displays, upgraded weapons options are some of the upgrades.
However, just like upgrading a PC to an Intel Gen 13 processor and adding an Nvidia 4090 to the mix, the aircraft will need additional electrical power and cooling for all the improvements. This can be done by upgrading the Pratt and Whitney engine in a program called the Engine Core Upgrade. Lockheed Martin wants to completely change out the engine using a GE/Rolls-Royce engine called the Adaptive Engine Transition Program. Congress has nixed the idea of changing engines at this stage but Lockheed is still pushing for it. https://breakingdefense.com/20... [breakingdefense.com]
I've participated in a few software block cycle upgrades and I can tell you it is an exhaustive process to test all the upgrades, especially when you have to simulate a complex threat and electronic warfare environment to test all the new sensors and processors. Then you have to stage and evaluate multiple live-fire exercises to validate the targeting and weapons handling plus battlefield data integration. Withholding payment because Lockheed is missing important milestones is an extremely efficient method of convincing them to start allocating more resources to the project.
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" This can be done by upgrading the Pratt and Whitney engine in a program called the Engine Core Upgrade."
Huh? While I can appreciate the extra power required on the power bus I really doubt that they need to upgrade a probably 100,000hp engine in order to supply it! Even Intel would balk at that kind of power requirement (for now)!
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I also squinted at that, my guess is this is more about the cooling part, or worse, the changes in the software/hardware maybe being so meaningful, the speed of the algorithms for maneuverability is so improved the engines can't keep up but that would mean the software was flawed for targeting unreasonable specs.
But even if it's just electrical power for the new components and compute workloads, I could still see this requiring different engines: it may not be easy to convert jet engine power to constant el
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I don't know about military jets, but commercial airlines usually start the engines using an external source of hot, compressed air (usually somewhere around 150 to 350 lbs of air per minute at 30 to 50 psig & 250F to 350F give or take, depending on the engine and other factors).
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from the sentence immediately before the mention of the 20x and 37x figures:
"The aircraft needs the delay-plagued software upgrade to function fully with new cockpit hardware"
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/i... [kym-cdn.com]
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Sure, the F35 loses the Internet general's test, which is "who would win in a one on one dogfight?" It's the Internet general's test because it's the coolest question to ask.
This is the same reason Internet generals fetishize the largest and more complex WW2 German tanks, even though those super tanks lost the battle of Kursk to a huge swarm of *sensible* (for the cirumstances) tanks rush-built in Soviet tractor factories. The best German tanks would win a tank on tank duel with any other tank in the fie
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Don't get me wrong. The F22 is a far sexier plane. Faster, and more maneu
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This is spot on. As I have heard it described is that if the F35 is in a dogfight at all something has gone very wrong.
Also even the most expensive VTOL variant is still less than 1/2 the price of an F22.
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We've seen this before, in the 50s.
You know, missiles are the new high-tech stuff and those commies won't even see it coming. Makes dogfights a thing of the past, and that's why we removed the cannon from the F-4 when designing it. Gunfights are obsolete, our new superior technology completely replaces it.
"If a F-4 Phantom II is in a dogfight at all something has gone very wrong."
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This time it's true.
It's now possible to destroy enemy aircraft long before they are in visual range - in fact the Iranian airforce were doing it in 1980 against Iraq with their F14's.
In simulated air combat between the F22 and Typhoons, theF22 was consistently able to "destroy" the Typhoon before the Typhoon pilot was aware the F22 was there.
The idea of avoiding dogfights is not new. In WW2, the F4F squadrons developed tactics that allowed them to avoid dogfights with Zeros because the Zero was far superio
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Sure, it's fine to be skeptical but we have to consider some things with jet development have changed in the world between a platform that started design in 1952 versus 2003. Also while the US military has been hoodwinked on hype before the long list of international customers clamoring to get ahold of the planes I think speaks to its capabilities today (also the current cost is actually relatively cheap for capabilities)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"before the bandit knew there was an F35."
Total fantasy about stealth being equivalent to invisible.
Trans-Horizon Radar will track the F-35 as soon as it takes flight.
VHF radar will track the F-35 with no problems.
What F-35 stealth does is reduce the range at which a radar guided missile (usually X-band) can be shot at it. Useful, but not absolute. A ground based VHF radar vectors a bandit, who flies with its own radar off and will shoot down the F-35 with an IR guided missile.
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Re:Are these "5th generation fighters"? (Score:4, Interesting)
This. Assuming they are on their own in a battlefield the F35 will have launched many air to air missiles at the bandit in a 4th or 3rd generation fighter before the bandit knew there was an F35. Their entire purpose is battlefield dominance "beyond visual range". That is mostly accomplished by superb stealth, and even more impressive sensor arrays and weapons systems that it will command vs the 4th generation fighters like the F22. Don't get me wrong. The F22 is a far sexier plane. Faster, and more maneuverable, better suited to dog-fights and out-gunning enemy aircraft with aeronautical feats. The F35 is just a sniper of an aircraft with bitching binoculars. You wont know its there and it will hit you with a head shot before you know you've been targeted. Thats its point.
I see you have been watching aviation pop-documentaries. Whether the F-35 can dominate somethign like the Eurofighter Typhoon or the Rafale depends entirely on context. It can carry six AA missiles internally and remain stealthy. That does not last you very long. The F-35 can carry more AA missiles but it has to t carry them on external racks and when it does the F-35 instantly becomes a 4.5 generation fighter. In isolation, in a laboratory environment, the F-35 has a distinct advantage against a 4.5 gen aircraft. However, wars are not fought in a laboratory environment. If the F-35 is flying into an air defence envelope to attack critical infrastructure (and let's face it that's what it is designed to do) against a peer nation over territory with crawling with AWACS, SAM systems, electronic warfare systems, radars operating on a wide range of frequency bands including the ones the F-35's stealth is not optimised for and that are all covering the same area, where the area is monitored by satellite systems that can track stealth aircraft, in the absence of electro optical sensors and distributed radar systems the F-35 is no longer invulnerable. These systems may not always be able to provide targeting data accurate enough to target the F-35 with SAMs but they can track it and vector 4.5 gen fighters close enough to F-35s that are now deep inside enemy territory and don't enjoy any of this sensor and EW support for the 4.5 gen aircraft to get BVR locks on them. On top of this the F-35 also has severe problems with range when flying long distance missions off of carriers and out of land bases in the Pacific and S/E Asia into something like Chinese mainland's air defence network which is quite similar to the one I just described and which on top of that is surrounded by a belt of even more such air defences in the South China sea. In so many words, there is a reason the US is retiring the F-22, which is a superior aircraft to the F-35 and is replacing it with this thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and working on expendable 'loyal wingman' stealth drones (well, semi-expendible, their price tag is still significant fraction of that of an F-35+Pilot). The FCAS is far superior to the F-22 and far, far, superior to the F-35 because that's what the Pentagon feels is needed for a combat aircraft to survive in the environment I just described.
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This. Assuming they are on their own in a battlefield the F35 will have launched many air to air missiles at the bandit in a 4th or 3rd generation fighter before the bandit knew there was an F35. Their entire purpose is battlefield dominance "beyond visual range". That is mostly accomplished by superb stealth, and even more impressive sensor arrays and weapons systems that it will command vs the 4th generation fighters like the F22. Don't get me wrong. The F22 is a far sexier plane. Faster, and more maneuverable, better suited to dog-fights and out-gunning enemy aircraft with aeronautical feats. The F35 is just a sniper of an aircraft with bitching binoculars. You wont know its there and it will hit you with a head shot before you know you've been targeted. Thats its point.
I see you have been watching aviation pop-documentaries. Whether the F-35 can dominate somethign like the Eurofighter Typhoon or the Rafale depends entirely on context. It can carry six AA missiles internally and remain stealthy. That does not last you very long. The F-35 can carry more AA missiles but it has to t carry them on external racks and when it does the F-35 instantly becomes a 4.5 generation fighter. In isolation, in a laboratory environment, the F-35 has a distinct advantage against a 4.5 gen aircraft. However, wars are not fought in a laboratory environment. If the F-35 is flying into an air defence envelope to attack critical infrastructure (and let's face it that's what it is designed to do) against a peer nation over territory with crawling with AWACS, SAM systems, electronic warfare systems, radars operating on a wide range of frequency bands including the ones the F-35's stealth is not optimised for and that are all covering the same area, where the area is monitored by satellite systems that can track stealth aircraft, in the absence of electro optical sensors and distributed radar systems the F-35 is no longer invulnerable. These systems may not always be able to provide targeting data accurate enough to target the F-35 with SAMs but they can track it and vector 4.5 gen fighters close enough to F-35s that are now deep inside enemy territory and don't enjoy any of this sensor and EW support for the 4.5 gen aircraft to get BVR locks on them. On top of this the F-35 also has severe problems with range when flying long distance missions off of carriers and out of land bases in the Pacific and S/E Asia into something like Chinese mainland's air defence network which is quite similar to the one I just described and which on top of that is surrounded by a belt of even more such air defences in the South China sea. In so many words, there is a reason the US is retiring the F-22, which is a superior aircraft to the F-35 and is replacing it with this thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and working on expendable 'loyal wingman' stealth drones (well, semi-expendible, their price tag is still significant fraction of that of an F-35+Pilot). The FCAS is far superior to the F-22 and far, far, superior to the F-35 because that's what the Pentagon feels is needed for a combat aircraft to survive in the environment I just described.
This, as Ukraine has shown, flying anything into an air defence envelope is difficult at best. Both Ukraine and Russia are hesitant to use their aircraft in the combat area because both sides have it covered by MANPADs, SAMs and AAA to a stupid level and a single aircraft this day and age are too expensive to be lost en masse. Aircraft that are used have to fly at high speed just above the treetops, fast enough to avoid the MANPADS and low enough not to be tracked by ground radar.
A modern fighter, be it
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Sure they are not 100% infallible, and neither are anyone else's... but they were designe
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Insightful post, but you forget, the F-35 was actually designed precisely for what you say it will be doing.
No, I am not saying that. I am pointing out that when it was conceived 30 years ago the F-35 could have possibly done this, if it had been ready on schedule. However, by the time they Pentagon finally had enough of the defence industrial complex dragging it's ass on the F-35 program in order to suck as many billions as possible out of the taxpayers' pocket, put it's foot down and finally got the F-35 into service the aircraft was well on its way to becoming obsolete. The F-35 program has taken too long, cos
Re: Are these "5th generation fighters"? (Score:2)
He didn't mention anything about defecting, did he
Buzzwords (Score:2)
There's no such thing as a "5th Generation" fighter. There's also no such thing as a 4th, 3rd, or 2nd generation fighter. It's just a marketing buzzword which you should ignore. Its sole purpose is to obfuscate the actual strengths and weaknesses of particular aircraft.
Think about it for a second. How could you reasonably group dozens of aircraft from multiple independent countries, engineered to fill different roles, operating under different doctrines, for different militaries, in different countries, ac
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