JSF's Big December Goals
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Posted
by Bill Sweetman at
12/1/2009 4:30 AM CST
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According to the ambitious goals set in September, the Joint Strike Fighter program has an easy set of targets for this month: fly four more prototypes and perform a series of flight tests with short take-off, vertical landing prototype BF-1, culminating in the first vertical landing at the Navy's Patuxent River flight test center.
Anyone want to take any bets on whether this will actually happen? It probably won't. In two weeks' time, it will be three years since the first F-35, AA-1, made its first flight, but the program still behaves like a flight-test effort in its first stages: AF-1 made its first flight on November 13 but has not taken to the air since then.
So far, the uncomfortable fact for the JSF program's supporters is that the critics and "naysayers" have consistently predicted milestones more accurately than the highly paid, security-cleared program bosses. Both prototype first flights and the first vertical landing - which can't be long delayed if there is to be any hope of a Marine IOC in 2012 - have continued to slip to the right. Not surprising, then, that Pentagon procurement boss Ashton Carter has been talking this month about how to accelerate the program - by adding software engineers and diverting more early production aircraft to flight test - and at the same time there has been discussion of a one-year extension of the development program.
Meanwhile, Australia's good news - a government commitment to buy 14 aircraft - is offset to some extent by a slip in first deliveries (confirming earlier reports), and there is no firm contract as yet. And Australia's plans to order another batch of aircraft in 2012 - which will be needed to establish a squadron - are apparently based on a multi-year buy, which may not be possible at that point if development is further stretched out.
As I write this, a charcoal-backed banner advert from Jack Daniel's wraps around Reuters' report last week from Jim Wolf. It might be appropriate, because some people might have needed a stiff drink after reading the story, in which JSF international-affairs head Jon Schreiber firmly stated that no JSF partner was going to get access to the source code that underpins the software.
Some partners probably don't care. Their model (whether their politicians know it or not) is that they will never operate outside a US coalition. But rumblings out of the UK indicate a certain level of shock. After all, the UK (like some other international partners) spends a lot of time and money on acquiring SIGINT, enabling it to build up its own electronic order of battle (EOB). SIGINT involves not just identifying the type of emitter but even individual systems, giving valuable clues to the way that the adversary deploys and moves systems. But it's all useless if you can't program it into the JSF's electronic warfare systems.
Likewise, anything detected by the JSF's EW systems, and passed to the network, has a black-box characteristic: you don't know exactly how it was identified, and according to what rules.
The UK, apparently, seriously thought that it was going to get source code, or at least enough of it to achieve "operational sovereignty" - which, in plain terms, means the ability to sustain deployed operations of the JSF, and to modify it or integrate new weapons, without having to ask permission from Washington. This does not seem to be the case today.
Finally, this seems to be a good time to reprise the program's predictions from late January:
January 2009 schedule
Yes, that's eight aircraft that were supposed to fly this year, and have not done so - with short test days and winter weather closing in.
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Reading Jim Wolf's report I get the idea that LM, similarly to commercial computer code, will expose enough "user exits" and "APIs" in the code so that partners will be able to plug in specific needs.
What for sure is not solved is how any nation can be sure that in 8 million lines of code there is no backdoor and no remote switch-off that, by the way, can be included in the HW...
For the sw part it could be solved by setting up at the reprogramming facility a review lab where partner's code experts can check the code. It would not compromise code ownership (try to memorize 8 million lines) but also reassure partners.
Similar to a standard Linux practice, partners could also compile (who checks the compilers?) their code after inspection and load on their F-35s...
The more I think of it and the more I think LM/USA can fool anybody, so it ends up as a trust matter.
"The U.S. cannot give away the code because they haven't separated the critical s/w from the non-critical s/w," he said.
Of course he went on to claim that in the case of Gripen NG, this is different. Saab has separated the critical and non-critical s/w by using layers and partitions, he said. Gripen NG customers would be "able to change the non-critical s/w however they like; in the future maybe even by downloading open architecture s/w applications from the Internet."
My comments lost their way somewhere... I repeat it here.
Very few news of the JSF for a couple of week in your columns. Today we have one but we were accustomed to a more impressive momentum. What's wrong? Many other smart people publish fascinating lines on this program. You did it till now and suddenly disappeared. Did somebody from the Lockheed-Martin Emporium suggested more cautiousness on the matter?
Please inform us. It is worthwhile.
Ô, just one more word on Vive lEmpereur you wrote recently. As a King, I personally had many occasions to oppose quite systematically I would even say to US political moves against my armament industry deals the last &50 years. Lot and lot of industry competitions where the winner had to oppose friendly political pressures and to let the market be how do you say that? : distorted. My Korean and Singaporean friends recall it to me at each occasion we meet&
Let my small successor Nicolas play in the big league. He is not so bad and thanks God, the Rafale works very very well (seen Peter Collins article in Flight International? http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2009/11/rafale-beats-f-35-f-22-in-flig.html ), its electronic and software are mainly from civilian-military firm Thales (cf your argument on the Rafale some obsolescence issues ) and the Fourth generation is on due course.
On Embraer, I suppose you know why the Brazilian military is upset: this company had to suffer the privatization fervor which raised it has to be admitted its profits massively (partly thanks to &Dassault participation in its capital). The collateral damage done to the Brazilian Air Force is that the companys board exerts now a complete autonomy vis-à-vis the generals. They will never forgive Dassault for that.
Bill? Could you be socialist now against those damned French liberals?
All that is Imperial bazaar, I concede. Lets talk serious business now: what is the new episode of the JSF?
CdG
B. Bolsøy
Oslo
And then just go by brand new F15s &F18s? Where is Obama and Gates? Wish I could have crashed that his dinner party!
I find it incredible if true.
What the Saab VP explained is standard practice in serious commercial sw development.
Obviously I wasn't questioning your report.
SAAB possibly knows something and wishes to unearth some more to improve their commercial position. Guess they'll not succeed. As of today is unconfirmed FUD, but I've never seen confirmed FUD either ;-)