27 March 2013

Inside the Decider's Head II


For a case study in incestuous amplification and how it perverts the Observation - Orientation - Decision - Action (OODA) loops throughout an entire political/media culture, watch this video, which first aired in 2007.

22 March 2013

Iraq Invasion Anniversary: Inside The Decider’s Head


By Chuck Spinney, Time.com, March 22, 2013

(Note: A shorter version of this essay also appeared in Counterpunch on March 21, 2013)


White House Photo/Paul Morse: President Bush announces the invastion of Iraq from the Oval Office, Mar 19, 2003


In the summer of 2002, during the lead up to the Iraq War, a White House official expressed displeasure about with article written by journalist Ron Suskind in Esquire. He asserted people like Suskind were trapped “in what we call the reality-based community,” which the official defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.”
Suskind murmured something about enlightenment principles grounded in scientific empiricism, but the official cut him off, saying, 

We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
This is a revealing statement about the mentality in the Bush White House prior to the Iraq War.
Think about it: in effect, the official is claiming the mind of a decider, who is tasked with making decisions to cope with the constraints of the real world, has the power to create a new reality over and over again. Therefore the decider need not be worried about matching his actions against those constraints, or even observing those constraints, before making his decisions.
Arrogant? To be sure.
Unusual inside the Beltway?  Not really, based on my experience in the Pentagon.
But this outlook also reflects an incredibly stupid and dangerous way to orient one’s decision cycle to events in the real world.
It is trite to say that madness occurs when the mind governing decisions and actions becomes systemically disconnected from the real world.
But in the Versailles on the Potomac, where madness has risen to a high art form, reinforced by pseudo science, ideology, and greed, all neatly packaged in compelling PowerPoint briefings, transformative visions, and amplified by an adoring mainstream media, it is difficult to know what the real world really is.
Faced with this reality in the 1980s, the military reformers in the Pentagon led by Col John R. Boyd found it necessary to develop a more precise working definition of madness: We concluded that madness occurs when the decision maker’s Observation – Orientation – Decision – Action (OODA) loop becomes increasingly distorted and disconnected from its environment by the existence of Incestuous Amplification.
Let me explain.
Incestuous Amplification is a common phenomenon in Versailles. It occurs when the preconceptions in the decider’s Orientation (that is, his/her repository of ideology, belief systems, cultural heritage, previous experiences, education, genetic heritage, etc) misshape the Observations feeding that Orientation.
Note that the key word is misshape: there is no question that one’s Orientation always shapes everything that is apprehended in the environment, or that one’s orientation evolves and changes over time in response to changes in the interaction between the observing organism and its environment.
A six-year-old sees the world very differently than when he is 60. The relevant measure of merit is whether that evolving Orientation produces Decisions and Actions that improve the match-up between the decision-making organism and its environment, as it marches along the one-way arrow of time.
But when the decider’s Orientation becomes infected by Incestuous Amplification, the opposite occurs — his or her Orientation distorts observations in a way that drives the interaction to toward an ever-increasing mismatch between the organism and its environment.
Viewed abstractly, here is how it happens:
Incestuous Amplification, in effect, hijacks the Orientation of decider’s OODA loop by overriding Observations to a point where one’s Orientation induces the Decider to see and Act on what he wants to see rather than what is. (BTW … when a self-styled decider or change agent uses the words like “vision” and “transformation” in the same paragraph, it is sure warning sign that such a hijacking is well underway.)
It follows that the Decisions and Actions flowing from this kind of Orientation must be disconnected from reality, except by accident or chance. But this initial disconnect is only the first order effect; subsequent effects remove any significant possibility of a lucky break. That is because the disconnect between the Actions and the environment that those actions purport to cope with pumps dysfunctional behavior back into the entire OODA loop, which then folds back on itself to magnify the mismatch.
How this happens becomes clear when one realizes that the consequences of the first-order actions (which, as noted above, are already disconnected from the exigencies of the environment) create changes or external effects that are then fed back into the OODA loop as subsequent Observations. These new Observations are distorted again by the highjacked Orientation of the Decider, who sees again what he wants to see. This produces new Decisions and Actions, which, in turn, are even more disconnected from reality. And so the cycle not only repeats itself but it turns in on and amplifies itself — the effect is a little like placing a microphone next a speaker when recording, only the result is far more dangerous.
That is because, as any student of nonlinear dynamics in control theory, or the theory of evolution by natural selection, can tell you, this kind of positive feedback loop, if not corrected by some form of selection (natural or otherwise), must produce an explosive spiral of ever increasing mismatches, leading to increasing confusion and disorder that inevitably degenerate into chaos or death or extinction. Left uncorrected, the decision-making organism exhibiting an incestuously amplifying OODA loop becomes increasingly disconnected from its environment, but nevertheless blunders forward to the tune of its internal dynamics.
Without a correction, there can be but one outcome: the environment eventually intrudes to make the irrevocable decision.
Put another way, all living organisms from the individual to a society can be viewed as open (thermodynamic) systems that must process a flux of matter, energy, and information to maintain their coherence. To do this, they must communicate effectively with their environments. Incestuous amplification has the effect of closing off the system from its environment, and any activity in a closed system always generates entropy, thereby making it impossible to maintain that system’s coherence. So, without a correction or a change that opens the decider’s OODA loop to an effective communication with the real world, the only uncertainty in the outcome is how long an OODA loop driven mad by incestuous amplification can last before it degenerates into chaos and is selected out.
Now, with this working appreciation of Madness in mind, let’s put these abstract ideas into action with regard to the America’s Iraq debacle.
Job One, gathering the data has just been made much easier.  I urge you to read carefully The Iraq War Ten Years After: Declassified Documents Show Failed Intelligence, Policy Ad Hockery, and Propaganda-Driven Decision Making and the links to the official documents it cites.  This compilation of official documents illustrates the “information” that was used by U.S. decision makers to justify (to themselves and others) and to plan the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. These documents have been made accessible to anyone with an internet connection by invaluable National Security Archive of George Washington University.
After spending trillions of dollars, killing hundreds of thousands of (approaching perhaps a million) Iraqis, suffering over 4,000 US combat-related deaths, and tens of thousands of wounded and stressed-out veterans — not to mention placing a huge indelible stain on our national honor — interested readers can use this archive to take a tour down memory lane to understand the evolving Orientation that led to the Iraq horror story.
This is precisely the kind information needed to address the crucial question of whether or not Incestuous Amplification corrupted the OODA loops of the Deciders who created this catastrophe.  Surely given the magnitude of the disaster, this is a project worth pursuing.
Perhaps more importantly, it is feasible for you or anyone else to use this data to make the analysis.  To see why, I respectfully submit the following null hypothesis for your initial analysis of the question of whether or not the American OODA loop went mad in the run up to the Iraq War:
The Decider’s OODA loop was not hijacked by the incestuous amplification of Decider’s Observations.
Note the careful wording of this hypothesis ensures that it can indeed be falsified should you choose to use the archive’s database to test its truth.  This construction has the added benefit of ensuring that you will not fall prey to the epistemological trap laid so carefully by Donald Rumsfeld and Condi Rice during this period: namely that “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.”

06 March 2013

More on the F-35's Concurrency Shop of Horrors


The is the second posting on the travails of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as documented by the Defense Department's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E).

Attached is more insight into the deplorable state of affairs of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the largest program in DoD's history.  This commentary by Winslow Wheeler, Director of the Strauss Military Reform Project, is based on the information in yet another official Pentagon DOT&E report.  I especially uge that doubters, deniers, and non-believers take the time to peruse the entire official DOT&E report at this link, also referenced in Winslow's the first paragraph.  

It is important to understand the F-35 sorry state of affairs is a typical albeit extreme example of where concurrency leads -- higher costs, decreased performance, stretched-out and/or truncated production runs, culminating in aging, shrinking inventories and rising costs of maintaining even low rates of readiness of combat forces.  And the concurrency horrors of the F-35 are by no means unique, remember the concurrency related problems that flowed out of the pre-mature production decisions for the F-111, C-5, V-22F-22, and F-18E/F.  To be sure, concurrency is not the sole cause of these aforementioned trends, but it is a major front loading strategy for the reason explained here (see especially pgs 11-13).

But in the case of the F-35, even some parts of the Pentagon are starting to gag on the monster they have unleashed.  In February 2012, no less an authority than Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's acting acquisition chief charactered the F-35's grossly excessive concurrency as "acquisition malpractice."  (Congressional Research Report (RL30563), F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Program, see page 7). 

Of course, Kendall's statement smacked of the pot calling the kettle black.  Where was the concern by him or his predecessors when they could have done something about what is now a $1.5 trillion* problem?   It is not as if the general nature, if not the specifics, of the inevitable F-35 mess was hard for acquisition managers to foresee -- if you doubt that, read my essay, JSF: One More Card in the House, published over 12 years ago in the August 2000 issue of the Proceedings of the Naval Institute
_______
* Estimated  (as of December 31, 2011) life cycle cost for developing, buying, and operating 2443 F-35s for 50 years (at 30 years per plane), assuming total production run, assuming no more unexpected problems, schedule slippages, and a full production run [see DoD Selected Acquisition Report, pg. 84]. 

Chuck Spinney

New, Unclassified DOD Document Describes F-35A Performance in Training

by Winslow Wheeler

Including stunning pilot comments about the aircraft's survivability (such as "Aft visibility will get the pilot gunned [down] every time"), a new, unclassified DOD document on the F-35 is now available. It describes the performance of the F-35A and its support systems in initial training at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.  Find the document at POGO's website at http://pogoarchives.org/straus/ote-info-memo-20130215.pdf.    Find my summary and analysis of the document below.


The Air Force's F-35A: Not Ready for Combat, Not Even Ready for Combat Training.

On February 15, 2013 the Department of Defense's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) sent a memorandum and accompanying evaluation report to Congress and the DOD hierarchy describing the performance of the F-35A and its support infrastructure at Eglin Air Force Base (FL).  There, already skilled Air Force pilots are undergoing a basic syllabus of familiarization training with the aircraft.  Not previously in the public domain, the unclassified DOT&E materials are available at the POGO website at http://pogoarchives.org/straus/ote-info-memo-20130215.pdf.

DOT&E's report, titled "F-35A Joint Strike Fighter: Readiness for Training Operational Utility Evaluation," reveals yet more disappointments on the status and performance of the F-35.  The Operational Utility Evaluation (OUE) is particularly valuable as it focuses on the Air Force's A model of the F-35 "Joint Strike Fighter." Many in the political and think tank world have focused more on the Marine Corps B, or Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL), version or the Navy's C model with its heavier structure and larger wings.  While the B  and C are even more expensive and lower in performance-on certain key performance dimensions-than the Air Force's A model, this OUE (inadvertently) demonstrates that the A model is also flawed beyond redemption.

While the DOT&E paperwork includes an opening memo and an executive summary, they do not do justice to the detailed findings of the report.  Specific issues are discussed below-much of it in quotations and showing the appropriate page number of the text of the evaluation.


RESTRICTIONS IN SOFTWARE, SYSTEMS AND FLIGHT

The currently available software essential to control the aircraft (software Blocks 1A and 1B) is "intended to provide only basic pilot training and has no combat capability. The current aircraft have a number of significant operational restrictions . such as limited maneuvering, speeds, and constrained descent rates; no carriage of weapons, no use of countermeasures, and no opening of weapons bay doors in flight." (p. 1.)  Also, ". student pilots were limited in flight maneuvering to very basic aircraft handling, such as simple turns, climbs, and descents as the flight envelope of speed and altitude was limited, angle-of-attack and g-loading were restricted, and maneuvers normally flown during a familiarization phase of a syllabus were explicitly prohibited." (p. 2.)

Table 3-1 (starting on p. 14.) outlines the many limitations. The following are prohibited:

  • Descent rates more than 6,000 feet per minute (for reference, Wikipedia shows the F-16C rate of climb to be 50,000 feet per minute);
  • Airspeed above 550 knots per hour or Mach 0.9 (not the 1.6 Mach or 1,200 mph Wikipedia says the F-35 is capable of);
  • Angle-of-attack (attitude of flight) beyond -5 and +18 degrees (e.g. not the +50 degrees the aircraft is capable of);
  • Maneuvering at more than -1 or +5 gs (nowhere near the stated +9g capability);
  • Take offs or landings in formation;
  • Flying at night or in weather;
  • Using real or simulated weapons;
  • Rapid stick or rudder movements;
  • Air-to-air or air-to-ground tracking maneuvers;
  • Refueling in the air;
  • Flying within 25 miles of lightning;
  • Use of electronic countermeasures;
  • Use of anti-jamming, secure communications, or datalink systems;
  • Electro-optical targeting;
  • Using the Distributed Aperture System of sensors to detect targets or threats;
  • Using the Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) Interrogator;
  • Using the helmet mounted display system as a "primary reference;"
  • Use of air-to-air or air-to-ground radar modes for electronic attack, sea search, ground-moving targets or close-in air combat modes. (pp. 14-16.)

In addition, ".the radar system exhibited shortfalls that - if not corrected - may significantly degrade the ability to train and fly safely under a typical transition training syllabus, where an operational radar is required. The radar performance shortfalls ranged from the radar being completely inoperative on two sorties to failing to display targets on one sortie, inexplicably dropping targets on another sortie, and taking excessive time to develop a track on near co-speed targets on yet another sortie." (p. 13.)


"AFT VISIBILITY WILL GET THE PILOT GUNNED EVERY TIME"

A key system of the aircraft, the pilot's multi-million dollar helmet-mounted display (HMD) of the aircraft's operating systems, threats, targets and other information "functioned more or less adequately. [but] presented frequent problems for the pilots."   These included "misalignment of the virtual horizon display with the actual horizon, inoperative or flickering displays, and focal problems - where the pilot would have either blurry or 'double vision' in the display. The pilots also mentioned problems with stability, jitter, latency, and brightness of the presentation in the helmet display.." Two of the complaints were basically that elements of the helmet made it harder, not easier, to see outside the aircraft. (pp. 16-17.)

There are additional problems for detecting threats in the all-important visual mode: the ejection seat headrest and canopy "bow" (where the canopy meets the fuselage) are designed in such a way as to impede seeing aircraft to the rear: one pilot commented "A pilot will find it nearly impossible to check [their six o'clock position{to the rear}] under g." Another commented, "The head rest is too large and will impede aft visibility and survivability during surface and air engagements," and "Aft visibility will get the pilot gunned [down] every time," referring to close-range combat. (p. 18.)

Indeed, DOT&E stated explicitly "The out-of-cockpit visibility in the F-35 is less than other Air Force fighter aircraft." (p. 17.)

To summarize in different words, the helmet-mounted display and the F-35 system does not present an enhanced, clearer view of the outside world, targets and threats to the pilot; instead, they present a distorted and/or obstructed view.  This is one of the most serious backward steps that the entire F-35 system takes, and it presents an even greater threat to the survivability of the F-35 and its pilot than the astounding evidence of the flammability of the F-35 (all versions) in the recent analysis of another DOT&E report by military analyst Lee Gaillard at Counterpunch athttp://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/04/when-money-is-no-object-the-strange-saga-of-the-f-35/.  

In the event of the pilot needing to escape from the aircraft, there are also some incompletely explained problems with the ejection seat in "off-normal" situations, i.e. those that can occur in combat or even real training. (p. 43.)


"SUSTAINMENT"

While there is little that is more important than pilot and aircraft survivability, additional, almost-as stunning revelations about the F-35A involved its "sustainment"-or reliability, maintainability, and availability.

While the report states "Sustainment of the six Block 1A F-35A aircraft was sufficient to meet the student training sortie requirements of the syllabus" (p. ii.), it further explains that this was despite "generous" Air Force resources and a "hybrid of government and contractor support personnel that relies heavily on workaround procedures, non-standard support procedure, and specialized support equipment to generate sorties and maintain the F-35A fleet.." (p. iv).

Moreover, "the program is not meeting reliability growth targets.."  That is to say, it is not as reliable as it should be for this stage of its development. (pp. iv and 27)  It is also important to note that this was despite the aircraft lacking many mission systems "which resulted in far fewer failure modes and a narrower scope of demand on the supply chain" than would a combat capable aircraft. (In other words, had more of the F-35's complex components and systems been available for use, the aircraft would have required still more maintenance, with the commensurate, additional loss of reliability and availability. [p. 27])

The as is sustainment numbers were not impressive. 

The F-35 program required an air abort rate no greater than 1,000 aborts per 100,000 flight hours to commence F-35A training (p. 27): while they were previously even higher, in late 2012-well after the training started-the aircraft had an air abort rate of 3,600 air aborts per 100,000 flying hours. (p. 28) 

Mission aborts while the plane is still on the ground (ground aborts) were also a serious problem: one in seven sortie attempts resulted in a ground abort. (p. 28)

The Air Force wanted the F-35As at Eglin AFB to be available for training missions 33 percent of the time: the equivalent of each aircraft flying one sortie every three days. (pp. 29, 30) By late 2012 this very modest minimum was basically being achieved (p. 29), but certain aircraft at various times during the OUE flew as seldom as one sortie every 7 to 10 days. (pp. 30, 31)

Mean Flight Hours Between Critical Failures (a typical measure of reliability) occurred every four hours, on average-well short of the expected 11 hours at this stage of the F-35's development-and well below the aircraft's ultimate goal of a modest 20 hours. (p. 34) The F-35As at Eglin also failed reliability goals for this stage of development: a major problem was the poor reliability of the complicated, badly performing helmet. (p. 34) 

Similar problems occurred on the maintenance time the aircraft required. (pp. 36, 37)  For example, the mean elapsed time for an engine removal and installation was 52 hours; the system threshold is 120 minutes. (p. 37)

One component vividly demonstrated the fragility of the F-35A.  Overnight temperatures at Eglin below 59 degrees Fahrenheit caused a problem for the 270 Volt Battery Charger Control Unit inside the airplane.  Maintainers had to warm the aircraft in hangars overnight to prevent ground aborts. (p. 38) Foreign purchasers such as Canada and Norway, already wary of real cold weather issues for their F-35As, are sure to be concerned with a "cold weather" issue at just 59 degrees and below.


The aircraft's Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) was limited and required workarounds throughout the operating cycle (p. 38), and it has potential problems in hot weather when air conditioning is not available, which would cause ALIS to shut down altogether.  The system was also cumbersome and time consuming. (pp. 39-41)

CONCLUSION

The conclusion is obvious: The F-35A is not viable.
_____________________________
Winslow T. Wheeler
Director 
Straus Military Reform Project,
Center for Defense Information at the
Project On Government Oversight (POGO)

04 March 2013

Buy Before You Fly ... or ... How to Suck Money During the Politics of Austerity


The joint-service F-35 strike fighter is the Pentagon's largest program. In fact, it is the most expensive procurement program in the Pentagon's history.  It is also an unfolding disaster that is well documented, but of almost unimaginable proportions.  And yet, the F-35 is impervious to budget cutbacks in sequesterland.  Not surprisingly, among the cognoscenti of gold-plated boondoggles, the F-35 is not only a source of cynical humor, it is rapidly  becoming the mother of all case studies of the pathologies that fuel the Pentagon's budget crisis.  

Perhaps the most egregious of these pathologies is the practice of concurrent engineering and production, a practice from which all bad things flow.  

Concurrency refers to the practice of placing a complex hi-tech weapon system into production, before it is completely designed.   Known in the Pentagon as "buy before you fly." It is the opposite of commonsens engineering, yet concurrency has been business as usual in the Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex for many years,  the problem-plagued F-111 and C-5  in the 60s, and more recently the V-22 tilt rotor and the F-22 fighter being cases in point.  

Why do we repeat a madness that both robs the taxpayer and puts defective weapons in the hands of soldiers year after year?  

Concurrency has one paramount saving grace: Although it increases the risks to the taxpayer and soldiers, it reduces the risk the faction that benefits from the program's continued life. By sucking a compliant Congress into the scam, the bureaucratic gamesters in the Pentagon and in the defense industry have figured out a strategy for unleashing the power of faction, in effect turning Madison's theory of using checks and balances to curb the power of faction (see Federalist 10) on its head. 

That is because the decision to enter concurrent engineering and manufacturing development authorizes contractors and subcontractors to build production facilities and hire workers in locations strategically placed in congressional districts distributed all over the country.  It also enables contractors to establish stable supply networks, thus augmenting the direct effect of plant placement.  In effect, the concurrency decision authorizes the construction of  a political safety net for a program by spreading dollars, jobs, and profits -- and political influence -- all over the country, or in the F-35's case, with its international co-production agreements, all over the world. 

This practice, which is ubiquitous in weapons development is known in the Pentagon as political engineering, and it has the effect of placing unstoppable constituent pressures on politicians to keep a program going even when it fails to meet its design specs.  The goal of political engineers is simple: lock open the money hose, and they have succeeded big time in the case of the F-35. 

To wit: the F-35, as my good friend Lee Gaillard  describes in excruciating detail in the important essay attached below, is a monstrously expensive program that is totally screwed up.  Performance shortfalls are causing specs to be adjusted downward -- a practice known in the trade as managing to a rubber baseline.  Costs are skyrocketing upward, out of control. The program is being slowed down and stretched out.  Yet such is the power of the F-35 faction that the money just keeps spewing out of the Pentagon into the coffers of the contractors as if nothing were amiss.  

To date, this money flow has been impervious to cutbacks, even in the era of the dreaded budget sequester -- a sequester, I might add, that is forcing the military services to lay up ships, to lay off civil service employees, to cut back on depot maintenance for tanks, ships, and airplanes, to cut back training tempos, and a whole host of other reductions in the activities that keep the military running and healthy. 

In effect, the political imperatives of protecting the voracious financial appetite of the F-35 faction, are causing the decision making system to trade away the welfare of the troops at the pointy end of the spear while hosing the taxpayer.  

Such is the nature of austerity in Versailles on the Potomac.  Now I urge you read Lee's excellent commentary.

Chuck Spinney

MARCH 04, 2013

‘Concurrent Production’ Exacerbates Multiple Problems
When Money is No Object: the Strange Saga of the F-35
by LEE GAILLARD, Counterpunch


On 14 January, very shortly after the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) released its 2012 annual report on progress in various Pentagon programs (including a 16-page section on the F-35), Turkey announced a one-year delay in the purchase of its first two Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. Why? ”High cost yield” and flight and combat capabilities that “are not at the desired level yet”. In short, the F-35 doesn’t work and it’s too expensive. (See GlobalFlight.)
That’s just the tip of the iceberg for what is the most expensive military procurement program in history. While some will argue that the key word in the Turkish statement is “yet”, one must ask whether Turkey or the United States and all other partner F-35 nations will ever get what they were initially promised.
Several sources (Aviation Week & Space TechnologyFlightGlobalet al.) have provided briefer summaries of the DOT&E’s F-35 annual report. But few examine the implications of what the DoD has published, or ask questions that should have been asked years ago.
*  *  *
For its competition against Boeing’s X-32, Lockheed Martin built two X-35 prototypes, the first of which flew on 24 October 2000; the first Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) version flew about six years later, on 15 December 2006. Now, over 12 years since that first flight, roughly 65 F-35 airframes have been delivered—43 of them produced during 2011 and 2012; the 100th aircraft is now on the assembly line.
Not one is combat capable. Even in training flights they face restrictions.
We are dealing with an aircraft that has been produced and tested in fits and starts, hobbled by a massively expensive and ineffective program of what is euphemistically called “concurrent production” where you build, fly, test, repair, redesign, retrofit, re-test—all at the same time, a process patented by R. Goldberg; money is no object.
Part of the problem is, of course, that Lockheed Martin presented us with two versions of what Detroit would call a ‘concept car’: a one-off only superficially representative design smaller and lighter than the actual fighter of which it was supposed to be a working prototype. The X-35A flew only 27 test flights in the one-month period before its test regimen ended on November 22; the X-35B (converted from the –A) flew 48.9 hours of tests in 66 flights during the roughly six weeks from June 23 to August 6, 2001. And the –C variant’s test regime lasted less than a month—from February 12 to March 10, 2001: 73 test flights totaling 58 hours (including 250 carrier-type landings on the runway at Patuxent River; no mention of how successful the arresting hook turned out to be). For the most part, then, test sequences of roughly one month with flights averaging less than an hour each.
Under those conditions, what kind of ‘wring-out’ testing could these two aircraft do that would reveal future problems with transonic buffet, wing roll off, and the other significant issues that appeared from the start during testing of LRIP aircraft? Thus, when the Pentagon signed on the dotted line for the first lot of LRIP F-35s, it was buying an untested, larger, heavier paper design that hugely increased risks in any ‘concurrent production’ program. We are now facing the consequences.  
For all F-35 versions, according to the DOT&E report, the pilot’s helmet-mounted display system doesn’t work; the F-35C is not yet carrier-qualified because the tail hook didn’t work, had to be redesigned, and only now is being re-tested; the ejection seat in all models would put pilots at serious risk in any non-level flight mode above 500 knots (i.e., most dogfight scenarios); since flight control software is itself still under development, the computerized flight control system lacks crucial intended capabilities; key structural components have cracked and require redesign. The list goes on. Yet Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth plant keeps churning out F-35s in all their defective glory. And those aircraft already produced now need retrofits of software and flight critical hardware.
Let’s take a closer look.
Structural Problems
In the recently released DOT&E report on 2012 F-35 testing and development, we observe that:
* High-speed high-altitude flight results in delamination and heat damage to the horizontal stabilizers and their stealth coatings (pages 30, 32, and 33 in the DOT&E report; all further numbers in parentheses refer to this report);
* A cracked wing carry-through bulkhead (36) halted durability testing for over a year until it could be analyzed and repaired;
* Weakness in the auxiliary air inlet doors on the -B version led to redesign and retesting and time lost (32);
* A crack was found in a forward rib of the F-35A’s right wing root—in addition to the similar crack reported on in the FY11 DOT&E Annual Report (36);
* A crack was found in the right engine thrust mount shear web (37);
* Multiple cracks appeared in the lower fuselage bulkhead flange (37), effectively halting F-35B testing;
* All this in addition to earlier cracks discovered in the –B’s right side fuselage support frame as well as under a wing where a pylon and its weapon get attached (37)—and yet another in an internal support structure.
All may require redesigning of parts and subsequent added weight (since strengthening weak parts often involves adding mass to the component as part of the redesign) when for two of the F-35 versions there is less than a one-percent weight gain margin left for the entire remaining development process, and only a one percent margin available to the F-35C. “Managing weight growth with such small margins will continue to be a significant program challenge” (32); that’s an understatement. Then there’s the issue of retrofit to aircraft already delivered and others on the production line. (There are, of course, other structural issues not listed here—such as the drive shaft for the lift fan (31), now undergoing its second redesign, plus damaged door attachments (31), etc., etc.) Trenchant DOT&E observation: “Results of findings from structural testing highlight the risks and costs of concurrent production with development” (37).
Some obvious questions:
* Why yet another ‘spiral development/concurrent production’ program when the same kinds of major problems and expenses had appeared years earlier with the V-22 Osprey during whose development 30 Marines were killed? (Not to mention our similar ‘concurrent development’ fiasco involving the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS): as Rear Adm. Tom Rowden wrote recently in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, “In the interest of quick delivery to the fleet, ship design began before requirements were finalized, and building started before designs were stable.” No wonder the  Navy has conceded that “LCS vessels are only rated for Combat 1+ levels—lower than a tanker” [as quoted by Mike Fabey in Aviation Week’s  January 28, 2013 Defense Technology Edition]. Pathetic. Reminiscent of the current barely Block 1 training capabilities of the F-35?
* What was missing from wind tunnel tests and 3D computer modeling studies of flow, weight, and stress that permitted the cracking found in that wing carry-through bulkhead and other basic structural weaknesses to get through?
* Why weren’t two representative pre-production aircraft put through the wringer with several months of test flights to find these areas of stress and their causes before completion of final design and authorization of Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP)?
Performance Shortfall
Performance—where the chickens come home to roost. The intended performance envelope for the F-35 is, roughly speaking: altitude capability of 50,000 feet; 700 kts./Mach 1.6 airspeed; maximum g rating of 9.0 (-A), 7.0 (-B), 7.5 (-C) ;  turn performance of 5.3 sustained g’s (-A), 5.0 sustained g’s (-B), and 5.1 sustained g’s (-C); acceleration from Mach O.8 to Mach 1.2 intended to be within 65 seconds (See Aviation Week.); angle of attack (AoA) capability to 50 degrees.
At the moment, however, this all seems wishful thinking. Undeveloped software, combined with disappointing results in real-world flight tests (“results of air vehicle performance and flying qualities evaluations” (30) ) have triggered flight restrictions and rolled back overly optimistic Key Performance Parameters (KPPs). For these and a variety of conditions that should not be occurring, flights are limited to top speeds of 550 (not 700) kts. (38) and altitudes of 39,000 feet (38) rather than 50,000 feet; AoA to be no greater than 18 degrees (vs. 50 degrees)…as well as the imposition of other “aircraft operating limitations that are not suitable for combat” (38). KPPs for sustained g’s in a turn have been weakened—by 20 percent for the –A (5.3 down to 4.6)(30), by 10 percent for the –B (5.0 down to 4.5) (32), and by 2 percent for the –C (5.1 down to 5.0) (33). Transonic acceleration from Mach 0.8 to M. 1.2 suffers significantly: with the –A version, it takes 8 seconds longer; 16 seconds longer with the –B; and a worrisome 43 seconds longer with the –C…an increase of about two thirds. Although the F-35 is essentially a strike aircraft, acceleration capability could be critical in combat.
Transonic roll-off (where one wing loses lift sooner than the other when a shock wave forms at the top of the wing as the airflow reaches the local speed of sound) and buffet (or shaking of the entire aircraft) as more surfaces form shock waves and boundary layer flow becomes turbulent—both were more serious than expected in the –B and –C versions, especially with the latter, whose wingspan is greater than that of the other variants: another possible problem in a combat situation.
Some fighter pilots offered their comments on FlightGlobal: ” ‘What an embarrassment, and there will be obvious tactical implications,’ another highly experienced fighter pilot says. ‘[It's] certainly not anywhere near the performance of most fourth and fifth-generation aircraft.
‘At higher altitudes, the reduced performance will directly impact survivability against advanced Russian-designed “double-digit” surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems such as the Almaz-Antey S-300PMU2 (also called the SA-20 Gargoyle by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), the pilot says. At lower altitudes, where fighters might operate in the close air support or forward air control role, the reduced airframe performance will place pilots at increased risk against shorter-range SAMs and anti-aircraft artillery” ( See GlobalFlight).
A few questions:
Why didn’t earlier wind tunnel tests and computational fluid dynamic modeling predict problems involved in maintaining intended sustained g’s in a turn?
Why was not poor F-35 transonic acceleration also predicted—especially for the F-35C, whose eight feet greater wingspan contributes to the significantly larger Mach Cone (the zone of disturbed air behind the shock wave system generated by an aircraft at supersonic speed) that must be dragged during the transonic regime?
Why was there not greater fuselage application of area rule (that pinched waist so visible on the ubiquitous T-38 supersonic trainer), that brilliant 1950s design breakthrough by aerodynamicist Richard Whitcomb specifically to minimize transonic drag?
For the –B model, the lift fan may have prevented such a waist pinch. But why have this tail wag the dog, mandating that commonality be based on the least aerodynamic of the three variants when fuselage area rule could well have been applied to the –A and –C versions, establishing a common baseline design of improved transonic efficiency and performance across the 2243 aircraft intended (in current projections) for the Air Force and the Navy—plus all international customers not intending to order the specialized STOVL version that will be produced in the smallest numbers? Pinched-waist commonality would seem to make sense for the vast portion of the fleet numbering more than four times the 540 –B variants tentatively listed for the Marine Corps and the Royal Navy. As it is, given unique differences in wingspan and arresting gear requirements and STOVL mechanical provisions, each version already differs from the other two versions. Commonality? But applying area rule to 75 per cent of F-35s produced would have added commonality where it is most needed, cutting transonic acceleration time while improving combat efficiency, range, and speed.
Weapons and Guidance Glitches
Most weapons tested for compatibility and safe release have worked so far, but under 1-g conditions in level flight. Have possible wind tunnel-based concerns about post-release unstable airflow around wing and fuselage attachment locations prevented more combat-realistic testing under higher g’s and in banking or diving modes?
Then there’s the high-tech computer-linked helmet-mounted display system that will control these weapons (already in use with other aircraft and in other air forces)—classified as “deficient”. Doesn’t work. Why? “Expected capabilities that were not delivered” (35) include latency problems with the distributed aperture system (DAS) in the helmet-mounted video display. Latency—some call it ‘transport time’—is the time between aircraft sensors’ signal acquisition and its transmission and projection in readable format on the pilot’s helmet video display. Currently at .133 seconds, that time delay of over an eighth of a second then has to be added to the pilot’s additional physical response time of about .15 seconds if he or she is to react to the data displayed and launch a weapon. In dogfights with closing speeds of over 1000 knots, this cumulative delay of more than a quarter of a second can be potentially fatal, and the latency-derived .133 second margin of error in initial aim point stands as an unacceptable contributor to this dangerous combat deficiency. Then add in deficient “night vision acuity,” excessive jitter that degrades data and images, inconsistent bore sight alignment, distracting “green glow” seepage from other avionics, imagery and data unable to be recorded (35). So—those high-tech air-to-air missiles and guided bombs cannot even be launched.
And the 25mm four-barrel rotating cannon with its 180 shells? Intended only for the Air Force F-35A version; -B and -C versions have no cannon, but will require external gun pods mounted by ground crews. Why did F-35 designers intentionally ignore the F-4 dogfighting débacle in Vietnam? The F-4—with no internal cannon and radar-guided Sparrow missiles that did not work at short range—could not shoot down the MiG-17s and MiG-21s thrown against them. Gun pods then provided a poor interim solution before the F-4E was redesigned to carry an internal 20mm cannon.
Now we have the F-35—“F” for its “Fighter” role, although it seems primarily an expensive attempt to replace early model F/A-18s and the Marines’ subsonic AV-8B Harrier II STOVL aircraft in their ground attack roles. (Ironically, what Hussein’s tank crews feared most was the A-10 Warthog with its GAU-8/A Avenger seven-barrel 30mm cannon, which tore them to bits from above, where their armor was thinnest.)
Why, then, in the DOT&E report are there no results listed from airborne firing tests of the F-35A’s cannon? If there have not yet been such tests, has a qualifying 25mm shell even been chosen? (We remember what inappropriate propellant selection did to M-16 rifle performance in Vietnam…) Such testing early on will be crucial in determining the effect of recoil shock on the aircraft’s structure and engine operation. Not to mention effects of the muzzle blast and combustion gasses on adjacent stealth coatings given that heat from air friction and radiational heating from the afterburner seemed to do such a job on the skin and coatings of the horizontal stabilizers.
No discussion. So—cannon not tested and other external and internally carried weapons for all practical purposes unlaunchable because of “deficient” sighting system available to pilots, thus rendering all F-35s produced so far as little more than expensive aerial targets for their adversaries.
Vulnerability Increased, Combat Survivability Jeopardized
* In the live fire test and evaluation, “None of the F-35 variants met the operational requirement for the HEI threat” posed by fragments and damage from a 30mm high explosive incendiary (HEI) shell (41). The Mirage 2000, MiG-29, and the Su-27 and its derivatives (these in service with a number of countries)—and the T-50/PAK-FA shaped for stealth and now in development—all carry 30mm cannon and could be considered potential adversaries for the F-35.
* But, given the F-35’s basic design, it’s not just 30mm shells that pose a threat: any 20mm, 7.62mm, 5.56mm round from the ground or fragments from the smallest of shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles penetrating the F-35’s skin could trigger catastrophic loss of aircraft. The –A and –C variants have massive volumes of fuel surrounding the engine inlets, and the 270-volt electrical system provides ample charge for a fatal spark in the air/fuel mixture. Since the fuel is also being used as a heat sink to cool avionics and other systems (and has considerable trouble doing so on hot summer days), it is already at an elevated temperature. Furthermore, this pre-heated and volatile fuel is being used as the operating liquid in the –B’s “fueldraulic system” that swivels the extremely hot engine exhaust nozzle during STOVL mode. (Eaton supplies the VDRP fueldraulic boost pump and the 4000 psi hydraulic power generation system.) What happens when a stray rifle bullet nicks a fueldraulic line and raw fuel sprays at 4000 psi into the broiling engine bay next to the 1500-1700 degree exhaust nozzle?
* All F-35 models rely on a highly computerized fly-by-wire flight control system, with primary avionics bays nested in the lower forward fuselage—where they are most susceptible to ground fire. With even one hit to that flight control computer, the pilot immediately loses control of the aircraft and must eject.
*And that poses a further problem: the Air Force found the early LRIP pilot escape system to be a “serious risk” since “interactions between the pilot, the ejection seat, and the canopy during the ejection sequence …are not well understood” (38). So—don’t get into a dogfight with MiG-29s or Mirage 2000s or Su-27s or PAK-FAs or any other fighter armed with 30mm cannon, and don’t bail out if you survive their cannon fire?  (We are reminded of equivalent survivability issues with the MV-22 Osprey, which cannot autotrotate to a safe landing if both engines fail, nor has it ever been tested in a power-out dead-stick landing: its glide ratio is abysmal, its fuselage is brittle (composites), and it has no crew ejection seats; yet it’s been in full production for the Marines and the Air Force for several years.)
F-35B: STOVL Missions Raise Risks
That the F-35B’s lift fan system remains untested against live fire while in operation (when its rotating blades would be most failure prone) is probably irrelevant since AV-8B Harrier II-type vertical landings on unprepared surfaces just behind front lines will be problematic at best and even downright dangerous for the F-35B. Despite best USMC intentions regarding close air support and the F-35B’s specialized STOVL capabilities, discussions had already begun three years ago on ways to “limit heat damage to carrier decks and other surfaces,” very possibly leading to “severe F-35 operating restrictions and or costly facility upgrades, repairs or both” (http://www.dodbuzz.com/2010/07/19/jsf-heat-woes-being-fixed-trautman/). Indeed, Bill Sweetman (in his Ares blog for Aviation Week) quotes from a Navy report issued in January of 2010 which “outlines what base-construction engineers need to do to ensure that the F-35B’s exhaust does not turn the surface it lands on into an area-denial weapon. And it’s not trivial. Vertical-landing ‘pads will be exposed to 1700 deg. F and high velocity (Mach 1) exhaust,’ the report says. The exhaust will melt asphalt and ‘is likely to spall the surface of standard airfield concrete pavements on the first VL.’ (The report leaves to the imagination what jagged chunks of spalled concrete will do in a supersonic blast field.)”  Heat-resistant reinforced concrete, special sealants…the list goes on. And what about that unprepared field, where debris thrown up and sucked into the intakes as the F-35B touches down causes incapacitating foreign object damage (FOD) to the aircraft’s engine? And what would be long-term effects on carrier decks? Not a pleasant scenario. Discussion of these problems—and their solutions—do not appear in the 2012 DOT&E report.
F-35C: Carrier Capabilities in Jeopardy
Carrier capability is currently nonexistent: the F-35C is therefore unable to perform carrier-based missions for which it was designed.
* Arresting hook: not operational—could not catch the cable and had to be entirely redesigned. A basic design issue is that the distance between the F-35C’s main landing gear (MLG) and the tail hook is too short, providing insufficient time after passage of the main wheels over the wire for it to bounce up and be snagged by the hook. The new hook, with a sharper point, is now being tested on an arresting cable-equipped runway simulating a carrier deck. Unfortunately, these tests have been less than fully successful. In addition, the situation has now morphed into a systems engineering issue in that a recent study shows “higher than predicted loads” (39) being passed from the hook to the airframe. Will further cracking soon occur in key support frames to which the hook system is attached, requiring additional redesign of basic structure and adding yet more weight?
* Significant carrier landing approach problems: when “30 degrees of flaps are required to meet the KPP for maximum approach speed of 145 knots at required carrier landing weight” (33), poor handling qualities result; a 15-degree flap setting improves handling (33) but raises approach speed above the KPP limit. (And higher touch-down speed will further degrade arresting cable bounce time needed for the arresting hook even as it further increases stress on the aircraft’s tail hook mounting points.)
* The need for 43 additional seconds to accelerate from Mach .8 to Mach 1.2 (33), along with more severe transonic buffeting and wing roll off than in the other two variants, suggests that the –C has become essentially a subsonic aircraft in both air-intercept and ground-attack modes.
* Tactical data transfer: doesn’t work—pilot cannot transfer video data or crucial recorded mission data to the carrier’s intelligence system, and the carrier cannot receive Link 16 datalink imagery transmissions (39).
* Maintenance Repair & Overhaul (MRO) datalink: inoperable—“design of the JSF Prognostic Health Maintenance downlink is incomplete” (39)—as are so many other software-reliant systems. (How do you deliver an aircraft—or more than 65 of them—when basic parts or systems have not yet even been designed?!) Result? An efficient pre-landing prognostic maintenance transmission becomes a lengthy and inefficient post-mission diagnostic analysis. And, as in so many other time-consuming cases with the F-35, once design is complete, more time will have to be wasted in regression testing of the revised system for all versions of this aircraft (see below for further examples).
In short, it would seem that the Navy has a 5th-generation ‘supersonic’ carrier-based strike fighter that struggles in the transonic regime, has significant speed or handling problems during landing approach, is currently equipped with a tail hook that does not work, and—once on board—cannot download crucial mission data or essential maintenance requirements.
* Mission Availability, Reliability, and Maintenance With this Prognostic Health Maintenance datalink inoperable, the degrading of efficient MRO operations has an obvious impact on subsequent aircraft reliability. Meanwhile, concurrent development has forced the incorporation of other unproven and immature subsystems into the overall JSF systems package with predictable results on reliability. Mean flight hours between flight critical failure were 40 percent below expectations for the F-35A, 30 percent below for the F-35B, and 16 percent below for the F-35C (41).
Corrective measures related to these critical failures? The F-35A’s mean corrective maintenance time is 2 to 3 times the period allotted. For the –B, it’s 78 percent more than time allowed, and 65 percent over for the –C (42). Massive immaturity of the Joint Technical Data (JTD) maintenance program and the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) require multiple workarounds (42) by the maintenance crew and further compromise aircraft availability, causing frustrating additional operational delays. Indeed, regarding those USMC F-35Bs deployed to Yuma, AZ: “Without a certified and functional ALIS system, the aircraft are essentially inoperable” (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/senior-f-35-official-warns-on-software-breakdowns-relationship-crisis-376590/).
It’s little surprise that the Air Force’s Operational Utility Evaluation (OUE) that ran for two months from September through November, 2012, “included no combat capabilities” (27) because the overall system itself was still under development and so immature that “little can be learned about operating and sustaining the F-35 in combat operations from this evaluation” (27). But they did discover the disconcerting impact of the critical failures and maintenance problems listed above:
* Mission availability rate for the F-35A consequently averaged less than 35 percent, “meaning three of nine aircraft were available on average at any given time” (38);
* And for those ‘available’ aircraft, reports from the field at Eglin indicate that pre-flight prep for the F-35 requires roughly 44-50 maintenance man-hours, close to double the total maintenance man-hours per flight hour for the F-16.
* Despite that extended pre-flight prep, cumulative air abort rates for both the –A and –B variants averaged roughly five aborts per 100 flight hours—despite the “goal of 1.0 air abort per 100 flight hours as a threshold to start an evaluation of the system’s readiness for training” (author emphasis; 38). Readiness for combat? Not mentioned.
Software: The Noose That’s Strangling the F-35
In a nutshell, the software just isn’t ready. We’re no longer climbing into P-51s. Since at least the F-16, software has been absolutely essential for onboard computer systems that maintain stability of fly-by-wire aircraft whose design intentionally places them on the thin edge of instability to permit almost instantaneous change in flight path—crucial in a high-speed dogfight or in avoiding a SAM. Without such computers and software, pilots cannot control the aircraft.
Now take the F-35 and all its automated functions—from helmet-cued weapon sighting to datalink sensor transmissions to other aircraft and…the list goes on. It is said that the F-22 Raptor, the F-35’s older brother, has 2.2 million lines of computer code; a recent estimate for the F-35’s Block 3 (combat capable) mission systems software postulates that the aircraft’s own computers will harbor approximately 8.6 million lines of software code—not counting even higher requirements in related ground systems. Yet “Block 3i software, required for delivery of Lot 6 aircraft and hosted on an upgraded processor, has lagged in integration and laboratory testing” (34). Block 2B software is what is required for only the most basic “initial, limited combat capability for selected internal weapons (AIM-120C, GBU-32/31, and GBU-12)” (34), yet DOT&E admits that “the program made virtually no progress in the development, integration, and laboratory testing of any software beyond 2B” (author emphasis; 34)—i.e., no tangible progress toward anything resembling real combat capability. In the wishful thinking department, full combat System Design and Development capability is tentatively scheduled for Block 3F software to be installed starting with production Lot 9 (34), which means on airframe number 214 at the earliest…possibly sometime in 2017. As for that Block 3i software, those Lot 6 aircraft are already on the assembly line (starting with airframe number 96); while delivery may begin in 2014, don’t hold your breath: given program history to date, this mission software may well not be ready and Lot 6 aircraft will be in danger of being undeployable—not much better than ‘hangar queens’ so often grounded for other glitches. (Will Turkey have waited long enough?)
How bad is it? It’s all summarized in that Pentagon report: “Flight restrictions blocked accomplishment of a portion of the planned baseline test points until a new version of vehicle systems software became available” (33). And when it comes to internal weapons release and guidance, “basic mission systems capabilities, such as communications, navigation, and basic radar functions” (34), and more—fully coded software is essential. Yet aircraft are being delivered with major variances that defer testing and add “a bow wave of test points that will have to be completed in the future” (34), while such regressive testing of systems that should have been tested earlier but were forced to be deferred massively complicates any results-based linear (not concurrent) testing and development program. At the time of the report’s release, even the minimal capability of Block 1 software included in delivered aircraft was deficient by 20 percent (34). Block 2A software was delivered to flight test four months late and 50 percent deficient (34). Let the report speak for itself: “Testing needed for completion of the remaining 20 percent of Block 1 capabilities and 50 percent of Block 2A capabilities will have to be conducted while the program is introducing Block 2B software to flight test. Software integration tasks supporting Block 2B (and later increments) were delayed in 2012 as contractor software integration staff were needed to support Block 2A development, test, and anomaly resolution” (35). So much for any attempt to install mission and flight control software in any logical sequence where later and more complex versions can build on a foundation of previously installed systems. And that’s just a small sampling. Sounds like absolute chaos.
Who is the supervisor for software development? For software integration? Why haven’t they been replaced?
Better yet, why hasn’t software development and integration, at this point, been transferred to a different vendor?
These seem to be some basic questions that no one is asking.
Equally depressing news has appeared in previous Pentagon annual reports on the F-35, and surely these reports have been distributed to members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
Why have they taken no action regarding the mismanagement of the most massive and expensive military procurement program in our history?
More important, when will they start to do so?
Lee Gaillard holds degrees from Yale University and Middlebury College. He served in the Marine Corps Reserve, worked in publishing for Time-Life International in New York, in industry as a senior product marketing specialist for the world’s largest manufacturer of semiconductor assembly equipment, and in secondary education as teacher, department head, and school administrator. In 2002, Gaillard attended the Royal Institute of International Affairs defense conference in London, U.K.: “Europe and America: A New Strategic Partnership,” subsequently writing two related articles that appeared in Defense News. After Airways Magazine (July 2005) published his examination of the National Transportation Safety Board’s flawed investigation of the American Airlines Flight 587 disaster, he served as a consultant to “Airline Cracks,” a documentary on load-bearing composite structures in commercial jetliners, telecast by ITV-West (Bristol, U.K.) on Oct. 4, 2005. In 2006, the Center for Defense Information published his monograph on the V-22 Osprey.
Gaillard has been writing about aviation and defense issues for over 25 years. His more than 100 articles and book reviews have appeared in newspapers, professional journals, and magazines around the country—on topics ranging from the role of luck in the Battle of Midway (Naval Institute PROCEEDINGS) to “Submarine Design: Aeroengineering Dimensions” (Submarine Review) and the V-22 Osprey’s readiness for combat (Jane’s Defence Weekly). He is listed in recent editions of Who’s Who in America and is a contributor to the Straus Military Reform Project.