The controversy around F-35 It’s nothing new. The plane has been involved in numerous problems for years. Delays, cost overruns, defective and difficult to handle parts, limitations on flying near thunderstorms, questionable reliability and much more. Despite this, the Department of Defense has not stopped boasting “the unmatched capabilities” of the United States’ “most advanced” war machine and has ensured that Lockheed Martin maintains production at peak performance.
Now, a recently declassified report has left the most expensive and ambitious weapon in the North American country in a humiliating position. These are details that had remained under lock and key, but have come to light following a request from the Government Oversight Project through the Freedom of Information Act. Bloomberg has published a preview, but the full report should be published as soon as this Thursday. Elon Musk’s criticism has not been long in coming.
F-35, a project that continues to receive criticism
It’s been 18 years since the F-35 first flew, but the Pentagon is still trying to address long-standing problems. The aforementioned report notes that “the reliability, maintainability and overall availability of the US fleet remains at risk. below expectations of service”, according to the Operational Testing and Evaluation of the project. Concerns include such important aspects as weapons installation, repair times and cybersecurity.
The fifth-generation fighter’s automatic diagnostic system records one false positive per hour. Like any system, there is a margin of failure. The problem? An incorrect diagnosis was expected every 50 hours. At the repair level, F-35 repairs may take twice as long as stipulated. As if this were not enough, the Air Force variant has a 25 mm cannon that continues to fail to hit targets, the result of errors in its design and installation, even after years of adjustments.
Bloomberg notes that some details about how the F-35 deals with cyberattacks were hidden. It is a maneuver that makes sense, after all we are talking about a weapon of war whose details remain secret. However, they point out that the office involved in the program requested extensive testing to test more of the fighter’s cyber defense capabilities in a realistic environment. These are some of the points made in the declassified project report.
As we say, Elon Musk has not been slow to launch unfiltered comments against the F-35. The South African-born businessman said that the problems began as soon as the project was conceived, where an aircraft was designed with too many requirements and unable to satisfy them all. “He never had a chance of success,” he said in a message. On his social network,
Musk usually makes blunt comments, although his words may now carry more weight. This is because the businessman has become one of the closest allies of President-elect Donald J. Trump and one of the leaders of the future “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)”. This is an external organization that will aim to promote a large-scale structural reform of the Government and will mainly focus on drastically reducing spending.
Images | Department of Defense (1, 2)
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