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When the People Lead,

the Leaders Follow
The Backbone Campaign specializes in the creation of spectacle imagery, innovative messaging and political theater. Most of our work involves what we call Artful Activism, in which we engage progressive activists and organizers in the strategic use of creative tactics such as festival arts, flash mobs, music and other theatrical forms of nonviolent direct action.

The Blaster

Comments on Politics, Foreign Policy, and Defense

As Napoleon said ...

"The Moral is to the Material as Three to One" ...or as the Taliban said about the American exit strategy, "You may have the clock, but we have the time."

Now read this:
Drone pilot burnout triggers call for recruiting overhaul
Nidhi Subbaraman NBC News
May 17, 2013 at 4:15 AM ET
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/drone-pilot-burnout-triggers-call-recruiting-overhaul-1C9910483
Driving a war drone is a stressful business. Shifts up to 12 hours long are stretches of dullness, watching and waiting, interrupted by flashes of intense activity in which pilots must make life-or-death decisions. Not their own life or death, however.
Pilots may be thousands of miles away from the flying weapons system they're operating. They often head home at the end of the day, as if returning from any other office job, maybe picking up milk on the way. But while at work, their drones' onboard cameras put them in a unique position to watch people being killed and injured as a direct result of their actions.
As psychologists learn more about the mental scarring warfare leaves on drone pilots — caused by long shift hours, isolation, witnessing casualties and those Jekyll-and-Hyde days split between battlefield and home — experts from within the U.S. Air Force are calling for a review of drone pilot selection. ... continued
Wanna know why there won't be a peace dividend?
Almost 23 years ago, I wrote a short pamphlet, Defense Power Games. My aim then (as it is now) was to explain why the end of the Cold War would not produce a peace dividend in the form of reduced defense budgets that were substantially lower that those averaged during America's Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Take a quick scan of Defense Power Games ... now watch this 25 minute video -- America's War Games -- (also on youtube here) just released by Aljazeera for its People and Power segment.

The video explains why the end of the War on Terror will not, like the end of the Cold War did not, result in a peace dividend

Santayana wrote that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. After watching "America's War Games," ask yourself two simple questions:
1. "What has changed since the Defense Power Games pamphlet was published in 1990?"
2. "Will the end of the War on Terror produce a dividend?"
I submit the answers are self-evident: (1) "Nothing" and (2) "No"

But one thing that has changed: Our economy is in far greater trouble today than it was in 1990, although the seeds for the current disaster were being merrily planted during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, as well as in the 1990s, not to mention the first decade of the 21st Century. And this time around, it ought to be clear that continuing to assign grossly excessive amounts of scarce resources (capital and skilled labour) to defense spending will make America's current economic problems worse.

So, how can we reduce the defense budget to free up the funds needed by both the private and public sectors to reinvigorate our economy?

Clearly, President Obama's most recent budget provides no answer -- He has placed defense off limits. Moreover, the President and Congress are clearly maneuvering to neuter the effects of the budget sequester on the Pentagon's weapons boondoggles by focusing on furloughing people, cutting back on training, reducing spare parts purchases, etc.

Over the years (since the 1970s), my colleagues and I have written extensive diagnoses of the Pentagon's institutional problems together with many recommendations about how to correct the Pentagon's dysfunctional behaviour. Over time, our central conclusion has remained the same: It is not only possible to reduce the defense budget, but budget reductions are a necessary step in reforming the pentagon's wasteful management practices to produce a more effective military (should it be truly necessary to use it, which is usually not the case).

Perhaps the best and most accessible summary of our views of the problems afflicting the Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex and our recommendations for correcting them can be found in The Pentagon Labyrinth: 10 Short Essays to Help You Through It , a free ebook we jointly wrote in 2011. (a summary of it, a chapter outline, a variety of additional links is appended below)
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The Pentagon Labyrinth

It is our pleasure to announce the publication of The Pentagon Labyrinth: 10 Short Essays to Help You Through It. This is a short pamphlet of less than 150 pages and is available at no cost in E-Book PDF format, as well as in hard copy from links on this page as well as here and here. Included in the menu below are download links for a wide variety of supplemental/supporting information (much previously unavailable on the web) describing how notions of combat effectiveness relate to the basic building blocks of people, ideas, and hardware/technology; the nature of strategy; and the dysfunctional character of the Pentagon’s decision making procedures and the supporting role of its accounting shambles.

This pamphlet aims to help both newcomers and seasoned observers learn how to grapple with the problems of national defense. Intended for readers who are frustrated with the superficial nature of the debate on national security, this handbook takes advantage of the insights of ten unique professionals, each with decades of experience in the armed services, the Pentagon bureaucracy, Congress, the intelligence community, military history, journalism and other disciplines. The short but provocative essays will help you to:
- identify the decay – moral, mental and physical – in America’s defenses,
- understand the various “tribes” that run bureaucratic life in the Pentagon,
- appreciate what too many defense journalists are not doing, but should,
- conduct first rate national security oversight instead of second rate theater,
- separate careerists from ethical professionals in senior military and civilian ranks,
- learn to critique strategies, distinguishing the useful from the agenda-driven,
- recognize the pervasive influence of money in defense decision-making,
- unravel the budget games the Pentagon and Congress love to play,
- understand how to sort good weapons from bad – and avoid high cost failures, and
- reform the failed defense procurement system without changing a single law.
The handbook ends with lists of contacts, readings and Web sites carefully selected to facilitate further understanding of the above, and more.
Select press:
Download the whole book in .pdf format, or find individual essays and supplemental materials below.

Table of Contents
- Preface
- About the Authors
- Essays:
1. Why is this Handbook Necessary? Franklin C. Spinney (this essay is a variation of the Domestic Roots of Perpetual War)
2. Penetrating the Pentagon. George Wilson
3. Learning about Defense. Bruce I. Gudmundsson
4. Congressional Oversight. Willing and Able or Willing to Enable? Winslow T. Wheeler
5. Careerism. Col. GI Wilson, USMC, ret.
6. Confused Alarms of Struggle and Flight: A Primer for Assessing Defense Strategy in the post-Iraq World. Col. Chet Richards, USAF, ret.
7. Follow the Money. Andrew Cockburn
8. Decoding the Defense Budget. Winslow T. Wheeler
9. Evaluating Weapons: Sorting the Good from the Bad. Pierre M. Sprey
10. Developing, Buying and Fielding Superior Weapon Systems. Thomas Christie
- Suggested Readings, Links, Organizations and Contacts
Materials Cited:
Essay #1: Why is this Handbook Necessary? Franklin C. Spinney
Essay #4: Congressional Oversight. Willing and Able or Willing to Enable? Winslow T. Wheeler
1. The Week of Shame: Congress Wilts as the President Demands an Unclogged Path to War
Essay #6: Confused Alarms of Struggle and Flight: A Primer for Assessing Defense Strategy in the post-Iraq World. Col. Chet Richards (USAF, ret.)
1. If We Can Keep It: A National Security Manifesto for the Next Administration
2. Shattering Illusions: A National Security Strategy for 2009-2017
Essay #9: Evaluating Weapons: Sorting the Good from the Bad . Pierre M. Sprey
Essay #10: Developing, Buying and Fielding Superior Weapon Systems. Thomas Christie
1. Paper on Oversight from DSB Task Force on Acquisition Streamlining
Suggested Readings, Links, Organizations and Contacts
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.
Iraq Invasion Anniversary: Inside The Decider’s Head

By Chuck Spinney, Time.com, March 22, 2013
http://nation.time.com/2013/03/22/iraq-invasion-anniversary-inside-the-deciders-head/

(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.”
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-22, F-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)

Chuck Spinney

spinney

Franklin (Chuck) Spinney retired from the Defense Department in 2003 after a military-civilian career spanning 33 years. The latter 26 of those years were as a staff analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. During this period, he appeared as a witness in many congressional hearings before the Budget, Armed Services, Defense Appropriations and Government Affairs or Reform and Oversight committees of the U.S. House and Senate. He is author of Defense Facts of Life: The Plans/Reality Mismatch (1985). His op-eds and essays have appeared in the TheWall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Challenge, CounterPunch, Proceedings Magazine of the U.S Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Gazette, among other places. His critical plans/reality analysis of the Reagan defense program landed him on the cover of Time Magazine (March 7, 1983). In 2003, his hour long "exit interview" with Bill Moyers on the PBS show NOW won an Emmy Award for being the best news magazine show of 2003. After retiring, Chuck and his wife moved aboard a 12 meter sailboat, crossed the Atlantic in 2005, and since then they have been sailing and living in Mediterranean Sea. Many of Chuck’s reports and essays can be found on his website.