The Air Force Just Bought 100 Stealth Fighters That Cant Fight

[babylonsister]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-air-force-just-bought-100-stealth-fighters-that-cant-fight

ERROR FORCE
The Air Force Just Bought 100 Stealth Fighters That Can’t Fight
Some 6 percent of the planned 1,700-strong F-35 fleet may be unfit for combat, sticking U.S. taxpayers with a $20 billion tab for fighters... that can’t fight.
David Axe
10.15.17 9:00 PM ET


The U.S. military has signaled that it might cancel essential upgrades for more than 100 early model F-35 stealth fighters flown by the Air Force, rendering the radar-evading jets incompatible with many of the latest weapons.

In that case, some 6 percent of the flying branch’s planned 1,700-strong F-35 fleet would be unfit for combat, sticking U.S. taxpayers with a $20 billion tab for fighters... that can’t fight.

Experts say the military never should have bought the planes the first place, as they rolled out of Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth factory before the F-35’s design was complete and thoroughly tested—a deliberate strategy called “concurrency” that the military hoped would speed up the program’s progress.

“The risk that the services would be stuck with less-than-capable aircraft is one that the Pentagon knowingly took when leaders decided to overlap the development and testing of the program with the production,” wrote Dan Grazier, an analyst with the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C.

Skipping upgrades for 108 older F-35As—“concurrency orphans,” Grazier dubbed them—is reportedly one option under consideration as the Pentagon tries to find money for scores of newer F-35s. “We’re looking at solution spaces to give our warfighters options,” Navy Vice Adm. Matt Winter, head of the F-35 program, told Flight Global. The military asked Congress to fund 70 F-35s in 2018 for $10.3 billion.

The F-35s in question mostly have the so-called Block 2B software, which the military calls the “initial warfighting” version of the jet’s complex computer code. F-35s with Block 2B software can carry just four different kinds of bombs and missiles—far fewer than the F-35 was designed to carry when the fully combat-capable Block 3C software is installed.

Jets with Block 3C code are also more maneuverable than Block 2B models are. To have any chance of surviving in combat, F-35s with Block 2B software would “need to avoid threat engagement and would require augmentation by other friendly forces,” according to the Pentagon’s testing agency.

[TexasProgresive]

1. Reposting my comment from Rollo's OP of this.

F-35 worthless money pit

And this pic says it all

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141890335