Problems plaguing F-35's next-gen maintenance system

[jakeXT]

The F-35's highly touted, next-generation software system designed to detail maintenance issues on the jet is plagued with problems that could lead to more delays with the jet's development.

The F-35's Autonomic Logistics Information System is a program that a maintainer plugs into the jet, and it is expected to outline what is wrong and what is working, and to streamline the process of identifying replacement parts. It has been a touted as a game-changing technology to simplify the maintenance process for the new jet.

But members of the House Armed Services tactical air and land subcommittee who spoke with maintainers last month at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, heard a different story. Maintainers there said 80 percent of issues identified by ALIS are "false positives." Additionally, the program is sluggish, slowing down maintenance instead of streamlining it, subcommittee chairman Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, said during a hearing Tuesday.

"When we asked them how many false positives, I thought it would be a high number because it is a new system," Turner said. "But when they said 80, I was taken aback."

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2015/04/15/problems-facing-f35-maintainers-automated-system/25781075/

[djean111]

1. It is starting to look like it would make more sense to shoot millions of dollars

out of t-shirt cannons, over random neighborhoods, every couple of days, than to pour so much money into the f-35 pit.

[jtuck004]

2. If one looks overseas, we have apparently been doing that as well. With no better results.n/t

[bemildred]

3. This is what happens when you let the money boys make technical decisions.

And it is ignorant on it's face to think that all future maintenance can be automated, or that the stuff you cannot automate is not the most important stuff. All they care about is profit. They want to remove the "unreliable" humans from the maintenance loop, and they will find for such tasks a trained human is far superior to anything the programmed computer can do.