Uncle Sam tells F-35B allies they'll have to fly the things a lot more if they want to help out around South China Sea

2020-02-07 16:24

British F-35Bs deploying to the South China Sea next year may not meet key reliability metrics set by an American government watchdog, its annual report has revealed.

On top of that, the supersonic stealth jet project's move towards Agile methodology for "Minimum viable product"-phased development of critical flight and weapons software every six months is a "High risk" strategy, according to DOTE. The F-35B fleet worldwide needs to rack up 75,000 flight hours before DOTE thinks it has gathered enough data to meet the contract spec.

DOTE appeared unsure whether Mad Hatter was DevOps-based or agile commenting: "It is unclear that new approaches, such as ALIS NEXT and 'Mad Hatter' will sufficiently improve ALIS, or if more resources are needed."

ALIS NEXT is an insourcing of ALIS by the US government, which plans to stick it on a public-sector-owned cloud in addition to having local deployments following F-35 squadrons around with large numbers of servers in tow.

Warning of the problems in store, DOTE said: "These configurations include the fielded TR-2 processors and system for Block 3F, new EW equipment in Lot 11 and later aircraft, an improved display processor that may be added to TR-2, new TR-3 open-architecture processors to enable Block 4 capabilities and other avionics for later increments in Block 4. Adequate plans for supporting all these configurations do not appear to be in place."

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