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Pentagon Cheats On $1 Trillion Stealth Fighter’s Key Performance Test
The pentagon has been caught in a scandal to cover up the fact its new stealth fighter fails to meet military requirements to fly as far and take off as quickly as needed.
As the US military has plans to phase out over 100 existing air force fighters and replace them with the new F-35 stealth fighters, the Pentagon has been caught in the middle of another scandal.
They have been caught cheating to get the overweight, over budget and behind schedule joint strike fighter to pass its “mid-terms” and avoid yet another embarrassing scandal
This is of course sad for for the $1 trillion dollar program which is the most expensive military project in human history, already has 13 serious design flaws, and still doesn’t even have full clearance to fly locally yet.
Perhaps even more scandalous is that Washington bureaucrats, at the beckoning call of the military industrial complex lobbyists, have forced excessive funding to product $2,500 planes despite repeated statements from the Pentagon that so many planes are not needed.
Wired reports:
Pentagon Helps New Stealth Fighter Cheat on Key Performance Test
It seemed like a promising step for America’s next stealth fighter: The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter passed a key Pentagon test of its combat capability. But it turns out that the family of jets cleared the mid-February exam only because its proctor agreed to inflate its grade. In essence, the military helped the F-35 cheat on its midterms.
The collusion between the Pentagon testing body, known as the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), and the F-35 program — first reported by Inside Defense — confirmed that the U.S.’ most expensive warplane met previously established performance criteria. Specifically, the review was meant to show that the jet can fly as far and take off as quickly as combat commanders say they need it to.
But the review council, which includes the vice chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, eased the standard flying profile of the Air Force’s F-35A model — thereby giving it a range boost of 30 miles. And it tacked an additional 50 feet onto the required takeoff distance for the Marines’ F-35B version, which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta just took off budgetary probation.
[....]
Citing earlier efforts to boost the Joint Strike Fighter’s image, defense analyst Winslow Wheeler accused the Pentagon of “putting lipstick on the pig.” That’s an apt characterization of recent moves by the Pentagon’s F-35 boosters.
[...]
Increasingly, it seems the F-35 only passes tests when the tests are rigged. The good news for the fighter program typically comes with buried caveats. In response to Wheeler’s criticism, Stephen O’Bryan, then a vice president for stealth-fighter contractor Lockheed Martin, insisted that “the F-35 is meeting or exceeding every single one of the Key Performance Parameters that the services have mandated.” Of course, it’s easy to ace a test when the teacher’s already decided you passed.
Source: Wired
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