An Cosantóir

www.military.ie the defence forces magazine | 21 tioned maintenance environment. The ALIS schedules upgrades and configurations, it records and monitors the aircraft during flight, and allows the global transfer of data to the connected technicians and maintenance planners using one platform. Although the F-35 represents immense advances in aerospace engineering, it has not been without its problems, setbacks and criticisms. In 2011 former Republican presidential candidate and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Mc- Cain, alluding to the cost and time overruns, called the JSF "one of the great national scandals", suggested cancelling the project, and demanded that Lockheed Martin pick up more of the tab on alterations. Senator McCain's criticisms may be well -founded. A 2012 report to the US Congress by military aviation specialist Jermiah Gertler gave a damming appraisal of the programme. Simple issues, such as an ill-designed tail-hook for carrier landings and landing lights inconsistent with FAA rules, as well as more serious matters such as the 'excessive shaking of the aircraft during flight', were identi- fied. The investigating team also claimed it demonstrated a 'low design maturity', with more retrofits and changes than planned. Some of these issues stemmed from a practice known as 'ac- quisition concurrency'. This allows the development and produc- tion phases of a project to overlap and permits new techniques to be incorporated and research completed on highly sophisticated technological parts during the production phase. The practice contrasts with methods employed for previ- ous generations of aircraft such as 'fly before you buy', where a finished, tested model is delivered. If anything the acquisition practice employed has contributed to the bad press the F-35 has received. The aircraft has performed remarkably well in recent testing, with the F35-C surpassing expectations on carrier landings. The project's advanced manufacturing techniques are picking up some of the highest awards in the field, such as the DoD's Joint Defence Manufacturing Technology Achievement, which it won for developing innovative and cost-saving methods for making advanced cockpits. Accomplishments like these are bound to have positive additional spin-offs for the US economy. While Congress has scrutinised the project's every delay, the DoD plans on buying a lot of F-35s; over 2,000 of them at last estimate. With a revised-down figure of 35 ordered for this year, cost-saving results have become a priority to attract overseas orders from non-NATO nations such as Japan and Israel. The F-35 will be joining the F-22 Raptor, the advanced tactical air superiority fighter, in the arsenal of next-generation, air weap- ons platforms. The present rivals on the market are the Russian- made Sukhoi PAK FA and the Chinese J-20, both of which are cur- rently in test and design phases and due for commissioning later in the decade. Whether the F-35 can match, or supersede, these aircraft, is still an open question among most military analysts. The F-35's success or otherwise will not only be seen as a judge- ment on the aircraft's design, but also its central principle that stealth alone can create superiority. The US Marine Corps is hoping to reach an initial operating capacity with the aircraft by December 2015, and it's slated to appear on the decks of the British Navy's newest carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, by 2020, and to be at operating capacity with the US Air Force by 2017. However further transition still remains: training pilots to man its advanced avionics, retiring the older fighters, and develop- ing an advanced payload. These processes could take up to and beyond the year 2030, ensuring that the F35 Lightning II will be around for quite some time, into and beyond mid-century. Robert Tarrant is a graduate of the University of Aberdeen (Msc) Strategic Studies programme. He is a regular contributor to An Cosantóir, with interests in the areas of technology, strategy and international affairs.

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