The F-35 Guide to Avoiding Radars, Accountants, and Reality

The Producers tells the story of a theater producer and an accountant who want to create a Broadway flop. They borrow outrageous amounts from investors, knowing that nobody follows the money after a failure. After this pre-ordained disaster, they intended to abscond to Brazil as millionaires. The plan goes terribly wrong when the show turns out to be a surprise hit. Despite a pro-Nazi theme and a terrible cast, it succeeds. How did they get going wrong so wrong? Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon would take no such risks.

Here are the golden rules of making a successful fighter plane, which have been proven repeatedly over the last ninety years (with few exceptions):

1. Fighters must be fast and agile
2. ‘Multi-role’ aircraft seldom are, don’t try
3. You can’t make a fighter out of a bomber (make it a fighter first, then later develop a ground-attack version)
4. Never rely on any unproven concepts as linchpins
5. Don’t start production until the aircraft works

The F-35 has broken all of them.

Has the F-35 been schemed by a joker seeking to highlight the insanity of military procurement? Or maybe somewhere there are two men in Hawaiian shirts packing suitcases? Even without any catchy show tunes, the F-35 is my favorite comedy.  It’s probably less funny to taxpayers around the world, however. (Check how much your country has already invested in the program before you feel too smug.)

The breaching of Rule 5 above is the biggest heart-breaker. On Valentine’s Day, an F-35 cockpit mysteriously filled with smoke, and a week later a crack was found in a turbine blade and the whole fleet of aircraft was grounded. This week a leaked Pentagon report revealed that pilots have complained about flickering in the display of the plane’s sophisticated new helmet, and not being able to turn their heads in the cockpit–a problem because, as one beta tester noted, any disruption to visibility “will get the pilot gunned” down in dogfights.

The aircraft have now been given the all-clear to resume flying, but we can expect more technical problems as it is still being tested. That’s because of the now-infamous decision to begin building F-35s before the design was finalized, which has meant that military has spent $373 million rebuilding the F-35s we’ve already built.

 “This will make a headline if I say it, but I’m going to say it anyway,” Pentagon acquisitions head Frank Kendall, whose predecessor hailed the F-35 acquisitions process, said. “Putting the F-35 into production years before the first test flight was acquisition malpractice. It should not have been done.”

But that’s not the story the F-35’s developer would tell. Through a beautiful combination of multi-state congressional support, an excellent track record and wonderfully elastic powers of language, Lockheed Martin has created what appears to be an unkillable monster.

The centerpiece of the F-35’s public image is its website. As we enter the site we’re met by some films.

The two films called “The F-35 In Action” were clearly written by a lunatic. They start like budget action films. A montage of audio news reports is played, reminding us what a big, bad world it is. Words appear on the screen: “One mission”…”protecting freedom”…”one solution.” What the hell does that mean? The more you think about it, the less it means.

Everything here
is expressed in
three or four words or short phrases
which are very vague
or meaningless

Then we’re in some kind of mission control centre, where women of all races seem to be watching graphics of F-35s. No idea why, but certainly seems important.

Via Lockheed Martin

The bizarre, empty series of slogans are high-quality nonsense. My favorite line insists that the F-35 “brings lethality and stealth to the battlefield.” I think it’s fair to say that a battlefield probably has a fair amount of lethality before the F-35 turns up. If “lethality” means “capable of causing death,” it’s not a very special trait for a military weapon.

The DoD define it as “The ability of a munition (or laser, high power microwave, etc.) to cause damage that will cause the loss or a degradation in the ability of a target system to complete its designated mission”. In fact it’s such a normal trait for a weapon, that when a weapon is non-lethal, it is specified. I think arms manufacturers just like the term because it sounds cool. Lethality seems to be used as a synonym for invincible.

Lockheed Martin then goes on to describe the F-35 as “A lethal information collector.” I think this one may be a Freudian slip. I Googled it and Lethal Information was a hardcore porn film from 2001.

Other words that pop up with regularity on the F-35 site are “affordable,” “survivable,” “supportable,” and the like. It’s odd to boast about any of these really, because if a warplane lacked any single one of these characteristics it would be an absolute failure.

“Affordable” is the funniest word, as this is an aircraft which has become the most expensive fighter ever built. The use of redundant words makes the viewer suspicious. How would Lockheed Martin describe a burger? “Edible,” “holdable,” “more burger-like than any rival pizza.”

But the weirdest feature of the F-35 site? The “Take Action” page, where you can show your support for America’s most expensive weapon by writing an email to Congress (this is an automated feature). “Our nation is currently facing both economic and national security challenges,” it reads, “and the F-35 plays a vital role in addressing both.”

Is Lockheed Martin serious? Are we still talking about the biggest, most financially out of control example of military procurement in history? What “national security challenges” the F-35 is vital in addressing is beyond me. The F-35 is designed to be good at bombing a well-defended city (think Baghdad in 1991, but more so). Quite how this applies to national security is anyone’s guess. Maybe militant survivalists are building a top-notch integrated air defense system?

Marana, Arizona Mayor Ed Honea tests out an F-35 cockpit simulator at Sargent Aerospace, which is one of many sub-contractors on the F-35 program. Image: Will Seberger/TucsonSentinel.com

The following will always say nice things about military aircraft programs: The right-wing press (as long it’s made in their country), right-wing politicians (as long as it’s made in their state), aviation journalists, technology publications and the armed forces. So when any of these groups starting growling at a project, something odd is going on.

In the case of F-35, members of all of the above groups have spoken out against it. Most significantly, USAF Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, the program executive officer for the F-35, said last week that Lockheed Martin is trying to “squeeze every nickel” out of the US government. Even with sequestration and budget cuts looming, Bogdan’s lashing out against contractors is something you normally don’t see from top brass, which makes it all the more indicative of how poorly the F-35 program is going.

Bogdan’s point was that Lockheed Martin is acting like each F-35 is the last aircraft it will ever build, and thus is trying to snatch every penny it can. Rather than treating the program like the 40-odd year working relationship it is, Bogdan is basically saying Lockheed Martin is stealing from the minibar of a sinking ship. (His actual words included the comically chosen line “I’m not getting all that love yet.”)

Once deemed too big to fail, big cracks are starting to show in the F-35 program. Australia is considering reducing its order, as is Canada, while Turkey has only recently publicly renewed its faith in the program after reportedly considering dropping out. Politicians around the world are waking up and thinking “How the hell did the US sell us this pig in a poke?” But as F-35 costs continue to spiral upward, even as the planes don’t perform as they should, the hundred billion dollar question is how long our own officials will keep supporting the plane.

Joe Saklatvala is the editor of Hush-Kit.