How the F-35 Software Should Have Been Done

As we’ve seen and discussed, software has become the major obstacle to successful programs and the F-35 is probably the poster child for this.  The F-35 logistics and maintenance program, ALIS, was supposed to have been a miraculous piece of software that would do … well … everything plus several things we haven’t even thought of yet.  As it turned out, it couldn’t run a toaster correctly and may be the biggest military software flop in history.  In addition, the vaunted Block 4 software that enables full combat capability from the aircraft is years overdue with no implementation date in sight and many of the features have been permanently deferred to a non-existent ‘future’ date or deferred to the next aircraft program.  Those features will never be part of the F-35.  Even worse, because of the hugely delayed software and the resulting concurrency, we’ve produced hundreds of orphan F-35s that are so out of date that they will never be upgraded.  They’re essentially garbage throwaways at $100M each. 
 
Could all this have been avoided?  I don’t see how.  After all, this is how aircraft development and acquisition programs go, right?  I mean, everyone knows that, right? 
 
Well, let’s now take a look at how the software should have been handled and how all of this could have been avoided.  Wait … is that really possible?  Could all of this have been avoided?  Yes, it could, quite simply, as a matter of fact, and now we’ll see how.
 
 
Requirements – To begin, the software was insanely over spec’ed.  Only a lunatic – or the US military – would have attempted to cram so many features into the software.  We’ve talked about this at length.  The software had far too many requirements that had nothing to do with combat (looking at you ALIS) and nothing to do with realistic combat (looking at remote guidance handoffs and similar technology for the sake of technology features).  The military is obsessed with technology for its own sake.  Our guiding principle should be K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid).  One could also refer to this as K.I.S.A. (Keep It Simple, Admiral) since ‘admiral’ is a synonym for ‘stupid’.  The two words are interchangeable. 
 
By reducing the software requirements to just direct and realistic combat features we could have cut the scope, cost, and time to produce the software in half, or whatever actual large proportion.  So, half our job is done before we even begin!
 
Think of this as the Boyd approach to software:  not a single line of code that doesn’t directly enable realistic combat.  Programmer Boyd would be proud of us!
 
Of course, even with drastically pared down requirements, some significant amount of software is still required and here’s how it should have been handled.
 
We start by recognizing three absolutely critical and obvious conditions:
 
1. Software is platform agnostic. 
 
2. Software must be its own, stand-alone program, separate from the hardware program.
 
3.  Hardware development cannot proceed until the software is finalized.
 
 
Platform Agnostic Software - This is the key to software development. We didn’t need to have an actual F-35 aircraft in order to develop the software.  The software can be developed in laboratory simulations or on surrogate aircraft if an actual aircraft is needed for some reason that I can’t fathom.  We could have loaded the software on a Piper Cub, if necessary.  This would have allowed us to completely develop the software without every spending a penny on the physical aircraft.  The physical aircraft is the last thing we need.  It’s the final piece of the puzzle not the first.  The F-35 attempted to do the reverse.  They built the aircraft first and then remembered they had to add some software.  Utterly predictably, that approach failed miserably.
 
Stand-Alone Program Management – Software comes before hardware and must be its own, stand-alone project from a program management perspective.  Software cannot be an afterthought, add-on to the hardware as it was with the F-35.  The only way to effectively manage the software and avoid having it become an afterthought is to make it its own program with its own, clearly and rigidly defined requirements, schedule, and milestones.  If the software fails to meet its milestones, you don’t screw around or extend the program;  you kill it, learn lessons, fire and court-martial the managers, and move on.  Failure, then, becomes a positive in the sense that it serves as a warning – a severe warning – to the next project and manager to maintain tight control on the project and to be realistic regarding capabilities.  No more promising the moon and delivering nothing.  Fire and court-martial a few people and the next ones fall in line.
 
Start Point - Software is the hardware enabler.  Without the software, the hardware is just a very expensive paperweight.  In other words, there is no point even buying the first hardware rivet until the software is complete.  Thus, the completion of the software is what controls and triggers the start of hardware development.  This doesn’t mean partial completion with some nebulous phased delivery in the ephemeral future;  it means just what it says:  complete.  Finished.  Nothing left to do.  The contract is fully satisfied.  ‘I’s’ are dotted and ‘T’s’ are crossed.  Last line of code is written.  Had we followed this with the F-35, we would not yet have spent a single penny on the F-35 aircraft, itself.  What a savings!  We would not now have hundreds of orphans and wasted billions of dollars and have an entire fleet of only partially combat capable aircraft.  We might have even recognized, decades ago, that the software was not viable and halted the program while we could have still easily gotten out from under it.  We could have learned lessons and moved on to a second, wiser attempt (who am I kidding?  we don’t learn lessons  …  but, I digress).
 
 
Conclusion
 
Nothing that I’ve described is anything other than common sense and none of it requires any act of Congress.  It could be implemented tomorrow by nothing more than a command from the Chief of Naval Operations or Secretary of the Navy.  Some of you will protest some aspect or another but that’s just you being trapped in your paradigm and unable to see outside it.
 
Had we done this with the F-35, do you see the very early off-ramp that would have presented itself when it quickly became obvious that the software would not, and could not, be delivered in any useful time frame?  For just a hundred million dollars or so of initial programming, it would have become clear that we did not have a viable software and the program would have terminated with the hardware portion never having begun.  How many billions of dollars would we have saved? 

What’s Missing?

Here’s just a fun little thought exercise.  The fleet is decidedly unbalanced.  The only surface ship we have is the Burke class which is incapable of effective anti-surface or anti-submarine combat.  It’s a pure anti-air and Tomahawk land attack platform by capability and training.  The fleet is missing various types of ships with different capabilities and costs.
 
If you were the Chief of Naval Operations and had enough extra funding to build one additional ship type, what would it be, and why?
 
ComNavOps’ choice would be a small ASW corvette … or maybe a true destroyer like a modernized Fletcher … or maybe an 8” gunned cruiser … or maybe a Midway/Forrestal size carrier … or … 
 
Hmm, this may be harder than I thought to pick just one type.
 
Maybe, despite ComNavOps’ proof of uselessness, you’d pick a lightning carrier or a sea control carrier?  Maybe a class of SSGNs?  Or maybe you’re a believer in small missile boats?
 

Alright, I'm going to pick the small ASW corvette to deal with the multitude of diesel subs, provide convoy escort, patrol chokepoints, protect homeland harbors, provide ASW protection for Guam, and pick up the crap peacetime duties like anti-piracy.

What one class would you pick to get the most bang for the buck?

Defeat in Detail

‘Defeat in detail’ is a military tactic of destroying an enemy force by engaging its small, isolated units one by one with a larger force.
 
This is a great military theory – and proven successful – but it requires that the enemy present his forces in small, dispersed packets ready to be defeated.  This generally only happens if one is fighting an utterly inept foe or if the enemy’s units are forced to disperse due to unrecoverable circumstances such as the rout of a main force or the end of a conflict when the enemy lacks the forces to mass and fight.
 
In other words, no sane military is going to willingly present its forces to the enemy in small, isolated units.  Unfortunately, this is exactly what the Navy and Marines seem determined to do.  They seem committed to a war doctrine of small, isolated, individually weak units that will, in some unexplained and unfathomable manner, not only survive and avoid defeat in detail but will go on to exert an effect greater than the woefully weak sum of its parts.
 
Let’s briefly remind ourselves of the small, isolated units the Marines and Navy are planning to field.
 
Missile Shooters - The Marines have converted from a middle weight, combined arms force to a penny packet force of platoon size units that will engage in missing sniping deep inside enemy controlled territory. 
 
Distributed Lethality – The Navy wants to disperse all manner of isolated ships (the LCS is frequently mentioned) deep inside enemy territory where they will not only survive but, in some mythical way, find enemy ships and sink them while remaining undetected.  The Navy has even talked about arming amphibious and logistic ships for use in the distributed lethality scheme.  How these non-stealthy, slow, defenseless ships would remain undetected and survive remains unexplained.
 
LAW – The Marine’s Light Amphibious Warship (a laughable term right up there with Littoral Combat Ship) is intended to operate alone or in very small groups while supplying hidden Marine units and relocating them from island to island.  How these small, non-stealthy, slow, defenseless ships would remain undetected and survive remains unexplained.
 
Unmanned Surface Vessels – The Navy plans to use dispersed, remote, and/or isolated small, unmanned vessels in some yet to be fully explained manner which they believe will ‘confuse’ the enemy and rain destruction down on an unaware foe.
 
Unmanned Underwater Vessels – Similar to the USV plan, the Navy envisions small UUVs operating alone inside enemy waters in some unexplained manner.
 
Retirements – The Navy is downsizing the fleet’s firepower by retiring Ticonderoga cruisers and SSGNs with no direct replacement, contributing to a significant decrease in VLS cells in the fleet.  Thus, the individual ships and task forces are becoming steadily weaker.
 
LCS – The Navy has described the LCS as the modern day PT boat and envisions them operating in enemy territory, hiding amongst islands.
 
Task Forces – The Navy is training only with single carrier task forces and escorts numbering around three per carrier.  While one would desperately hope this is not the actual wartime plan (so why aren’t we training like we’ll fight?), the reality is that’s the only configuration being practiced.  If this is what actually happens, this will be less than a ¼ carrier task force.
 
And the list goes on.
 
The common characteristic of these small, isolated units is that they are defenseless in any practical way.  When found – and it’s a question of ‘when’ not ‘if’ – they will be destroyed as a matter of course.  In other words, they’ll be defeated in detail.  The Navy and Marines seem utterly ignorant of the lessons of history as they apply to combat.  All of our much-hyped plans will be quickly put to ruin when the individual units encounter larger forces. 
 
Defeat in detail.

F-35 Software Problems Continue

We’ve previously noted that software has become the leading cause of schedule delays and cost overruns and we cited the F-35 program’s attempt to implement the Technology Refresh (TR-3) leading to Block 4 upgrades (see, “F-35 Software Case Study” and “The Heartbreak of Software”) without which the F-35 cannot achieve full combat capability.
 
About a year ago, the Pentagon put a freeze on deliveries of new F-35s pending fixes for the TR-3 implementation.  F-35s have been piling up in warehouses awaiting a resolution of the software issues.
 
Honestly, the freeze on deliveries has been more symbolic than effective since the Pentagon has continued payments for the new aircraft with just a $7M withholding per aircraft.[1]  That means that Lockheed has still been getting around 91% of the contract price for aircraft that don’t meet spec and can’t be delivered.  That’s not a bad deal if you can get it!
 
Financial aspects aside, I’m not sure any of us fully appreciate just how badly broken the software side of things are in the F-35 program.  The Pentagon has just caved to various pressures and announced that the delivery freeze has been lifted despite the software problem remaining unresolved.  Hmm …
 

Bowing to operational demands, the Pentagon has lifted a year-long freeze on accepting new F-35 stealth fighters — even though the problem that prompted the standstill has not been fully resolved.[1]
 
Persistent problems with TR-3 prompted officials to eventually capitulate to an interim software fix …[1]

 
Read this next quote slowly and carefully and fully grasp the meaning and implications.
 

… jets will be delivered with interim software that facilitates training, but a second software drop that enables combat capabilities likely won’t be available for at least another year.[1]

That’s right.  We’re delivering training jets but not fully combat capable jets.  We’re decades into this program, have built a thousand aircraft, and still don’t have a fully combat capable aircraft.  Someone should face a firing squad for this.
 
The purpose of this post is not to simply beat on the F-35 program.  Instead, I’d like to highlight a couple of points that this development hammers home for us.
 
Software – As we’ve noted, software has become the main obstacle to successful programs.  We’ve already stated that we need to change the way we treat software and make it its own program instead of just an afterthought for the hardware.  This latest incident just hammers that point home.  Our frontline combat aircraft, the F-35, is not yet fully combat capable due to continuing software problems because the software was treated as an afterthought. 
 
For acquisition programs, our focus has to be software, software, software.
 
SOFTWARE, SOFTWARE, SOFTWARE !
 
Phased Delivery – The incompetent, lazy method of running an acquisition program is to use some sort of incomplete, so-called ‘phased’ delivery where the product is delivered incomplete, to be finished over subsequent years of development.  Of course, this never works out.  The F-35, for example, has yet to achieve full combat capability and we’ve built some thousand aircraft, none of them fully combat capable.  That’s criminal and leads to endless upgrades which add to the cost of the aircraft.  That $80M aircraft becomes a $100M+ aircraft after all the upgrades are included. 
 
Further, by all accounts, we’ve produced hundreds of F-35 orphans which, due to concurrency, will never be brought up to standard and are, essentially, throwaways.  Again, that’s criminal.  This half-assed F-35 production program just hammers home the folly of any kind of phased delivery program.
 
We have to adopt a philosophy of the product, the whole product, and nothing but the whole product or don’t bother building it.
 
Contracts – The final point that this incident hammers home is the unmitigated stupidity of a contract that does not specify and demand delivery of a fully capable product in order to get paid a single penny.  You wouldn’t make a partial payment on an incomplete automobile, would you?  So why are we paying for incomplete aircraft (or ships or anything)?  Again, we need to bring back firing squads on a regular basis.
 
 
Inescapable Conclusion
 
Our acquisition program methodologies are badly broken and our military leadership is 100% complicit to the point of dereliction of duty and criminal fraud.  We have got to start learning lessons from our endless string of failures.  Congress needs to start firing admirals.  Accountability is the only way people as stupid as our military leaders will ever learn a lesson.
 
 
 
_____________________________

 
[1]Breaking Defense, “F-35 deliveries to resume next week, despite incomplete upgrade”, Michael Marrow and Valerie Insinna, 11-Jul-2024,
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/07/f-35-deliveries-to-resume-next-week-despite-incomplete-upgrade/

Warship or Cruise Ship?

ComNavOps has long pointed out that our ships are cruise ships rather than warships.  Let’s check in and see what the latest is on that …
 

When the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) pulls away from its California berth for its upcoming deployment, the crew will embark with some homey creature comforts.
 
Comforts like cushy club chairs by an electric fireplace, reliable WIFI, a gaming room, a stadium-seating movie theater. There are also phones, a pair of teal-blue rotary dial phones [with] plain old telephone system lines, are tucked into two enclosed, sound-proofed booths.
 
Those amenities are features of the new fully renovated library and lounge, courtesy of the USO, that have taken over three spaces of the Lincoln’s command religious ministries department. Each space is softened by teal bulkheads, wood laminated flooring, wood accents and artificial plants with steam punk-styled and contemporary artwork of the former Abraham Lincoln dress the walls.
 
“What the Abraham Lincoln USO Center offers is a peaceful and modern respite for our sailors and Marines to rest and recharge and to reach their families while using wifi while at sea, to watch movies in legitimate movie theater seating, and play video games in a purposefully designed video game room,” Capt. Pete Riebe, Lincoln’s commander, said during a Monday ceremony on the carrier’s flight deck.[1]

 
Is this just a one-off experiment on the Lincoln?  No …
 

The newly named USO Center is the fifth to open aboard a Navy aircraft carrier, officials said, and similar redos of library and lounge spaces aboard four more carriers are planned this year.[1]

 
This is reprehensible as a matter of survivability, if for no other reason.  Recall that during the McCain and Fitzgerald collisions, sailors died because escape paths were blocked by loose debris.  Every item not directly related to combat is a survival liability.  We are knowingly and intentionally jeopardizing sailors lives.  Sure, everyone wants a cushy video-gaming lounge right up until you have to evacuate a flooding compartment and large overstuffed pillows and furniture are blocking your way.  Today, every ship is a moment away from combat and critical survival situations.  It is long past time to strip ship and recognize that a ship is supposed to be a WARship not a cruise ship.  Any sailor who won’t serve because they don’t have access to lounges, a movie theater, over-stuffed chairs, etc. is not a sailor worth having.
 
On a personal note, I’m torn between a luxury cruise to the Caribbean or a US Navy aircraft carrier cruise for my vacation this year.  I like the Caribbean destination but the aircraft carrier has better amenities.  It’ll be a tough choice.
 
 
 
_____________________________

 
[1]USNI News website, “Carrier USS Abraham Lincoln’s Latest Upgrade Dials Up Crew Comfort”, Gidget Fuentes, 11-Jul-2024,
https://news.usni.org/2024/07/11/carrier-uss-abraham-lincolns-latest-upgrade-dials-up-crew-comfort

Efficiency and Competition

In WWII, a dozen or more shipyards built Fletcher class destroyers.  The yards were given a set of blueprints and contracted to build the ships according to the plans.  It didn’t matter which yard built any given destroyer, they were all the same.  This worked because the Navy designed the ship and generated the blueprints.  Once that was accomplished, any yard could build the ship.  It was just a matter of following the plans.
 
In contrast, because the Navy no longer designs ships, generates blueprints, or even requires complete designs and blueprints prior to the start of construction, only the contracted yard can build a given ship.  The LCS is the standout example of this badly flawed approach.  Lacking any guidance or blueprints, both Lockheed and Austal generated their own LCS designs, spec’ed their own equipment and combat systems, and no one else could build them.  Thus, we wound up with two LCS classes that had almost nothing in common;  the epitome of inefficiency.
 
What should have happened is that the Navy should have generated a complete design concept – and locked it down instead of continuously changing it! – followed by a complete set of construction blueprints.  They could have then shopped around for the best manufacturing deal and, if necessary, utilized multiple shipyards to in competition to ensure that costs and quality were well controlled.
 
 Our ship design and contracting approach is badly broken and yet the Navy is not only embracing it but doubling down on it.  Ignoring common sense, best practices, and all previous experience, the Navy began the Constellation class frigate construction without a complete design or complete set of construction blueprints (see, “Lesson Learned?”).
 
How do we expect the shipbuilder to accurately bid on the construction without a locked in design and a complete set of blueprints?  They can’t!  And yet we turn around and try to blame the manufacturer when costs inevitably balloon out of control.
 
The Navy absolutely must regain control over the ship design and construction process.  We must reinstitute the General Board (design) and BuShips (blueprints).  Without those capabilities, the Navy is just going to continue producing failure after failure.

The Passive Warship

While many of the lessons of war are timeless, tactics do change as technology changes.  Consider the following observations and logic chain.

• With the existence of hundred/thousand mile cruise missiles, multi-thousand mile ballistic missiles, supersonic aircraft and missiles, 50 mile torpedoes, SSGNs, etc., any ship that is spotted can be killed and fairly quickly, from a distance.
• Given SIGINT, radar warning receivers, direction finders, and all manner of electromagnetic sensing devices, any ship that emits, intentionally or unintentionally, can be spotted.
• Hence, to be spotted is to be sunk.
• The obvious conclusion is don’t get spotted!
• The obvious way to reduce the chance of being spotted is to emit nothing.  No active radar.  No unshielded electronic devices.  No signals.  Emit nothing for an enemy to pick up.

 
Of course, with today’s ship designs, emitting nothing is, potentially, another definition of being blind and a ship that is blind is going to stumble into trouble.
 
The job of a naval force is to find the enemy.  How can that be accomplished without active emissions?
 
This is where we begin to see that we need a paradigm shift away from active detection systems and toward passive systems.  This doesn’t mean tacking a single electro-optical (EO) sensor on the superstructure somewhere and glancing at it occasionally, as is done today.  Instead, it means designing an entire ship around passive sensing as its main sensor system.  We need a passive warship design.  Let’s look a bit closer at this concept.
 
 
The Passive Warship
 
The passive warship begins with a maximum stealth design which includes not just radar stealth but infrared, acoustic, optical, electromagnetic, and wake stealth.  Once we have a ship that is as stealthy as possible we can begin designing its sensing system.  We want a maximum stealth ship design combined with primarily passive sensing – a ship that can’t be seen but can see all around itself.  The enemy can’t see it but it can see the enemy.
 
Electro-optical – The F-14 Tomcat (and other aircraft – no need to list them) had optical systems that were reportedly capable of detecting bomber size aircraft out to a hundred miles or so.  We have optical telescopes that can see distant galaxies.  Of course, those telescopes are far too large to mount on a warship but with something in between the F-14’s tiny camera and a giant observatory telescope we should be able to easily see fighter size aircraft at hundreds of miles.  Place several (not just one!) of these EO sensors around the ship to provide 360 degree coverage with a huge amount of overlap and redundancy to allow for battle damage and we have 360 degree, long range, passive sensing that matches or exceeds what radar can provide.  Remember that one major advantage of optical systems is that they can easily detect stealth aircraft.
 
What makes this approach viable is accompanying software that can monitor the optical images continuously and detect the faintest of possible targets – something that a human would fail to do simply due to visual fatigue. 
 
Of course, optical sensing is vulnerable to interference and degradation from weather, smoke, and other effects.  Thus, we need additional passive sensing to supplement and complement optical sensing.
 
Infrared – Take the preceding EO concept and duplicate it with IR sensors.  Picture aircraft infrared search and track (IRST) pods, scaled up for much greater sensitivity and range, placed all around the ship to, again, provide 360 degree coverage with overlap and redundancy.  IR sensing nicely supplements and complements optical sensing.
 
SIGINT – Signal intercept sensors provide passive detection of enemy electronic signals and communications.   These signals might be fire control comms, voice comms, data communications traffic, missile networking comms, helicopter traffic control comms, or any other type of signal.  Given the ability of many signal types to travel beyond the horizon – and thus be detected over the horizon – SIGINT can provide very long range detection.
 
UAVs – Not only do we want our passive warship to have the preceding capabilities but we need to extend the ship’s sensor reach/range using small, cheap reconnaissance UAVs equipped with passive sensors.  These UAVs can be employed continuously for area recon, specifically for target confirmation or intense monitoring of a specific area, or sporadically so as not give even a hint of the host ship’s presence.
 
Fire Control – The final step is to tie the passive sensor systems into the ship’s fire control.  Thus, passive sensors become the primary fire control and the ship never needs to radiate, even while defending against an attack.  Of course, if the ship is being attacked, it’s already been spotted and it’s no longer necessary to remain passive.  Active radar can be used at that point although it would still be preferable to avoid active systems thereby eliminating the enemy’s use of radar homing targeting.
 

There are already purely passive fire control systems throughout the world's militaries so this isn't something radically new. 

An alternative fire control scheme might be a mixed passive/active scheme which coordinates passive and active sensing so that tracking is passive and, at the last moment, active sensors (radar) activate for weapon guidance.  This would not, however, be the preferred approach. 
 
 
Discussion
 
From the preceding, we can envision a passive warship at the center of a 360 degree spherical ‘eye’ made up of dozens of optical, infrared, and signal sensors.  The sphere would extend from the horizon to hundreds of miles for elevated targets.  UAVs would further extend the monitored area.
 
The complementary systems would mitigate the negative effects of weather and whatnot.  What one system fails to detect, another will.
 
Of particular note is the ability of passive systems to detect stealth aircraft with ease.  A properly designed passive system almost renders radar stealth useless.
 
As noted, a passive fire control eliminates the enemy’s ability to use radar homing weapons.
 
We see, then, that a purely passive warship system has a lot going for it.
 
Radar would still be provided on our passive warship as there may be occasions to use it but there would be no need for high end, Aegis type systems.  A simple TRS-4D type radar for horizon ranges would be sufficient.
 
While the passive system is a rock solid concept, there are some unknowns that would need to be tested.  For example, can passive sensors provide sufficient weapon guidance?  What size sensors do we need?
 
We need to set up a passive test ship and determine whether we can detect, track, and fire control purely passively with sufficient effectiveness.  If we can’t, we need to find out where the limitations are and work to eliminate them.  We need to find out what the practical detection ranges are for various size/shape targets and flight profiles.  And so on.
 
Technology has changed and that demands a change in tactics.  Unfortunately, the Navy is anchored in the past.  We’re producing Burkes that are based on technology and tactics that are several decades out of date and hopelessly obsolete.  Our latest combat ship, the Constellation class, was obsolete before the first one was even laid down.  We are mired in the past.  It’s long past time for a paradigm shift in warship design.