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Defeat of the Super-Villains, Part II
Defeat of the Super-Villains, Part II: Besides weight, software has been the worst offender in driving aircraft development costs through the roof. Thanks to lessons learned on other programs, notably the F-22, the F-35 is not having those issues, said Dan Crowley, Lockheed Martin VP and F-35 general manager. The F-35 is a software-intensive aircraft and will ultimately have 19 million lines of code, but Crowley said the software effort is on track and more than half of the software needed for early operational versions is done. The Pentagon's Cost Analysis Improvement Group initially set a pessimistic outlook on software for the fighter, but the CAIG recently visited the F-35's code operations and came away "I think … genuinely impressed," Crowley said Thursday. He expects a rosier outlook when the CAIG updates its software projections. Unlike the F-22, which suffered from "software instability" fairly late in development, the F-35 has had none show up in flight. That's partly because the F-35's processors are isolated from each other—they have shared processors for fusion—so one can't take them all down in a software crash. Another crisis predicted for the F-35 years ago—availability of qualified code-writers—hasn't materialized. Whether due to the weak economy or the attractiveness of the project, the F-35 has all the programmers it needs.
2/26/2009
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Preemptive Action "Since the [Defense] Department's acceptance of the independent estimates last fall, we've been, in just about every respect, acting as if the program were in a Nunn-McCurdy breach. ... We've been taking all of the mitigating and corrective action that we would take as if there were a Nunn-McCurdy breach." —Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, discussing with reporters the restructure of the F-35 strike fighter program announced in February 2010 and the probability that the program will soon exceed Nunn-McCurdy cost-monitoring thresholds that would necessitate, per US law, a program review and corrective steps, Washington, D.C., March 2, 2010. |
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Message for Grandma "She has working for her as a citizen in the United States an Air Force Reserve that has some very talented, capable, patriotic, and willing individuals doing the business to keep this nation free. Just like her generation—the 'Greatest Generation'—was, I am very proud of the folks that we have got. If not the second greatest, then they are an extension of the greatest generation and they are ready, willing, and able to do the things that she would want them to do to make sure we keep our freedoms." —Lt. Gen. Charles Stenner, Air Force Reserve chief, responding to a reporter's question on what the reporter should tell his 85-year-old grandmother to convey to her the importance of Air Force Reservists to the nation's security, Orlando, Fla., Feb. 19, 2010.
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