"it also sends each jet’s history back to the US"...
Let me guess... The laptops are running Windows 10 ?
Oh ALIS, don't keep us waiting: F-35 jet's software 'delayed'
Key software for the troubled F-35 fighter jet has been repeatedly delayed, causing problems for the British armed forces as they wait for Americans to iron out the bugs. The F-35’s Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) is the heart of the support offering bundled with the F-35 by its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin. …
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Friday 13th January 2017 09:20 GMT stu 4
Re: "it also sends each jet’s history back to the US"...
"windows for warplanes" - you jest - but I can see it now....
2017 and windows is still baffled when you plug in a USB peripheral into a different USB port from the one it was in before "what on earth could this be - an F-35 you say.. never seen one of those before in port2 , let me just check windows for driver, cause like though I've got some installed for port1 thats clearly irrelevant right...ah - NO DRIVERS found.. failed to install F-35"...
And anyway, I mean how fecking bad can the programmers be to not manage to get a basic sync working - maybe they should have based it all in Arducopter - that syncs just fine every time.
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Thursday 12th January 2017 09:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The Cloud..
Worse. It is integrated to mission planning and munitions supply and logistics as well.
If memory serves me right, you cannot plan missions for more than one month in stand-alone mode. After that you have to report to ALIS mothership and provide USA with full flight path data, full telemetry and full bill of materials of what you have flown in order for the system to continue to function.
Anybody purchasing this outside the USA should be tried under their respective grand treason statute for their country.
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Thursday 12th January 2017 13:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The Cloud..
"After that you have to report to ALIS mothership and provide USA with full flight path data, full telemetry and full bill of materials of what you have flown in order for the system to continue to function."
Clickety-Click.
Connect Y/N?
Y
DONG!
???
"You seem to have a few F-35 licenses which expire soon. Do you want help with renewal?"
!!!
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Thursday 12th January 2017 09:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
"...view flight plans, and review each jet’s entire history from the moment it leaves the factory..."
There were some issues in the Vietnam era of military operations occurring over the wrong country, all denied etc etc... Now when the aircraft gets shot down, whoever finds it can probably look back and KNOW where the aircraft has been. Could get messy if its the "wrong" side that finds the smoldering wreckage.
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Thursday 12th January 2017 10:40 GMT John Smith 19
" whoever finds it can probably look back and KNOW where the aircraft has been"
Absolutely not (as I'm sure LM would tell people)
No one has any idea of the protocol used to transfer the data.
Any notion that
dullardsfuture insurgents could get into the system, let alone ready that data is quite absurd.Honest.
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Thursday 12th January 2017 13:45 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: " whoever finds it can probably look back and KNOW where the aircraft has been"
>Any notion that dullards future insurgents could get into the system, let alone ready that data is quite absurd.
Any notion that Chinese/Russian/Etc computer security experts could get into the system .....
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Saturday 14th January 2017 17:18 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: " whoever finds it can probably look back and KNOW where the aircraft has been"
The password is very closely guarded by every technician at every US and foreign customer airbase, everyone at Lockheed Martin and by everyone in the DoD - with so many people guarding the password it is very safe.
It might be useful if it was possible to change it from the default - but that would make the system more complicated
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Thursday 12th January 2017 09:15 GMT saif
National security
So, interface is Internet Explorer (the 3rd or 4th most secure browser), can not connect unless security at the base station is reduced and then proceeds to send all mission data (apart from the pilots name) to US.... Great. Should meet all the RAF's requirements for a utility.
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Thursday 12th January 2017 13:43 GMT Peter2
Re: National security
To be fair, the one advantage of IE is that it's installed on everything and comes with a handy set of group policies which lets you force settings on users stopping them from doing things. Chrome was designed around the users and so doesn't give much in the way of central control although it's a "better" web browser than MSIE.
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Sunday 15th January 2017 06:11 GMT david 12
Re: National security
IE not secure? Not according to my system admin. He refuses to countenance Chrome etc on the basis that MS is Business Standard, Secure and Professional.
My sysAdmin doesn't agree. He makes everything more secure by also installing parrallel software so that he doesn't have to use MS. Another browser. Another shell. Another script. Another DHCP server. Another text editor. Another file copy utility. Another Another. Makes verything more secure, right?
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Thursday 12th January 2017 09:20 GMT Jeroen Braamhaar
old military wisdom has it ...
...that the side with the simplest uniforms usually wins.
it could be suggested as a modern-day corollary that the side with the simplest servicable weapons has the better chance of victory too.
And since the only battle an F35 is likely to fight is the struggle to leave the ground - where the only clouds it is likeliest to see are composed of big data instead of big amounts of water vapor ... well ...
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Thursday 12th January 2017 09:31 GMT A Non e-mouse
Re: old military wisdom has it ...
I wonder if ALIS is going to be the Battle Analyzer from Superiority...
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Thursday 12th January 2017 09:43 GMT WonkoTheSane
Re: old military wisdom has it ...
"And since the only battle an F35 is likely to fight is the struggle to leave the ground - where the only clouds it is likeliest to see are composed of big data instead of big amounts of water vapor ... well ..."
I'm sure I read somewhere that the F35 doesn't do well with big amounts of water vapor either.
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Thursday 12th January 2017 11:16 GMT John Smith 19
"I'm sure I read somewhere that the F35 doesn't do well with big amounts of water vapor "r."
Not sure about that. IIRC that was the issue with one of the F117 stealth bombers over Sarajevo.
Turned out the stealth coating was just fine in the Middle Eastern atmosphere but over soggy Europe it broke down.
The crew thought they were flying a radar invisible aircraft.
They weren't.
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Thursday 12th January 2017 13:22 GMT Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
Re: "I'm sure I read somewhere that the F35 doesn't do well with big amounts of water vapor "r."
If you're referring to the one that got shot down - it was a combination of multiple factors. Experienced anti-air battery commander with a modified longwave radar, F-117 flying on a predictable flightpath with its bomb doors open, and some amount of good fortune. Maybe moisture affected things a bit, maybe it didn't, hard to say.
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Thursday 12th January 2017 19:30 GMT Mark 85
Re: old military wisdom has it ...
I seem to remember Chuck Yeager being an advocate of the F5 as it was Cheap, Rugged and most importantly not a hanger queen.
Yes.. cheap and fairly impressive as it was picked to be the 'aggressor' in the Top Gun type of wargames as it mimicked the flight characteristics of some Russian fighters very well. But it was cheap and thus, not much pork there.
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Thursday 12th January 2017 19:43 GMT JLV
Re: old military wisdom has it ...
Not only that, Northrop later tried to resurrect it as the F20 Tigershark. Cheap and cheerful. Northrop did that on its own initiative, with their own money, reasoning it could make money out of a good-enough plane.
The USAF would not touch it - too cheap and did not go through their procurement (read 'not enough bacon being handed out'). Second and third world countries? "If it ain't good enough for the USAF, it sure ain't good enough for Pakistan!!!".
Taught those idiots a lesson! Never try to give the military good value if you can gold plate it.
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Thursday 12th January 2017 14:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: old military wisdom has it ...
To be fair, lower-rung German uniforms were pretty simple (even those of the party's armed forces), although "grandes uniformes" of people near the politicial death star were ludicrous. Germany just got done by its massive opponent throwing people into the shredder with great abandon. And also by being dumb enough by going on an irrational killing spree instead of a recruiting heavily.
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Thursday 12th January 2017 16:33 GMT Peter2
Re: old military wisdom has it ...
I think his comment about Germanys last trip to Russia is more to do with the equipment issues than the uniforms. As in the Germans turned out 2500 Tiger tanks of all marks, 6k Panthers and 8.5k Panzer 4's.
The Russians meanwhile turned out 85,000 T34's and the western allies chipped in 50,000 Shermans, exclusive of heavy tanks, tank destroyers etc which puts the figures at Germany having ~17,000 tanks vs 135,000 fielded by the allies. Even if you accepted that the Germans tanks were 5 times better than ours in WW2, that'd still only account for 17k * 5 = 85k of our tanks, which leaves 50k tanks left to run over their shattered remains. Which is pretty much what happened during WW2.
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Thursday 12th January 2017 17:20 GMT JLV
>Germans tanks were 5 times better
Check out Fury (it's on Netflix).
01:17:00 in, traipsing happily through the countryside. Action starts @ 01:18.
6 minutes of pure tank-gasm. Not a bad movie overall either. That scene had them taking the sole running Tiger left in the world out for a spin.
Upon seeing the tracers, my kids went "Star Wars! Star Wars!". Not sure how I think about that... a compliment to old school Star Wars esthetics getting something right? Seems fairly well researched otherwise. Musta sucked big time gang-rushing Tigers, using flammable petrol/gasoline-burning M4s mounting short 75s...
re. the tank production figures. Germany did not, strangely enough, really fully go to a war economy until fairly late in the game, 43? Hitler was trying to pull a Rumsfeld and carry out an invasion on the cheap. Second, German industry and military had a lot of issues with standardization. Vehicles would be produced in small amounts, but would not use standardized parts. The military would constantly have the stuff tweaked, but not in very production-efficient ways. So many many models of AFV, planes, .... And the logistics of spares were dreadful because of the high material variability. When people say that strategic bombing did not slow down Nazi production, they lose track that by 43-44, Speer had taken over, knocked heads together and that Hitler had finally gone on full war economy. So, yes, production would have gone up. Whether strategic bombing achieved much is still another debate though.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
