Oh ALIS, don't keep us waiting: F-35 jet's software 'delayed'

The Cloud..

Where planes bought from the US operate and also send their flight data too...

"...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.

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.

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 ...

How to ground a F-35

If I understand well you just have to find the laptop it can sync with and steal it...

ALIS sounds like a good idea in principle, but if there's one thing that I've learned from my (far too) many years in the software development business, it's this: don't be clever - cleverness always gets you into trouble one way or another.

With ALIS it's not as though it's solving a problem that needs to be solved. Every air force in the world has a way of managing logistics which works well enough for them to operate. Is something as clever as ALIS really needed? Maybe, but probably not...and there has to be a point where it's starting to look like such a nightmare that it ought to be canned in favour of a simpler, less techy approach

Go stick your head in a pig

SIRIUS CYBERNETICS CORPORATION PRODUCTS

It is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all

In other words - and this is the rock solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.

SHARE AND ENJOY

The company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years.

The motto stands - or rather stood - in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of many talented young complaints executives - now deceased.

The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig", and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration.

http://www.sput.nl/~rob/sirius.html nicked from the late Douglas Adams.

The F35

ALIS' adventures in Blunderland

It's a classic example

ALIS wants to send encrypted information to BOB.

In BG the Cylons disabled all modern battle ships by injecting a virus. Only the old decomissioned ships, and a few that were out of contactable range (remembering liberally here), avoided paralysis.

Now, if the laptop needs to communicate to a central, and then be hooked up to the aircraft..

I'm sure there is a lesson here somewhere..

Non-fictional examples would include Israel's mucking about with Iran's centrifuges.

Exceptional cock-up.

Someone in procurement needs to be shown the door and their gold-plated final salary pension frozen until they retire.

However, I'd suggest that the minister who took the advice from whatever military team will escape completely unscathed, along with the posh lads who went on all the 'paid jolleys' to Lockheed Martin, but I stand to be corrected.

Makes you wonder how on earth air forces managed to keep their fleets of old-school fighters - such as the original (BAC) Lightning - flying for decades, without Toughbooks, Internet Explorer, or any of that stuff.

Call the AA

On more than one occasion a nice AA patrolman has plugged his rufty tufty laptop inrto my car and figured out what was wrong with it.

Maybe we could get a Homestart sunscription for the F35s

All this crap about the F35 reminded me of the F111

The F111 started out as a do-all, for everyone fighter/strike. It was even supposed to be on carriers*. In finale, you can see that it got kinda semi-deployed, but quickly ended up in specialized roles and in limited numbers and other planes ended up doing its jobs.

That this plane was a dud was mostly in my memory and wikipedia entries on military gear mostly tend to be sanitized as regards to failures. Then I went and found this little opinion piece that just screamed "F35".

http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.ca/2010/11/weekend-wings-37-f-111-aardvark-part-1.html

Basically, he posits that the project's main point of failure was that it pursued too many technological breakthroughs on the F111's development.

"""

Five new technologies caused the greatest difficulties. They were:

Variable geometry wings incorporating high lift devices;

Turbofan powerplants and associated systems and structures;

The need for new metal alloys;

A sophisticated, automated navigation and weapons delivery system; and

A novel crew escape system.

"""

Remind you of anything? New helmet, new engine setup for multiple configuration, jack of all trades, a weird new approach to monolithic logistics software...

At least the F35 ground crews have it easy. F111 fuel tanks had to be crawled into to clean them from the inside, breathing vapors all the while. Many of the mechanics have consequently been extremely sick.

* No Marines STOL version sought, a regrettable oversight.