Software Block 3F ..... prima o poi funzionerà .....
Final Software Load Plagues F-35 Test Jets .....
Lara Seligman - Aerospace Daily & Defense Report (AW&ST) - July 11, 2016
RAF FAIRFORD, ENGLAND – The U.S. Air Force is on the verge of declaring its F-35 Joint Strike Fighters operational after resolving a software bug that caused the jets’ systems to stall out mid-flight and have to be rebooted.
But at Edwards Air Force Base, California, the development test (DT) team in charge of testing each new increment of software is now seeing the same shutdown events in the new Block 3F software – the final load needed to give the F-35 full combat capability.
The Air Force F-35As will reach initial operational capability (IOC) this year with a less mature version of F-35 software, called Block 3i, which does not include some key combat capabilities.
The final 3F software load will enable the full-up jets to deploy critical weapons such as the GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bomb, the GBU-31/32 Joint Direct Attack Munition, the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile the AIM-9X Sidewinder missile and the main gun system.
The Joint Program Office (JPO) is aiming to complete 3F DT by June 30, 2017, in time for the operational test (OT) team to begin testing the full-up jets – a key test period that is officially called initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E) – that fall.
But the team at Edwards is already running low on schedule margin to move to IOT&E on time due to the months spent fixing the issues with the Air Force’s 3i software load.
Any unplanned discoveries on 3F could throw a wrench in the timeline.
DT pilots flying the 3F software loads at Edwards have recently experienced system glitches where the jets’ systems shut down and need to be rebooted, both during flight and on the ground, according to Marine Corps Lt. Col. Richard Rusnok, F-35 detachment officer in charge at VMX-1.
However, he cautioned against reading too much into these “anomalies,” arguing that such events are not uncommon for fighter jets across the fleet.
It is normal to see challenges during developmental testing, he stressed.
“When Microsoft or Apple put out software, the thing you don’t see as a consumer is all the frustration that goes on in the background,” Rusnok told Aviation Week.
“That’s why we’re doing it, right, otherwise if everything was perfect all the time then we’d never have to do flight test and I’d be out of a job.”
Jeff Babione, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program manager, acknowledged that the initial releases of the 3F software “regressed slightly” compared to the finished 3i load.
However, the team “fully anticipated” this challenge and is working to resolve it, he told Aviation Week.
The “choking effect” seen in earlier versions of 3i was caused in essence by a timing misalignment of the software of the plane’s sensors and the software of its main computers.
But the issues on 3F are down to the software of the systems themselves, for instance the radar, Babione said.
“So think of, how the radar actually does what the radar needs to do – those are more what I’d call software glitches, not stability issues,” Babione said.
The new glitches occurred after Lockheed added a new feature in the 3F software, Babione explained.
Lockheed incorporated a solution and released a new version of 3F July 1, but Babione said he has not seen the latest tests results that will show whether or not the fix worked as planned.
“At the end of the day what I’m highly confident of is it will be everything they want and the stability will be on par with what we are seeing on 3i,” Babione said.
The JPO signed off on the Block 3i software in May, and recently began retrofitting the fleet with the improved load.
The team will need to retrofit the jets again with the full 3F load once development is complete.
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Final F-35 Software Twice as Good .....
John A. Tirpak - Daily Report (AFA) - July 14, 2016
Farnborough, UK — There are far fewer problems with the objective 3F block of F-35 software, now more than two-thirds through flight testing, than there were in earlier iterations, program director Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan said Monday at a Farnborough Air Show press conference.
"The issues we saw early in the 2B and 3i versions" of the software, which allowed the Marine Corps to declare operational capability a year ago and which will equip the Air Force's first operational jets next month, were "far more substantial than the issues we have with the 3F now."
There is much less software instability, he said, and the software is "twice as good" now, even before testing is complete, "than the 2B version" the Marines are flying with.
Even so, the 3F version adds "so much more capability" than the 2B/3i version, he said,.
The key now is to make sure all the "sensors and computers are communicating" with "no lags."
He acknowledged, however, that "we have no margin left" in developing the 3F software.
"We ate it all up."
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