"We got a pilot in my house...I guess he landed in my backyard"
The latest F35 accident is still under investigation, but it draws attention to a range of lingering safety and software concerns with this key global defence asset.
Has there been a crash?
The astonishing loss of an F-35b Lightning II jet in South Carolina made headlines at the end of last month. It’s pilot was forced to eject after a technical ‘mishap’ before landing in a farmyard.
In a recorded exchange, the homeowner called 911 and explained that the pilot had landed in his back garden, prompting the emergency operator to work through a standard checklist of questions to evaluate his possible injuries. ‘How far did he fall?’ she asks, before the pilot can be heard to answer, with remarkable composure: “I was at 2000ft.”
The pilot himself then took the phone, eager to move the conversation to more pressing matters:
We need to get the rescue rolling. I’m not sure where the airplane is….Has there been a report of an airplane crash?
It took over twenty four hours to find the wreckage of the $150 million, Lockheed made, fighter jet in nearby Williamsburg County. It took this long as the F35 has stealth capabilities that make it difficult to detect by radar and its transponder - which broadcasts its location and identity - was not functioning.
The incident was the third significant F35 fault in just six weeks and the US Marine Corps imposed a two-day safety stand down as a result. At the time of writing there is still no further information on what the ‘mishap’ that caused the pilot to eject was.
A ‘flying computer’
There have been a number of technical faults of F35s in recent years, and a recent incident provides an indication of the types of fault being experienced. Just two months before the crash, an official investigation into a crash that happened in Ogden, Utah, in October 2022 was published. In that accident the pilot had encountered unforeseen turbulence as they prepared to land. As in South Carolina, the pilot ejected and the fighter jet crashed. According to the investigation report the problem was in the plane’s avionics software which wrongly interpreted flight data when the jet encountered disrupted air flow from a plane ahead of it. Simulations confirmed that the issue stemmed from the jet’s misinterpretation of the flight data, not the physical effects of turbulence itself.
The F35 represents a step change in the use of computers and diagnostic information compared to previous fighter planes, being referred to as a ‘flying computer’. In recent years, as the complexity of software has grown, the programme has sought to use agile software development techniques to release software quickly but this has created concerns that the software is too buggy and unstable.
Lt. Gen. Eric Fick, program executive officer for the F-35 Joint Program Office has acknowledged problems with regression testing of software, admitting in a 2021 report that its software wasn’t being tested properly for hidden bugs and that - in at least one case - a system that was working fine got broken when a new capability was added elsewhere. In addition to the plane itself there have been a number of issues with its Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) which is used to transmit aircraft diagnostic and maintenance information to plane technicians.
It is noteworthy that, despite its huge budget and vital strategic importance, the F-35 is suffering from the same technical and integration problems that are familiar to anyone who’s involved with delivering and maintaining modern software based systems.
Over budget and over here
Former Marine Corps officer Dan Grazier has repeatedly criticized the F-35 program for its significant cost overruns and its various technical problems, including software glitches and delays in fixing critical issues. He has questioned the aircraft's overall performance, suggesting that it falls short of expectations in its dogfighting capabilities. Even more alarmingly he’s also claimed that the plane is riddled with cyber-security vulnerabilities and speculated that the incident in South Carolina could have been the result of a cyber attack.
Grazier has also criticized the F35 procurement strategy, claiming it favours Lockheed Martin over other defence contractors, potentially limiting competition and innovation. Certainly the F35 programme has been one of the most expensive and complex defence acquisition projects in history with costs recently estimated at $1.7 trillion. And the reliability and cost of the F35 is not just a concern for the US military. Since the UK became the first international partner to join the F35 programme in 1995, the plane has become a lynchpin of western militaries, with fleets in thirteen different countries. Some of these countries are also expressing their concerns. Last year, a member of the South Korea’s National Defence Committee found that F-35s suffered from more than two hundred flaws over an 18 month period: The mission failure rates seen were over twice those of South Korea’s Vietnam War era fighters, some of which are being directly replaced by the F-35.
With global tensions running high, many will watch with interest to see what the report into the accident in South Carolina finds, and whether the learning can help with putting right any systemic flaws in these vital planes.
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