The U.S. military’s frontline F-35 fighter jet continues to face problems with key software and related issues that are delaying operational deployment, according to the Pentagon’s senior weapons tester.
J. Michael Glimore, director of operational test and evaluation within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, told a House hearing last week that the F-35 — which is being built in three different versions for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps — is "at a critical time."
"There are shortfalls in electronic warfare, electronic attack, shortfalls in the performance of distributed aperture system and other issues that are classified," Mr. Gilmore said March 23. "With regard to mission assistance, stealth aircraft are not visible to achieve success against the modern stressing mobile threats. We’re relying on our $400 million investment in F-35 to provide mission systems [that] must work in some reasonable sense of that word."
Read the entire article at the Washington Times.