F-35. The last line of protection for pilots begins to crumble.

Thanks for the link Nico!

via Yahoo Finance.

Kyra Hawn, spokeswoman for the $392 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, said discussions were under way with the Pentagon's "testing community" but no decisions had been made.
"It's trying to do what makes sense and is efficient, without up-ending the intent of having these separate and distinct review processes," Hawn said.
Pentagon officials have said they hope to protect the F-35, the military's most expensive new weapons program, but mounting budget pressures have forced officials to look for efficiencies and cost savings across the board.
Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon's director of operational testing and evaluation, has been critical of past efforts to reduce F-35 developmental testing, arguing that it could lead to significant discoveries during operational testing later.
Gilmore had also warned against starting pilot training before more developmental testing had been completed, but the services decided to press ahead with training programs.
But Gilmore's spokeswoman Jenn Elzea said he would consider a more integrated testing approach, if structured properly.
"The Director of Operational Test & Evaluation is always open to considering the use of integrated testing, which uses developmental tests conducted under appropriate conditions to collect data for use in our operational evaluations," she said.
Traditionally, U.S. weapons programs have gone through developmental testing to flesh out any design flaws and then rigorous operational tests before the weapons are fielded.
But the F-35 program was designed to move into production while developmental testing was still in progress, an approach called "concurrency" that Frank Kendall, now the Pentagon's chief arms buyer, has described as "acquisition malpractice."

Read the entire article.

Operational Test and Evaluation is suppose to be the final guardian of equipment used by US personnel.  The idea that they would cave into political and economic pressure to get a plane into service before its been thoroughly tested is depressing.  I've feared that the entire Pentagon has gone belly up and this proves it.

There is no one left to look after the interests of the troops.

A pilot will possibly die because this plane is being rushed into service with untold number of undiscovered issues because we're doing production AND testing at the same time.  When problems are discovered later on, the entire Western fleet of aircraft will be grounded and costly upgrades applied because Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon are so desperate to get it into service NOW!

We are becoming more vulnerable than ever and all the proponents of this plane can yell is "stay the course" instead of lifting their heads up and realizing exactly how fucked up this program really is.