The WARZONE talks F-35 EOTS upgrades, the real story is the Frankenstein fleet of F-35's we're building!

via The Warzone.

But this could easily create new headaches for the already often vexing Joint Strike Fighter program. Lockheed has already delivered 300 F-35s to the U.S. military and foreign participants in the project, all of which have the AN/AAQ-37. The firm has dozens of additional jets already in production or on order through Lot 10 and, as already noted, doesn’t even plan to make the DAS shift until it has finished work on at least four more production lots.

🥳Today the 300th #F35⚡️, designated as AF-150 was delivered to the @usairforce. Congrats to the entire F-35 enterprise on delivering 300 of the most advanced fighter jets in the world. Many more to come! https://t.co/6kDdh5jFMs pic.twitter.com/rwEEySkmH8

— F-35 Lightning II (@thef35) June 11, 2018
This can only create at least some new level of logistical difficulty by creating essentially at least two distinct configurations of each of the three variants. It's true that military aircraft receive significant upgrades and major modifications all the time, but the F-35 is a complex design to begin with that has suffered delays and difficulties in production owing in no small part to the stringent standards it has to adhere to in order to maintain its low-observable characteristics.

Raytheon's cameras will more than likely use as much of the existing mounting architecture as possible to save costs, but this won’t allow operators to mix and match cameras from the AN/AAQ-37 and the new system if one of them breaks, either. As such, any unit that ends up operating a mix of aircraft with different systems installed would have to source a larger array of replacement parts and services.

The same goes for the upgraded EOTS, which will require more significant and expensive changes to the aircraft’s internal structure. And unless the upgrades occur at the same time, it is possible that there may be aircraft with and without one upgraded sensor suite or the other.

Story here. 

Eric Palmer once talked, shouted and warned about "mistake jets".  He tried to get the word out about how we're essentially spending BILLIONS of dollars on warplanes that won't be used.

Good God the guy was right.

And if he wasn't then that's worse.  That means we're gonna spend BILLIONS more to get all those planes up to the same standard.

It also means that while we're waiting to do that we're gonna have a Frankenstein fleet of planes with different sensor suites of varying capability.

You still think this program hasn't reached the criminal stage?  You still think the Pentagon is a good steward of the taxpayers dollar?