F-35’s $17 Billion Diagnostic System Rife with Flaws, GAO Says

A $17 billion Lockheed Martin Corp. system used since 2009 to monitor F-35 fighter jets for repairs, parts replacement and general maintenance is rife with flaws, sometimes forcing personnel to spend hours entering data by hand, according to congressional auditors.

Maintenance crews at one of five U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps bases that were reviewed “estimated they spend an average of 5,000 to 10,000 hours per year manually tracking information that should be automatically and accurately captured” by Lockheed’s system, the Government Accountability Office said in a report obtained by Bloomberg News.

In addition, “inaccurate or missing data” in the Autonomic Logistics Information System, or ALIS, sometimes result in alerts that “an aircraft should not be flown even though it is ready for flight,” the GAO said. Airmen said the flaws are affecting the readiness of the fighter jets built by Lockheed. At one location, crews experienced as many as 400 “issues per week related to inaccurate or missing electronic records,” according to the report.

The problem adds to uncertainty about the F-35, the world’s costliest weapons system. Attention long focused on the plane’s $428 billion acquisition program and on setbacks in development and production. But now the cost of sustaining the planes -- estimated at about $1.2 trillion over 66 years -- is what most worries military officials and lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee panel that requested the GAO assessment. (end of excerpt)

Click here for the full story, on the Bloomberg website.

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