Threat Data Biggest Worry F-35A’s IOC; It ‘Will Be On Time'

[tritonprime]

"US Software Stranglehold Threatens F-35 Foreign Operations"
(Source: Defense-Aerospace.com; published Nov 04, 2015)
by Giovanni de Briganti

Source:
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articl ... tions.html

PARIS --- The unilateral decision by the United States to locate all F-35 software laboratories on its territory, and to manage the operation and sustainment of the global F-35 fleet from its territory, has introduced vulnerabilities that are only beginning to emerge.

The biggest risk is that, since the F-35 cannot operate effectively without permanent data exchanges with its software labs and logistic support computers in the United States, any disruption in the two-way flow of information would compromise its effectiveness.

All F-35 aircraft operating across the world will have to update their mission data files and their Autonomic Logistic Information System (ALIS) profiles before and after every sortie, to ensure that on-board systems are programmed with the latest available operational data and that ALIS is kept permanently informed of each aircraft’s technical status and maintenance requirements. ALIS can, and has, prevented aircraft taking off because of an incomplete data file.

Given that the United States hopes to sell hundreds of F-35s to allies in Europe, Asia and Australia, the volume of data that must travel to and from the United States is gigantic, and any disruption in Internet traffic could cripple air forces as the F-35 cannot operate unless it is logged into, and cleared by, ALIS.

For example, “Mission data load development and testing is a critical path to combat capability,” Pentagon OT&E director Michael Gilmore said in his fiscal 2014 report. “Accuracy of threat identification and location depend on how well the mission data loads are optimized to perform in ambiguous operational environments.”

Updating and uploading mission data loads depends on a functioning Internet, and as Wired.com noted in an Oct. 29 story, “undersea Internet cables are surprisingly vulnerable.” It quoted Nicole Starosielski, a media scholar at New York University, as saying that “people would be surprised to know that there are a little over 200 systems that carry all of the internet traffic across the ocean, and these are by and large concentrated in very few areas. The cables end up getting funneled through these narrow pressure points all around the globe.”

Recent activity by Russian ships near crucial undersea cables has added to concerns about the vulnerability of Internet, as recently illustrated by the New York Times, which noted that “Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict.”

The fear is that an “ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent,” the article said.

Whatever the other repercussions, such an event would severely limit the ability of the world’s F-35 fighters to fly – due to a loss of ALIS link – and to operate effectively, as their fighting ability would disappear if their software and mission data files could not be updated.

No Internet, No F-35 Operations

In a recent article, Aviation Week explored how F-35 operators “are being compelled to fund $150 million software laboratories, based in the U.S. and almost 50% staffed by U.S. personnel, that generate data crucial to the fighter’s ability to identify new radio-frequency threats.”

It noted that the MDFs “are twice as large as the equivalent data load in the F-22,” and that there are 12 packages covering different regions.

The JSF program is establishing two centers to produce and update MDFs, at Eglin AFB, Florida, and NAS Point Mugu, California. The latter will support Japanese and Israeli F-35s, Aviation Week reported, while an Australia/U.K. facility and a laboratory to support Norway and Italy will be established at Eglin.

Given that the ALIS mainframe is located at Fort Worth, Texas, operating the F-35 will require three very large data conduits to and from these locations, again using Internet cables as the volume of data is too great for satellite transmission.

In fact, if the F-35 performs as advertised, it should gather very argue amounts of tactical data during each mission – data that it will have to transmit to the software labs in the US so they can be used to update the mission data files, adding another large volume data flow in both directions.

In addition, according to the OT&E FY 2014 report, 18,049 Joint Technical Data (JTD) modules have been developed for the aircraft, 3,123 for its engine and 1,775 for Supportable Low Observables; all are required for ALIS to operate as designed. While no information is available as to the data volumes involved, it seems logical to assume it is considerable.

The OT&E report mentions that “Maintenance downloads using the ground data receptacle … usually takes an hour, delaying access to maintenance information.” This is an indication of the data volume involved, especially as the upgraded ALIS runs on a standard Windows 7 operating system.

This was confirmed by Lt Gen Christopher Bogdan, the head of the F-35 Joint Program Office, in recent Congressional testimony.

“Currently, the pilot debrief timeline is too long as it takes approximately 1.5 hours to download a 1.5 hour flight. This is unacceptable and [we] are in the process of fielding an improved system [which] will decrease the timeline to download mission data by a factor of 8, meaning a 1.5 hour flight will be downloaded in about fifteen minutes,” he told the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces of the House Armed Services Committee on Oct 21.

[spazsinbad]

Just utter rubbish from a very wilfully ignorant & fantasist source aided and abetted by other AvWeak ignorant fantasists.

See the earlier AvWEAK bollocks where NO ONE IS COMPELLED to do anything they do not want to do - see following post to highlight how ignorant this AvWeak article is and then the Brigante doubles down. What an a$$. THE AvWEAKer:

viewtopic.php?f=62&t=27067&p=306122&hilit=compelled#p306122

[XanderCrews]

"US Software Stranglehold Threatens F-35 Foreign Operations"
(Source: Defense-Aerospace.com; published Nov 04, 2015)
by Giovanni de Briganti

Source:
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articl ... tions.html

PARIS --- The unilateral decision by the United States to locate all F-35 software laboratories on its territory, and to manage the operation and sustainment of the global F-35 fleet from its territory, has introduced vulnerabilities that are only beginning to emerge.

The biggest risk is that, since the F-35 cannot operate effectively without permanent data exchanges with its software labs and logistic support computers in the United States, any disruption in the two-way flow of information would compromise its effectiveness.

All F-35 aircraft operating across the world will have to update their mission data files and their Autonomic Logistic Information System (ALIS) profiles before and after every sortie, to ensure that on-board systems are programmed with the latest available operational data and that ALIS is kept permanently informed of each aircraft’s technical status and maintenance requirements. ALIS can, and has, prevented aircraft taking off because of an incomplete data file.

Given that the United States hopes to sell hundreds of F-35s to allies in Europe, Asia and Australia, the volume of data that must travel to and from the United States is gigantic, and any disruption in Internet traffic could cripple air forces as the F-35 cannot operate unless it is logged into, and cleared by, ALIS.

For example, “Mission data load development and testing is a critical path to combat capability,” Pentagon OT&E director Michael Gilmore said in his fiscal 2014 report. “Accuracy of threat identification and location depend on how well the mission data loads are optimized to perform in ambiguous operational environments.”

Updating and uploading mission data loads depends on a functioning Internet, and as Wired.com noted in an Oct. 29 story, “undersea Internet cables are surprisingly vulnerable.” It quoted Nicole Starosielski, a media scholar at New York University, as saying that “people would be surprised to know that there are a little over 200 systems that carry all of the internet traffic across the ocean, and these are by and large concentrated in very few areas. The cables end up getting funneled through these narrow pressure points all around the globe.”

Recent activity by Russian ships near crucial undersea cables has added to concerns about the vulnerability of Internet, as recently illustrated by the New York Times, which noted that “Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict.”

The fear is that an “ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent,” the article said.

Whatever the other repercussions, such an event would severely limit the ability of the world’s F-35 fighters to fly – due to a loss of ALIS link – and to operate effectively, as their fighting ability would disappear if their software and mission data files could not be updated.

No Internet, No F-35 Operations

In a recent article, Aviation Week explored how F-35 operators “are being compelled to fund $150 million software laboratories, based in the U.S. and almost 50% staffed by U.S. personnel, that generate data crucial to the fighter’s ability to identify new radio-frequency threats.”

It noted that the MDFs “are twice as large as the equivalent data load in the F-22,” and that there are 12 packages covering different regions.

The JSF program is establishing two centers to produce and update MDFs, at Eglin AFB, Florida, and NAS Point Mugu, California. The latter will support Japanese and Israeli F-35s, Aviation Week reported, while an Australia/U.K. facility and a laboratory to support Norway and Italy will be established at Eglin.

Given that the ALIS mainframe is located at Fort Worth, Texas, operating the F-35 will require three very large data conduits to and from these locations, again using Internet cables as the volume of data is too great for satellite transmission.

In fact, if the F-35 performs as advertised, it should gather very argue amounts of tactical data during each mission – data that it will have to transmit to the software labs in the US so they can be used to update the mission data files, adding another large volume data flow in both directions.

In addition, according to the OT&E FY 2014 report, 18,049 Joint Technical Data (JTD) modules have been developed for the aircraft, 3,123 for its engine and 1,775 for Supportable Low Observables; all are required for ALIS to operate as designed. While no information is available as to the data volumes involved, it seems logical to assume it is considerable.

The OT&E report mentions that “Maintenance downloads using the ground data receptacle … usually takes an hour, delaying access to maintenance information.” This is an indication of the data volume involved, especially as the upgraded ALIS runs on a standard Windows 7 operating system.

This was confirmed by Lt Gen Christopher Bogdan, the head of the F-35 Joint Program Office, in recent Congressional testimony.

“Currently, the pilot debrief timeline is too long as it takes approximately 1.5 hours to download a 1.5 hour flight. This is unacceptable and [we] are in the process of fielding an improved system [which] will decrease the timeline to download mission data by a factor of 8, meaning a 1.5 hour flight will be downloaded in about fifteen minutes,” he told the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces of the House Armed Services Committee on Oct 21.

Come on man, Bringanti is pure rubbish. His reports are editorials and he is basically paid by the competition to bash the F-35.

I don't mind addressing critism but this is about as accurate as an official north Korean report about capatilism

[optimist]

sweetman started the know nothing posts, quoted by Giovanni de Briganti. Now we need Axe, ELP and soloman to make it true

99% of the threat library in pre-done in the labs. The other 1% is done in-country, between missions and even inflight threat update of the library

[cantaz]

He also mixed up maintenance data and flight recording data. Two very different things.

[spazsinbad]

McCain Lays Down Law On F-35 Bulk Buy; Kendall Says It Works
26 Apr 2016 Colin Clark

"...Perhaps the most significant issue facing the program over the next two years lies with something that has dogged it for at least a year, since Air Force Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, head of F-35 integration, told me in his first interview about it: It’s development of the mission data files or “threat library.” The data on missile launches, frequencies, opponents’ weapons and their sensors come from the Intelligence Community (IC). The Office of Secretary of Defense’s Intelligence Mission Data Center gathers the data from across the IC. Then the $300 million United States Reprogramming Laboratory at Nellis Air Force Base turns that information into threat data for all three versions of the F-35, as well as for its international partners. (That lab will be joined by three more over the next few years, Bogdan said this afternoon.)

This looks like a case where someone simply goofed. “Despite a $45 Million budget provided to the Program Office in FY13, the required equipment was not ordered in time and the USRL is still not configured properly to build and optimize Block 3F Mission Data Files (MDFs). The program still has not designed, contracted for, and ordered all of the required equipment – a process that will take at least two years for some of the complex equipment – after which significant time for installation and check-out will be required,” Michael Gilmore, the head of Operational Testing and Evaluation, said in prepared testimony. When I asked him about this, Bogdan confirmed the situation: “He is right that we didn’t buy this in time.”

Does this really matter? Yes. Gilmore put it simply in his written testimony: “If the situation with the USRL is not rectified, U.S. F-35 forces will be at substantial risk of failure (emphasis added) if used in combat against these threats.”..."

Source: http://breakingdefense.com/2016/04/mcca ... -it-works/

[neptune]

https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/ ... e/1417374/

Release No: CR-011-18
Jan. 17, 2018

Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded $7,476,086 for modification P00004 to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-fixed fee contract (N00019-15-C-0105) to transition the F-35 Australia, Canada, United Kingdom Reprogramming Laboratory (ACURL) system from (cold and snowy) Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth, Texas, to (warm and sunny) Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.

Support includes required activities including packing, shipping, installation, integration, and testing.
This modification also provides for initial spares for the ACURL.

Work will be performed at Eglin Air Force Base, Eglin, Florida (70 percent); and Fort Worth, Texas (30 percent), and is expected to be completed in March 2019.

International partner funds in the amount of $7,476,086 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year.

The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity.

[spazsinbad]

Note that the CanadaDUCKtheMoneyAidians are still in the ACURL - I don't know why we Oz/UK bother with them.