The Heartbreak of Software
2nd October 2023
It has become painfully clear in recent decades that, more and more, the major stumbling block in weapon acquisition programs is software, rather than hardware.
The F-35, for example, has failed on the software side of things rather than the hardware. The all-encompassing, mission planning, parts inventory controlling, maintenance regulating, aircraft health assessing ALIS software has been a colossal, and to date, unrecoverable, failure. Further, the F-35 was planned to be fully combat capable only with the advent of the Block 4 software upgrade which is now hopelessly behind schedule and has had many of its planned features deleted or deferred to some undetermined future time.