Saturday, December 01, 2012

One of These Days ... Pow!!! Right in the Kisser

How many tales of woe start with "it seemed like a good idea at the time"? An effort to keep the costs of F-35 maintenance down coupled with an effort to maintain congressional support is turning into a costly system that will keep this core of our future combat air fleet vulnerable to some future disgruntled E-4 with a CD labeled "Lady Gaga."

Please tell me this really isn't a problem:

The U.S. Navy and Air Force have created an automated supply system (ALIS, Autonomic Logistics Information System) for their new fleet of F-35 warplanes. This extensive use of computers and networks has already proven vulnerable to hacker attacks (during tests of such vulnerabilities) and the situation is worse than that because the aircraft manufacturer, in order to obtain maximum political support for the F-35 , selected suppliers with an eye towards where they were, in addition to what they could do.

Our potential enemies can be excused for saying, "Baby, you're the greatest!" when they look at ALIS.