Most expensive weapon ever built limps toward finish line

With a $110-million price-tag, the F-35 fighter jet is the most expensive weapon ever built for America's arsenal -- but nine years into development, it's also a weapon still "not acceptable for combat," and plagued by huge cost overruns that one lawmaker is calling a "scandal."
Those were the troubling messages exchanged Tuesday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing into the $379-billion weapons program -- along with an acknowledgement that the U.S. can't afford to see the program fail.
“If the F-35 doesn’t succeed, we’ll be in a pickle,” J. Michael Gilmore, the Department of Defense’s director of operational test and evaluation, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"If the F-35 doesn't succeed, we'll be in a pickle."
- J. Michael Gilmore

The primary technical issue centers on the so-called “brain” of the F-35 -- known as the Autonomic Logistic Information System, or ALIS -- which controls plane operations, maintenance, scheduling and supply chain management. It’s considered as essential to the aircraft's operation as the airframe and engine. Of the myriad concerns involving ALIS, the primary is that there is no backup for data processing – which means that a failure could in theory ground the entire 2,443-aircraft force. Other issues include a lack of testing, inability to communicate with legacy systems and cybersecurity questions.