Comment by chishaku | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chishaku | Hacker News Reader

Highlights from the GAO report:

* Pilots, maintainers, and administrators at three of the five sites we visited are concerned about ALIS’s ability to deploy and function in forward locations. For example, users are concerned about the large server size and connectivity requirements, and whether the system’s infrastructure can maintain power and withstand a high-temperature environment.

* ALIS users at three of the five sites we visited are concerned that a failure in the system’s current infrastructure could degrade the system and ground the fleet. Currently, ALIS information, including data from all U.S. F-35 sites, flows from the Standard Operating Units (SOU) to a single national Central Point of Entry, and then to the lone Autonomic Logistics Operating Unit (ALOU).26 This data flow process has no back up system for continuity of operations if either of these servers were to fail.

* Maintainers and pilots at three of the five sites we visited were concerned that ALIS does not have much interoperability with legacy aircraft systems... The ability to share information between ALIS and these legacy systems is vital due to the way the services operate.

* Maintainers at four of the five sites we visited told us that the current Action Request (AR) process does not allow for the effective reporting and resolution of F-35 aircraft and ALIS issues.

* ALIS users at all five sites we visited are concerned with data accuracy issues within the system, including missing or inaccurate data and inaccessibility of raw data within ALIS.

http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/676576.pdf

Description of ALIS risks starts on page 15.

One other highlight from the report: the total lifetime cost of the program is now estimated at 1.3 trillion dollars, or $1300000000000 if you prefer longhand (up from the 1 trillion dollar estimate of a few years ago). Other things we could've done with that money besides spending it on this useless garbage heap of a plane are left to the reader's imagination.

Interesting question - at what price will it be cheaper just to hire some country to bomb the #$%^ out of some other.

> the total lifetime cost of the program is now estimated at 1.3 trillion dollars

But the would-be US presidential candidate suggesting free higher education is the fiscally irrespomsible fantasist, apparently.

I've seen numbers floating at 70 billion/year for that. So that would be 18.5 years.

I've seen estimations of about 1.7 trillion for the wars since 9/11. That'd be another 24 years.

Peter Dale Scott wrote a book about something he calls "The Deep State" which at least, to me helps explain how seemingly regardless of who gets elected, such unpopular expensive programs continue without elected officials people having any discussion of legislation to stop it.

Have you ever noticed that whenever government gives a bunch of money to higher education to operate, the cost to operate those universities goes up to match whatever extra was given?

The government has been dramatically scaling back direct funding of higher education which has to then be made up with higher tuition. Often times, yes, the tuition is then paid for with government-backed loans but the cost-per-student in most areas hasn't budged in 30 years.

That's just not true. Higher education costs have held steady for about 30 years.

What has increased is the share of that cost that is being fronted by the student, instead of the government. You want to be mad, be mad. But at least point it in the right direction.

For example - at the 'state funded' institution I was previously employed by, only 11% of our annual funding came from the state. Compare that to the 1970's, when around 60% came from the same source.

The cost of tuition didn't increase (outside of annual inflation adjustments) overall. The cost to the student increased because the state cut back so hard on their payments. Meanwhile, students demand the same, or better services every year. You can have cheap, you can have good, but you can't have both.

The fact that people going to college in the 1970's were able to pay for college on part-time summer jobs wasn't because it was miraculously cheap. It was heavily subsidized.

These aren't secrets.

Citation needed.

Have you ever noticed that wherever you point a firehose, the target tends to get soaked as soon as you turn the water on?

No but I have noticed that when the state reduces its funding contribution, that tuition rises to compensate.

So, what is your proposal exactly? Cut this program, and make army weaker, while others(Russia, China, isis, whatever) gain military weight?

I'd like to have meaningful public discussion befitting of the size of these financial commitments.

For instance, there's occasional debate about defunding public broadcasting, which costs 0.013% of F35 + wars. Planned Parenthood is 0.018% of this. Even the often hotly contested NASA is 0.62% of this.

A few years ago, congress was in heated budget debates - trying to knock off PBS to save a buck - but a plane that cost 48,743 times that was never brought up for discussion.

Even if you span these budgets over the 20 years of the F35 program, something like planned parenthood cost 0.4% as much.

If we can find the time to talk about X as a huge waste of tax payer dollars and have legislation to defund it, surely we can find time to talk about something that costs 25,000% more than X.

However, other than an occasional news article and grumble of discontent, nothing actually happens. It moves forward unabated. That's a problem.

These types of debates are going for few decades already. 1,3trln is joint air-force budget for next 80 years (since F-35 is intended to cover 90% of all air-force/navy/marines air tasks), includes not only 2500 highly sophisticated vehicles them-self, but maintenance, and probably training and weapons, and covers 50% of national security problems in modern world. I think 1.3trln is moderate price for that.

That's cool. I guess warfare and killing people just ain't my thing.

Maybe thinking about your kids future is your thing.

DoD projects are modern Public Works projects since they tend to employ people outside big cities in manufacturing jobs that aren't supposed to be outsourced. The instant you try to criticize DoD spending as media or a politician, you are branded as anti-American and you're pushed to the fringes.

I do not understand why its not possible for those same engineers/workers making planes to became teachers/proffesors ?

It seems such a terrible mis-allocations of resources since those same brilliant people could help the next generation learn and progress.

Or the simpler explanation is that Americans do not value public higher education as much as they value their global hegemonic position.

Manufacturing facilities in the US employ only a few engineers compared to forklift operators, truck drivers, machinists on an assembly line, and construction workers. Most people in the US cannot be employed in high demand fields that require more education than just a certificate and some hands-on training for a couple months under an apprenticeship kind of system.

Secondly, teaching jobs in the US are extremely hard to come by and have such poor pay that most people in manufacturing would do better in the same communities by looking for factory work.

As it stands, most of the "brilliant" people that are motivated enough simply leave these areas for bigger metro areas and the typically rural communities that make up a very large portion of the US's population and area suffer brain drain. Over generations, this flight becomes culturalized resentment for those trying to better themselves and there is strong pressure against people from leaving. Hence, one of the strongest values among rural people here is "nobody is better than anyone else" and any hint whatsoever of arrogance is extremely chastized. The irony that this is surprisingly close to what liberals fight for in the US politically never seems to register (much of politics in this country is really strange but primarily racially divided or based purely upon economic standing at this point rather than upon actual political views - most black voters are actually conservative and most poor rural whites would vote Democrat if gun control was relaxed, for example).

Anti-intellectualism is very strong in the US compared to most countries in the world and needs to be examined much more closely than other factors IMO.

The only people who prefer longhand are those who want people to evaluate the number without context and just see a big number. $130000000000 is just a big number to many people, regardless of how many zeros are in it

The only people who prefer shorthand are those who want people to evaluate the number without context and just see a small number. $1.3tn is just a small number to many people, regardless of the unit which comes after it.

Or you could just, you know, immediately abandon the failed project and avoid 1200% cost overruns..

Forgiving federal student loans for every person in America .. and you'd still have $0.3 trillion left over.

That's enough money to buy every American citizen 3-4 ponies (if you ignore the effect on the pony market buying hundreds of millions of ponies would have).

With the extra money we could do wonders for oral hygiene.

That is amazing:

> ALIS does not have redundant infrastructure: ALIS’s current design results in all F-35 data produced across the U.S. fleet to be routed to a Central Point of Entry and then to ALIS’s main operating unit with no backup system or redundancy. If either of these fail, it could take the entire F -35 fleet offline.

That sounds like a movie plot [Independence Day] (or Battlestar Galactica)!

So, the enemy jams comms or shoots down satellites, and a F-35 squadron deployed to a base on the other side of the world can't do maintenance? An aircraft carrier is attacked and its antennas are destroyed, and they can't do maintenance? The enemy breaks into or takes offline the Central Point of Entry over the Internet (oh, but it's airgapped, of course...), and the entire F-35 fleet around the world can't do maintenance? (Or can't do it at the level required to maintain combat readiness.)

Am I misunderstanding something here?

Nope that sounds like the ramifications of having a single point of failure.

Yes, yes, and I don't think so.

Where was the oversight? It's beyond incompetent.

If I was paranoid I'd wonder if procurement and architecture had been taken over by hostile agents.

Short of putting a remotely controlled logic bomb and/or actual explosive device on every plane, it's hard to imagine how the F-35 could possibly have been made more vulnerable and less fit for purpose.

> So, the enemy jams comms or shoots down satellites, and a F-35 squadron deployed to a base on the other side of the world can't do maintenance?

This makes it sound as if ALIS does maintenance. ALIS does not do the maintenance. Human beings still do the maintenance.

From the article it seems like they need to drive around with ALIS CD-ROMs to do maintenance..

That's not supposed to happen, but...

> This makes it sound as if ALIS does maintenance. ALIS does not do the maintenance. Human beings still do the maintenance.

Well, obviously, ALIS is not a robot with mechanical arms that do the physical work (although with its name, it wouldn't be surprising if some people expected "Alice" to do just that; and the personification is creepily reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey).

But from what I've read in these articles and part of that GAO report, it sounds like ALIS is part of the designed maintenance protocols. For example, Action Requests are entered into ALIS and uploaded to the contractor (!) who triages them (!) and collates data across multiple sites (noted in the GAO report are problems such as a software update preventing contractors from receiving ARs while the on-site personnel are waiting for an answer--eventually they call and ask, hey, what about those ARs? and the contractors respond, what ARs? because they didn't know they were failing). And technical manuals are accessible through ALIS instead of having to refer to paper manuals.

Of course, these are all so vague and general that it's hard for laymen to figure out what it would mean in practice. The terms used in the GAO report for expected functionality are so non-specific that it seems nearly useless to even use them.

Having said all that, the GAO report does mention (buried in the middle of a paragraph, not prominently like a major vulnerability should be) that ALIS can be used in an offline capacity:

> DOD officials told us that they recognize this issue and, for short-term losses of connection, ALIS users are able to work offline. (page 17)

But that doesn't sound very reassuring to me. In wartime, all sorts of bad things happen, and lost connectivity and communications should be at the top of the list of expectations. If maintenance is severely degraded and aircraft can't fly sorties at the needed rate, well, in a war....

AIUI, every component of the plane has a unique identity and status. It sounded to me like this involves digital signatures and all that. So presumably, manual maintenance without the proper bookkeeping would be viewed as tampering/sabotage, and the plane would refuse to operate.

> manual maintenance without the proper bookkeeping would be viewed as tampering/sabotage, and the plane would refuse to operate.

If that's true, it sounds like a solution is search of a requirement. IIRC, but I don't think the US military has had problems with tampering and sabotage of military jets.

Sounds more like DRM than prevention of sabotage. Like in printer ink heads...

"Attention! Counterfeit hydraulics system installed. F-35 disabled until genuine system purchased".

This would stop people buying cheap F-35 spare parts from China on ebay and trying to save a couple of million dollars.

Interesting speculation, but General Bogdan's assertion that you can operate an individual F-35 for "up to 30 days" without ALIS indicates otherwise.

I don't think that contradicts my understanding. If no maintenance was necessary in the 30 day period, then there wouldn't be anything to detect.

A droll reply would be, "It's a fighter, maintenance is always necessary."

But to give a real answer:

If a jet sits for 30 days without any maintenance, then it's supposed to be preserved. This means all fuel is offloaded, all lubricants drained and then refilled and then drained again (leaving a film of clean lubricant over important parts), etc. Otherwise, you have to perform an engine run to keep the aircraft nominally flyable.

Really, if you aren't flying, you are either doing maintenance to prepare to fly, fixing something, performing scheduled inspections, or performing modifications. So if the aircraft is operational, there is no such thing as a 30 day period without maintenance.

Without ALIS, you just do all of this via the old paper processes for a while.

Have they considered designing super weapons for the Galactic Empire?

The sad/funny/weird thing is that some people would say that's what this is. Almost makes one wonder...

> airgapped

How the heck to do you airgap a "Central Point of Entry", lol.

That's a good question. I meant airgapped from the Internet, of course, but the "..." was meant to imply that it's the kind of thing that is easier said than done, and easily, accidentally done wrong.

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