F-35 Operational Clearance Threatened As Radar Turns Off In-Flight

The US Air Force' F-35 fighter jet is facing a software glitch involving the radar as it requires the pilot to turn it off and on again in-flight and poses threat to delaying the USAF plans to declare the jet operationally deployable.

"What would happen is they'd get a signal that says either a radar degrade or a radar (AN/APG-81 AESA) fail -something that would force us to restart the radar," Jeffrey Harrigian, director of the air force's F-35 integration office at the Pentagon was quoted as saying by IHS Janes Sunday.

The issue arose in late 2015, according to the general. "We first started to see it in testing," he said.

"Lockheed Martin discovered the root cause, and now they're in the process of making sure they take that solution and run it through the [software testing] lab." He added that new software that corrects the error is to be delivered to the USAF at the end of March.

To correct the software quickly, some code writers were diverted from their work on increment 3F, Maj Gen Harrigian said. However, any solution to the problem in increment 3i will be transferable to 3F coding, so both increments will benefit from the work.

Harrigian described the problem as "radar stability - the radar's ability to stay up and running" using the 3i software that the air force intends to use when it declares initial operational capability (IOC) for its fleet sometime between 1 August and 31 December.