"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In any case, most actual fighting will be done by small robots, and as you go forth today remember your duty is clear: to build and maintain those robots. " -- from The Simpsons
Yes it's achieved an Initial Operational Capacity, at least for the earlier versions. However, it hasn't finished Operational Testing, for the newer versions of software/hardware upgrades.
"The Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation said in its annual report, submitted to Congress on Jan. 31, that dedicated operational tests for the F-35’s Technology Refresh 3, or TR-3, upgrades will probably start in mid to late fiscal 2026, or around next summer. Those tests are intended to determine whether TR-3 is operationally effective.
Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, the military’s F-35 program executive officer, said in a statement to Defense News that as of January, Lockheed Martin has delivered more than 100 TR-3 equipped fighters. All of those jets have software allowing its pilots to conduct training flights, including combat training."
> Yes it's achieved an Initial Operational Capacity, at least for the earlier versions. However, it hasn't finished Operational Testing, for the newer versions of software/hardware upgrades.
Yeah, by that standard, we’ve jumped the gun on the B-21 (and the B-2 and the B-1 and...) because the B-52 isn't “finished”, with B-52J Initial Operational Capacity now expected in 2033.
Well now that's moving the goalposts. Military aircraft are frequently upgraded with new models or blocks throughout the production run. So there will always be new capabilities undergoing testing. The F-35 TR-3 is behind schedule and over budget as usual, but that really has nothing to do with the NGAD / F-47 program.
Only 30% of F-35 fleet are "mission ready", software suite is full of bugs, and the airframe cracks if you use the cannon, but sure, it's just "moving the goal posts" and has nothing to do with anything. Let's spend another couple trillion on another half-baked heap of bugs, except this time around let's spend it with the company that forgot how to build reliable planes or spacecraft.
It's not like there's any alternative. We need the capabilities and there are no other comparable aircraft in production, so despite its flaws it's the F-35 or nothing. Meanwhile the F-22 airframes are wearing out, and it's too small to be fully effective in the Indo-Pacific theater, so the F-47 is needed as well. There's plenty of blame to go around for the current deplorable state of readiness but it is what it is.
And let's not have any silly claims that those manned fighters could be completely replaced by cheaper drones. Maybe that will be possible someday but for now AI software is nowhere near ready to take on the full mission set.
I'm not sure, but it is possible we do minor servicing on the missiles. e.g. swap out components for spares.
However the missiles are regularly rotated back in to the common pool in the USA for servicing. The schedule is such that the USA could disable our deterrent within a couple of years if they so desired.
So we have the nukes, but no independent way to deliver them.
".. health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suggested that poultry farmers should let the virus run rampant through flocks rather than safely cull them, which is currently required. Farmers "should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it," Kennedy, who has no health or science background, said during an interview on Fox News.
[Agriculture Secretary] Rollins seemed to be open to the concerning idea, telling the outlet last month: "There are some farmers that are out there that are willing to really try this on a pilot as we build the safe perimeter around them to see if there is a way forward with immunity."
"What is Live Update?
Live Update is a specialized reboot process where selected devices are
kept operational across a kernel transition. For these devices, DMA and
interrupt activity may continue uninterrupted during the kernel reboot.
...
The primary use case is in cloud environments, allowing hypervisor updates without fully disrupting running virtual machines by keeping selected devices
alive across the reboot boundary. "
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43484093
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