Air Force cautiously confident on new fighter.Only months before the Air Force is scheduled to fly the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter A strike fighter is a fighter aircraft which is also capable of attacking surface targets, including ships. It differs from an attack aircraft in that the aircraft remains a capable fighter. , the service's top officer gave a less-than-glowing assessment of the program. Of most concern are the aircraft's intricate software systems, says Gen. T. Michael Moseley Teed Michael Moseley, KBE[1], is the current Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force. He assumed the position during a ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base on September 2, 2005. , Air Force chief of staff. "The primary challenge is software integration. Not the hardware side," he told reporters. But he said he remains confident that the contractor, Lockheed Martin For the former company, see . Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) is a leading multinational aerospace manufacturer and advanced technology company formed in 1995 by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta. , will make it work. "We are asking a lot," Moseley said. According to Eric Branyan, avionics engineer at Lockheed, the F-35 is the most software-intensive combat airplane ever built, with 5.3 million lines of code The statements and instructions that a programmer writes when creating a program. One line of this "source code" may generate one machine instruction or several depending on the programming language. A line of code in assembly language is typically turned into one machine instruction. . He said the company is on track to finish software development by 2011. |
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