Monday, February 06, 2012

The F-35 Fugue . . .

— the F-35 Fugue —
THIS JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER: according to DEFENCETECH "Did Chinese Espionage Lead to F-35 Delays?", that's what happened.

Chinese spies apparently hacked into secure conference calls and listened to meetings discussing the classified technologies aboard the jets. In particular, China may have stolen info about the F-35’s secure communications and antenna systems; leading to costly software rewrites and other redesigns to compromised parts of the plane.

The worst part, this problem isn’t just limited to the F-35, though the program’s size and the fact that it’s information systems were apparently designed without any concern for cyber espionage made it an easy target.

All those cost over-runs hurt, but giving the other side an insight as to how you think about things, as well as design approaches and methods, oh boy. As far as the Chinese are concerned, not quite priceless, but large, as they can make a large jump in capability more quickly.

4 comments:

Dave said...

Lessee... stealth? Scratch that one.

Migod, given the publicity this frigging airframe and its plant have been given there is not an opposing force in the world which hasn't developed at least a theoretical coutermeasure to it.

The Wright Brothers had better security.

Dave said...

Oh yeah!!!

I left out one important point.

Some bimbo really likes the F-35 because it goes fast. First name reminds me of a German-made car. Last name ... doesn't matter.

Steve said...

Lets just zero hour the F18 and give Bombardier barrels of cash to make arctic drones.

Boris said...

Me thinks F-35 and LM are too big to fail. Amazing that LM can have its meetings infiltrated by Chinese intelligence yet somehow both it and the superproject in question are permitted to continue. I mean, lesser beings would think it would be a no brainer that thing like the F-35 would be seriously compromised and the company running it, should the major strategic rival everyone's worried about gain access to the secret bits.