PENTAGON: The F-35‘s highly sensitive sensors suffer a basic problem right now: They often aren’t sure what they are detecting. That results in a high rate of false alarms. The key to fixing this lies in building highly complex data files — what we can colloquially call the threat library — and integrating them with the Joint Strike Fighter‘s software.

“I think the probably the biggest concern is with these mission data files [threat library],” Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian told me in his first interview since being named at the end of January to coordinate procurement and integration of the F-35A into the Air Force. “With any detection systems, it’s always a chore to work through what the sensor is actually seeing.”

Creating those threat files is complex enough. The data on missile launches, frequencies, opponents’ weapons and their sensors come from the Intelligence Community (IC). The Office of Secretary of Defense’s Intelligence Mission Data Center gathers the data from across the IC. A lab at Nellis Air Force Base turns that information into threat data for the Air Force’s weapons.

The Air Force civilian who handles F-35A integration, Thomas Lawhead, said the missile warning data fusion for the F-35 “is still a little too sensitive.” An Air Force officer involved with the building of the threat library told me recently that most of it is still being built and much of the combination of the plane’s fusion software and threat information won’t be ready until close to Air Force IOC.

But Harrigian several times told me calmly variations on this: “I’m very confident we are going to get to IOC on time.”

In his 2014 annual report, the director of Operational Test and Evaluation described the sensors this way: “fusion of information from own-ship sensors, as well as fusion of information from off-board sensors is still deficient. The Distributed Aperture System continues to exhibit high false-alarm rates and false target tracks, and poor stability performance, even in later versions of software.”

Full integration of the threats and the aircraft software won’t occur until close to Full Operational Capability, in part because it takes time for pilots, intelligence analysts and the plane’s builder — Lockheed Martin — to figure out exactly what the sensors are capable of and how the software should be redesigned to do the best job of taking the sensors information and the threat information and helping them work together.

In part, that’s because the F-35 gathers so much more data through its array of sensors than does its fifth generation cousin, the F-22.