F/A-22 Ups and Downs; the Tacair Debate; [Brian's Military Ping List]

At a March 22 review of the F/A-22 program, the Defense Acquisition Board found no reason that USAF should not proceed with initial operational test and evaluation (IOT &E) for its new stealthy fighter.

The DAB, which is chaired by acting Pentagon acquisition, technology, and logistics chief Michael W. Wynne, appeared satisfied with the aircraft’s progress despite earlier claims by some members that the Air Force was moving too quickly into IOT&E.

The board met to review whether the F/A-22’s avionics had met the level of stability that was mandated for entry into IOT&E. The Air Force was required to demonstrate that the avionics suite could sustain a five-hour-mean-time-between-failure rate for critical elements. (See “The F/A-22 Force Forms Up,” April, p. 34.)

The day after the DAB meeting, Marvin R. Sambur, USAF’s top acquisition official, told lawmakers that Wynne had said he was “very encouraged by the program’s progress” and saw “no impediment to entering IOT&E in the April time frame.”

Sambur also told a House subcommittee that, although the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center had “not formally completed” its analysis, the AFOTEC commander found the F/A-22’s performance “very impressive.” That constituted a rave review, according to Sambur.

“I have never heard an AFOTEC commander ... use anything better than, ‘It is OK’ ” when describing a weapon system, said Sambur.

At the same hearing, Lt. Gen. Ronald E. Keys, USAF’s deputy chief of staff for air and space operations, responded to a question about a mock dogfight in which eight F-15Cs engaged four F/A-22s. He said the Eagles “all died.” Keys added that most of the F-15s never even got off a shot against the F/A-22s.

The thumbs up by the DAB and the upbeat testimony by Air Force officials was in sharp contrast to a March 15 General Accounting Office report. The Congressional watchdog agency had reported that the F/A-22 was still struggling to meet avionics requirements. (See below.)

However, Keys told the lawmakers that the GAO report was simply out of date. “This is a moving target,” he said.

Sambur emphasized that the F/A-22 program “is now at 6.1 [hours] vs. the five-hour metric.”

The GAO charged, in its report and testimony, that the Pentagon had failed to provide sufficient information to Congress to justify the number of F/A-22s USAF plans to buy or its modernization investment plans for the new stealthy fighter.

The GAO said DOD “did not address key business case questions such as how many F/A-22s are needed, how many are affordable, and if alternatives to planned investments increasing the F/A-22 air-to-ground capabilities exist.”

The business case that DOD did provide to Congress said it “planned to buy 277 F/A-22s based on a ‘buy-to-budget’ concept,” according to the GAO. The GAO said that DOD, if held to the $36.8 billion production cost cap imposed by Congress in 1998, could only buy about 218 F/A-22s.

The higher number is based on the Pentagon’s production cost cap of $42.2 billion, which several lawmakers at the April hearing said violated the Congressional mandate. DOD and Air Force acquisition leaders stated at the hearing that the Pentagon planned to ask for relief from the statutory cost cap.

Sambur on April 11 told lawmakers that the Air Force was “not happy” with either number. He said the service maintains it needs “something in the order of 381.” (See “Editorial: The Raptor Review,” April, p. 2.)

GAO claimed that USAF had included $3.5 billion for addition of improved ground-attack capabilities through 2009 but that the service would actually need $11.7 billion. Air Force Secretary James G. Roche said he finds it hard to grasp the $8 billion difference.

“The biggest change is the radar,” Roche said at a Defense Writers Group meeting in mid-March. “In changing the radar, the price of the radar falls 40 percent. So it doesn’t go up; it goes down.”

Roche said the “second biggest change” is inclusion of the small diameter bomb, but the small diameter bomb is going to go on lots of things.” He added, “I don’t know what got included in the costs of air-to-ground.”

The mostly favorable news on the F/A-22 impressed many members of Congress, most of whom said the F/A-22 is on firmer ground. However, they noted that tactical aviation as a whole is facing stiff problems.

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, on March 25 claimed that, despite his support for the F/A-22, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and the Navy’s F/A-18E/F, the long-anticipated procurement “train wreck”—too many programs and not enough money to fund them all—is approaching.

He said that the defense budget can’t sustain three Tacair programs along with other top defense needs.

“Something has to give,” Weldon said. It may be this year or the next several years, he said, but Congress is going to “have to be able to make some extremely difficult and tough decisions.”

Weldon pointed out that a year ago no one expected the Army to kill its Comanche scout helicopter program and said that he didn’t want to go any further with the three fighter programs if they aren’t all affordable.

The mounting pressure on Tacair programs was evident in other Congressional sessions, as well. However, support for the F/A-22 seemed solid, at least for the moment.

In a March 24 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, chairman Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said he is committed to the Raptor. “This committee did save the C-17,” said Stevens. “We saved the Predator. We saved the B-2. And, as far as I’m concerned, we’re going to save the F/A-22.”

One former foe of the F/A-22, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, who dealt the program some significant delays and funding cuts in 1999, told Congressional Quarterly that he had turned around on the Raptor.

“Our members have come a long way down the path of believing that the F/A-22 is an asset that we cannot afford to do without,” said Lewis.

Weldon said he couldn’t see the F/A-22 being terminated, however, because it, like the F/A-18, is already in production. In his view, not being in production makes the F-35 vulnerable.

The F-35, on the other hand, he said, is “just a viewgraph” not a real airplane yet, and that could lead some to make it a target.

Weldon emphasized that the Pentagon does not have the “political clout to support something that is, maybe, three years from now vs. what is here—and that is a practical reality we have to deal with.”

However, Weldon pressed the services to “make the case” for the F-35 primarily because canceling the program would leave the Marine Corps “in a bind.”

Gen. John W. Handy, commander of US Transportation Command and Air Mobility Command, told lawmakers in March that the Defense Department will soon begin a new mobility capabilities study (MCS). It is long overdue, he said, because current airlift is about 18 percent short of the now obsolete airlift goals set by a study concluded nearly four years ago.

The earlier study, Mobility Requirements Study 2005, dubbed MRS-05, was released in January 2001. Since then, worldwide operations in support of the war on terrorism have caused airlift demands to surge. “The requirements in our business have gone up dramatically compared to what MRS-05 thought they would be,” Handy told the House Armed Services Committee.

He said that the new MCS would be an all encompassing mobility review—air, land, and sea. However, he emphasized that the airlift portion would see the most “dramatic impact.”

Handy said TRANSCOM’S No. 1 shortfall is its “aging and numerically inadequate strategic airlift fleet.”

The current strategic airlift shortfall of 9.8 million ton-miles per day (MTM/D) is based on the MRS-05 goal of 54.5 MTM/D. The true airlift shortfall is almost certainly greater than MRS-05 indicates.

Handy said that the Pentagon was to begin the new review by June and would issue a report by spring 2005. He noted that the 10-month timeline “presents an ambitious challenge.”

The TRANSCOM head also told lawmakers that to meet future air mobility challenges, the Air Force will need “high speed, low observable, multimission strategic mobility aircraft with short takeoff and landing as well as autonomous approach capabilities.”

An independent study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies says that while DOD has made great strides in jointness and rationalizing its structure over the last 20 years, it is still wasting money and stifling innovation with unnecessary red tape and layers of bureaucracy.

Phase 1 of the CSIS report, titled “Beyond Goldwater-Nichols: Defense Reform for a New Strategic Era,” reviews and builds on the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols reforms, considered the most comprehensive defense reorganization effort since the 1947 National Security Act. The 1986 reforms enhanced civilian control of the department, secured the role of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the principal military advisor, and strengthened the authority of combatant commanders—all changes that were intended to speed development of jointness among the services.

The center prepared the study that led to the Goldwater-Nichols legislation, prompting many defense analysts to suggest the new report may serve as a blueprint for a major restructuring of the Pentagon.

CSIS officials said the Beyond Goldwater-Nichols (BGN) team has regularly briefed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and USAF Gen. Richard B. Meyers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, on the study.

John J. Hamre, president of CSIS and former deputy defense secretary, said he expects the Pentagon to implement the findings “almost to the degree of the Space Commission” report, issued in January 2001. Rumsfeld originally chaired the Space Commission and acted on its findings when he became Secretary.

In Phase 1 of Beyond Goldwater-Nichols, CSIS recommends eliminating entire layers of staff for the senior levels of the department to promote faster decision-making, shorter system development time, and greater accountability all around.

CSIS said the Office of the Secretary of Defense should “focus on policy formation and oversight, resist the temptation to manage programs, and consolidate housekeeping functions under an assistant secretary.”

Two of the senior layers targeted in the BGN report are the separate staffs maintained by each branch of the armed forces to support a service’s two most senior civilian and military leaders. For the Air Force, that would lead to the merger of the Secretariat and Air Staffs. CSIS believes this change within each service would “reduce friction,” foster better coordination, and “increase the coherency of service positions.”

Another recommendation would expand the undersecretary of intelligence position to include command, control, and communications. The BGN team indicated that such a move would improve the Pentagon’s ability to acquire and field joint interoperable command and control capabilities, an endeavor it is currently “failing.”

CSIS recommends that DOD eliminate competing sources of advice about personnel matters by combining elements of manpower and personnel on the Joint Staff with similar functions on Rumsfeld’s staff under a military deputy to the undersecretary of personnel and readiness.

For the logistics arena, the BGN team believes that both the Defense Secretary and JCS Chairman need stronger support. To achieve that, they would integrate much of the Joint Staff’s logistics function with the deputy undersecretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness and place the new entity under a three-star military deputy to the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics. That would be “a major step in ensuring sufficient OSD attention to this critical function,” stated the report.

Other logistics recommendations include making a two-star deputy to the Joint Staff’s head of operations responsible for operational logistics planning and moving the Joint Logistics Operations Center under the J-3 (operations) umbrella.

The BGN group believes that Rumsfeld has made some progress toward enhancing joint focus in the resource allocation process, but they recommend more emphasis. Specifically, they want to give the combatant commanders a stronger role.

CSIS suggests the Pentagon must strengthen the defense civilian force, including creating a new Defense Professionals Corps “to attract the best and brightest ... and provide greatly expanded opportunities for professional development.”

At least three proposals are beyond the scope of the Pentagon but would significantly impact its operations. CSIS calls for the President to appoint a new Presidential assistant on the National Security Council staff to coordinate action between federal departments involved in operations abroad and create a new NSC Office of Stability Operations. In line with that move, CSIS said Congress should create an independent Agency for Stability Operations that contains a Civilian Stability Operations Corps that would organize, train, equip, and deploy a civilian force for post-military operations.

Additionally, the Beyond Goldwater-Nichols report suggests that Congress “reform itself” with an eye toward “reinvigorating Congressional oversight of DOD.” CSIS suggests that armed services committees should focus on macro strategy, policy, and organizational issues. The report also suggests Congress should sharply reduce the size of its authorizing committees and limit claims of jurisdiction over DOD operations.

Since Congress usually doesn’t give up power voluntarily, the authors asked Congress to establish a method similar to the base realignment and closure process to accomplish this task of assessing “current committee membership, structures, and jurisdictions and make recommendations on how to enhance Congressional oversight.” A second phase of the report, due to be completed early next year, will examine how DOD organizes for “new missions and new domains of warfare,” the acquisition process, defense agencies, and joint professional military education, among other topics.

The Air Force is speeding up its plans to acquire a new long-range strike capability by about a decade. Two new service offices—one at Air Combat Command and one at Air Force Materiel Command—have been set up to help quicken the pace toward finding a successor for today’s bombers.

The offices will develop an analysis of alternatives and manage acquisition of a future long-range strike capability, Gen. T. Michael Moseley, USAF vice chief of staff, told the House Armed Services Committee in March. He said that the Air Force planned to have a new system in service by 2025.

That is more than a decade sooner than USAF’s previous plan, which called for a bomber replacement to come online around 2037.

The two offices were funded out of the $100 million Congress inserted in the Fiscal 2004 defense authorization bill specifically to begin work on a successor to USAF’s bomber fleet. (See “Washington Watch: On to the Next Bomber,” January, p. 8.) Congress was concerned that USAF was not moving fast enough.

Moseley did not limit the new long-range strike system to a specific platform; instead he said USAF was considering a “portfolio of options that includes manned and unmanned systems, air breathing and space systems, and a wide mix of munitions connected to a network backbone of command and control that facilitates global strike.”

However, he noted that the service is still thinking about a “bridge capability” to provide more deep strike choices while the new system is developed.

To form this bridge, the Air Force is considering an F/A-22 variant, called an FB-22, to serve as a “regional” bomber, in the words of Secretary Roche. It would have a theater capability but not global reach. The FB-22 would have a range of about 1,800 miles, with a payload of up to 30 small diameter bombs. The aircraft would not have all the maneuvering capability of the F/A-22, but would retain stealth and high speed.

Programming GPS coords and dropping a bomb weren't the technical hurdles.

Oh, my head.

Is this bomb just hanging out on a cloud, kickin' it? Please tell us how it gets to the place from where it can be dropped? I beg you.

Yes and actually getting GPS weapons to altitude? What are you gonna do turboprop your way up there? With what a single 350lb GPS munition? Again, cant a cruise missile do the same for cheaper?

You glazed right over the other systems c'mon man this is getting sad.

True again, but the Tanker has no stealth. Straight line or not, you only need position forces between the target and the tanker. A non-directional course only decreases the range back to the gas. I would expect assets near the tanker, but that too gives away the intended heading of the B-2. If the B-2 drops on NK, war is on, and metal will be flying everywhere, not just along the route home. But, you know this.

"I wont even ask you how you plan to get this magic weapon INTO space, I promise."
216 posted on 06/01/2004 5:29:19 PM CDT by Pukin Dog (Sans Reproache)

Oh, my head. "Is this bomb just hanging out on a cloud, kickin' it? Please tell us how it gets to the place from where it can be dropped? I beg you."
221 posted on 06/01/2004 5:38:25 PM CDT by Pukin Dog (Sans Reproache)

Do I have to play 20 questions to get the source of your wisdom?

What makes you think JSF is in such dire straits? I'm not arguing, I just haven't heard any sources supporting your premonition. And the Lockheed/BAE team has a pretty impressive program in JSF (though I am personally still sketical of single engine aircraft for naval aviation).

While I like the F22, the services need new modern airframes pretty much all around (the Hornet being pretty much the only current line of fixed wing to speak of), and the F22 fills only a small part of that need.

Forget the other questions, and just tell me how it is possible to 'drop' ANYTHING from space, and I will go away happy.

Don't you think if you are going to quote me, you should use the entire quote? You did not answer the question, so the rest is moot. How old are you?

What makes you think JSF is in such dire straits? I'm not arguing, I just haven't heard any sources supporting your premonition.

Pentagon scuttlebutt, fired Program managers and designers, BRAC list realities, and other stuff I cannot mention here. I regret the post, because I was not in my right mind last night and probably should not have mentioned it at all. It's out there now, and you can find the same elsewhere if you look hard enough.

I'm still skeptical. It takes more than a DoD program manager getting fired to kill something as big as JSF (though in the current Rumsfeld environment, I agree it is more likely). And from what I've seen its an impressive set of platforms, given its three variants. (Still prefer two engines for shipboard use.)

Regards,

True again, but the Tanker has no stealth.

At 2,000+ miles away, it doesn't NEED stealth.

Speaking of tankers...where would the DPRK tanker orbit be? MiGs get awful thirsty awful quick at Mach 1.5...

Pooh, I am only pointing out that locating the tankers would give clues to the potential future direction of the B-2. Of course, stealth is not required. I am saying, if I want to find the B-2, I want to know where it is going. First thing I want to know is where the tankers are, so I can get something between them and where the attack took place. One-way mission for someone going after a B-2. That guy is no fool, he does not expect to be coming home.

Fair enough, but it is not an impressive bird from current specs. It is just too fat to perform its missions. I wish I had access to some of the glowing initial design reviews of the F-111. That aircraft was adored. John Boyd's folks said you had to look hard to find the sections discussing weight in the early reviews, because they would mysteriously be left out.

Answer: "somewhere."

First thing I want to know is where the tankers are, so I can get something between them and where the attack took place.

The tanker, like the truth, is out there. Where "out there" is, you know not...nor do you know which way "out there" is.

Tanker orbits can be near Guam, Australia, Japan, Alaska, or nowhere in particular. Your guess is as good as anyone else's.

But that tanker orbit you thought you spotted in the Yellow Sea? That wasn't a tanker, that was a wing's worth of F-15s out of Kadena, looking to sucker-punch some poor DPRK zoomies...

One-way mission for someone going after a B-2. That guy is no fool, he does not expect to be coming home.

If the DPRK wishes to expend their resources on stupid stuff with no chance of success, I shan't stand in their way...

I don't know if you know this or not but the F-22 is the F/A-22.

http://www.af.mil/mediacenter/pressrelease.asp?prID=123006703

Yes Currently our 15's, 16's, and 18's our just as good as what China currently has, but that's right now. The 18 is getting modded and will be much more effective towards the new Russian jets, but the Air Force does not use the 18. Our main fighters are 15's and 16's and in a few years they will be obsolete. Like I said...right now the cost is expensive, but don't be surprised if drops down to no more then a couple billion a plane. What the AF is starting out with is 3 fighter squadrons. I believe Nellis, Eglin, and Langley are each receiving one. That's just the start, after that the price should drop significantly. What I look for them to do is do away with the new X-35. It's a piece of shit in my mind.

With regard to the F-35? It's been widely reported that it's too heavy. And it's unlikely the engineers are going to be able to drop the extra weight. More likely, even if it is funded, it'll be like the F-16 and just get heavier as they hang more on it while expanding it's mission.

But one line of thinking that hasn't been mentioned is engine improvements. Time and time again we've fielded decent, but underpowered airframes. Then along comes the right engine(s) and the true genius of the plane is realized. Perhaps the F-35's genius is only an engine improvement away?

Ok...so I'm the guy who is eves-dropping and then buts into the conversation. See...I think I got you figured out.

You go hard core on one idea and beat it into the ground. While your assumptions and statements are so outrageous that people have to respond, there is enough truth in what you're saying to give you some creditability, making responding to you irresistible. And because around here polite rules the day, few will say that you're full of it outright, though their posts are designed to say just that. Which, of course, you conveniently ignore while stubbornly sticking to your script.

As the eavesdropper, I find it all very entertaining and admittedly, I have learned a great deal more about our aircraft, capabilities, and uses. The thing I don't know is...are you doing this on purpose or do you really believe that Rutan's space plane is anything more than an big ticket amusement ride?

I'm glad you're here, Southack! You've kept this thread, and others like it, alive. As I said, I've learned a lot more from your getting people to respond to you, so now I'm more convinced than ever before that we clearly need the F-22 ASAP!

Brilliant! My hat's off to a true master!

I took a break to consider my closed-mindedness, and I have reluctantly concluded that the secret saving the F-35 is pedal-power. What a better way to offset the weight issues than to remove the power systems and go with a lightweight, spaceage, bicycle mechanism ala-Lance Armstrong? Hell, most sorties are 2 hours of boredom with 2 minutes of fun anyway? Why not use the available time en-route to get a little exercise, and keep those MFDs nice and bright at the same time? Then, in their new Lycra G-suits, guys can practice Tybo moves on the way to the range. See, I can be a modern guy, dammit.

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