Posted on 09/11/2008 6:24:33 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Joint Strike Fighter: The Latest Hotspot in the U.S. Defense Meltdown
While its illusion as an "affordable" multi-role fighter-bomber is alive and well in Washington D.C., the F-35 "Joint Strike Fighter" is already a disaster, and the bad news has barely begun to roll in. Internationally recognized combat aircraft designer Pierre Sprey and Straus Military Reform Project Director Winslow Wheeler summarize the many failures in a new opinion piece that appears in the Sept. 10, 2008 issue of Janes Defence Weekly and is reproduced below.
"Joint Strike Fighter: The Latest Hotspot in the U.S. Defense Meltdown"
by Pierre M. Sprey and Winslow T. Wheeler
Politicians in the US are papering over serious problems in the country?s armed forces. Equating exposure of flaws with failure to 'support the troops', Congress, the presidential candidates and think-tank pundits repeatedly dub the US armed forces the best in the world. Behind this vapid rhetoric, a meltdown decades in the making is occurring.
The collapse is occurring in all the armed forces, but it is most obvious in the US Air Force (USAF). There, despite a much needed change in leadership, nothing is being done to reverse he deplorable situation the air force has put itself into.
The USAF's annual budget is now in excess of USD150 billion: well above what it averaged during the Cold War. Despite the plentiful dollars, the USAF?s inventory of tactical aircraft is smaller today than it has ever been since the end of the Second World War. At the same time, the shrunken inventory is older, on average, than it has been ever before.
Since George W Bush came to office in 2001, the air force has received a major budget 'plus up', supposedly to address its problems. In January 2001 a projection of its budgets showed USD850 billion for 2001 to 2009. It actually received USD1,059 billion not counting the additional billions (more than USD80 billion) it also received to fund its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the ?plus up? of more than USD200 billion, the air force actually made its inventory troubles worse: from 2001 to today, tactical aircraft numbers shrank by about 100 aircraft and their average age increased from 15 years to 20, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Not to worry, the air force and its politicians assert, the solution is in hand; it is called the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. It will do all three tactical missions: air-to-ground bombing, air-to-air combat and specialised close air support for ground troops and there will be tailored variants for the air force, navy and marines. Most importantly, it will be ?affordable? and, thus, the US can buy it in such large numbers that it will resolve all those shrinking and ageing problems.
Baloney. When the first official cost and quantity estimate for the F-35 showed up on Capitol Hill in 2001, the Department of Defense (DoD) predicted 2,866 units for USD226 billion. That is a not inconsiderable USD79 million for each aircraft. The latest official estimate is for a smaller number of aircraft (2,456) to cost more (USD299 billion). That represents a 54 per cent increase in the per-unit cost to USD122 million, and the deliveries will be two years late. The Government Accountability Office reported in March that the US can expect the costs to increase some more perhaps by as much as USD38 billion with deliveries likely to be delayed again, perhaps by another year. That is just the start of the rest of the bad news. The price increases and schedule delays cited above are for currently known problems.
Unfortunately, the F-35 has barely begun its flight-test programme, which means more problems are likely to be discovered perhaps even more serious than the serious engine, flight control, electrical and avionics glitches found thus far.
Take the F-22 experience; it was in a similarly early stage of flight testing in 1998. Its programme unit cost was then USD184 million per aircraft but it climbed to a breathtaking USD355 million by 2008. Considering that the F-35 is even more complex (19 million lines of computer code compared to 4 million, and three separate service versions compared to one), the horrifying prospect of the F-35?s unit cost doubling is not outlandish.
The last tri-service, tri-mission ?fighter? the US built, the F-111, tripled in cost before being cut back to barely half the number originally contemplated. The DoD currently plans to spend more than USD10 billion to produce fewer than 100 F-35s per year at peak production. USAF leaders would like to increase the production rate and add in a few more F-22s. That plan is irresponsibly unaffordable (which contributed to the recent departure of the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff). The unaffordability will become even more obvious when the unavoidable F-35 cost increases emerge.
The inevitable reaction, just as in past programmes, will be a slashing of annual production, the opposite of the increase the air force needs to address its inventory problems. The DoD fix is simple: test the F-35 less and buy more copies before the testing is completed. Two test aircraft and hundreds of flight-test hours have been eliminated from the programme, and there is now a plan to produce more than 500 copies before the emasculated testing is finished. This approach will not fix the programme but it will help paper over the problems and make the F-35 more cancellationproof in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.
It gets even worse. Even without new problems, the F-35 is a ?dog?. If one accepts every performance promise the DoD currently makes for the aircraft, the F-35 will be: ? Overweight and underpowered: at 49,500 lb (22,450kg) air-to-air take-off weight with an engine rated at 42,000 lb of thrust, it will be a significant step backward in thrust-to-weight ratio for a new fighter. ? At that weight and with just 460 sq ft (43 m2) of wing area for the air force and Marine Corps variants, it will have a ?wing-loading? of 108 lb per square foot. Fighters need large wings relative to their weight to enable them to manoeuvre and survive. The F-35 is actually less manoeuvrable than the appallingly vulnerable F-105 ?Lead Sled? that got wiped out over North Vietnam in the Indochina War.
? With a payload of only two 2,000 lb bombs in its bomb bay far less than US Vietnam-era fighters the F-35 is hardly a first-class bomber either. With more bombs carried under its wings, the F-35 instantly becomes ?non-stealthy? and the DoD does not plan to seriously test it in this configuration for years.
? As a ?close air support? attack aircraft to help US troops engaged in combat, the F-35 is a nonstarter. It is too fast to see the tactical targets it is shooting at; too delicate and flammable to withstand ground fire; and it lacks the payload and especially the endurance to loiter usefully over US forces for sustained periods as they manoeuvre on the ground. Specialised for this role, the air force?s existing A-10s are far superior.
However, what, the advocates will protest, of the F-35?s two most prized features: its ?stealth? and its advanced avionics? What the USAF will not tell you is that ?stealthy? aircraft are quite detectable by radar; it is simply a question of the type of radar and its angle relative to the aircraft. Ask the pilots of the two ?stealthy? F-117s that the Serbs successfully attacked with radar missiles in the 1999 Kosovo air war.
As for the highly complex electronics to attack targets in the air, the F-35, like the F-22 before it, has mortgaged its success on a hypothetical vision of ultra-long range, radar-based air-to-air combat that has fallen on its face many times in real air war. The F-35?s air-to-ground electronics promise little more than slicker command and control for the use of existing munitions.
The immediate questions for the F-35 are: how much more will it cost and how many additional problems will compromise its already mediocre performance? We will only know when a complete and rigorous test schedule not currently planned is finished. The F-35 is a bad deal that shows every sign of turning into a disaster as big as the F-111 fiasco of the 1960s.
In January the US will inaugurate a new president. If he is serious about US defences and courageous enough to ignore the corporate lobbies and their minions in Congress and the think-tanks he will ask some very tough questions. These will start with why an increased budget buys a shrinking, ageing force. After that the new president will have to take steps unavoidably painful ones to reverse the course the country is now on.
The man who best deserves to be inaugurated next January will actually start asking those questions now.
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Boyd and the fighter mafia were right in the 60s. They were still right up thru about 1985, when radar missiles went from pieces of junk to very reliable. When AMRAAM hit, Boyd became a relic.
Radar and face-shooting heaters now have a higher probability of kill than a gun shot would. Data links make sneaking behind someone very difficult.
I ‘grew up’ with F-4s in the 80s. Before I left the USAF (officially retire 1 Oct...), I had a chance to work on testing some of the new equipment. Targeting pods, precision munitions, data links between multiple radars - there is a whole new world of fighter technology. The author of this piece doesn’t seem to understand that!
Huh?
You said the USAF is arrogant and incompetent? Where do you get that?
“...Every military system has problems. Usually they dont work correctly until they are deployed....”
This is the same 60s style crap spewed by the press for every piece of military hardware developed in the last 40 years.
I have seen a couple specials on the Military Channel that give the F-35 high marks and high expectations. I will take a wait and see approach.
It calls into question the whole article.
The USAF only lost one F-117 -- not two.
They didn't say we lost another F-117, only that it was "successfully attacked".
"Some American sources acknowledge that a second F-117A was also damaged during a raid in the same campaign, and although it made it back to its base, it supposedly never flew again." - Wikipedia
I've seen Winslow Wheeler a number of times on C-SPAN and he appears to be very well informed.
The variable vectoring was one reason the US military was looking to purchase the SU-30 frame and ergonomics. Slap in our engines and avionics packages and you’d have one hell of mission capable fighter.
In what capacity? Head shed strap hanger? Considering that they are from two different manufacturers, and had two different system program offices, (both at Wright-Patterson of course), and that they were in development at about the same time, it would have been pretty unusual for one person to be involved in both other than at a "policy" or "oversight" level.
My statement is true. Please post my whole comment next time. You missed my point.
bmflr
I believe that F-111s carried out most of the precision bombing missions during the first gulf war.
"Boyd, defense analysts Tom Christie and Pierre Sprey, and test pilot Col. Everest Riccioni formed the core of the self-named "fighter mafia" which worked behind the scenes in the late 1960s to pursue a lightweight fighter as an alternative to the F-15. Riccioni coined the nickname, a joke on his Italian heritage, and dubbed himself the "godfather". In 1969, under the guise that the Navy was developing a small, high-performance Navy aircraft, Riccioni won $149,000 to fund the "Study to Validate the Integration of Advanced Energy-Maneuverability Theory with Trade-Off Analysis". This money was split between Northrop and General Dynamics to build the embodiment of Boyd's E-M theory - a small, low-draw, low-weight, pure fighter with no bomb racks. Northrop demanded and received $100,000 to design the YF-17; General Dynamics, eager to redeem its debacle with the F-111, received the remainder to develop the YF-16."[2]
"Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and Deputy Defense Secretary David Packard, who entered office with the Nixon administration in 1969, were interested in these studies and threw their support behind the notion. In May 1971, Congress issued a critical report of the F-14 and F-15 and advocated spending $50 million on developing an alternative lightweight fighter. This was followed by the assignment of $12 million in the 1972 fiscal year budget for the LWF. On January 6, 1971, an RFP was issued to industry for a 20,000 pound fighter to complement the F-15.[1] Sprey insisted on a fly-off between two prototypes, as he had earlier on the A-X program, pitting the planes against MiG-17s and MiG-21s secretly maintained in Nevada, as well as an F-4. Furthermore, the evaluating pilots would not be test pilots, and each would fly both airframes."
You misunderstand. I was agreeing with you and referencing the article as 60s clap trap.
I was not clear in my comment, though. Sorry to cause confusion.
The F-111B was not a "carrier bomber", but rather a Fleet Air Defense interceptor, the same mission as the F-14, which benefited from "lessons learned" on the F-111B, and even inherited some of it's systems, like the radar and to some extent the Phoenix missile (which was actually started even earlier than the F-111B program, but was brought along for it) Also the engines which were inadequate for both the F-111B and F-14 (Until the D models which got variants of the engines from the F-15/F-16.
Short video at the link above.
Yep. You got me. If it’s in Wiki its got to be the truth, right?
In my world, we go based on facts. The F-117A airframe lost on 03/27/99 in Serbia was serial number 82-806 out of Holloman AFB.
Plus, tell us the serial number of the other F117 damaged in Serbia and never be to flown again?
ping
As long a no one was searching for you on radar, nor using radar guided weapons to shoot at you. Then it would, sooner rather than later, be so much scrap metal raining down out of the sky.
The Wikipedia statement has two sources. As I said Winslow Wheeler struck me as someone who really knows what he is talking about. This event is also discussed in other places on the Internet such as in this paper from the Army War College. All this is enough for me to believe that it is quite possible that a second F-117 was damaged.
Plus, tell us the serial number of the other F117 damaged in Serbia and never be to flown again?
Obviously the Pentagon is not going to release that information.
A good piece, albeit from a left-leaning organization.
Spey was part of the design/testing teams for the F-16 (and F-16XL) program, I believe. He also had a hand in the design of the A-10. While he leaves out a lot of detail on the cost overrun/procurement stats, I’m inclined to take his design analysis critique seriously.
I also think that the idea of a supersonic aircraft for close air support is ridiculous. I talked to a couple of A-10 pilots last summer; they call the F/A-18s in that role “lawn darts”, because they fly the same way when hit (into the ground) and are about as accurate (pray the pointy end goes where you want it to) when it comes to CAS missions.
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LOL! I remember going through ITR at Pendleton in 1965 with a M-1 so worn out it was a single shot.
And of course eating C-rats in VN that were made in WWII, while the army got all the good new stuff that mixed with hot water.
Lastly, I absolutely agree the training is far superior now than then. What I have seen of modern USMC bootcamp is lightyears ahead of the rudimentary training we got. The modern Marine is a much better trained warrior than we were from the get-go. We had to learn on the job, so to speak.
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