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.
# # #
Actually since the F-117A has been withdrawn from service that type of information will eventually come out. Other aircraft types document their 'mishaps' and 'losses' by serial number. I wouldn't be surprised if when perusing the F-117 serial number file you might not find a unit that got scrapped "for spares" (or some other euphamism for a heavily battle-damaged craft).
The A-10 pilots you were talking to were full of...stuff.
With targeting pods, the fast movers can drop bombs MORE accurately from 30K than an A-10 at 300’ AGL. And with Rover, they can ‘see’ the same target the TACP is seeing, with comments from the TACP. That beats the hell out of trying to figure it out while in a 10 deg dive, even at A-10 speeds.
All of which is why the A-10C has targeting pod capability.
The most modern fighter aircraft fire (like modern tanks) generate overwhelming and accurate firepower from out of range of enemy attack.
But -- don't worry, the JSF will be able to maneuver.
JOHN BOYD AND JOHN WARDEN:AIR POWER'S QUEST FOR STRATEGIC PARALYSIS
It is how we one GW1, and how we drove the Taliban out of Kabul.
one=won
I'm sorry, but I don't see that. A lot of what I read is dead nuts on accurate criticism. For instance, this piece from Chuck Spinney:
More than seven years after 9-11, it ought to be clear from (1) the senseless destruction of Iraq, (2) the deteriorating war in Afghanistan, and (3) the increasing potential for chaos in nuclear-armed Pakistan, that George II has gomered up the so-called war on terror (WOT).
A cold assessment of the motives of our terrorist adversaries ought to have been the basis for our strategy, but in this regard, the American people have been fed only mindless slogans-like the terrorists are evil, they attacked us because they hate our freedoms, they hate our way of life, they kill innocents, they are Islamofascists (whatever that is) out to conquer the world, you are either with us or against us, etc. This rhetoric is not what some call “actionable” information, but it plays well in the Hall of Mirrors that is Versailles on the Potomac./b> [Which is a pretty darn accurate portrayal - AJ]
Not surprisingly, given such a primitive appreciation or our adversary’s motives, our response has been equally mindless, driven more by the hot fire of blind rage than a cold sense strategy and grand strategy. And seven years on, after spending more on the so-called War on Terror (WOT) than we did on the Vietnam War, after gutting of our constitutional freedoms, and destroying our moral authority in the world, not only is there is no light at the end of the tunnel, there is now a definite possibility for even greater darkness.
Now I am sure that those statements will hurt and smart - but you know what - those kinds of things are the things that the geniuses in Versailles sur Patomac get paid the big bucks to think about.
In fact, from what I read of Petraeus, he saw the need for the answers to these same questions in planning a counterinsurgency strategy.
No other long term viable, new, Western, Allied, late fourth or fifth gen fighter built, will keep up with the JSF in production volume.
Let me use your reasoning. The most successful Western fighter is the Spitfire, 20,351 built. There you have it. Sorry it wasn't your F4. Hell, while at it write a letter to 60 minutes and ask why we could build a P51 for 51K and it takes us 82M today for a JSF?
There is a difference between purchase cost, fly away cost, and “life cycle” cost. The USAF likes to look at the cost of a planes predicted life cycle. I own a plane, what you pay up front is only part of the cost, and often the more expensive plane at purchase ends up cheaper over the span of a planes predicted life or even per mile traveled, or per weight moved. It depends how you figure it. JSF with use of COTS, mass production (economy of scale) and in the US where it's cheaper than many other places, technology transfers from elsewhere (F22), a design that's intended to keep costs under control (Example: single engine with lots of hours of life on it), commonality replacing several airframes and used by several branches (Logistics, training, and economy of scale long term there too), is delivering a plane at a cost that's untouchable with those capabilities. Even if you look into the near future, i.e. 4 years from now, you'd realize that the cost per plane will actually come down.
http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-080204-081.pdf (Go to page 43) Then knock about 37% off your “Fly away” cost.
Your arguments might make a little more sense if you compare apples with apples.
Send in the drones. :o)
Once you eliminate the need to get the pilot home safely, airframe and avionices are mucher and even the Marines will be impressed by the Close Air Support provided by kamikaze missions.
Thanks for your insight and thank you for your service.
My mental picture is— like old sailors’ homes built next to a harbor— old airmen retire to a nice cottage next to an active runway, but perhaps you have plans in the meantime. :o)
Enjoy your retirement.
There may be problems with the F-35, but not nearly as many as in thought process of it’s founder.
From Wiki:
Gene R. La Rocque (born 1918) is a retired rear admiral of the United States Navy who founded the Center for Defense Information. Born in Kankakee, Illinois, he began his naval service in 1940.
He is part of that “I’n the smartest mam who ever put on a uniform” crowd.
When the attack of Pearl Harbor war carried out, he was serving on the USS Macdonough. He participated in 13 major battles in World War II and worked for seven years in the Strategic Plans Directorate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He retired in 1972, disillusioned over the Vietnam War. La Rocque and his colleagues testified before Congress, appeared frequently in the media, and consulted many national and international political leaders.
In the 1980s, La Rocque founded a weekly public affairs television program, America’s Defense Monitor. In 1974, he stated that in his experience, any ship that is capable of carring nuclear weapons, carries nuclear weapons and do not off-load them when they are in foreign ports. The statement sparked contorversy in Japan, which has a non-nuclear policy since World War II.
In August 1983, 575 retired admirals, led by Thomas Moorer, placed an advertisement in The Washington Times criticizing La Rocque for appearing on Soviet television. He retired from the center in 1993
Maybe that bears some emphasis becaue you are trying to tar decent and honorable and highly competent men with the same brush.
Or is it that you don't believe that our military acquistition system is capable of contracting for dogs. Let me tell you - as a retired naval captain - the pentagon is quite capable of expending multiple billions on unquestionably bad ideas. The Pentagon acquisition system has all the worst behaviors of the worst of DC bureaucratic socialism when it chalks its soles for the task.
Or do you believe that crossing a bridge on the Patomac has magically transformative powers that turns the worlds biggest bureaucracy (which it undeniably is) into a towering example of competence? Would you like to buy that bridge? How about some vials of the magical waters that course down the Patomac.
In short, my friend, you have anti-communist fever. You like several of your friends around here see the world as pro or anti-socialist and cannot see crooks, scoundrels and incompetents, as human characteristics that long predate any of Marx's writings.
You don't for a moment think that McNamara, LBJ and their crowd of the best and brightest actually had a clue how to fight a counterinsurgency war, do you?
Do I have certain strong anti-communist feelings? You bet your ass I do. Being shot at for years by men soldiering under the communist flag does that to you.
Is the Pentagon acquisition system bloated and marginally competent? Of course, as are all government agencies. That has nothing to do with Marx. What you seem to want to do is conveniently forget this not just about acquisition problems but your heroes, CDI, usually taking strong anti-American positions on every issue.
And by the way, you claim to be a retired Navy Captain, certainly with decades of service. The real question is, since the USSR was our main enemy during your years of service, why didn't you develop an anti-communist position?
One drawback: communication jamming devices could disable them. So we also need planes too [at least half of the air power budget] until programming can allow drones to operate more independently.
That's another reason why we need safer borders. Our leaking technology is blowing one opportunity after another. Without safer borders, guarded with the the same vigor that our military bases are, it will be difficult to stop technology theft.
We also need to dominate outer space as much as possible. Drones are more effective with satellites. That means that the UN an foolish treaties can subtly scuttle our drones if we're not careful.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.