Why bother?
Unless we get rid of about 25 million Democrat voters.
So the B-52 wil fly for nearly a century? Don’t they foresee UAVs taking over that role way before that happens? We have drones so small you can’t see them with the naked eye and the AF brass is acting like Curtis LeMay is still around and chomping on his cigar. Talk about fighting the last war, they’re still fighting WWII! You can’t tell me we don’t have hypersonic spacecraft out in Nevada, why are the still flying BUFFs?
LLS
If they don’t want to ‘overdesign” it, they need to change the process and get rid of the committees and officers. I designed a one-page product to track my troops’ training. Passed it out to the rest of the unit in case someone else could leverage it. Became a project, overseen by officers as part of an “empowerment” program. By the time they got done, we had a 19-page product that they wanted everyone to use, instead of a few one-page products that could be tailored to the shop.
Given the extreme downsizing of the mil budget today, by the time the plans are finalized, their budget will be so small that producing a solitary Sopwith Camel might be considered too expensive ...
As a former AF officer, I’d love the Service to get a new stategic bomber. Unfortunately, I think there is a slim to none chance of that happening. And that includes new fighters too. I fully expect the F-35 to meet the same fate as the B-2 & F-22; that is a long, expensive development process following by procure of a mere fraction of the planned units. Even if a Republican is elected, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Likely it will stay in development purgatory just so POTUS can look tough on defense.
The reason? The cost of entitlement (and the deficit) will suck up every spare penny for Defense. Our legitimate defense needs will be starved to pay for our exploding human services client base. We already borrow 40+ cents for every dollar the Government spends—and that is with interest rates near zero.
Eventually 10Y UST rates will go back to something normal (5%+) and then all Hell will break loose.
What?
That's right - the problem isn't in acquisition it is how the AF handles its assignment process.
When you look at projects where the manpower pukes are excluded the acquisition process runs fairly smoothly. This is why the “black” projects seem to do so well - they, for security reasons, - cannot tolerate having between 15 and 25 percent of their personnel reassigned every 12 months to make them “promotable”. The one Vietnam “white” program that didn't have massive manpower moves was the C-141. If I remember correctly it was on time, at budget, with the required capabilities on its roll out. There a multiple programs in the AF that cannot make any, much less all, of those claims in spite of being “operational” for a decade, or more.
Again, Why?
The hardest thing to do as an AF Officer (I did 20 years commissioned service) is to NOT put your personal mark on your duty/additional duty. For example, I took the base's worse report writing additional duty section to the best by simply enforcing the squadron's procedures. My commander was horrified that I didn't invent a new program!
When you start talking about acquisition efforts instead of paperwork efforts every little change/correction made after a certain point causes ripples up and down the production line. The more people in charge the more minor changes, the more time and money spent, the more personnel changes, the more minor changes, ... well, you should get the picture now.
Is there a way out? IMHO there is a historically proven viable alternative. It was even “invented” in the US.
Look at the YB-17 program. The YB-17 was a service test aircraft built in small numbers (a single squadron) to advance the state of the art for bomber aircraft. Almost everyone involved in the 8AF European bomber war a few years later flew in that squadron as they proved the technology and developed supporting tactics. Why such a small sample size - the costs were extreme (we were in the Great Depression) and the technological jumps were massive (from cloth covered, slow, open cockpits to aluminum bodies, contemporary fighter speeds, enclosed cockpits). The situation we face today has too many historical parallels to ignore any more.
21 B-2s at two billion apiece would be $42 billion, wouldn’t it? The author says they spent hundreds of billions developing the B-2. That doesn’t add up right.
“You can be somebody, or you can do something.”
Reading this makes me wonder about the efficacy of the Large Penetrating Manned Bomber strategy in this day of drones and orbital weaponry.
Provided the normal cost-plus development nonsense is avoided, stealthy drones could easily flood a battlespace, with manned platforms nearby to act as follow-up. Drones, if used in a multi-role capacity as anti-radiation and ground suppression could open up the way for the heavy stuff.
Orbital weapons are hardly discussed. There are a number of kinetic energy weapons which are quite literally unstoppable and extremely effective even against hardened targets. A $55 billion bomber acquisition would be better spent on LEO booster development and kinetic weaponry designed for orbital use, as well as other orbital weaponry.
It’s time to take the high ground.
“hundreds of billions of dollars on that program only to end up with 21 aircraft, each with a $2 billion price tag”
Must have been using Military Math. ($2B x 21 = $42B, not “hundreds of billions of dollars”)
ping