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The F-35 Story
New submitter phyzz writes "The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program aimed to replace several aircraft from three major military services with a fifth-generation model capable of short-takeoff and vertical-landing while maintaining the capability of sustained supersonic flight — all while staying affordable. The project has finally gotten some test points validated, but after a decade in development and numerous cost and schedule overruns, it faces an uphill fight against budget reductions. Bloomberg has an interesting story about the program's troubled past. Quoting: 'Ten years and $66 billion later, the aircraft is still in development, five years behind schedule and 64 percent over cost estimates. The Obama administration may cancel some models and also cut the Pentagon’s orders. The plane, envisioned as the affordable stealth fighter for the U.S. and allies, has turned into a budget target. "I’d blame the program’s setbacks on the fact that we lived in a rich man’s world," said Jacques Gansler, a former Pentagon chief weapons buyer in the Clinton administration and now a professor at the University of Maryland at College Park. "There has been less emphasis on cost over the past 10 years," he said.'"
Figher aircraft have traditionally run over budget. It has paid off, anyway - expensive aircraft have turned out to be very capable in a 'you get what you pay for' way. The F-35 is no different. Is there pork or inefficiency in some of what happened? Probably, and it would be nice to recover it - but in general a new fighter aircraft running over budget and late on milestones should not be a surprise.
We live in the world of pure economics now, where the only real motivation that institutions believe matters is money. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It is fascinating that the enemies of the US right now are those people who believe in something worthing killing and dying for that isn't money.
“A lot of design compromises were made especially to give the Marine Corps the STOVL capability which, by the way, they’ve never used in combat,” he said. “And who says the Marines need a fast jet in combat?” said McPeak, now chairman of Ethicspoint Inc., a consulting firm in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
Building vertical takeoff into the thing was the big mistake. Historically, VTOL aircraft have not been very successful, despite many attempts. However, the USMC has the Harrier, almost the only VTOL aircraft that works. So VTOL capability was specified for the F-35. This complicated the design enormously. (Look at the video, with all those hatches opening and huge nozzles deploying). I admire Lockheed-Martin for making that work at all. That's where the money went.
The best fighters have been clean, simple beasts, like the F-16. Trying to combine fighter, bomber, stealth, and VTOL guarantees an expensive aircraft. Usually something important is lost, like range, bomb load, or turn radius. Or, most importantly, number of aircraft. In an air war, the side that runs out of fighters first loses.
Part of the game that everyone plays is they pitch it to the public under budget, and but then pay cost overruns anyway, everyone involved knowing full well that there will be cost overruns, but once you're 66 billion dollars invested, another few billion to get you out isn't that much.
The other thing is: what's the alternative? We're having this discussion in canada right now. We have F18's. We are slated to buy F35's, and there are certainly other aircraft we could consider (the Eurofighter for example, or one of the Russian aircraft), or we can stick with what we have. Sticking with what we have is fine, but 15 years from now we may find it rather difficult to get new aircraft quickly if we need them. For the US it's not able to afford (nor would it want) 2000 F22's, so the choices are slim, buying 2000 eurofighters would be politically impractical, and the F35 is a better aircraft anyway. So options are limited at this point. Axing the project and starting afresh would set everything back, and be tremendously expensive - so the F35 project has to work at this point, cost overruns or not.
what's different here from half a century ago is that usa government essentially contracted development instead of delivery.
nothing ever gets ready that way. what penalty could there be for a budget overrun? think about it. the profit margin is counted in the development as long as it continues and the engineers will walk away if they're not paid. so the penalty would be losing support contracts for the machinery, which could go to any bidder anyways. but canceling means throwing away the investment, so the program is a hostage and motivation to finish isn't sky high, again because everyone working on development is working on development.. and there's no real war scenario so the deadlines don't really matter - anything can be tweaked to infinity.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Yet it was well known Republican Bob Gates that pushed to cancel the F22, not the dems. BTW, I think that he did mostly the right thing. I do not agree with the choice to stop production on the ABL. However, the current dems that push for cancellation of lasers and esp. the railguns, certainly make your case.
Will the Army let them? The last time the Air Force talked about abandoning the A-10 the Army threatened to restart the Army Air Corps so there would be someone to fly the tubs. Supersonic fighters dropping bombs from 10k feet isn't exactly the same role as the A-10.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
That's why the US isn't selling F-22's to anyone. No doubt the F-35 shares a great deal of tech with F-22 but the F-22 advanced and integrated computer capabilities are better than anything you will see in the F-35. The F-22 is most likely the last manned fighter the US will ever build as warfare as migrates towards the unmanned aircraft doctrine. Unless some type of inertial damping system is developed the F-22 has already surpassed the limits of what a human pilot can endure. I have aways wondered if the US went to war with a country we have sold advanced fighter jets and missiles systems to how would the fight come out? I have a strong suspicion that the first time someone tried to lock on to a US fighter with an F-15 we sold them might end up seeing their missile loop back around and start targeting them or just plain misfire. The US black boxes most of the internal tech in their advanced weapon systems and requires all replacement parts and certain maintenance tasks to be overseen by US technicians. The sales contracts also include an inspection provision that allows the US to periodically inspect any of the weapon systems they have sold to the customer. After all what's the big deal since we are all good buddies and faithful allies. Why would anyone object to this requirement? The country manufacturing advanced weaponry for sale would be foolish in the extreme if they did not attempt to make sure the weapons couldn't be used on them. The French sold out Argentina against the British during the Falken Island war by giving England the flight control comm frequency and crypto keys to neutralize the Exocet missiles Argentina had purchased from France. It's not a very big secret that Thatcher contacted the French president at the time requesting the missile codes and making all kinds of subtle threats about what would happen if those codes were not immediately forthcoming. Argentina was sinking British ships with little effort and then suddenly they stopped using the Exocet's. And they didn't run out of them and the British certainly couldn't have stopped them with the equipment they had on hand. The British ships were very vulnerable to the Exocet attacks. The Tornadoes and ship defenses at that time were certainly not capable of shooting down an Exocet.
Warfare doesn't work like that. Remember thesis-counterthesis-synthesis from ROTC training? Combined arms? If you have only one way to get the job done, the enemy counters that single strategy before they even declare war, and roll right past your Maginot line. You always, always, need more than one way to reach your objectives, and more than one way to get the job done when you get there.
Good question, though! Not everybody has had military 101.
They are even "Contracting Out" the Active Duty job.
The National Guard is supposed to be a Civilian force to be utilized by State Governors and as a ready backup source of emergency troop reinforcements. It's designed to harbor a large number of trained individuals who can back up the Active Duty force which is tasked with performing the operational mission.
As it stands now, the Pentagon calls more and more upon National Guard forces for deployment into combat zones. That has the advantage of reducing the number of Active Duty military, and that makes the politicos happy. "See, we've reduced the size of the military!" Nada. You have reduced the size of the workload by sharing it with people that are engaged with private industry, to the detriment of the industries/businesses who must do without a trained and productive leader for gigantic spans of time (90-180 days+). Could this possibly contribute to a business problem that expands the recessionary tendencies? Do we need some kind of "study" to reinforce the common sense on that?
We need to "right size" the mission to the Active Duty force that we have, or "right size" the Active Duty force to the mission at hand and leave the National Guard forces as a reserve force to deal with the inevitable coming day when the defecation hits the rotary oscillator.
Oh... and BTW.... The proper mission of our military is to kill people and blow things up. It needs to be an awesome and deadly force to be unleashed upon our enemies with fearsome and deadly precision and effect. If people anywhere near our sworn enemies move quickly away from them because death is likely to reign down from the sky at any moment, then we will have achieved the intended life-saving effect.
Military pay and pensions are only "fat" when measured against the fact that most Americans have had those things stolen from them. Anything is immensely bigger than nothing, I suppose. I just love how our answer to this is to get angry at anyone who still has what everyone should have rather than to fight to get it back. Self destructive crap. I would rather have the money go to a human being who will spend it in his or her local community than to a contracting megacorp which as likely as not will take the profits out of the country.