Two things...
“The nice thing about the defense budget is it’s so big, it’s so
huge, that a 1 percent reduction is the equivalent of the education
budget,” Obama said, immediately noting he was “exaggerating” the exact
numbers.
And this...
Today, the Marines are stuck with aging airframes that have limited
capabilities and are expensive to operate—a double problem. In contrast,
the “B is a winner on both counts.
The impact on the fleet is significant. The Marines go from three to
one aircraft; and it gets a new aircraft with significant reductions in
cost of maintenance.”
The fate of the F–35 is a case study in the President’s penny-wise, pound-foolish approach to defense spending.
Read the entire article but when need better leadership than we're currently getting...both in Congress and in the Administration. I wonder how they think the unemployment numbers are going to look after all the reductions in force....I wonder if this entire budget battle isn't really about saving health care and not reducing the deficit....I wonder if anyone in D.C. actually cares. I wonder.
Not defending anyone's budget record or budgetary thinking (not Obama's, not the big government Republicrats) but . . .
ReplyDeleteThe "F-35 vs. SLEPing old airframes" cost argument is a false choice. There have always been alternatives to the F-35 and, if we could set the wayback machine for even 5 years ago, we could be choosing from several new aircraft options now. The F-35 should be defended or attacked in comparison to current alternatives or near term "might have beens / could be's" not in comparison to what it costs to keep old F-18s flying.
I also don't think it is fair to say that the Obama administration has "slow rolled the F-35B". It was delayed by major design flaws and the Obama administration has kept it going even while the only other major customer, the UK, has bailed. The MTBF on the F-35B is still execrable; low acquisition and maintenance costs for it are projected by LM and the Pentagon but not proven and can be reasonably disputed.
Criticism of Obama vs. the F-35B is much more reasonable from haters who want it axed than it is from proponents of a V/STOL fighter, who are getting what they want despite the fact that every criticism about development costs, delays, performance short falls and production and maintenance costs for the F-35 program applies doubly so to the F-35B.
"have always been alternatives to the F-35 and, if we could set the wayback machine for even 5 years ago, we could be choosing from several new aircraft options now. "
ReplyDeleteNot viable ones. That's always the fly in the ointment. It's easy to say there are alternatives when you don't have to worry about little things like requirements eh?
@Solomon: Yeah people in DC care - about their own power. Period. They will screw this country and be gleeful about it as long as they can keep their worthless selves in power.
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ReplyDeleteF-16 RFP to first F-16 (NOT YF-16 but the modified production F-16) coming off the manufacturing line was less than four years so don't underestimate what can be done in five years.
ReplyDeleteAlso anti-radar stealth, since the F-35 is not stealthy against any kind of IRST, is one requirement of many for the F-35, and all of the other requirements are easily met by other designs.
The importance of anti-radar stealth is based on optimizing the F-35 for BVR air to air combat in an environment where radar is the primary air to air and ground to air sensor and IRST is not a factor and the enemy has no capability to engage aircraft like AWACS or tankers at long range nor any significant capability to detect and target radar emissions from the F-35. As long as that single, narrow scenario is paramount, you're right there are no alternatives to the F-35, except of course the F-22, of which we could have procured 400-600 additional F-22s just for the cost of developing (not procuring, just developing) the F-35.
For any other scenario there are multiple alternatives right now and more within a five year window.
Speaking of requirements, it was also a requirement that the F-35 fill the "fighter gap." It has already failed this requirement and the question is not whether aircraft will be SLEP'd and F-18s procured because of the F-35's delays, it is a question of how many SLEPs and how many super bugs. This is true regardless of how good an airplane the F-35 turns out to be.
It was also a requirement that the F-35 produce an affordable plane. Even by current estimates, accepting that the full production run will be made (which has not been true of any US stealth program since the F-117), the per unit cost of the F-35 is up 50% from it's original estimate. Thus the F-35 has failed at this requirement too, again the only question is how badly it will fail.
So yes, I do worry about requirements. Why are "VTOL" and "anti-radar stealth" inviolable requirements but not the "fill the fighter gap" and "affordable program" requirements?
"F-16 RFP to first F-16 (NOT YF-16 but the modified production F-16) coming off the manufacturing line was less than four years so don't underestimate what can be done in five years."
ReplyDeleteThe Lockheed XP-80 went from design proposal to first flight in only six months so I guess the F-16 is an utter failure. Right?
geez time to check his IP address...he sounds like another guy that comes here...
ReplyDeleteGeez. Talk about a "target rich" environment.
ReplyDeleteBB: You cannot name what you perceive as 'major design flaws' where I can't show you something worse or equivalent in the F-16 or F-18A/B/E/F design that had to either be worked out before fielding or mitigated in the field.
BB: Public F-35B maintenance data has not been updated since it was based solely on the data from 1 airplane. Given the sorties they are flying now, I suspect the curve is maturing right nicely.
A cut and paste of a comment I made a while back at DT, concerning delivery of small numbers of early configuration F-35s to Eglin:
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"Not very dissimilar to F-16 Block1 and 5 deliveries before the first Block 10s, except there were >>>>291!<<<<< aircraft delivered before the first nominally useful 10 was built. (most Blk1 & 5 were later upgraded) For perspective, the YF-16's first flight (official) was Feb 74, and the first definitive and fully capable F-16s for the US, the Block 30/32s, first flew Feb 87. Feel free to [do] the math, and talk amongst yourselves."
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Someone of course challenged me as to the relevance and as to what 'fully capable' meant, so to preclude such a thing occurring here, I also include my response then:
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"RE: “How many thousand F-16s were produced before the Blk 30s came along?”
Counting the YFs and foreign jets, assuming no version overlap, and including the ‘almost there’ Blk25s: ~1805, less than half the total production to-date.
RE: “Fully capable by who’s definition?”
By anyone's definition. The Blk25s came out shortly before the Blk30s, but they didn’t have the bugs worked out of them yet. Block 30s were the first F-16s with full Beyond Visual Range-engagement and night/precision ground/maritime attack capabilities. First with full AIM-7/AMRAAM/AGM-65D/HARM capabilities. First with Seek Talk secure voice comm, and a bunch of other relatively minor improvements.
RE: Early models were considered better fighters by the pilots opinions.
Name them (kidding!). A myth propagated perhaps by the even more-mythic Lightweight Fighter Mafia? Until the Blk30, the F-16 was a hot-rod daytime knife-fighter. It is not hard to conceptualize that among the majority of ‘combat’ pilots, they value the capability to fight day or night, visual or beyond, air-to-air and air-to-mud more."
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Fish. Barrel. I would love to hear an original argument against the F-35. It would be even better if it were a logical one.
Yikes! There are even more targets than I thought. No time for them all, so I'll focus on a favorite myth: "IRSTs can't be (or are too hard to be) defended against."
ReplyDeleteIRST tracking is a short range capability. Just like for visible light digital detection systems, digital infrared detection requires at a minimum 1 pixel with detecable contrast to surrounding pixels. (Analog systems, such as the human eye require 1/2 arc-seconds 'width' contrasting against the field of view).These are clear-sky minimums. Any kind of moisture in the air between target and detector, or behind the target will reduce detection range. Typical operating altitudes commonly have a lot of this moisture equal or above them.
The total target contrast is attenuated by the physical properties of the atmosphere itself. The major constituent gases 'absorb' Medium IR frequencies, and those just happen to be the part of the bandwidth emitted by the jet exhaust. The Low IR and High IR bands aren't absorbed nearly as much, so the management of the these emissions is accomplished by selection of outer mold line shaping, coating colors and surface textures.
And then you we get to F-35 formations, tactics and sensor fusion. Sneaking up on an F-35 with an IRST will be a very dangerous game for the attacker.
Ref major design flaws: lift fan, drive shaft and structural cracking at less than 10% of designed life. It was major enough for the entire F-35B program to be on probation for as long as it took to develop the YF-16 from scratch.
ReplyDeleteRef improving reliability of the F-35B, well I hope so. A 400% increase in MTBF is required just to get it back on track and to get to half of the desired level. They can improve MTBF by 200% and still be way behind schedule with crappy reliability so while a major improvement would be good progress it does not mean that the plane is meeting requirements.
Ref early F-16s not being fully capable: Do you really want to bring that up when there are no combat ready F-35s nor will there be any till Block 3 software which is not projected till 2015 and oh, by the way, Block 3 is currently four years behind schedule and LM has yet to hit a single software completion date?
Ref IRST: the SU-35's system claims 35-90 km depending on target aspect. That's long enough to be dangerous. The point is not that IRST is a full replacement for radar, it's not and driving the enemy to using IRST instead of radar is valuable for a number of reasons, it's that the F-35 is not invisible or undetectable at common BVR ranges by a modern, high tech enemy and will be well within the detection range of any IRST defended target when using JDAM for land attack.
Finally, all high tech air forces are going to use formations and tactics customized to defeat their opponent, including opponents using stealth.
Heh.
ReplyDeleteRE: Lift Fan/Shaft: The core Lift fan and drive shaft DESIGN is now and always has been sound. You may be thinking of thr Lift Fan Door system change, or the ongoing tweaking of the lift fan/drive shaft installation (spacers, mounts, etc that is part and parcel with the integration of the aircraft. Or perhaps the door & flight control software changes made based upon B model?
Re: B failure rates. The point is that data based upon one airplane (and first production article at that) is statistically useless, and in this case doubly so because it is about a year out of date. Marines with data in hand don't seem to be worried (quite the opposite actually), so I don't see why I should be either.
Re: Structural cracking. One bulkhead. trivial to fix for aircraft to come, and workarounds are possible for those already delivered. This is an extremely common occurrance for high performance aircraft where weight is the enemy, and the typical path is to take as much weight out as you can stand and put some back as required. Structure 'problems' manifest in either weight, performance, or durability penalties. In perspective, the F-35's challenge is no worse than:
1. F-16s stuctural cracks found to be widespread because pilots were spending more time at higher Gs than anticipated (circa 1991). Additionally, during AIM-9L FOT&E (late 70s)we found that the AIM-9L's different center of gravity compared to earlier model AIM-9s would twist the F-16's wingtips terribly under Gs. Later model F-16s with more wing structure fixed the problem. There is a reason the F-16 got heavier as it got older.
2. F-18A/B had early structural cracking on the verticles in the first batch of planes. They were life-limited to a few hundred flight hours versus the spec in the thousands. A poorly understood aerodynamic phenonemon was the cause (LEX vortices were buffetting the tails). Structural changes were required to correct.
3. F-18E/F structure problerms were a little more indirect. To keep drag down on the bigger wing and to keep weight down, the E/F wing was radically different than the A/B/C/D (not just scaling) this change caused the infamous 'wing drop', which took 4 years to 'fix'. I put 'fix' in scare quotes because some still consider the solution found a short term one. Scared the Navy so bad they levied a wing-drop "risk" on the F-35 before the C model design wind tunnel data was final.
4. F-15s had their ticking time bomb of a longeron that finally went off in 2007 when the cockpit separated from the rest of the plane in flight, grounding all F-15s for a while and some still. In the early 2000's the F-15 Program Office recommended replacing all F-15 verticals brefore they fell off.
The point about the gestation of the F-16 is that it is a much simpler aircraft and still took 13 years to field a fully capable aircraft. From contract award to the first block 30 F-35 should only be slightly longer, except in this case there are THREE tailored aircraft design variants being fielded in that time, we will not have had to build over 1800 aircraft to get where we can produce a definitive version, and it would have been accomplished even faster if the Customer had decided to not reduce risk and instead hold to schedule. And oh BTW, even a Block 10 F-35 will stomp a Block 50/52 F-16.
Heh some more.
ReplyDeleteRE: IRST. If I built an IRST I'd advertise fantastic 'clear-sky' performance as well. Just because you can see a LO asset doesn't mean you can engage it. If you can engage the LO asset, it doesn't mean you can actually hit it. I know you are already aware of this since I already told you here (http://snafu-solomon.blogspot.com/2011/05/f-35-tests-proceed-revealing-fa-18-like.html) months ago about the Aussie Aggressor pilot.Think about it -- there's a reason why we've never gone in big on IRSTs for air-to-air combat.
RE: Formations and Tactics. You have no idea the kind of disparity there is between 5th Gen and 'the rest'. I'll take the networked 5th Gen fighter tactics and formations, you can have the target's. How will you engage what sees you first and always gets the first move? How will you overcome my advantages when I can always adjust before you can tell what I'm doing or where I'm at/going? If you find one of me, how will you avoid getting killed by the other one of me that you cannot see and are therefore not aware of? I get the first move AND the last move. This is not trivial, since the ultimate weapon is the mind of man.
If you aren't LO, networked and situationally aware, you aren't 'high-tech' - you are 'toast'.