The Air Force Chief of Staff reportedly told the Army that he was about to kill the A-10 because he could no longer afford a single mission airplane.
Besides being an outright lie...C-17, C-130, KC-135, SR-71 etc...are all examples of single role aircraft, the A-10 signifies something more dangerous.
The USAF is moving away from close air support. Words are meaningless, actions are reality. The reality is that the USAF has been trying for years to dump the A-10..
But back to the bigger issue.
Are single role airplanes such a bad thing? Consider the carrier air wing of two decades ago. You know them but let me give you a refresher.
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| F-14 Fleet Defense Fighter. |
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| A-6 Deep Strike Bomber, Refueler, Electronic Attack. |
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| A-7 Light Strike Aircraft. Hauls as much as a F-18 but much cheaper. |
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| S-3 Viking. Anti-Sub specialist, Electronic attack in the ES-3 platform and aerial refueler. |
Which is more powerful? The Carrier Air Wing of 20 years ago or the Wing of today?
The same rationale can be applied to the USAF. Are they making the same mistake as the USN so many years ago? Is it a mistake to neck down to a two plane fighter/attack force? And if it is who will pay the price for that mistake. I'll give you a hint. It won't be airmen that pay the price.
It'll be some soldier in a ditch begging JTAC for air strikes and being told that the F-35s are off doing ISR for the next air tasking. He better hope the cannoneers are set for the fire mission because that will be the only help he'll get. The Air Wings/Forces have officially abandoned ground forces to fight on there own.
I have to admit when the marines announced the F-35 as ready I was as thrown off as everyone else.
ReplyDeleteBut I was reading around on some of these single use planes when I came across this tidbit on the F-14/15:
"In order to save time and forestall interference from Secretary McNamara, the navy skipped the prototype phase and jumped directly to full-scale development; the air force took a similar approach with its F-15."
So there is some sort of precedent for whatever the marines are pulling. Of a sorts...
you're comparing going to full scale development before they've been tested?
Deletehow much is Lockheed Martin paying you to come spread silliness on my pages? continue to post but with that statement you're officially on the ignore list.
OK, put me on ignore. You seem hell bent on being hostile and saying I'm on someone payroll.
DeleteI'm comparing them skipping the prototype and the reason why they did so. I never said it was the same, it just shows services do odd things to circumvent certain things.
I can't help but feel the marines did it for a similar reason, ie they can't seriously think the F-35 is combat ready.... get it?
I'm left wondering if the USMC's combat ready date for the F-35B is out-and-out deadline for Lockheed.
DeleteWhat happens if the JSF isn't ready, which it likely won't be? The USMC will have a good reason, right then and there to walk away from the program. This would kill the F-35B outright and likely lead to the inevitable "death spiral" for the A and C models. It's pretty much scorched earth.
In the meantime, this puts pressure on LockMart to get their ass in gear and make damn sure that the F-35B is ready in some form by 2016. If they can get the STOVL version worked out by then, then the more conventional CTOL and CV versions should be a piece of cake. If they CAN'T get the STOVL version to work, then the entire JSF concept is proven as faulty and it deserves to be put out of everybody's misery.
Given the USAF's recent aversion to reality (I'm looking at you General "Captain America"), you know they weren't going to do anything that might risk the F-35, and the USN just doesn't seem to care, since its got carriers that need funding and Rhinos to fly if the JSF goes tits up.
Maybe the USMC is just trying to get everybody to face reality.
In principle being able to retask assets to a range of missions depending on current requirements is good. However obviously this is only the case when it enhances capabilities. To carry out the spectrum of missions required to achieve victory in any theatre a range of systems is needed. What that range is(maybe even the missions), I believe is where the contention is.
ReplyDeleteWhilst I believe there is definitely room to shrink the combat wings airframe number(of types) whilst maintaing and improving capacity I also find the idea that the USA can't achieve scales of economies while producing several different airframes, each in production runs comparable to some of the largest production runs from the largest states to be silly. Despite much larger production runs for some airframs than any other airframe anywhere in the world the USA is not able to achieve costs comparable to much smaller foreign runs.
This multirole idea is blown way out of proportion. If you try to design it to be able to do everything,it won't be able to do any one thing all that great. Multirole should be a secondary consideration at most. The way to get a good multirole plane is to design a plane to do one thing and then if it can do other stuff too well then great! A happy accident! Not a designed in feature. You can see it many times in aviation history- P-47, "hmm, built a big fighter to use the big engine, gee it sure carries a lot of guns I bet it would do well at ground attack!" F-15, "Holy cow we built the best fighter in the world! It's as fast as an F-111! Hey, you know I bet that f-15 could carry bombs too like the f-4 could..." P-51 "gee this new fighter plane seems a bit underpowered, I bet if we put dive brakes on it it could be a good dive bomber.... What we got this great new British engine? Put it in that dive bomber! Pow, one of the best fighters of the war!"
ReplyDeleteyeah this hasn't been about the "cost" of keeping the A-10 in service...this has been about the F-35 and how its draining the budgets of everyone.
Deleteits not about providing air power that can protect the nation, its been about fixing things so that the USAF grabs a bigger share of the defense pie.
they can talk joint till the cows come home, bu the truth is simple. the USAF declared budget war on everyone else.
The entire concept of a "multirole" air superiority fighter seems asinine to me.
ReplyDeleteAdding extra equipment needed for the ground attack role adds weight. Weight reduces performance and requires bigger wings and bigger engines to compensate. Now you need more fuel, so you have to strap on external tanks, adding more weight and reducing the amount of pylons available for missiles. Better yet, since stealth is all the rage, lets store those missiles and fuel internally, making the aircraft even bigger and heavier. Now lets add more sensors so it can replicate a AWACS as well.
We now have a big, fat, bulbous fighter that carries only 4 missiles internally (there's only so much room, y'know), can't turn or accelerate for shit, and carries so many extra gizmos and gadgets that it requires the programming staff of Microsoft and Apple combined to write computer code for it.
Wait... I've just described the F-35.
The old joke about a camel being a horse designed by a committee is apt. It's poor design discipline.
ReplyDeleteLook at the F-16: it was called the Lightweight Fighter program because Boyd and the 'Fighter Mafia' realized the F-15 was so expensive the Air Force wouldn't be able to purchase enough of them for it to be relevant. So they designed the specs for a single-engine fighter that was less than 20,000 lb. They stuck to those specs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Fighter_program
It wasn't until AFTER it was delivered that the Air Forces 'ruined' it by adding all sorts of weight to it so it could drop bombs and it became mult-mission. In spite of this it became the best fighter program of the modern era. Can you imagine the Cold War without the F-16? It allowed NATO allies to ditch the F104 and was cheap enough it could be purchased in massive quantities. Even tiny Belgium had over 200 of them!
It's all about design discipline. Design it for one role and if it happens to be able to do other stuff, it's all gravy but the meat and potatoes are already there.
compare that to TFX/F111 or the Bradley or the F35, etc. and you realize it is the poor discipline in the design phase.
Look at the A-10: Air Force didn't want it, it wasn't fast, it couldn't tango with MiGs and all it did was support grunts. Designed by Boyd and Sprey because they saw the need for it (and by studying the Ostfront and interviewing STUKA ace, Hans-Ulrich Rudel.
Once it gets to a committee with poor discipline, they start tacking on missions, gadgets and unproven technology.
An interesting thing about all the planes you posted:they all were offered in much improved versions for the US armed forces and these very capable versions were all turned down..
ReplyDelete-The ASF-14 Super Tomcat
-The A-6F Intruder II
-The A-7F Strikefighter
-The KS-3
The A-10B Night/Adverse Weather
Imagine if the USN/USAF had gone that way...
*snif* errm excuse me..just something in my eye
DeleteShame that the same will happen to the F-15Se ,the ASH and the F-16V...
ReplyDeleteArtillery, Minuteman missiles are single mission. Maybe we should get rid of them. I think a better investment in time would be to get rid of single-mission general officers.
ReplyDeleteI think the key here is that many multi-role aircraft were design first as single-role aircraft and were later adapted to perform other roles. The single-role aspect kept the designers disciplined to deliver a platform that worked first and didn't need to compromise.
ReplyDeleteThe old adage that a camel is a horse designed by a committee seems quite apt. When other people start adding missions and gold-plated, unproven tech you the programs start to be compromised and eventually fail to deliver a decent product.
If you deliver the meat-and-potatoes of a good platform that excels AND you can add other roles to it, that's gravy. But even if you don't have gravy, you still have an excellent serving of meat and potatoes.
F-16 grew out of the Lightweight Fighter program and was designed solely for shooting down Soviet fighter aircraft. After it was designed and accepted by the Air Force, then they started adding attack and nuclear missions to it.
Sol insist on a future battlefield where we will face an equal enemy. I believe him.
ReplyDeleteBut then that has to mean the enemy has some pretty frightening weaponry, we have had javelin Surface to air missiles since the 80s. That stuff is only gonna be better by the next time the next war comes around and supposedly our equal technologically capable enemy will have it. (won't they? unless this is the one weapon they somehow aren't our equal in?)
How does this future not make the A-10 and even exposed forward helicopters unviable given their survivability would be that of a fly? From what I've read those foot soldier fired SA missiles are prone to targeting problems like from coulds, smoke, fog, but are very difficult to fool electronically since they are in a sense guided by sight....
More and more you are demanding Suicide missions from your CAS so you can get your low and slow.
I think STOL is a niche capability that should be dropped. Spend the money on giving Marine Corps/SFs/Rangers/SEALs the capability to grab and hold any airfield and voila, you don't have to worry about -B version. Lot cheaper and far more effective because THAT capability of holding an airfield can be used for a bunch of other missions, THAT'S MULTI-MISSION!!....F35B is really redundant, A and C can do the job better.
ReplyDeleteThe price to pay for the "communality" of the F35 and multi-mission role is too excessive for just about everything except for the top end mission like war with China. North Korea, Libya or Syria pretty much can be done with F16 and F15s/cruise missiles,etc... of today.
For missions like Afghanistan, Yemen, Mali, Somalia or whatever hell hole AL-Qaeda feels comfortable in, drones and a simple trainer/fighter like M346, T50 or even AT6/Super Tucano with Apaches are more than adequate for just about everything you are going to face.
I will add something that never gets mentioned, the likelihood of the USA going to war with China are pretty remote, I have no problem spending some money on that worst case scenario but the way I see it, we should be spending money on what THE MAJORITY of the time we will be facing: countries/scenarios where we don't need the F35 and it's overkill, let's spends some money of a M346/T50 for training and CAS. Why the hell does the Marine Corps or US Army need to have stealth fighters over head when you are in Libya or Somalia,etc???
In my book, F35 is a single mission fighter since it is redundant, overkill or inappropriate in almost all scenarios except war with China or maybe Iran.
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