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How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

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Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#91

Post by thedrbrian »

masklinn wrote: post #68
sschueller wrote: post #43

"Lockheed’s F-117 stealth fighter was developed in a breakneck 30 months by a close-knit team of 50 engineers led by an experienced fighter designer named Alan Brown and overseen by seven government employees." vs. "The F-35, by contrast, is being designed by some 6,000 engineers led by a rotating contingent of short-tenure managers, with no fewer than 2,000 government workers providing oversight."

The final section of "Skunk Works" touches on the bureaucratic morasses. Although the 30 months quote is really misleading: the surface analysis prefiguring the Have Blue concept were started in 1974, XST phase one was started in 1975, the Have Blue demonstrator first flew in 1977. 31 months (not 30) is the time between the full-scale development decision and the first test model, decision to operational capability t…

Doesn't Kelly Johnson give Ben Rich the advice to never work with the navy?

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#92

Post by greedo »

VLM wrote: post #81
greedo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheap? Hardly. A Tomahawk is far north of $1M a shot, and JASSM is above $1M as well.

Yes, dirt cheap. Even if you use Hollywood accounting like "flyaway costs" you can get 100 Tomahawks for the cost of one F-35, and the point of the wargame was you only get roughly one sortie per F-35 unless you have air superiority. So economically its far cheaper to not build one F-35 while buying 100 Tomahawks, then cruise missile every airfield, than to lose your entire stock of F-35 on one sortie. Another way to…

You have to include launcher costs: either an SSGN like the modified Tridents, or the SSNs that carry them. Plus, with an aircraft, you can use it multiple times, and often in unique and unexpected ways. A missile, not so much.

Plus, TLAM isn't expected to be very survivable in a contested environment, especially around S300/S400 sites. That's the impetus for developing the troubled JASSM.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#93

Post by greedo »

VLM wrote: post #78
brudgers wrote: post #74

I am not saying that the JSF is a good plane, or that VSTOL is a good thing. But the claims of the article are all resting on this: "In the scenario, 72 Chinese jets patrolled the Taiwan Strait. Just 26 American warplanes — the survivors of a second missile barrage targeting their airfields — were able to intercept them, including 10 twin-engine F-22 stealth fighters that quickly fired off all their missiles" To summ…

A simpler question is why did all the cruise missiles targeting airfields work over Taiwan, but apparently none worked over China? Hidden assumption of cyber warfare or ?

China is using SRBMs and MRBMs to target/attack Taiwan and Okinawa. While Aegis and Patriot have some ability to intercept them, they'll be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#94

Post by greedo »

chiph wrote: post #90
hindsightbias wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was right? His lightweight fighter isn't so light and has been more utilized in an air-to-ground role than as a fighter. If he'd been right, the F-16 wouldn't have all those hardpoints or a radar (he believed air combat would be managed by ground controllers). You can say the F-16 evolved, but it sure as hell didn't evolve as he thought it should. The AF and Navy/USMC need a plane for dropping bombs. They keep hac…

Compared to the F-111, the F-16 is very light (well, almost everything is lighter than an F-111...). He fought against the F-16 being certified in the nuclear role and lost. I hadn't heard he was opposed to a radar in the F-16 -- depending on ground control doesn't make sense for an offensive unit. He probably didn't anticipate how lightweight modern electronics have become.

Yes, he wanted the F-16 to be purely a daylight fighter, with simple avionics and a fast turnaround time.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#95

Post by zokier »

greedo wrote: post #33
coldcode wrote: post #2

Having worked on the F16 at one point in my career it kicks the F35 is the ass every day and twice on Sunday. Plus you can buy 20 of them for every F35. It's all about money though, the F16 is too cheap to keep Lockheed in business no matter how much you upgrade it.

Current fly away costs estimates for the F-35 are in the neighborhood of 100-150M. Current fly away costs for Block 50+ F-16 are in the 100M range depending on electronics suite. It's been a long, long time since you could buy an F-16 for $5M. Also, the F-35 is more maneuverable than the current F-16s which have to hang a ton of armament on pylons, as well as drop tanks to get range equivalent to the F-35. And try fl…

> Current fly away costs for Block 50+ F-16 are in the 100M range depending on electronics suite.

Any sources for this claim? The details on sales deals are scarce, but from what I gather Block50/52 models should be in the $40M range, or maybe even as low as $15M. The major exception being UAEs heavily modified Block60 which seem to go for significantly higher (in the $100M range).

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#96

Post by zokier »

gadders wrote: post #87
newbie12 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a UK developed plane and did do well in the Falklands-- a testament to the skill of British pilots as much as anything. In the U.S., one third of our Harrier fleet has crashed, here's the article cited in the parent: http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/6722

So why are they killing US Marines and not British RAF?

There has been plenty of British Harriers crashing too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Harrier_Jump_Jet_family...

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#97

Post by masklinn »

thedrbrian wrote: post #91
masklinn wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The final section of "Skunk Works" touches on the bureaucratic morasses. Although the 30 months quote is really misleading: the surface analysis prefiguring the Have Blue concept were started in 1974, XST phase one was started in 1975, the Have Blue demonstrator first flew in 1977. 31 months (not 30) is the time between the full-scale development decision and the first test model, decision to operational capability t…

Doesn't Kelly Johnson give Ben Rich the advice to never work with the navy?

I'm now home so I can both reply and complete my previous comment.

> Doesn't Kelly Johnson give Ben Rich the advice to never work with the navy?

It's more than that, it's Kelly's unwritten 15th rule of management:

> Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy.

It's in the early page (#2) of the chapter on Sea Shadow.

The bureaucratic morass was from the Air Force and mentioned in the penultimate chapter about the B2:

> When we began testing out stealth fighter, the combined Lockheed and Air Force personnel involved totaled 240 persons. There are more than two thousand Air Force auditors, engineers, and official kibitzers crawling all over that trouble B-2 assembly building in Palmdale. What are they doing? Compiling one million sheets of paper every day — reports and data that no one in the bureaucracy has either the time or the interest to read.

> The Air Force now has too many commissioned officers with no real mission to perform, so they stand around production lines with clipboards in hand, second-guessing and interfering every step of the way. The Drug Enforcement Agency has 1,200 enforcement agents out in the field [nb: the book was published in 1994, the DEA has learned since…] fighting the drug trafficking problem. The DOD employs 27,000 auditors. That kind of discrepancy shows how skewed the impulse for oversight has become both at the Pentagon and in the halls of Congress.

He also presciently notes that the way the B2 was done (involving multiple manufacturers in a huge project) would spread and infect all future projects as the number of projects would diminish and the DOD would spread projects around to avoid any contractor dying.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#98

Post by Spooky23 »

Nelson69 wrote: post #71
lmg643 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree on drones and unmanned aircraft. Manned combat planes are going to be the cavalry of war in a few years (if not already) for the simple fact that a pilot cannot withstand the g-forces that an unmanned plane or missile can. US hasn't realized this yet because we are currently using our military might to pick on folks who are decades if not a century or more behind us technologically but would likely be a differe…

Has it not been realized? I think it has, there is a ton of drone stuff going on. The DoD hasn't rewritten the war fighting manual and strategy yet though so manned fighters and bombers are still part of the plans but I don't think UAVs haven't proven themselves. This is a titanically slow moving organization... lives and deaths are on the line with their decisions. One of the real lesson of the JSF is the amount of…

The Marines have "amphibious assault ships" that are sort of like aircraft carriers for helicopters. S/VTOL aircraft can operate from these locations.

I was told by a Marine that the Harrier obsession stems from Guadalcanal in WW2. The waters in the Solomons were heavily contested and the Navy basically took off and left the Marines stranded. That institutional memory is hard to shake.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#99

Post by greedo »

zokier wrote: post #95
greedo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current fly away costs estimates for the F-35 are in the neighborhood of 100-150M. Current fly away costs for Block 50+ F-16 are in the 100M range depending on electronics suite. It's been a long, long time since you could buy an F-16 for $5M. Also, the F-35 is more maneuverable than the current F-16s which have to hang a ton of armament on pylons, as well as drop tanks to get range equivalent to the F-35. And try fl…

> Current fly away costs for Block 50+ F-16 are in the 100M range depending on electronics suite. Any sources for this claim? The details on sales deals are scarce, but from what I gather Block50/52 models should be in the $40M range, or maybe even as low as $15M. The major exception being UAEs heavily modified Block60 which seem to go for significantly higher (in the $100M range).

Turkey bought 30 Block 50s at $2.9B, which is a hair under $100M, but I was really referring more to the UAE Block 60.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/turkey-orders-30-f16c-bl...

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#100

Post by masklinn »

antubbs wrote: post #49
sschueller wrote: post #43

"Lockheed’s F-117 stealth fighter was developed in a breakneck 30 months by a close-knit team of 50 engineers led by an experienced fighter designer named Alan Brown and overseen by seven government employees." vs. "The F-35, by contrast, is being designed by some 6,000 engineers led by a rotating contingent of short-tenure managers, with no fewer than 2,000 government workers providing oversight."

To their credit, the F-117 also wasn't a multirole fighter, was built in low quantities, wasn't planned for export uses, and was relatively quickly retired. It's a one-trick pony designed to sneak in, drop a precision bomb, and get out.

> the F-117 also wasn't a multirole fighter, was built in low quantities [...] It's a one-trick pony designed to sneak in, drop a precision bomb, and get out.

These are all good things, though. It's a focused airframe absolutely excellent at what it does. Much like the A10 really.

> and was relatively quickly retired

Beg pardon? The F-117 reached operational capability in 1983 and was retired in 2008 (the original plan was 2011, it was retired earlier to free money to buy F22s). And they've flown as recently as 2010 around Nellis.

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