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The F-15 Eagle: Origins and Development, 1964-1972 [pdf]

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Re: The F-15 Eagle: Origins and Development, 1964-1972 [pdf]

#41

Post by dralley »

ajmurmann wrote: post #27
icegreentea2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That tends to happen because military procurement is always a set of compromises, so there lies a tremendous amount of room for basically arguing about how to weigh the different requirements/criteria/mission sets. Also while the article vindicates Sprey's want of having a lightweight fighter, the reality is that while lightweight fighters did come, they quickly became exactly what Sprey would not have wanted (once t…

The Boyd biography by Robert Coram tells the story of the battle between the Fighter Mafia and the Bomber Generals. It also talks about, what I'd at best call regulatory capture. There was an outrageous series of events around procurement of the Bradley fighting vehicle. An excerpt from the craziness that ensued: "The Bradley was a tragedy waiting to happen. It was packed with ammunition, fuel, and people. The thinne…

This narrative is nonsense. To point out one example

>> To further insure that the Bradley appeared impregnable, the Army filled the internal fuel tanks with water rather than with diesel fuel.

No, the reason is so that you can see what got hit by shrapnel and where afterwards, and not have a burned out wreck of metal. The goal of testing is to make improvements to the design, not produce very expensive fireworks displays.

Likewise it was obvious that no amount (or composition) of armor was going to make it survive direct hits from a tank or ATGM, so heavily compromising the design in a futile attempt to do so would be wasteful, as would blowing up several dozen of them with such tests as Boyd and co. wanted to do.

We now have decades of experience with the Bradley and while it's not a perfect vehicle, it is pretty good.

Re: The F-15 Eagle: Origins and Development, 1964-1972 [pdf]

#42

Post by belter »

GalenErso wrote: post #17
belter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can revisit it after it is proven in combat, something that still has to happen.

The F-35 has been proven in simulations with aggressor squadrons. The Air Force does that all the time: real aircraft in the air, real pilots, real weapons, they just don't actually shoot them for obvious reasons. But they have other ways of simulating kills. https://www.businessinsider.com/f-22-pilot-describes-going-u... Here's what a F-22 pilot (!) had to say about the F-35. "It is challenging, even flying the Rapt…

Proven in simulations is an oxymoron...

Re: The F-15 Eagle: Origins and Development, 1964-1972 [pdf]

#43

Post by icegreentea2 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #27
icegreentea2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That tends to happen because military procurement is always a set of compromises, so there lies a tremendous amount of room for basically arguing about how to weigh the different requirements/criteria/mission sets. Also while the article vindicates Sprey's want of having a lightweight fighter, the reality is that while lightweight fighters did come, they quickly became exactly what Sprey would not have wanted (once t…

The Boyd biography by Robert Coram tells the story of the battle between the Fighter Mafia and the Bomber Generals. It also talks about, what I'd at best call regulatory capture. There was an outrageous series of events around procurement of the Bradley fighting vehicle. An excerpt from the craziness that ensued: "The Bradley was a tragedy waiting to happen. It was packed with ammunition, fuel, and people. The thinne…

I've read that book - it was my introduction to Boyd. I read it as a teenager, and it really spoke to me. I believe that Boyd is incredibly important and has made very very valuable contributions.

I think it is slightly suspect that basically everyone either becomes a whole-hearted follower of Boyd, or is some bullshitter out to protect their backsides and finding how to backstab Boyd and their followers. I also think it's suspect that the book never really engages with the "what-if" scenarios had the reformers gotten everything they wanted.

What would have happened if the F-16 shipped with an airframe too small to practically retrofit a BVR capable radar?

What would have happened if the Bradley tests went exactly the way Burton wanted? What were the alternatives? Would any alternatives provide meaningfully better outcomes than the Bradley in the same tests that Burton wanted? Would they provide meaningfully better outcomes in actual battlefield use?

Maneuver warfare and mission command can generate tremendous outcomes (but they do not guarantee them... see Battle of France vs Barbarossa) . But what if there were meaningful reasons to want to hedge against going all in? What if synchronization of forces and actions cause a temporary reduction in velocity, to generate a surge in velocity at a later timepoint - what if this approach could also be beneficial to collapsing the opponent's decision loop? What if synchronization of forces is helpful with logistics?

I am not saying that procurement or the military is perfect. I am certain there are shit shows everywhere. I think Boyd and the reformers did a valuable job in trying to keep the services publicly accountable. I think it's important (in fact vital) for a democracy to be able to explain to their citizens why they are spending money on specific programs, and why these tradeoffs are being made, and ultimately what missions/requirements these programs are for - and ultimately what is the purpose of the military.

I just think also think that the reformers were not right about all of their technical thrusts, and certainly don't think we should take their recollections of events at face value.

Re: The F-15 Eagle: Origins and Development, 1964-1972 [pdf]

#44

Post by cpgxiii »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #6

> OSD, however, refused to tolerate this kind of intransigence and in May 1966 McNamara ordered a joint review of the commonality issue. Conducted over the next 18 months, the review confirmed that the needs of the Air Force and Navy could not be met by a single airframe. The two services argued that attempts to merge their requirements would produce, at exorbitant cost, a grotesque mutation with increased weight, an…

This whole "multi-service aircraft can't work" meme has been going for essentially a century, and has been wrong just as long.

The F-4 Phantom, probably deserving the title of greatest Western multi-role aircraft of the cold war, had long successful service with both USAF and USN (and USMC), with fewer inter-service airframe differences than between the F-35A and F-35C. Multi-service aircraft are totally workable, the services just don't like having to play nice with each other.

The F-35 is better thought of as a family of tightly-related aircraft which share as many major systems as possible (avionics, sensors, engine, cockpit) while having differing airframes. Doing exactly the kind of reusable engineering a major project should be doing. You can claim that different project management might have been cheaper, but the idea that three separate airplanes, one for each service, could have been engineered and produced for less is just wishful thinking.

Re: The F-15 Eagle: Origins and Development, 1964-1972 [pdf]

#45

Post by dralley »

VLM wrote: post #26
icegreentea2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That tends to happen because military procurement is always a set of compromises, so there lies a tremendous amount of room for basically arguing about how to weigh the different requirements/criteria/mission sets. Also while the article vindicates Sprey's want of having a lightweight fighter, the reality is that while lightweight fighters did come, they quickly became exactly what Sprey would not have wanted (once t…

Wikipedia disagrees and claims the last BVR missile engagement at BVR range was 30 years ago and BVR missiles are usually combat ineffective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond-visual-range_missile BVR is kind of a cold war tech; "its WW3 shoot down all the soviet bombers" it doesn't have another mission at this time. To risky to use.

Wikipedia is wrong. Conflicts between two powers where both have fighter jets are infrequent so of course BVR engagements are infrequent, so saying "it hasn't happened in 30 years" would be misleading even if it wasn't incorrect.

But it is incorrect, because most engagements in Ukraine ever since the first month of the war have been at beyond visual range. And should a conflict ever break out between China and the US, pretty much if not literally every air engagement would happen at beyond visual range. Just because it hasn't happened much doesn't mean it's an outdated idea, it just means that powers with significant air forces haven't shot at each other lately.

Re: The F-15 Eagle: Origins and Development, 1964-1972 [pdf]

#46

Post by coredog64 »

cpgxiii wrote: post #44
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #6

> OSD, however, refused to tolerate this kind of intransigence and in May 1966 McNamara ordered a joint review of the commonality issue. Conducted over the next 18 months, the review confirmed that the needs of the Air Force and Navy could not be met by a single airframe. The two services argued that attempts to merge their requirements would produce, at exorbitant cost, a grotesque mutation with increased weight, an…

This whole "multi-service aircraft can't work" meme has been going for essentially a century, and has been wrong just as long. The F-4 Phantom, probably deserving the title of greatest Western multi-role aircraft of the cold war, had long successful service with both USAF and USN (and USMC), with fewer inter-service airframe differences than between the F-35A and F-35C. Multi-service aircraft are totally workable, th…

I generally agree with your thesis, but:

The F-4 was built for the Navy and the other services saw what a great plane it was and bought in.

The F-35 is intended as a lightweight multi role aircraft, so it’s full of compromises already.

The F-111A/B as a shared USAF/USN aircraft is much harder as there’s not as much margin for compromise in something that is supposed to be the pinnacle of current performance.

Re: The F-15 Eagle: Origins and Development, 1964-1972 [pdf]

#47

Post by [deleted] »

belter wrote: post #42
GalenErso wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F-35 has been proven in simulations with aggressor squadrons. The Air Force does that all the time: real aircraft in the air, real pilots, real weapons, they just don't actually shoot them for obvious reasons. But they have other ways of simulating kills. https://www.businessinsider.com/f-22-pilot-describes-going-u... Here's what a F-22 pilot (!) had to say about the F-35. "It is challenging, even flying the Rapt…

Proven in simulations is an oxymoron...

[deleted]

Re: The F-15 Eagle: Origins and Development, 1964-1972 [pdf]

#50

Post by gmkiv »

mastax wrote: post #40
ajmurmann wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Boyd biography by Robert Coram tells the story of the battle between the Fighter Mafia and the Bomber Generals. It also talks about, what I'd at best call regulatory capture. There was an outrageous series of events around procurement of the Bradley fighting vehicle. An excerpt from the craziness that ensued: "The Bradley was a tragedy waiting to happen. It was packed with ammunition, fuel, and people. The thinne…

I had some hope that this biographer wouldn't take Burton's claims at face value, but alas. The Bradley was designed to survive 14.5mm HMG fire. This is in line with IFV doctrine. The three most important layers of the survivability onion come before "don't get penetrated" and Bradley has proven to be very good at those. The army did not plan to perform live fire testing with an RPG designed to destroy tanks weighing…

> I'm not sure if Burton was a Luddite who didn't believe in statistics or the scientific method, or if he didn't care about learning from his tests.

It's possible. It's also possible that he had a good sense of how test results are presented by program managers to Congress, and was trying to accurately convey the situation. Congress typically doesn't have time to delve into the details of the test, they get top-line results like "the Bradley did not catch fire when shot by an RPG" even though the footnotes would talk about the water in the tanks.

More generally, there is a tendency even today to make test results look good through judicious selection of test conditions. Program managers will refuse to do tests where "we already know the answer" - but only when we think the system won't work. We do plenty of tests when we have high confidence the system will work. So you get headlines like "86 of 105 hit-to-kill intercept attempts have been successful" [1], without the context that we never attempted the shots that we think we would miss, even if those scenarios are tactically important.

I'll grant that there are several motivations for testing like this, but let's not pretend that they are all purely technical.

[1] https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Interactive/2018/11-2019-M...

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