Can we afford the F-35?

[MillCreek]

^^^ Haven't I read that on occasion GPS and laser guided munitions go 'dumb' with poor results?  Maybe not so important for a strategic or tactical bombing mission, but perhaps a big deal if you are danger close in providing CAS.   I don't know, but I wonder if they are already using guided munitions for CAS.

[Gewehr98]

Yeah, I agree that M113 analogy was a stretch, because I don't know jack about APCs or any Army vehicles save for my own quality time with a Deuce and a Half.

We need to stop asking for one weapons system platform to be a jack-of-all-trades. That hobbles it at the starting gate.

If you want an air superiority fighter, fine.  Just don't come snooping around halfway through the test flight program, and make a bomber out of it.

(Hitler did that with the Me-262)  If you want a ground attack platform, fine.  Just don't ask the manufacturer to re-tool for supercruise.

For a while, the Air Force was going to give the A-10 to the Army as the OA-10, and retrofit the F-16 for the ground attack role.  That plan died a (rightfully) horrible death.

Low and slow is something the F-16 was never designed to do, compared to the A-10.  And yet, geniuses in the Pentagon still come up with that crap, to this day.

Now everybody's got a love-fest with UAVs.  They may be more useful in some roles, but I doubt very much we'll remove cockpits and human occupants in all of our military aircraft - nor should we.





 

[Boomhauer]

That durned Bradley Fighting Vehicle, it's aluminum, I tell you!  Why, even the M113 was made of proper steel!

Thread veer/ The Bradley is a POS that matches Soviet armored vehicles in maximum efficiency of killing the occupants.

[roo_ster]

Yeah, I agree that M113 analogy was a stretch, because I don't know jack about APCs or any Army vehicles save for my own quality time with a Deuce and a Half.

We need to stop asking for one weapons system platform to be a jack-of-all-trades. That hobbles it at the starting gate.

If you want an air superiority fighter, fine.  Just don't come snooping around halfway through the test flight program, and make a bomber out of it.

(Hitler did that with the Me-262)  If you want a ground attack platform, fine.  Just don't ask the manufacturer to re-tool for supercruise.

For a while, the Air Force was going to give the A-10 to the Army as the OA-10, and retrofit the F-16 for the ground attack role.  That plan died a (rightfully) horrible death.

Low and slow is something the F-16 was never designed to do, compared to the A-10.  And yet, geniuses in the Pentagon still come up with that crap, to this day.

Now everybody's got a love-fest with UAVs.  They may be more useful in some roles, but I doubt very much we'll remove cockpits and human occupants in all of our military aircraft - nor should we.

UAVs Uber Alles  Yeah, right now that is the hot ticket.  Gotta wonder, though.  UAVs vs cruise missiles is sort of a "stoneware vs paper plates" issue. 

Stoneware initial cost is much higher and can be re-used, vs one-shotpaper plates.  Plus, UAVs could carry a more varied payload.  I would think that UAVs would not be as survivable as a piloted attack plane so you'd lose more of them and could not replace an attack plane one for one.

Heck, lotsa trade offs to be made.  We ought to pay folks to figure that out for us...

[BobR]

I was aghast to see the Patrol Plane Commander shut down and feather the #1 engine.

I quickly produced my checkbook from my flightsuit leg pocket, and told him I'd gladly pay for the kerosene to keep that god-damned engine running.  

I don't know if those VPU guys ever did a 2 engine loiter, we did in the fleet more times than I cared too. The only real concern was to be light enough so that your single engine rate of descent was slow enough you could get another engine on line, before you went for a swim. We had to stay above 1000' with two engines shut down. If we dropped below 1K' to prosecute a target, we would start up one of the loitered engines, normally #4.

The last P3 squadron I was in, VP19, was decommissioned in 1991. It has now been reborn as VUP 19 (Unmanned Patrol Squadron) flying the MQ-4C (BAMS) Broad Area Maritime Surveillance drone based on the Global Hawk.



http://www.navaldrones.com/BAMS.html

It is the way of the future. It may cost less, and have more endurance, but, can it drop a SAR pack out the door to a floundering boat?

bob

[RocketMan]

Why does the F-35 remind me of McNamara's one-size-fits-all-branches F-111?  Maybe because it didn't work out as planned, either.

[BryanP]

Why does the F-35 remind me of McNamara's one-size-fits-all-branches F-111?  Maybe because it didn't work out as planned, either.

I was about to post on this.  I was also wondering if anyone remembered that the original spec for the F-111 included it being used for air superiority and carrier operations.  They should have scrapped the F and made it an A series.

[birdman]

I was about to post on this.  I was also wondering if anyone remembered that the original spec for the F-111 included it being used for air superiority and carrier operations.  They should have scrapped the F and made it an A series.

Not air superiority, interceptor.  The f-111B was a competitor for the f-14, neither of which was originally designed for true "air superiority" but rather "carry as many Phoenix as possible to engage those bombers coming at us, and when you run out of those, continue to close and use sparrow, then sidewinder, then cannon".  Neither were really designed for "turnin and burnin" but rather to get to 100nm radius as fast as possible.

Also, given the (great idea) F-14D (which could carry greater bomb load farther and faster than a f-18e/f) perhaps both should have changed to F/A multi role designations....along with the f-16, f-15e

Hell, the f-16 is used more for ground attack than almost any other plane in the USAF inventory, and it was designed from the outset as a multi-role (which is why it beat its competitor the YF-17 now F/A-18 hornet)

There aren't any true pure fighters anymore, only those optimized slightly one way or the other...the F-22 is almost turning back the clock in its level of optimization, but still, it can carry a significant bomb load, and in a non LO config, a HUGE bomb load.

[geronimotwo]

my biggest gripe with the munitions industry is the cost overuns.   when i give an estimate to someone it is stone clad, barring changes to the original specs.   

[Blakenzy]

Cost overruns are a feature with government contracts... the world over.

[41magsnub]

I have a relative who is the CO of a harrier squadron.  He is in no hurry to transition to F-35's.

[Hutch]

Why do we need meat in the cockpit?  We could have UAV's pulling 30g's or more.  Honest question.

[Regolith]

Why do we need meat in the cockpit?  We could have UAV's pulling 30g's or more.  Honest question.

Biggest problem with UAV's that I can see is they can be jammed. You jam a UAV, it either crashes or it goes into auto pilot and either loiters or comes home (maybe; don't know if they have that feature yet). You jam a jet, the pilot can still engage using guns/dumb bombs and maybe smart bombs/missiles that work with a frequency that isn't being jammed.

Electronic attack planes can also counter-jam, or fire off HARMs that go after the jammers. Don't know if they have EA UAV's yet.

[roo_ster]

Maybe the electronics could pull 30Gs, but the rest of the plane would likely bust apart.  Airframe design is a real bugger.  Some of the toughest trade-offs out there.

Plus, what Regolith wrote.  And we still want a human pulling the trigger.  Autonomous engagement is still pretty much a no-go zone.

[Gewehr98]

I could throw a bunch out there, to include situational awareness and rapid decision making capability.

To quote another Zoomie:

"Today’s technology is insufficient to allow unmanned aircraft to make independent, complex judgments in an ambiguous and novel environment and so must be tethered to human judgment. But data links can be denied or deceived, and in any case, they introduce seconds of delay that can be crucial, such as when prosecuting moving targets or surviving in well-defended airspace..."

I know, coming from an ISR background, that our crews made sophisticated decisions and spot analyses that couldn't be done with a UAV, either autonomic or remotely-piloted.

Constant Phoenix, for example, was capable of on-the-fly mission profile changes.  The sensor suites and the crews that manned them would have been absolutely impossible for a UAV to either duplicate or even approximate.

Collecting whole-air samples and filter papers for 8+ hours, changing out 3000psi spheres every 30 minutes, and doing real-time radiological analysis of the collected samples would be inconceivable for a UAV out there looking for the smoking gun of an undeclared nuclear test. We had secure Satcom to our parent organization, and the legs to do our mission for 20+ hours when needed. 

Same goes for Rivet Joint and Combat Sent.  Those crews are highly specialized, highly trained, and performing an ungodly amount of intel collection on those platforms.  They aren't pulling a lot of G-forces, but they're out there in their racetrack orbits sucking in data (per crew position) and processing it for best effect by the warfighter and intel community.  I can't see a UAV doing that with anywhere near the capacity, without sending a fleet at a time, each UAV tuned to a different part of the bigger mission profile. 

The B-52H I spent a good portion of my adult life on?  I'm sure one could build a huge UAV, put a rotary launcher in the bomb bay, and send it out there to engage multiple targets miles apart like we did, at 400ft AGL.  Make it stealthy like the B-2, and pray to gawd that either the software or data link to the remote pilot is fast enough to avoid ground and air-based threats during the sortie. 

Truthfully, until SkyNet becomes self-aware, we still need cerebral hemispheres physically on the planes, making decisions and stomping on rudder pedals.  Not all platforms, mind you, but the lion's share as of February 2013.     

[roo_ster]

I could throw a bunch out there, to include situational awareness and rapid decision making capability.

What I was trying to get at WRT UAV survivability vs manned aircraft and not being able to replace them one for one.

[Scout26]

Everyone looks for the "magic bullet".  It's like someone described earlier as the one gun that fits all needs.  It simply doesn't exist.  What we do have are several planes that fulfill various needs and roles.   There will always be a need for manned aircraft both in the reconnaissance and fighting/bombing roles.   UAV's have their purpose as well.  But there is no one-size-fits-all aircraft.   And we need to stop repeating McNamara's mistakes.


(Also I think CAS should run like the Marines do it.  A-10's should be Army not Air Farce assets.)

[Gewehr98]

I always liked how the Marines did CAS, by sending their pilots on a ground tour with front-line troops.  That immersion technique really integrates things, IMHO.

[HankB]

I always liked how the Marines did CAS, by sending their pilots on a ground tour with front-line troops.  That immersion technique really integrates things, IMHO.

I don't know when it started, but I know for sure that the Army Air Corps was doing some of that during WWII in the Pacific Theater.

As for major weapon procurement . . . an awful lot of the decisions on what weapons to buy depends more on which congressional district's campaign contributors employers will ultimately be getting the contracts; this outweighs things like strategic and tactical necessity.

[RevDisk]

I'll let people who know about this comment

My thoughts are, why do we need it? Seems to me the aircraft it's replacing are doing fine

Actually, that's the exact problem. The aircraft we're replacing are not doing fine.  At the moment, they are mostly fine. Over the next three to five decades (reasonable aircraft platform lifespan, see the B-52), not so fine.

We bet the house on the F-35 replacing near all of our existing aircraft in that general scope. It was supposed to unify platforms across services, and reduce maintenance costs. Maintenance costs exceed the cost of the aircraft, statistically speaking. Everything from paint to washers to new engines to replacing electronics. Over decades. Unless blown up or flown into the ground.

F-22 is a stealth fighter, and designed as one. Not designed for launching off carriers. Could it do so? Probably, with mods. But unless your airframe is designed around it, you're going to wear out the airframe a lot quicker with catapult launches and arresting wire landings. Making a frame optimized for carrier operations for the entire USAF is stupid as hell. Same as making the same aircraft VTOL. Common components is not stupid. The strategy of making say, 3 aircraft with different frames but as many interchangeable parts as possible is good in theory. This is basically what we did. Saves time, costs, manufacturing lead times, etc.

Problem is, it's an engineering nightmare and LockMart has made a lot of expensive mistakes. I haven't been impressed with their project management. If you think the F-35 is an expensive charlie foxtrot, per aircraft it has nothing on the VH-71 Kestrel. Difference is, more aircraft for the F-35 program so more billions in mistakes. One no **** mistake was forgetting the weight of the wiring in certain calculations. Yes, LockMart forgot to incorporate that info. My friend at Pratt who was doing engine design work on F135.

Yes, I'm biased. Yes, government procurement folks did not help. Yes, politics did not help. But the largest factor has been LockMart turning this into a charlie foxtrot. I could be wrong, but this is what I've hear from subcontractors, government procurement staff, military personnel.

Problem is, we dumped a LOT of money into this. A LOT OF MONEY. And we yanked development on a lot of other aircraft. I'm not going conspiracy theory and saying LockMart intentionally tried to bleed taxpayers dry. They just were not as incentivized to as quickly as possible to address project management deficiencies and outright failures. Personally, if I was the Joint Chief of Staff, a decade ago, I'd yank the board of LockMart to the middle of nowhere and explain that I'd make it my personal mission in life to see that they lost every contract both in the US and abroad unless they made DAMN sure the project management on the F-35 went smoothly. We bet the house on it, and LockMart delivered suboptimally. Not insanely horribly, but very suboptimally.

[MillCreek]

^^^ Not to mention all the other countries like the UK, Oz, etc. that also dumped a big chunk of change into the F-35.

[Jamisjockey]

I always liked how the Marines did CAS, by sending their pilots on a ground tour with front-line troops.  That immersion technique really integrates things, IMHO.

When the pilots are in tents right next to grunts, it says a lot.  Marine pilots are defintely a different breed, especially helo and harrier pilots.

[RevDisk]

Why do we need meat in the cockpit?  We could have UAV's pulling 30g's or more.  Honest question.

I metaphorically kick the USAF around as much as anyone else. Yes, ego controls too many operational decisions. But people have superior attributes to UAVs under certain circumstances. Just as UAVs have superior attributes to UAVs under certain circumstances.

Long story short:

Lingering and watching for hours? Anything passive, really? Anything ultra insanely dangerous? UAVs.
Anything requiring thought or judgment, or very sensitive? People.


Nothing can pull omni direction 30G and survive flight. There's only so much bracing you can put on something and expect it to fly. Missiles, especially high acceleration interceptors, are specifically designed for high G going more or less straight. SR71 could go fast, but you wouldn't want to make a tight turn. Aircraft with or without humans will pull roughly (very roughly) the same flight characteristics. Endurance, size and weight (end up being same thing) is the difference. Without human support systems and control area, you save weight and size. Which means more endurance or payload. What you get is someone making decisions over datalink. And that datalink is a true tactical weak point. UAV manufacturers and the military will gloss over that.

The amount of intelligence you can or want to pack into a drone is very limited. Mostly relating to self-regulating. Auto takeoff and auto landing, flight stabilization, etc.

[zahc]

From what I've heard from Navy vets, the Super Hornet, with all the newest radar gizmos, is out of this world awesome and the pilots love it, the maintenance crews have learned to live with it, and we have it. At the same time they refuse to fly the F22 because they don't want to die.

The aforementioned radar advances make me pretty skeptical about 'stealth' technology. At this point I'm considering 'stealth' nothing but a marketing buzzword from the late '80s that was successful in landing contracts.

We would be better off if we had taken all the money wasted on the F35/F22 program, and put it all into building F18s and A10s and parked them in fields. First rule of a gunfight: bring a gun. First rule of an air war: Have an airplane. Build them cheap and stack them deep. People point and laugh at the chinese F-22 clones, but they fly, and they can probably crank out 10X the amount we can, and they have 1 billion people to fly them. Our military seem to operate on the assumption that it won't have to actually fight.

Yes, planes have teething problems (including the F-18 with the straker problem), but this generation takes it to a new level. The F35/F22 development is such that I'm losing confidence in our military. Seriously. It's the iceberg principle...if they can get so absurdly off-track on the big stuff, why should I be confident that they have basic things covered? If a single man with small arms can kill 40 people on one of our military bases, why should I be confident that our military isn't simply an expensive pork project with camo? If I'm thinking this, what are our enemies thinking?

[RevDisk]

When the pilots are in tents right next to grunts, it says a lot.  Marine pilots are definitely a different breed, especially helo and harrier pilots.

That is one of the main reasons I view the USAF as dimly as I do. In general, as a culture, they are too divorced from the reality of the situation. It would be better if USAF spent more time living in tents and directly integrated with the USA/USMC troops they are supporting. Air or sea power can never win a war. They can achieve a very large percentage of victory, all the way into the 90's, but never 100%. But unless you have boots on ground, you only have a paper victory.

Here was order of fire when it came to trust in accuracy:

Arty (USMC or Army, about equal, Army just had more and bigger stuff)
USMC CAS
USN CAS
USAF CAS

This is not scientific. But I always wondered if the accuracy was equally due to fear of death if they made a mistake, as it was training and doctrine. Arty guys knew I could easily walk to their positions, and shoot them if they dropped rounds on my head instead of the bad guys. I never once had a round go in the wrong place. Off a bit, sure. You may have to walk rounds onto target. That's just implementation accuracy. But they never shorted a round by human error, or put one into my position. Army helo pilots were a bit looser, which some of us chalked up to the platform, but still very accurate.

I had a LOT less experience with USMC, USN or USAF CAS. Decent experience with USMC arty. They tended to have less cannon, but equally accurate. USMC pilots have a reputation of being both a) insane and b) accurate. B being the more important part of this discussion. I never knew, and I suspect no one really does, if it's just part of the culture, the close-contact with forward elements, or conscious/subconscious fear of personal repercussions. USN were slightly more divorced, but still had a fair amount of direct or close indirect contact with ground pounders. USAF, except for forward air controllers or CSAR, tended to be furthest away. In any case, it tracks closely (at least by perception). But correlation is not causation.

From what I've heard from Navy vets, the Super Hornet, with all the newest radar gizmos, is out of this world awesome and the pilots love it, the maintenance crews have learned to live with it, and we have it. At the same time they refuse to fly the F22 because they don't want to die.

The aforementioned radar advances make me pretty skeptical about 'stealth' technology. At this point I'm considering 'stealth' nothing but a marketing buzzword from the late '80s that was successful in landing contracts.

We would be better off if we had taken all the money wasted on the F35/F22 program, and put it all into building F18s and A10s and parked them in fields. First rule of a gunfight: bring a gun. First rule of an air war: Have an airplane. Build them cheap and stack them deep. People point and laugh at the chinese F-22 clones, but they fly, and they can probably crank out 10X the amount we can, and they have 1 billion people to fly them. Our military seem to operate on the assumption that it won't have to actually fight.

Yes, planes have teething problems (including the F-18 with the straker problem), but this generation takes it to a new level. The F35/F22 development is such that I'm losing confidence in our military. Seriously. It's the iceberg principle...if they can get so absurdly off-track on the big stuff, why should I be confident that they have basic things covered? If a single man with small arms can kill 40 people on one of our military bases, why should I be confident that our military isn't simply an expensive pork project with camo? If I'm thinking this, what are our enemies thinking?

Everything zahc said is straight on the money.