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No More New Fighter Aircraft Types?
"...The total cost of LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP.'s Joint Strike Fighter
program to develop a new tactical fighter will rise by $45 billion, or 22.6%, to $245 billion, the Pentagon said. In a regular report to Congress on major weapons programs, the U.S. Defense Department said the sharp rise in costs for the new jet, also known as the F-35, was due mainly to revised contractor labor and overhead costs, design delays, and a postponement in the start of procurement from 2006 to 2007. (Reuters 04:58 PM ET 04/05/2004)...." Are we getting to the point in history where the development of new fighter plane models is going to cease? History has seen the demise of the chariot, the battering ram, the military dirigible, the battleship, and even the hypersonic transport. So are we pursuing the last fighter plane in the F-35? The unit price of modern fighters is such that only a very few countries in the world can even afford a fully effective air force. Also, we now know the key to success in air combat is pilot training, not having the hottest airplanes. Witness two Navy F/A-18s on a bombing mission in Desert Storm shooting down two Iraqi interceptors while enroute to their target. Today only three entities apparently can afford to develop new fighter plane types. They are Russia, the European Union, and the good old USA. Other nations like Communist China, India, or Israel seem to do little more than develop variations on existing models. Even so, neither Russia or the EU have been able lately to compete with the USA in new model development. So is it becoming more and more difficult to justify a new model fighter today, either in term of performance or cost. Will the F-35 be the last of a breed? WDA end |
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W. D. Allen Sr. wrote:
Are we getting to the point in history where the development of new fighter plane models is going to cease? Fnord! I can't find the "United States military will only be able to afford one airplane" quote. Can somebody help me out here? -HJC |
#3
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Henry J Cobb wrote:
W. D. Allen Sr. wrote: Are we getting to the point in history where the development of new fighter plane models is going to cease? Fnord! I can't find the "United States military will only be able to afford one airplane" quote. Can somebody help me out here? Norman Augustine, from _Augustine's Laws._ (And I think a version before that in "The Widening Gyre" published in n_International Security_) "In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day." Of course, many of these so-called laws were actually intended to point out the fallaciousness of simple extrapolation of statistical data. -- Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail "Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right, when wrong to be put right." - Senator Carl Schurz, 1872 |
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Emmanuel Gustin wrote:
What is needed, clearly, is a revised approach to aircraft development. The USA is now trying to fund two fighters, the F"/A"-22 and the F-35, which are both highly ambitious and complex. With hindsight, it should have developed a single middle-class fighter (designed for carrier use; the USAF can use a lightened version) instead of a high/low mix, and the approach to design should have been more evolutionary. Can we call it a Super Hornet so people think it's just an upgrade of an existing fighter? -HJC |
#5
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On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 13:55:05 +0200, "Emmanuel Gustin"
wrote: Considering that Sweden (population 8,8 million, GDP US$231 billion) could still afford to develop JAS39 Gripen, I think that the demise of the fighter aircraft for financial reasons does not yet need to be feared. A good example. But, it also is an example of drawing conclusions when comparing apples to oranges. Certainly Sweden has a history of developing, producing and operating exceptional aircraft, but the neutrality of Sweden means that the aircraft are by definition going to be defensive in purpose and home-based in operation. We won't be finding much force projection going on for the Swedish military. The result is a fairly straightforward high agility, interceptor with limited ground attack capability and a fairly traditional sensor suite. What is needed, clearly, is a revised approach to aircraft development. The USA is now trying to fund two fighters, the F"/A"-22 and the F-35, which are both highly ambitious and complex. With hindsight, it should have developed a single middle-class fighter (designed for carrier use; the USAF can use a lightened version) instead of a high/low mix, and the approach to design should have been more evolutionary. While the stake in McNamara's heart never kill him? Must we also administer a silver bullet and still wear garlic around our necks? Your suggest sounds a lot like TFX--the horrendous "one size fits all" development projection that got the US the F-111. An airplane the Navy aborted in the third trimester and which the AF could not effectively operate for twenty years after deployment. The under-powered A, the vacuum tube unmaintainable D, the unsustainable E and finally the almost capable F model....ahhh yes, I remember them well. Great examples such as Mt. Home which housed 84 airplanes disguised as a three squadron (18 UE per squadron) wing and still could barely generate 0.5 sorties/aircraft/day figured on their "authorized equippage of 54 airframes. No thanks. Air dominance and ground attack seem to work best with dedicated air frames in a hi/lo mix--the USAF has done quite nicely with F-15/16 and the Navy seems to have concluded that the "good ol' days" of F-14/A-6 operations were better on both sides of the mission than the F/A-18 business. But I suspect that no small part of the cost getting out of control is due to so-called "management", techniques which are now also eating their way into military culture. The litigious American mind has long had an excessive reverence for the written word (whether it is the Constitution or "Do not dry pets in this microwave oven!") and appears to be easily seduced by the trappings of bureaucracy. Granted, the multi-national Eurofighter bureaucracy cannot be any better! There is a risk-averse tendency to break down development in phases, phases in stages, and stages in substages, ad infinitum, all surrounded by due process and a mass of tests. In theory, these serve to eliminate risks and get the best possible aircraft; in practice they stretch development time and increase costs. The justification is that the complexity of modern aircraft requires delegation of the work. In practice, according to Conway's law, every dividing line in the organisation adds complexity to the final system. Gotta agree 100% here. Certainly the project management culture increases costs while attempting to minimize risks. What you don't address, however, is the over-lay of political decision interference. While a free-market capitalist business model might be successful with the phase/stage/substage sequence, when you throw in the political posturing, competition for budget dollars, mis-information campaigns and general pacifism of nearly 50% of the American electorate, you really get a screwed up program. Ed Rasimus Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret) "When Thunder Rolled" Smithsonian Institution Press ISBN #1-58834-103-8 |
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"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message ... On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 13:55:05 +0200, "Emmanuel Gustin" wrote: No thanks. Air dominance and ground attack seem to work best with dedicated air frames in a hi/lo mix--the USAF has done quite nicely with F-15/16 and the Navy seems to have concluded that the "good ol' days" of F-14/A-6 operations were better on both sides of the mission than the F/A-18 business. The F/A-18 is the solution to USN's problems and a fine example of a procurement that faced the realities of the times. We can't very well expect to keep F-35 costs down by migrating electric/electronic systems from the F-22. That alone is reason for the price of the F-35 to adjust upwards by 1/3. These days I would look to tha F-35 to migrate technology to the F-22, if the F-22 survives it's current review. |
#7
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On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 13:55:05 +0200, Emmanuel Gustin wrote:
What is needed, clearly, is a revised approach to aircraft development. The USA is now trying to fund two fighters, the F"/A"-22 and the F-35, which are both highly ambitious and complex. With hindsight, it should have developed a single middle-class fighter (designed for carrier use; the USAF can use a lightened version) instead of a high/low mix, and the approach to design should have been more evolutionary. That sounds resonable. And at the same time, a STOVL ground attack aircraft replacing the A-10 and Harrier. -- "It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia (Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk) |
#8
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On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 08:58:55 -0600, Ed Rasimus wrote:
No thanks. Air dominance and ground attack seem to work best with dedicated air frames in a hi/lo mix Wny? Why not standardise on one fighter? -- "It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia (Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk) |
#9
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"phil hunt" wrote in message . .. On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 08:58:55 -0600, Ed Rasimus wrote: No thanks. Air dominance and ground attack seem to work best with dedicated air frames in a hi/lo mix Wny? Why not standardise on one fighter? The USAF loses power under that scenerio. I'd say a few USAF super bugs might get the point across. |
#10
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