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27 Jul 09

Obama Admin Crushes F-22 Supporters

www.dodbuzz.com/...vincing-senate-defeat-for-f-22 - Preview

F-22 airpower air_force procurement

“At a time when we’re fighting two wars and facing a serious deficit, this would have been an inexcusable waste of money. Every dollar of waste in our defense budget is a dollar we can’t spend to support our troops, or prepare for future threats, or protect the American people. Our budget is a zero-sum game, and if more money goes to F-22s, it is our troops and citizens who lose,” Obama said.
- 1) So, buying military aircraft during a time of war is a wate of money, but trillions of dollars for "stimulus," health care, and on and on, is not? 2) Future threats. Assumption: Future threats won't require air superiority of the kind provided by the F-22. 3) Zero-sum budget. So then trillions on stimulus and health care will be "dollar[s] we can't spend to support our troops, prepare for future threats, or protect the American people," right? - on 2009-07-27
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10 Jun 09

Obama's Pentagon Budget: Not Enough for Defense

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009060902647.html - Preview

procurement F-22 F-35 fcs

Procurement and research and development are the chief areas in which Defense Secretary Robert Gates has sought savings in the proposals he announced in April. He has proposed cuts to programs including the F-22 fighter, the DDG-1000 destroyer, the Army's Future Combat System, the presidential helicopter fleet, the transformational communications satellite, aircraft carrier production runs, the airborne laser missile defense program and the next-generation bomber. These are solid proposals; he could make additional cuts to the V-22 Osprey and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programs, as well as existing nuclear weapons platforms.

It is important to note, though, that these aren't cuts in current costs; they are cuts in plans. When you eliminate a defense program, you still typically must buy something to replace aging equipment, even if the alternative is less expensive. Moreover, a lot of equipment (much of it purchased under Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush) is wearing out, and we need to replace it soon.
- Or....here's a radical idea. Maybe it would be cheaper to buy the shit we've already paid to develop! Ya know, instead of paying for it, then shit canning it, and then paying AGAIN to develop other stuff!! The problem with these kinds of "analyses" is that they never take into account the money we have already spent. They only consider from today forward. Long term responsibility with our defense dollars means not making decisions now that, in effect, wastes all the money we have already spent. But alas, politicians don't think that way. - on 2009-06-10
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09 Mar 09

Fear of Lost Jobs Is Hurdle to Reining In Defense Contracts

What we really have here is a perfect storm of ideologies overtaking common sense. Gates and Obama don't necessarily share the same ideology, but they are useful to one another nonetheless. Gates has bought into the 4GW, the future is in counterinsurgency and therefore airplanes, ships, tanks, etc. are irrelevant ideology. Obama, as many predicted, is just more focused on domestic issues than defense. He doesn't necessarily buy into a theory of future warfare, just sees these projects as money that could be spent elsewhere. So, none of this has anything to do with solving real problems. A true assessment of the difficulties facing the economy, along with a look at what is happening in the world, should indicate that canceling force modernization efforts across the board, which is the Obama-Gates plan, is good for neither the economy, nor the military. But this si not about doing what's good or makes sense; it's about adhering to ideology come what may.

www.nytimes.com/...09defense.html - Preview

F-22 fcs procurement

Perhaps the most controversial program in Mr. Obama’s sights is the Air Force’s advanced F-22 fighter jet, which the Bush administration tried for years to halt, saying it was a cold war relic. Mr. Korb and other analysts say that if the president is determined to fix the contracting process, canceling the F-22 would send a strong signal.
Gordon Adams, a professor at American University in Washington, said parts of the $10 billion missile defense programs, which are still being tested, represent “low-hanging fruit” for Mr. Obama. His team might also cancel a radar-evading $3.3 billion destroyer that even the Navy says it can no longer afford. And the Army’s sweeping $160 billion modernization plan seems likely to be scaled back.
- Missile defense is so obviously irrelevant. With Iran test firing long range missiles, and North Korea preparing to do the same, and even threatening war if we attempt to shoot it down, anyone can see that there's no reason why we would want to develop missile defense systems. And beyond that, since when does the Air Force need airplanes, the Navy ships, or the Army new tanks, artillery, armored transports, etc.? [sarcasm] - on 2009-03-09
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- Many studies, including those by the Government Accountability Office and Pentagon boards, have shown that many weapons projects start out with unrealistically low cost estimates, depend on technologies that are not ready and face constant changes in design requirements.
  “The root cause is that you’ve got an ever-changing kaleidoscope of entities involved in the decisions, and nobody has the authority to just say no and be held accountable for it,” said John F. Lehman, the first secretary of the navy in the Reagan administration. “That’s what has to change.”
  - While I don't want to defense massive cost overruns (because I agree it's a problem), this argument makes a number of unrealistic assumptions about teh way technological change works. First, of course the technologies are "not ready." That's why it's called "research and development." It will not be perfect on day one. And the fact that it is not perfect on day one is not evidence that it will never work. This is an argument that gets leveled constantly against new weapon systems. Second, design requirements will change, and indeed should change. As the R&D process moves forward, as new lessons are learned, and as mission requirements, the likely environment of conflict, etc., all change, so will dessign requirements. Third, multiple entities will and should have input. Taken altogether, it is unrealistic and indesirable to have one authority that works to create a new system only from existing technologies where the design is fixed from the beginning and unresponsive both to lessons learned during development and from input from other entities. - on 2009-03-09
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07 Mar 09

Desolation Row

This is a great chart illustrating the problems faced by the Air Force. After fifteen years of neglect, the average age of fighters in the Air Force fleet has risen to just over 20 years, double the previous highest average. And with SecDef Gates and President Obama sending signals that the F-22's days are numbered, the problem will only get worse.

www.airforce-magazine.com/...DesolationRow.aspx - Preview

air_force airpower F-22 F-35

February 5, 2009— If you want to know why USAF fighters are so old, look no further. In the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, fighter purchases (vertical bars) generally oscillated between 150 and 400 a year. Turnover was heavy, so average age (red line) hovered around 10 years. Then, in 1992, came the crash. Fighter purchases fell to almost nothing and have stayed in that desolate spot through three presidencies. With no replacements, fighters have stayed in service, growing long in the tooth. The average fighter is now an unprecedented 21 years old.

Artwork by Heather Lewis

06 Mar 09

The Last Ace

An excellent argument by Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down, in favor of the F-22. Considering that Somalia is so often used as evidence in favor of the 4GW school of thought (which rejects technology like the F-22), it is interesting to see Bowden take this position.

www.theatlantic.com/...air-force - Preview

future war airpower air_force F-22

American air superiority has been so complete for so long that we take it for granted. For more than half a century, we’ve made only rare use of the aerial-combat skills of a man like Cesar Rodriguez, who retired two years ago with more air-to-air kills than any other active-duty fighter pilot. But our technological edge is eroding—Russia, China, India, North Korea, and Pakistan all now fly fighter jets with capabilities equal or superior to those of the F-15, the backbone of American air power since the Carter era. Now we have a choice. We can stock the Air Force with the expensive, cutting-edge F‑22—maintaining our technological superiority at great expense to our Treasury. Or we can go back to a time when the cost of air supremacy was paid in the blood of men like Rodriguez.
American pilots haven’t shot down many enemy jets in modern times, because few nations have dared rise to the challenge of trying to fight them. The F‑15, the backbone of America’s air power for more than a quarter century, may just be the most successful weapon in history. It is certainly the most successful fighter jet. In combat, its kill ratio over more than 30 years is 107 to zero. Zero. In three decades of flying, no F‑15 has ever been shot down by an enemy plane—and that includes F‑15s flown by air forces other than America’s. Rival fighters rarely test those odds. Many of Saddam Hussein’s MiGs fled into Iran when the U.S. attacked during the Gulf War. Of those who did fight the F-15, like the unfortunate pilot framed on Rodriguez’s wall, every last one was shot down. The lesson was remembered. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Saddam didn’t just ground his air force, he buried it.

That complete dominance is eroding. Some foreign-built fighters can now match or best the F‑15 in aerial combat, and given the changing nature of the threats our country is facing and the dizzying costs of maintaining our advantage, America is choosing to give up some of the edge we’ve long enjoyed, rather than pay the price to preserve it. The next great fighter, the F‑22 Raptor, is every bit as much a marvel today as the F‑15 was 25 years ago, and if we produced the F-22 in sufficient numbers we could move the goalposts out of reach again. But we are building fewer than a third of the number needed to replace the older fighters in service.
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- When Obama unveiled his national-security team in December, he remarked that he intended “to maintain the strongest military on the planet.” That goal will continue to require the biggest bill in the world, but the portion that bought aerial dominance for so long may have become too dear.
- If Obama opts to shut down production on the aircraft, it will certainly be a defensible decision.
- But even reasonable decisions can have harsh consequences. Without a full complement of Raptors, America’s aging fighters are more vulnerable, and hence more likely to be challenged.
- Countries such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea will be more likely to take on the U.S. Air Force if their pilots stand a fighting chance. This could well mean more air battles, more old-style aces—and more downed American pilots.
- The impact will not be felt only by aviators. Owning the sky is the first prerequisite of the way we fight wars today. Air supremacy is what enables us to send an elaborate fleet of machinery caterwauling over a targeted nation, such as Afghanistan or Iraq: the orchestrating AWACS (“Airborne Warning and Control System,” the flying surveillance-and-command center); precision bombers; attack planes, helicopters, and drones; ground support; rescue choppers; and the great flying tankers that keep them all fueled. This aerial juggernaut enables modern ground-fighting tactics that rely on the rapid movement of relatively small units, because lightly armed, fast-moving forces can quickly summon devastating air support if they encounter a heavy threat. Wounded soldiers can count on speedy evacuation and sophisticated emergency medical care. Accomplishing all this with anything like the efficiency American forces have enjoyed since the Vietnam War depends on owning the sky, which means having air-to-air hunter-killers that can shoot down enemy planes and destroy surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites before the rest of the fleet takes to the sky. Superior fighters are the linchpin of our modern war tactics. Having owned the high ground for so long, we tend to forget that it is not a birthright.
- So it is worth examining the nature of air-to-air combat today, and the possible consequences of not building a full fleet of F-22s.
- The Air Force fears that the dominance of U.S. airpower has been so complete for so long that it is taken for granted. The ability of the United States to own the skies over any battlefield has transformed the way we fight. The last American soldier killed on the ground by an enemy air attack died in Korea, on April 15, 1953.
  
  Russia, China, Iran, India, North Korea, Pakistan, and others are now flying fourth-generation fighters with avionics that match or exceed the F‑15’s. Ideally, from the standpoint of the U.S. Air Force, the F‑22 would gradually replace most of the F‑15s in the U.S. fleet over the next 15 years, and two or three more generations of American pilots, soldiers, and marines would fight without worrying about attacks from the sky. But that isn’t going to happen.
  
  “It means a step down from air dominance,” Richard Aboulafia, an air-warfare analyst for the Teal Group, which conducts assessments for the defense industry, told me. “The decision not to replace the F‑15 fleet with the F‑22 ultimately means that we will accept air casualties. We will lose more pilots. We will still achieve air superiority, but we will get hurt achieving it.”
- It was fashionable in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union to argue that the threat of conventional warfare was no longer relevant, because no other nation could compete with the United States on conventional terms. The attacks of September 11, 2001, underlined that argument; the new threat was “asymmetrical”—small cells of sophisticated terrorists against whom our huge arsenals were useless.
  
  Conventional weaponry may be useless against terrorists, but that doesn’t mean the old threats have disappeared. Russia’s incursion into Georgia and threatening gestures against the Baltic states; Iran’s persistence in pursuing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles; North Korea’s decision to ignore its agreement to cease building nuclear weapons—all are reminders that the threat posed by belligerent nation-states is still real.
- So America’s fighter fleet is likely to remain F‑15-based, backed up by the F‑22 and F‑35, a fifth-generation fighter that resembles the Raptor but without the same maneuverability and speed. It means that the days when the Air Force’s leading “ace” has only three kills may be coming to an end. If more vulnerability means more challenges—and it usually does—then more fighters will be seeing action. If the cost of air supremacy is not paid in dollars, it may be paid in blood.

26 Feb 09

Obama vows to help troops, cut weapon programs

www.spacewar.com/...s_cut_weapon_programs_999.html - Preview

F-22 F-35 fcs procurement future war

President Barack Obama said his upcoming budget would increase the number of US soldiers, state the true cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and cut "Cold War-era" weapons programs.

Setting out his priorities for military spending, Obama said late Tuesday in his first address to a joint session of Congress that he wanted to provide relief to men and women in uniform with higher pay and more boots on the ground.

"To relieve the strain on our forces, my budget increases the number of our soldiers and Marines," Obama said.
- Of course, "Cold War-era" is now an epithet that encompasses fighter and bomber aircraft, as well as tanks too. How is it that we are "providing relief" to or "relieving strain" from our forces by increasing their numbers but not giving them the weapons they need to fight? What will soldiers and Marines use for air support when the Air Force has no aircraft? Will soldiers and Marines feel relief or strain when they come under enemy air attack for the first time in decade because the Air Force wasn't given the tools to maintain air superiority? - on 2009-02-26
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates has already warned of major cutbacks, citing expensive weapons programs such as the F-22 fighter aircraft as possible targets.

"It's obviously one of the programs that, along with a number of others -- many others -- that we will be looking at," Gates said earlier this month.
- But of course it's obvious. I mean, when you're top-line fighter is 30 years old and has literally been falling out of sky lately, has been grounded almost as long this year as it has been flying, it obvious and makes total sense that you would seriously consider canning its replacement that you've already spent years and billions of dollars to develop. Makes perfect sense! [heavy dose of sarcasm] - on 2009-02-26
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- The United States cannot "eliminate national-security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything and buy everything," Gates wrote in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs.
  - True. But we also can't eliminate security threats without weapons. And with the F-22, F-35, and FCS all on the chopping block--i.e. all the major modernization efforts--one is left to wonder if Gates and the
    "New Establisment" really get that physical infrastructure in the form of weapons is still necessary, that war is not just a matter of mind. - on 2009-02-26
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- New weapons "have grown ever more baroque, have become ever more costly, are taking longer to build and are being fielded in ever dwindling quantities," he said.
  - So, in the case of the F-22, is cutting the number produced and fielded going to solve wither the "dwindling quantities" problem or the "more costly" problem? No. Part of the reason that numbers are dwindling Mr. Gates is that you are buying fewer. You have less because you bought less. Now, though not all of the cost increase problem is because of dwindling numbers--i.e. there are legitimate and serious problems in procurement that drive up costs--nonetheless, cutting the order and buying fewer increases the cost per unit. So, to a certain degree, you have fewer because you chose to have fewer, and those fewer units that you do have cost more because you chose to have fewer! You are to a large degree causing the problem that you are using to justify taking more of the actions led to the problem in the first place! - on 2009-02-26
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- Gates has made clear that counter-insurgency is the immediate priority, and that fleets of new ships, squadrons of sophisticated aircraft and a network of hi-tech army vehicles may be of little use in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  
  Apart from the F-22 Raptor fighters, which cost about 350 million dollars each, other candidates for possible cuts are F-35 and F-18E/F aircraft, the Navy's new generation destroyer -- the DDG-1000, a new amphibious ship, and computer-linked Army vehicles, known as Future Combat Systems.
  - Right, because our forces have made no use of airplanes, tanks, ships, or information networks in either Iraq or Afghanistan. And additionally, we all know that what we're doing right now (i.e. counterinsurgency) is all we'll ever do in the future, because we all know that that's how life works. Like, for exmaple, right now I'm writing a blog post, meaning that all I'll ever do from here on out will be to write blog posts. So, while I was planning what to eat for dinner, what I need to do this weekend, a conference for this fall, and all sorts of other stuff, it is clear now that I can just forget all of that because none of it relates to writing this blog post, which is, again, obviously all I'll ever do from now on. [Again, heavy dose of sarcasm.] The idiocy behind the dominant thinking of the "New Establishment" is mind boggling, and dangerous. - on 2009-02-27
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22 Nov 08

Pentagon Outmaneuvers Congress on F-22

www.military.com/...maneuvers-congress-on-f22.html - Preview

F-22 procurement

"The defense bill is the defense bill, and you will obey what it says -- period," a moderately unhappy Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), chairman of the House Armed Services air-land panel, told Young.
Abercrombie and members of both parties made it very clear to Young that they thought the Pentagon had flouted both the spirit and the intent of the law, which directed that $140 million be spent on advanced procurement of Raptors. The money would make it possible to fund an additional 20 F-22s and, perhaps more importantly, to keep the production lines open.
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- The Pentagon countered with plans to buy four more F-22s in the next supplemental spending bill and Young announced that he has approved Air Force spending of as much as $50 million for advance procurement.
- During the hearing, Young told Abercrombie and his colleagues that the Pentagon acted because it did not want to tie the hands of the Obama administration. But the effect of the decision, according to congressional aides, is to make any expansion of the F-22 buy highly unlikely.
- But Congress appears to have been outfoxed.
- By the time Congress could take any action to force the Pentagon to comply with the law -- several months -- the decision will already be in the hands of the new administration.

15 Nov 08

US DoD Releases Additional F-22 Funding

www4.janes.com/...doc_view.jsp - Preview

airpower air_force F-22

The US Department of Defense has released funding to build an additional four F-22 Raptor fighter jets beyond the 183 already
purchased.
US lawmakers have called on the Pentagon to release USD140 million in advanced procurement funds that have already been appropriated
to pave the way for the purchase of an additional 20 F-22s.

They - along with some US Air Force (<script language="JavaScript1.2">

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USAF) officials - have argued that failing to robustly fund the F-22 would lead to the
shut-down of the world's only fully operational fifth-generation fighter production line.

However, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Pentagon officials have until now resisted efforts to fund the F-22 beyond
the 183 already purchased, preferring to focus funding on the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter.
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- Young is meeting both sides half way by keeping the line open in the short term but leaving long-term decisions about F-22
  production to the next administration.