$300 billion F-35 fighter jet
by ilsm
The US deficit, and its related total debt, are awesome worries.
Military outlays need to be reviewed, by qualified analysts who have not bought into the climate of continuing to clothe the emperor in nothing. Those outlays that are not “worth the expenditure of scarce taxpayer resources” in the military program need to be “cut”.
Naval Open Source Intelligence reports:
“Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn on Thursday [21 Jan 10] underscored the Pentagon’s commitment to Lockheed Martin Corp’s $300 billion F-35 fighter jet, saying the U.S. government and its allies still planned to buy 3,000 of the new fighters over time.
“We are heavily investing in the F-35. A successful Joint Strike Fighter is at the heart of our continued air superiority,” Lynn told industry and military officials at a conference hosted by Tufts University and the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis.”
The pentagon’s commitment, like a drunken sailor, is toward the $300B for lockheed and the $600B in sustainment costs that the fighter jet represents. The relationship between air superiority and the common defense is not the issue. What does an airplane which cannot be built on time, pass its test and evaluation, and cannot be kept flying have to contribute to “air superioriity”?
“Heavily invested” means we need to throw good money after bad.
What is important about “air superiority“?
The last airplane “at the heart of air superiority” with these issues was the F-22 (Lockheed, too). For the original price of 800 F-22 the Air Force received 183. For huge maintenace costs the “mission availability” is running 62%. Mission availability is tracked at the flying units. The total availability of F-22 airframes is half are broke at any time, because many airplanes are off the units property books. These are really hard broke and the ones being refitted to fix scrap and rework problems that were found in test but since there is no relation between air superiority and these fighters they can buy the airplane and try to fix them after they are paid for.
If the F-35 were being purchased in a free market in a commercial contract the thing would have been terminated for breach and the judge would have awarded the buyer all their money back.
We must establish rules, which used to exist, that all contracts by the DoD be reveiwed for the value to the taxpayer, not for the money going off to Lockheed or Boeing or Northrop Grumman.
What sense to keep companies in business who cannot develop the F-35?
Air superiority is endangered by bad companies, and better served by killing the F-35.
Big military contracts are all suffering from poor performance from the big vendors.
The F-35 is the most recent and the one where the adminsitration needs to stand tall.
______________________________
by ilsm
The Lockheed Bailout Battle
Monday, Aug. 09, 1971
From that article: “THE nation’s biggest defense contractor was fighting for its life, and Congress had seldom before seen such frenzied lobbying. As the argument mounted last week over the proposal for the Government to guarantee $250 million in loans to the Lockheed Aircraft Corp., Nixon Administration officials placed calls around the country to sympathetic bankers and industrialists”
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,903076,00.html#ixzz0dqFjfUNi
ilsm,
What airframe(s) are you proposing to substitute for the F-35?
We’re already looking at a nose-to-tail transition for a number of existing aircraft models in the DoD inventory.
ilsm,
Its very hard to have any discussion with you over the military due to the fact that you are an Buchanonite isolationist. You have, on many occaisions, called for the reduction of the DoD budget by 50% or more. Your going in argument is basically cancel the US military…its like me talking with coberly and starting off with the statement that SS is welfare, bankrupt, and needs to be cut and absorbed into the general fund. There is no common ground from which to even have a discussion….
Asking the question.”What is important about “air superiority“?” Shows such a gross lack of knowledge of modern warfare that is breath-taking from someone who reportedly understands these things.
So basically your griping about replacing the current, old and aging out fighters (F-16/F-18/AV-8) with the new F-35? SO what’s your solution? Oh, that’s right eliminate the Air Force, reduce the Army to the Guard/reserve, and bring the Navy down to 6 carriers and 100 total ships or so.
You gripe but have no better solution. And remember the Dems are in charge and the F-35 program is fully supported by the current Dem administration. Also note the F-22 program was ended by the Bush Administration. So your all in favor of the R’s now?
Islam will change
Hey the generals need their toys for their toyboys (pilots) and nifty new Bugatti-type planes are just swell. Makes one’s bosom swell with pride and boy, how they scare the “terrorists” when we go at ’em with shock and awe or was it awful shock or what? You know like the Nazis terrorized their enemies with a blitzkrieg. Being as frightening as the Nazis just makes one so proud to be a Yankee.
warprofiteers=warmongers.
Yeah isolationism is so uncool. It would involve not trampling all over other countries with our military jackboots and our napalm to take off all their skin and our bombs that splay out and cut off their heads and other really nifty stuff that make us so admired around the world. We always have to be at war. Our inner being depends upon it. Peace would turn us into little green men living in caves, I have no doubt.
warprofiteers=warmongers
What’s so wrong with the Chinese wimps is that they aren’t occupying some other countries and killing their citizens and strutting around the global stage. They are such stupid wimps they stay at home and mind their own business. This will surely finish them off soon. If they don’t start a few wars they’ll shrivel up and blow away. Goodbye China.
warprofiteers-warmongers
Yeah feeding the military industrial complex did Nixon so much good. It make him a revered two term President beloved by all. And of course as a result he won the Vietnam war. Such a wise and lovely man.
Yes, the F-35 is over budget and behind schedule, like almost every major defense contract in recent history. But, part of the problem is that the DOD, unlike commercial parties entering into contracts, makes purchase orders for goods that have never successfully been built at the time that they are ordered (and because contractors aren’t willing to take the impossibility risk, does so on a cost plus contract basis).
The DOD does need to buy some amount of some kind of plane. A fighter has the shortest useful life of any aircraft that the DOD owns and the current batch of F-16s are getting very expensive to maintain because they are as much as thirty years old and not getting younger. The older the existing planes get, the bigger a problem it is to keep them in the air.
One can make a good argument for replacing the naval carrier version of the F-35 with the F-18 version currently in production that the Navy is happy with. One can make a good argument for a smaller buy of the Air Force version simply because we don’t need as many planes as we used to in an era of American air superiority, stealth and much more accurate munitions. One can also make a good argument for replacing some of the very expensive stealth aircraft we are purchasing for missions like defending American cities from errant non-military aircraft and close air support, where the high tech features of the F-35 don’t add value.
Those cuts can save billions of dollars. But, simply killing the program when there is no replacement lined up and the existing fleet is starting to fall apart isn’t a good solution either.
I might add that obviously we would have no relationship with other nations if we aren’t occupying them with our army, etc., Not having our military in 120 or whatever it is nations around the world would mean we wouldn’t trade with them or have diplomatic missions there or anthing else. Real “isolationism”. For example China is so completely isolationist because it doesn’t have its army occupying other countries. Same with India: completely isolated except from Kashmir since that is the only place it has troops outside its borders. Yeah. now I understand.
warprofitters=warmongers
Government and their prime contractors are wasteful and inefficient because there is nobody holding them accountable for better results and because the culture is such that perverse incentives abound. Government can do awesome things when really required. Think about the Manhattan project, or the weapons projects of WWII.
As perverse incentives were at the heart of the financial catastrophe, so they lie at the heart of government incompetence and inefficiency. Align incentives and things will fall into place.
I have worked for a small defence contractor (yes, we exist) for the last 3 years, and being that it’s small I have been exposed to the inner workings of the DoD machine. It’s very depressing, but I am no longer shocked and awed by the inability of Government to get something done right, or even done at all. It’s all very logical in a very perverse sort of way.
ILSM
For huge maintenace costs the “mission availability” is running 62%. Mission availability is tracked at the flying units. The total availability of F-22 airframes is half are broke at any time,..
Well…some of us did try to convince the folks at AFLMC/Wright-Pat to use a better multi-item, multi-echelon sparing to availability model, but AFLMC and their masters at the time (then BDM) wouldn’t have any of it. Live and learn.
So, a guy working for the U.S. Army was supposedly advising the U.S. Air Force on airframes and spares support structure? How did occur?
Marg,
What’s an airframe? What does nose-to-tail transition mean?
What’s the difference between the performance characteristics of the F-35 and the F-16?
No, don’t run around and look up this information… You act like you have some idea of the subject matter under discussion. Just answer the questions. Or go wreck another comment thread.
Movie Guy,
The ORSA offices across the services work pretty closely with one another. Or at least they used to. With all of the movement towards big, primitive and useless ERP platforms a lot of that interaction has died out. That and a lot of retirements.
BTW,
The Army probably has more airframes than the Air Force. Helicopters are airframes, and the Army has a lot of them. And surprisingly, the Army actually has more boats than the Navy, if you’ll overlook the boats vs ships distinction.
Anti-aircraft technology will soon overwhelm manned aircraft stealth technology and other defenses. The military will deny it until one day terrorists start routinely shooting our aircraft down with laser-guided weaponry from Russia and China. The Russians/Chinese will make apologies in public and give each other high-fives in private. Same thing as when the battleships suddenly because obsolete due to the development of air power.
Beyond that development lies the age of small robots, moving via air, land and sea. Small enough and with low enough electromagnetic signature as to be undetectable. Huge numbers of these robots invading the enemy territory and causing mass havoc. This is the future of warfare. The Chinese will likely be the leaders in this technology, given how we are letting our manufacturing go to hell and are obsessed with bloated dinosaur technologies (F-35, aircraft carriers, trident subs, hummers, etc). They will not challenge us directly, but rather will sell the weapons to the Muslim world and let the Muslims test the weaponry against us. Once it becomes clear that the weaponry works, the Chinese will then start to throw their weight around.
I read no request to abolish the military and no blame by party (R, D) in the post. The F-22 took years and years to extinguish. How did it aid security?
Oh gee, I mis-spoke. All those airplanes and nose to tail whatevers are not toys; they are killing machines How did I manage to think they were toys? Sorry to wreck a comment thread with some very justified sarcasm. You know what sarcasm is, don’t you? Often its a short way to the truth. I’ve never flown a military plane or bombed some innocent third worlders to death so I don’t really appreciate all the lingo and pleasure that doing those things gives you.
I guess you removed my sarcastic responses to buff’s apparent claim that if we didn’t send our military around the world invading countries (do you deny that it does that?) and use it to kill people (do you deny that?) we would be isolationist. I thought these comments addressed the idea that if we don’t do those things we become isolationist? I simply wanted to point out the logical fallacy in that thinking. Is that really “off topic”? I even wanted to also point out that by Buff’s logicl Brazil is “isolationist”. It, as far as I know, doesn’t have its military in other countries trying to control them. I know that sarcasm is hard to take, but it often is the best argument possible.
I might add that Buchanan, to my knowledge, has never advocated abolishing the military. What he has often said (though he tends to get wound up and self contradictory at times) quite often is that he thinks we should get our military out of lots of foreign countries. The idea that that is “isolationist” seems nonsense to me. Are all the nations whose military isn’t occupying some foreign country “isolationist”?
Probably the same way that I used to represent or advise the Army on a number of government contract cases when I was on the Air Force Trial Team. Some times through joint programs, some times because of expertise (especially on CAS and TINA issues) and some times through personal relationships. Indeed, we have a cross service, informal club of active and retired government contract litigators who communicate and assist each other on various projects.
I tend to agree with you. However, after I left the Air Force I did work for a medium sized aerospce company that worked with the military in the US and overseas as well as every civil aircraft manufacturer. Do not deceive yourself. Private industry also suffer from many of the same problems.
The use of civilian contractors causes significant problems with government expertise in the development of new weapon systems. I saw first hand the continual downgrading of the role of government engineers in the development, design and testing of these products. It costs the govenment access to the best and the brightest talent. (Pay is a factor as well, but not the only consideration.) Contractors and consultants also have significant disincentives as well. Lastly, the drive to privatize as much of the government as possible drives up costs and lessens accountability.
Point being we have been bailing out crappy failed corporations and supporting them for nearly 50 years now. Hell, I bet Lockhead wasn’t the first. Bailing out our banks, nothing original, repubs loving bailouts, hell yeah when it suits them. Little changed in our Corpocracy, check. Corporate Socialism wasn’t invented when Obama came to power.
Next time I will diemvowell the comments so you can remind yourself about what you actually wrote.
Hmmm…What happen to the money developing the F-23 thru F-34?
40 years of affirmative action and reverse discrimination set asides…
Stupid Americans, can’t get anything to fly? Join the USN, I heard it now flies, floats and f.cks. Gee, I hope we don’t get invaded…, but if we do, let’s hope they begin with the fruits and flakes in San Fran or Santa Monica or Washington DC. Bend over America, you know you want to…
I’m not sure I have the numbers after so long but: I think that in today’s dollars we spent something like $400 billion dollars on modern jets during the height of the Cold War — replacing flying brick mostly F-4s Phantoms (all services) with super maneuverable, mission designed, fly-by-wire planes (“not a pound for air to ground” — Opps!).
Bought something like 5,000. Didn’t bother to have more than 7 fighter pairs — more than 14 of them — on guard on 9/11: why we couldn’t defend the second tower and the Pentagon even though we knew they were coming (the White House could have gone down too).
Meanwhile we are no longer facing an adversary across an Iron Curtain (I support the Vietnam
war BTW) with 10,000 fighters (or was it 20,000?) and 180 tank divisions (50,000 tanks they could actually man with reserve call up — don’t forget 10 parachute divisions). Just who are we going to fight with all this muscle? Are we going to fly to another solar system to fight for the intergalactic air force championship?
I’m not sure I have the numbers after so long but: I think that in today’s dollars we spent something like $400 billion dollars on modern jets during the height of the Cold War — replacing flying brick mostly F-4s Phantoms (all services) with super maneuverable, mission designed, fly-by-wire planes (“not a pound for air to ground” — Opps!).
Bought something like 5,000. Didn’t bother to have more than 7 fighter pairs — more than 14 of them — on guard on 9/11: why we couldn’t defend the second tower and the Pentagon even though we knew they were coming (the White House could have gone down too).
Meanwhile we are no longer facing an adversary across an Iron Curtain (I support the Vietnam
War BTW) with 10,000 fighters (or was it 20,000?) and 180 tank divisions (50,000 tanks they could actually man with reserve call up — don’t forget 10 parachute divisions). Just who are we going to fight with all this muscle? Are we going to fly to another solar system to fight for the intergalactic air force championship?
I’m not sure I have the numbers after so long but: I think that in today’s dollars we spent something like $400 billion dollars on modern jets during the height of the Cold War — replacing flying brick mostly F-4s Phantoms (all services) with super maneuverable, mission designed, fly-by-wire planes (“not a pound for air to ground” — Opps!).
Bought something like 5,000. Didn’t bother to have more than 7 fighter pairs — more than 14 of them — on guard on 9/11: why we couldn’t defend the second tower and the Pentagon even though we knew they were coming (the White House could have gone down too).
Meanwhile we are no longer facing an adversary across an Iron Curtain (I support the Vietnam War, BTW) with 10,000 fighters (or was it 20,000?) and 180 tank divisions (50,000 tanks they could actually man with reserve call up — don’t forget 10 parachute divisions). Just who are we going to fight with all this muscle? Are we going to fly to another solar system to fight for the intergalactic air force championship?
MovieGuy, we eliminate the crewed aircraft like the F-35 altogether. They’re too expensive for the environment in which they’ll be working. We go with armed uncrewed platforms, which are even stealthier and can achieve higher performance. Yeah, the fighter mafia which runs the United States Air Force and the US Navy’s aviation programs will complain because we’re closing the toy store, but I didn’t realize we were here to provide expensive toys for boys who haven’t grown up. If this platform served a purpose – a real purpose – I could understand keeping it, but in the world of the mid-21st century it doesn’t. Kill it, fast.