Category: Aviation

What I Really Hate About United Airlines

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On Hold for Hours

If you read of my recent travel problems, I should note that they were all weather related, and everyone at United was polite, and efficient, energetic, and quite competent.

I really mean that.

But, because of the inevitable consequences of the snowtastrophe, it meant that I spent hours on hold.

And United has licensed George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue as its theme, and so it is their on hold music.

So I heard it for hours ……… and hours ……… and hours  ……… AND HOURS ………

It’s a musical masterpiece, and I can no longer listen to it.

UAL, drop Rhapsody in Blue as your hold music, please.

The Navy Just Tried to Pull Out of the JSF Program

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It’s not particularly surprising. The F-35C is the most expensive variant, and it has no potential exports (the only operator of catapult equipped carriers are the US, the French, and the Brazilians), so it is not surprising that the navy requested a “break” from the JSF program:

OSD TOLD THE NAVY: YOU CAN’T TAKE A ‘BREAK’ FROM THE F-35C: According to a congressional source,  in its 2015 budget proposal, the Navy asked to take a three-year “break” from its production of the F-35C, its variant of the Joint Strike Fighter. Concerned this was a first step toward walking away from the program permanently, OSD told the Navy: no way.

 It’s an open secret that the Navy would prefer to invest more in its F-18 fighters rather than buy the F-35C. But if the Navy pulled out of the program, the unit cost — already under scrutiny —  would go up for the Air Force and the Marine Corps.

The Navy did not get their “time out” because Office of the Secretary of Defense understood that a 3 year break constituted a cancellation of that variant, because in 3 years it will cost even more, and the DoD budgets will be under more stress.

This is, to quote Joe Biden, “A big f%$#ing deal.”

A 23 Year Long Multi-Billion Dollar Long Contract Dispute Settled

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And, surprise, surprise, it is a sweetheart deal for the defense contractors: (paid subscription required)

After more than two decades and numerous attempts at a settlement, the U.S. government finally agreed to accept $400 million from General Dynamics and Boeing in the dispute over the Navy’s cancellation of the $4.8 billion A-12 Avenger II program.

 The settlement is a fraction of what the government sought when the lawsuit began, demanding $1.3 billion in restitution ($2.2 billion in 2014 dollars) for money spent on the stealthy carrier-based aircraft program that had yet to deliver an aircraft. And it is even smaller when compared with an agreement for $2.9 billion that was nearly negotiated in 2003.

 ………

 The Navy will receive three EA-18G Growlers that will be delivered on top of the 21 Boeing aircraft that were funded by Congress for fiscal 2014 and are expected to be delivered in 2016, according to the Navy.

 General Dynamics will provide $198 million in credits to the Navy toward the design, construction and delivery portions of the Zumwalt-class DDG-1000 destroyer.

 ………

 The dispute began in 1991, when then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney canceled the $4.8 billion stealth attack aircraft, run by General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas, which has since been acquired by Boeing. It was terminated in part due to the government’s conclusion that contractors were not meeting cost and schedule targets. The Navy demanded that contractors repay $1.3 billion to the government.

 The prime contractors sued the government, arguing the government should make penalty payments because the contract was canceled for “convenience,” not a failure to perform. The case festered in the court system, eventually reaching the Supreme Court.

 ………

 In 2011, 20 years after the start of the dispute, the Supreme Court considered the case. The Navy argued that the contractors had not completed the work they had promised. The contractors argued that the government held back classified information about stealth technology that hampered their effectiveness. Ultimately, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, where it remained until now.

They met none of their technical requirements, they missed their schedule, and they were hideously over budget, and the punishment for the (now effectively admitted with the settlement) misfeasance and malfeasance is that the contractors get to secure the status of existing programs.

The Pentagon is Procuring Weapons at the Expense of Real Capability

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Two years after the USAF selected the 50 year old U-2 over the block 3 RQ-4 Global Hawk, drone because the 50 year Dragon Lady was cheaper to buy, cheaper to operate, more reliable, and more capable, the USAF is trying to throw another bone to the military-industrial complex:

Less than two years after proposing termination and premature mothballing of the new Block 30 version—once eyed as a replacement for the venerable, high-flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft—the Pentagon leadership is toying with a complete reversal on its position as it works through options for the fiscal 2015 budget proposal.

In a resourcing management decision—the mechanism by which the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) responds to the services’ annual spending plans—Pentagon budgeters gutted U-2 funding, shifting more than $3 billion into the Global Hawk Block 30 account. The decision is not yet final, and it remains to be seen whether the service will maintain its position from the fiscal 2013 budget. It favored halting Block 30 work and operations and focusing solely on the Lockheed Martin U-2 as the high-altitude, standoff intelligence collector for the next decade or more.

………

At issue for the Global Hawk is a dive in the cost per flying hour (CPFH) for the aircraft. In earlier fiscal years, CPFH was near that of the U-2 at roughly $33,000 per hr. Fiscal 2013 numbers, recently in from the field, point to a CPFH closer to $25,000, according to a program source.

The notable decrease is due to a substantial spike in the number of hours flown, a shift partly related to the fielding of the first Block 40s outfitted with active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radars for ground surveillance, an Air Force official says. The official did not provide a total number for the year, but a larger number of hours allows fixed costs to be more diluted in the calculation. Though the Air Force has not publicly proposed terminating the Block 40 in budget plans, last year senior leaders were eyeing it for a kill. It was likely saved owing to the then open debate on the fate of Block 30.

Even if this new CPFH holds true in coming years, one program official notes that for some regions—such as the Pacific—Global Hawk must fly more hours to have an equitable time on station as the U-2. While CPFH may be lower for the Global Hawk, the figure is not reflective of the total cost to gather the needed intelligence.

To give an example, the unmanned air system (UAS) would have to fly 54% more flight hours to collect intelligence on areas in North Korea, the Middle East and Iran.

Even if this new CPFH (cost per flying hour) holds true in coming years, one program official notes that for some regions—such as the Pacific—Global Hawk must fly more hours to have an equitable time on station as the U-2. While CPFH may be lower for the Global Hawk, the figure is not reflective of the total cost to gather the needed intelligence.

To give an example, the unmanned air system (UAS) would have to fly 54% more flight hours to collect intelligence on areas in North Korea, the Middle East and Iran.

Nor is CPFH reflective of mission success rates between the two platforms. Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance collection is in high demand, and aircraft downtime is extremely worrisome for combatant commanders. In the Pacific, 55% of Global Hawk’s missions were canceled in fiscal 2013; 96% of the U-2’s missions were achieved. The U-2 was also scheduled for nearly three times as many missions. Global Hawk lacks anti-icing equipment and is not able to operate in severe weather. An upgrade to remedy the shortcoming is being developed by the Navy for its Triton Global Hawk variant, but it would cost money and time to field.

The program source argues that CPFH is not an accurate metric on which to make a decision. He notes that Global Hawks based in Guam have to transit for hours just to reach North Korea, whereas the U-2, based at Osan air base, South Korea, has a shorter commute.

Additionally, the service originally opted to terminate the aircraft because of the lackluster performance by its Raytheon Enhanced Integrated Sensor Suite—the camera used to collect visual, infrared, and radar images. Global Hawk also flies at a lower altitude—typically close to 50,000 ft.—making it more susceptible to some weather and offering less-than-optimal ranges for peering into an enemy’s territory. The U-2, by contrast, operates above 60,000 ft., and has nearly twice as much onboard power at the ready for collecting radar images. Forthcoming fielding of the secret, stealthy RQ-180 UAS (also developed by Northrop Grumman) probably contributed to the Air Force’s view that the Global Hawk is excessive (AW&ST Dec, 9, 2013, p. 20).

The only reason to do this is to throw some bones to Northrop-Grumman, the manufacturer of the RQ-4, so that some general can score a lucrative executive or consultant gig after they retire.

Our military-industrial complex is  corrupting and destroying our ability to defend ourselves.

Unsustainable, Dangerous, and a Threat to the American Way of Life

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I am referring, of course to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, whose price is twice what we are being told:

The massive government and industry lobbying and PR efforts behind the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are starting to pay off for JSF-maker Lockheed Martin and the military users of the radar-evading jet.

In recent weeks several news outlets have repeated the pro-JSF camp’s assertion that the F-35—planned to be the main warplane for the Air Force and Marines and half the Navy’s future fighter fleet—will soon cost just $85 million a copy or less in near-future dollars, thanks to an increasingly efficient production line.

The “good news” helps bolster the $400-billion weapons program, the most expensive ever.

But it’s not true. Not by a long shot. The much-maligned, single-engine F-35—which suffers from a complex design and a lack of maneuverability—currently costs twice what its proponents are projecting. And don’t buy the argument that the jet’s sticker price will substantially drop in coming years. Lockheed’s been making that claim for a long time now, and it hasn’t happened yet.

………

To put the F-35-boosters’ claims in context, Winslow Wheeler, an analyst at the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C., has calculated the true current cost of an F-35. It’s way more than anyone in official circles likes to admit.

Sticker shock

Forget the $85-million or $60-million figure being bandied about in the press. Each of the 29 F-35s the Pentagon is purchasing from Lockheed in 2014 costs between $182 million and $299 million. And that’s leaving out research and development spending since the late 1990s, which could soon exceed $50 billion and add $16 million to true long-term acquisition cost of each F-35.

No, Wheeler calculated only the per-plane production cost, which includes advance funding for long-lead parts, the main funding in the year of authorization plus modification funds to fix design flaws on the planes shortly after they roll out of the factory.

By that measure, one Air Force F-35A—the simplest of the three JSF models—currently costs $182 million. A vertical-landing Marine F-35B sets taxpayers back $252 million. The Navy’s carrier-compatible F-35C, still mired in serious development problems, comes in at a whopping $299 million per plane.

Bear in mind that in 2010, Lockheed predicted an F-35 would soon cost just $60 million. “Actual F-35 unit costs are today multiples of what Lockheed says they will be,” Wheeler points out.

This is insane.

We are living the Arthur C. Clarke story Superiority, (story here, read it, it is a hoot) which depicts a war lost by a superior power because of its superior scientific achievements, and its continual grasping for a technological leap forward.

Why We Can’t Have Nice Stuff

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Because our definition of “Nice Stuff” includes aircraft that require 4 years of repair work after an engine fire:

Almost four years after the Air Force said a B-2 sustained “minor damage,” the aircraft returned to the fleet at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., on Dec. 16, according to the service.

An engine fire grounded the “Spirit of Washington” in 2010. Since then, Air Force maintainers and engineers have worked to get one of the 20 B-2 stealth bombers remaining in the Air Force fleet back in the air.

The fact there are only 20 B-2s in the Air Force’s fleet increased the urgency of the repair and helped Air Force officials to make the decision not to scrap the project even though it took three years and nine months to complete.

………

Maintaining the B-2’s stealth qualities added to the challenge, according to officials. A particular challenge was removing the charcoal created by the fire from the aircraft’s skin.

Maintainers created a process in which they used dry ice pellets to remove charcoal from the skin.

The increasingly exotic technology upon which The Pentagon relies have become unsustainable.

Boeing And Saab Join Up for T-38 Replacement

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Unlike the competition, (shown) it appears that Saab/Boeing appears to be going with a clean sheet design:

Boeing and Saab have signed an agreement to jointly develop and build an all-new aircraft for the U.S. Air Force’s T-X trainer competition, aimed at a replacement for the service’s 540-plus T-38 trainers. Boeing will be the prime contractor, but both companies will invest in the new aircraft, which will compete with three candidates based on non-U.S. off-the-shelf aircraft: the BAE Systems Hawk, offered by partner Northrop Grumman; the Alenia M-346, with General Dynamics as the prime; and the Korean Aerospace Industries T-50, proposed by development partner Lockheed Martin.

 Although Boeing and Saab are giving no details of the design—which in any case is described as flexible, depending on an Air Force requirement that has yet to firm up—it will not be based on Saab’s Gripen, beyond incorporating “some Gripen DNA,” an industry source says. This shows that the two companies expect to offer a smaller and cheaper aircraft than the Gripen-sized T-50.

 On the other hand, Saab’s expertise is in high-performance aircraft, pointing toward a fast and agile trainer that can produce pilots ready to handle complex fighters with no two-seat versions, like the F-22, F-35 and (so far) the JAS 39E.

 Discussions between Saab and Boeing were reported in September but have been underway for “much longer,” a Saab source says. Saab’s demonstrated capability in designing aircraft for flexible, affordable production is the key to the agreement, says an industry source. At the Paris air show in June, Saab President/CEO Hakan Bushke said the company had reduced production costs on the Gripen C/D even while slowing annual production to 8-12 units from 28, and that the larger JAS 39E would be cheaper still. “Bushke has made no secret of the fact that Saab is highly profitable at such rates,” says a Saab official.

The fact that the expertise that the Swedes bring to the table is the ability to deliver on time and on budget is yet another case of the the almost 400 year fallout from the sinking of the Vasa.

While Saab is adamant that the trainer will not be a Gripen E derivative, I’ve always thought that if you took the base Gripen, pulled the afterburner off of the F-404 (Volvo RM-12), and pulled out the radar, and removed some hard-points, they could have a decent trainer, though the direct operating cost would almost certainly be more than the that of the Hawk, which has about ½ the installed thrust of the Gripen.

Looking the competitors, with installed thrust varying by almost a factor 3, one can not help but think that the requirements of the program are not clear to the bidders.

Rand Corp. Study Finds that Joint Aircraft Costs More than Service Specific Aircraft

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Comparing Apples to Apples

Considering the history of multi-service fighter programs, the F-111 comes to mind, but there is also the JPATS, JSTARS and the Osprey tilt-rotor, it should surprise no one that Rand Corp’s analysis of the such programs shows that there are no savings. In fact, it shows that developing aircraft variants separately is less expensively than a common aircraft with service-specific variants.

The theoretical savings are a mirage:

A Rand Corp. report produced to guide future U.S. Air Force program plans has concluded that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program will cost more than three single-service programs would have done. That conclusion drew a sharp riposte from Lockheed Martin, which accused the report’s authors of using “outdated data” that overstated the F-35’s projected operating costs by a factor of two.

 Lockheed Martin based its criticism on numbers that cannot be found in the report. The company declined to give a source for those numbers, stating that they were “government data.” The Joint Strike Fighter program office distanced itself from the argument, saying it had “no real issues” with the report, and did not confirm any of the company’s figures.

 Rand’s Project Air Force team produced the report, which was requested in 2012 by then-commander of Air Force Materiel Command Gen. Donald Hoffman, as it became clear the JSF would be running many years behind the schedule that was planned up to 2010.

The study was based on historic data up to November 2011, including the fiscal year 2010 selected acquisition report (SAR). Rand, a think tank founded by the Air Force and still closely associated with the service, did not use the fiscal year 2011 SAR (issued in March 2012) which disclosed a three-year slip in development and actually reported higher cost projections than the 2010 report.

Because the JSF program is incomplete, and because no other joint fighter program has been completed as planned, the researchers used data from a variety of programs—from the F/A-18E/F and F-22 fighters to the T-6A turboprop trainer and E-8C surveillance platform—to gauge the historical cost increases in joint and single-service programs.

They did not focus on absolute costs, but on the percentage growth of estimated costs between the launch of a full-scale development program (Milestone B; MS B) and points five and nine years after MS B, the latter corresponding to the most recent JSF data available in late 2011.

………

Researchers compared the actual growth of F-35 estimates at the nine-year mark with growth rates for three separate programs based on historic growth with the F-22, the most comparable single-service fighter program. The same adjustments were applied to O&S costs, although a later and higher estimate of F-22 operational costs (at 14 years after MS B) was also included.

The study’s conclusion: The JSF estimated life-cycle cost (LCC) in 2010 was already higher than that of three single-service programs. “Under none of the plausible conditions that we analyzed did JSF have a lower LCC than the notional single-service programs.” The report does not recommend any changes to the JSF program, but advises the Air Force to avoid joint projects in future.

Of course, this does not answer why this is so.

One could argue that it is typically ambitious of joint programs, since the military’s goal of getting more bang for the buck is almost always more bang, not less buck, but if that were the case, the JPATS, the T-6 Texan II, where an extant turboprop trainer was adapted to a tri-service primary trainer would not have had a greater cost growth than the T-45 Goshawk, a naval advanced trainer, where an advanced jet was fully navalized to to land on carriers, but it did have a greater percentage cost growth.

When you further add the specifics of the JSF, specifically the Marine Corps requirement for STOVL, which f%$#s up the other variants in some very profound ways.

Saab Wins Brazil’s Fighter for Gripen NG by Turning Over Recipe to Special Sauce

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It’s been a long time coming, and through a number of odd twists and turns.

Earlier in the process, then Brazilian President Lula da Silva said that there was a deal with the French for the Dassault Rafale, largely for foreign policy reasons, but the defense establishment was fairly vehemently opposed to this, because of the much higher purchase and life cycle costs of the twin engine Rafale as compared to the single engine Gripen NG.

Still most of the stories seem to bury the lede:

Brazil has selected the Saab Gripen E/F for the 36 aircraft F-X2 requirement to replace its air force’s older combat types.

With an acquisition cost in the region of $4.5 billion, the Gripens will replace the Dassault Mirage 2000C fighters operated by the 1st Air Defence Group and a number of the modernised Northrop F-5EMs in four other Air Force squadrons.

The long-awaited announcement was made on 18 December by Brazilian defence minister Celso Amorim and Brazilian air force Chief Gen Juniti Saito.

The decision was driven by aircraft performance, transfer of technology and low through-life costs, according to the officials.

Contract negotiation is expected to last between 10 and 12 months.

Saab has guaranteed the total transfer of technology of “all systems” including the weapons command software, which will allow future integration of Brazilian-developed missiles and weapons.

(Emphasis Mine)

Both the F/A-18 E/F and the Rafale software suites are far more tightly integrated,  and the software of the F-35 is even more tightly integrated, which makes it more difficult to modify to incorporate new systems.

Saab deliberately chose to put a firewall between flight critical and tactical software, meaning that crashing the latter won’t crash the whole aircraft, which creates an easier upgrade and testing path.

Tinfoil Hat Time

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Loretta Fuddy, the director of the Hawaii Department of Health, was killed in a plane crash.

Ms. Fuddy was the official who released Obama’s “Long Form” birth certificate.

Within minutes, “whacko, my parents are first cousins, X-Files wannabe, black helicopter, tinfoil hat wearing, stupid, dim-witted, thinks pro wrestling is real,”* lunatic teabaggers were already saying that she was murdered for knowing too much:

When President Obama marched into the White House briefing room with his Hawaiian birth certificate in April 2011, he said: “I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest.”

How right he was. The release of his long-form birth certificate did not eliminate the “birther” movement, which wrongly contends that Obama was born in Kenya and is therefore ineligible to be president. Although conspiracists had demanded its release, once he made public the document it merely shifted the debate. Some birthers accused Obama of forgery, while others turned their focus to his college transcripts in hopes of proving that he had applied for admission as a foreign student. (He had not.)

And this week, birthers seized on a plane crash off Hawaii that killed one person: state public health Director Loretta Fuddy, the woman who verified the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate.

Skeptics turned to social media Thursday to suggest that Obama had played some role in Fuddy’s death. Twitter posts included: “The WH tying up loose ends?” “What did she really know?” and “R.I.P. Loretta Fuddy — we’ll know the truth about Barack Hussein Obama, regardless.”

Donald Trump, a longtime doubter of Obama’s birthplace, also weighed in on Twitter: “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.”

That reaction didn’t surprise those who study conspiracy theorists.

Wankers.

*Sorry, I think that I just channeled the comedian Denis Leary.

This is Amazingly Not Stupid

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Note new fuselage with rear ramp

A couple of weeks ago, I commented on the absurdity of using the V-22 to replace the C-2 for carrier-onboard-delivery (COD).

Basically, the V-22 is too expensive, lacks sufficient internal volume, is a maintenance hog, and lacks sufficient range.

One of the proposals is to update the C-2, which is based on the E-2, with the propulsion and aerodynamics updates that have been applied to the latest version of the Hawkeye.

LM is proposing a Refurbished S-3 Viking with a new fuselage:

Competition is the mother of invention, and with a handful of prime contractors chasing fewer new programs, none are willing to pass on a chance to compete, even if it means dusting off an old product.

 An example is the U.S. Navy’s emerging requirement to renew its carrier-onboard-delivery (COD) fleet. Northrop Grumman is proposing to remanufacture the existing C-2 Greyhounds, while the Bell Boeing team is offering new V-22 Osprey tiltrotors.

 Now Lockheed Martin has entered the fray with a proposal to take U.S. Navy S-3 Vikings out of desert storage, refurbish them and fit them with a new, larger fuselage suited to the cargo role. Retired from carrier decks in 2009, the twin-turbofan S-3 was designed for anti-submarine warfare but was also used for cargo delivery, electronic intelligence and aerial refueling.

It’s most famous use was delivering a Commander Codpiece (George W. Bush) to a carrier deck to announce “Mission Accomplished”.

Lockheed Martin’s KC-3 proposal for the Navy COD mission would reuse the S-3’s cockpit, wing, tail, engines and landing gear, but mate them to a new wider and longer fuselage with a rear loading ramp. “We’ve done the high-level engineering on whether it can take the cat and trap loads, and we believe it will,” Fearnow says. “We’ve run the concept past the Navy and responded to the RFI [request for information].”

 The KC-3, with its new aluminum fuselage, would actually be lighter than the S-3, once all of its mission avionics are removed, says Fearnow, but more work needs to be done on engineering the modification and assessing the condition of airframes and engines in storage. “We’re not completely there yet. We believe it can be cost-competitive, but we have off-ramps in case we do not go forward,” he notes.

Note that the unrefuelled range of the C-2 Grayhound is 2,400 km (before upgrades) and its top speed is 635 km/h, the V-22 has a 1,627 km range and a 509 km/h top speed, and the S-3 has a range of 5,121 km and a top speed of 795 km/h.

If I were running the Pentagon, I would probably go with upgraded/new C-2s, they will almost certainly be the cheapest to acquire, would probably have the lowest operational cost, and they the fewest changes to existing operations.

Why the Saab Gripen is different From the JSF

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We don’t care, we don’t have to…we’re the phone company.

While the customers of the F-35 are being shut out of its software, and are unable to integrate their own weapons systems, Saab is using its willingness to incorporate outside systems to make the platform more attractive:

A focus on realistic requirements has helped Swedish industry and government teams integrate weapons on the Gripen faster and at lower cost than similar efforts elsewhere, Saab says.

 Two new weapons for the Gripen, the Raytheon GBU-49 Enhanced Paveway II laser-plus-GPS bomb and Diehl Iris-T infrared air-to-air missile (AAM), were successfully integrated in 2006-09, according to Gideon Singer, technical director for Gripen exports, and Lisa Abom, head of the Saab project office for engineering and weapons. Flight testing of the Thales Digital Joint Reconnaissance Pod for South Africa’s Gripens was completed in 2011 in “less than eight months,” they say.

 The Gripen was also selected as the test platform for the MBDA Meteor AAM. The first production firing took place this summer and qualification firings for full integration of the Gripen will be complete in 2014. Sweden will be the first air force to field the new missile, with the Gripen MS 20 package in 2015. That upgrade will also include the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb.

………

 Saab devotes 14% of integration costs to planning and coordination, Singer and Albom told the Defense IQ International Fighter Conference here this month. One lesson is to “reach early agreement,” they said. This means defining and clearly interpreting requirements, limitations and the approach to testing. “You need to avoid terms like ‘full envelope,’” Singer remarked. “If you ask, the operational pilot will often say that he doesn’t need to go supersonic with three tanks and all these bombs.”

The JSF is such a huge program that they don’t care, much like Ma Bell in the 1960s.

Lockheed, and the Pentagon, see the closed nature as a source of profit (for Lockheed), and as a way to preserve the industrial base and to freeze out foreign competition (for both), and as such, it will be an upgrade nightmare, even for the so-called “partners” in the program.

The Triumph of Wicked Stupid Ideas

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It appears that the US Marines are to replace the C-2 carrier onboard delivery (COD) aircraft with the V-22, because increased orders should lower the unit price of the V-22 and allow the Marines more of the expensive, crash prone, and maintenance intensive dog.

The Marines have been very good at lobbying for really bad ideas lately, the EFV,* adding STOVL to the JSF, and now, this:

“The C-2 makes us so much more flexible that we could support three separated groups, if necessary,” boasted Rear Adm. Marshall White, commanding air forces in the Western Pacific.

Faster-flying, longer-ranged and more capacious than the predecessor C-1 cargo plane, the ungainly C-2s and their crews were the unheralded heroes of the naval crises of 1968 and countless incidents since. Produced in a second batch in the 1980s and since upgraded, today a force of 35 C-2s based in key locations allows America’s 10 carriers to range the globe, waging aerial war and responding to diplomatic crises without planners having to worry about stranding the vessels beyond range of aerial resupply.

Rarely have so few airplanes of a single—and relatively unsophisticated—type been so vitally important to the conduct of a superpower’s global affairs. “The C-2A allows carriers and the fleet to maintain a ready position by supporting the vital supply line,” says Brian Scolpino, who oversees the C-2 force for the Navy.

But the Navy could end up retiring the C-2s and replacing them with a far inferior plane—one that’s not really a plane at all, but a controversial hybrid craft. The Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey can take off vertically and cruise like an airplane thanks to its rotating wingtip engines, but lacks the C-2’s far-flying efficiency and its ease of use rooted in nearly 50 years of institutional experience.

………

The Pentagon is no stranger to pricey, ill-advised weapons development scheme, but even in this wasteful institution the plan to scrap the C-2 stands out as especially self-defeating. America’s world-spanning carrier fleet is one of its key advantages over its enemies. Constraining the flattops’ resupply could force them to stay closer to their home ports, reducing Washington’s options in the event of war and diminishing U.S. influence during peacetime.

………

The Navy is well aware of the Cod’s enduring qualities. “The C-2A has not experienced any limitations as the Cod aircraft,” Scolpino writes. But concerted lobbying by the Marines and Boeing have practically forced the sailing branch to at least consider buying the V-22. If politics triumph and the tiltrotor takes the C-2’s place, the fleet could find itself moving backwards in time, to a state of constrained fighting ability not unlike that that preceded the Cod’s arrival in 1966.

………

But the V-22 has less range and less payload than the C-2: Northrop’s prop plane can haul five tons of stuff 1,500 miles, but the V-22’s range with the same load could be as little as 50 miles, according to Navy statistics and Bell and Boeing’s own literature. That’s in part because the V-22 has just over a third the internal space of a C-2 and in the case of bulkier supplies would likely need to haul them slung by a rope suspended from the fuselage—a huge source of drag.

………

Extending the tiltrotor’s flying distance would require the constant attention of Air Force aerial tankers, which can cost up to $10,000 per hour to operate. The V-22 is also slightly slower than the C-2, can’t fly as high because it’s unpressurized and costs more: $68 million for a new V-22 compared to an estimated $50 million for a new C-2.

Note that the Marines succeeded in delaying the CH-53K, which had been under budget and ahead of schedule, in order to secure more orders for the V-22 as well.

This is a complete clusterf%$#.

*Full disclosure, I worked for General Dynamics, the prime contractor, on this vehicle when it was called the AAAV.

Sikorsky S-97, the Proposed Production Application of Advancing Blade Helicopter Technology, Enters Final Assembly

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Fuselage is on its way to Sikorsky


3-view images are courtesy of Sikorsky

I’ve had an affection for this technology since the Advancing Blade Concept in the 1980s.

It’s simpler than a tilt rotor and does things like autorotation and a lower disk loading, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it flies:

Sikorsky will begin final assembly of its S-97 Raider helicopter prototype this week, according to company officials.

 That puts the helicopter manufacturer — which is competing for the US Army’s Armed Aerial Scout program — on track for a first flight at the end of 2014.

 “It’s just a really exciting foundational milestone for us, and it’s great to be leaving the design phase of Raider and getting into the build phase,” Chris Van Buiten, Sikorsky Innovations vice president, said.

 The Raider is based on the X-2 technology developed by Sikorsky in the late 2000s, but grows the size and weight significantly. Where the X-2 demonstrator was a one-person, 5,000-pound platform, the Raider will be roughly 11,000 pounds with room for six troops in its combat assault mode. In reconnaissance mode, that space could be used for extra equipment or ammunition.

 Despite that growth, Sikorsky executives are confident the design will bring a mix of speed and maneuverability that helicopters have not yet achieved.

 “This thing has to fly faster than 220 knots” at cruising speed, Van Buiten said when asked about key performance targets. “It has got to do more than a 3G turn at speed. It has to demonstrate hover at 10,000 feet and 95 degrees. Those are the non-negotiables.”

Hopefully, this will work better than the over priced and under performing bucked of bolts called the V-22 Osprey.

A Low Cost Low Complexity Solution, So the US Air Force Will Hate It

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Click for full size


Note Widely Spaced Engines for Damage Tolerance


Performance specs indicate that it could also serve as a trainer


Structures appear to be rather low tech by aerospace standards

Textron is offering an unsolicited proposal for a simpler close support aircraft: (paid subscription required, there is also a CNN story with a bit less detail)

It takes a gutsy move for a company to pitch a brand new, clean-sheet aircraft to the Pentagon for a set of requirements it has not even said it wants, and to present this idea while defense spending in the U.S. faces massive cuts.

 But, that is exactly what a newly formed joint venture between Textron and a young company—AirLand Enterprises, formed in 2011—is doing. Textron is best known for its Cessna business jets and turboprops, as well as Bell Helicopter’s long experience with rotorcraft. Its partner, AirLand, however, was formed by a small group of investors, including retired defense officials, to explore a new concept for light attack.

 It could actually be the scarce funding environment that validates the strategy behind the joint venture’s new aircraft—the two-seat, twin-engine Scorpion. The team is unveiling its self-funded project Sept. 16 at the annual Air Force Association Air & Space Conference outside Washington, and officials gave Aviation Week an exclusive sneak peak.

 The Scorpion demonstrator is intended to whet the U.S. Air Force’s appetite with the promise of a low procurement and operating cost. The pitch is for this aircraft, which is optimized for 5-hr. endurance with onboard intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) collectors and weapons, to handle the Air Force’s low-end missions such as U.S.-based interdiction, quick-reaction natural disaster support and air sovereignty patrols. The goal is to field an aircraft capable of operating for less than $3,000 per flying hour; the company declined to cite a target unit cost. By contrast, the Pentagon in June cited the cost per flying hour of the F-16, which currently performs many of these missions, as $24,899.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, F-15s, F-16s and A-10s have been used for patrols and close air support in completely uncontested airspace. This was overkill, according to some military officials. Built for high-speed, high-G maneuvers, these aircraft made little use of their strengths in these conflicts, but were needed to drop ordnance and provide armed overwatch for ground troops.

Aside from the obvious correction, that the A-10 was not built for high speed, high-G maneuvers, it is clear that the F-15 and F-15 are ill suited to this role: They are too expensive, and they prosecute these missions at speeds and altitudes that are too high, and with far less endurance over the battlefield, particularly at low altitude where CAS aircraft should do their business, than either this aircraft or the A-10.

The A-10 is designed to attack tanks trying to attack NATO through the Fulda Gap, so it is much larger and heavier than is necessary (It’s empty weight is more than max weight for the Scorpion) for a low intensity conflict like Iraq or Afghanistan.

It should be noted that the USAF has been trying to get rid of the A-10 almost since it entered service.

One of the things that I don’t get about this aircraft

Though designed as a tandem-seat aircraft, Scorpion can be flown by a single pilot. Textron is building it to include a highly simplified and reconfigurable bay that is capable of carrying 3,000 lb. of weapons or intelligence-collecting equipment; the aircraft also has six hard points total. The twin Honewell TF731 engines were selected to provide ample power and cooling for a variety of ISR payloads, Donnelly says. Though used for the demonstrator, these engines could be swapped out.

I’m not sure why you want to have an internal weapons bay on what is clearly a non-stealthy subsonic airframe.

I think that this might be a way to create a large avionics bay without having to spend years (decades) developing the custom systems that the Air Force would likely demand.

That being said, I think that this aircraft is dead on arrival.  Low cost and simplicity makes it more difficult for retired Generals to snag highly remunerative jobs with the other side of the military industrial complex.

Burying the Lede

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In an article on Korean fighter purchase plans, there is a lot of discussion about their next fighter purchase:

Boeing’s F-15SE Silent Eagle has been selected as the only qualified bidder in South Korea’s F-X Phase 3 competition for 60 fighters—but the country’s air force is lobbying to overturn the decision in favor of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

 A win in South Korea would extend the F-15 production line into the next decade and launch an improved version that could compete for future fighter requirements in the 2020s. That outcome seems likely following the decision of the South Korean purchasing authority, the Defense Acquisition Program Agency (DAPA), to eliminate first the F-35 as too costly and then the Eurofighter Typhoon for a bidding irregularity—although EADS, representing the consortium in the South Korean deal, disputes DAPA’s decision.

(emphasis mine)

OK, let’s look at this.

The F-15SE has:

  • A larger weapons load.
  • Greater range.
  • Higher speed.
  • a 2nd crew member giving greater flexibility in deploying weapons.
  • A 2nd engine.
  • The ability to develop weapons and systems for the platform in Korea.
  • The ability to perform depot level maintenance in country.

The F-35 has:

  • Some degree of all aspect stealth.

And for giving up all of that, you have to pay more, a lot more for the F-35.

The F-35 simply costs too much.

    A Very Good Essay on the Problems with the F-35

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    While there are a number of problems, a protracted development process, unrealistic (and constantly changing) requirements, “cost as an independent variable”, and the need for jointness, but this article makes the point that when we look at the performance issues of the airframe, they are almost entirely a function of the STOVL requirements foisted on the airframe by the US Marine Corps:

    ………

    But the chorus of praise is wrong. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — a do-it-all strike jet being designed by Lockheed Martin to evade enemy radars, bomb ground targets and shoot down rival fighters — is as troubled as ever. Any recent tidbits of apparent good news can’t alter a fundamental flaw in the plane’s design with roots going back decades.

    Owing to heavy design compromises foisted on the plane mostly by the Marine Corps, the F-35 is an inferior combatant, seriously outclassed by even older Russian and Chinese jets that can fly faster and farther and maneuver better. In a fast-moving aerial battle, the JSF “is a dog … overweight and underpowered,” according to Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C.

    And future enemy planes, designed strictly with air combat in mind, could prove even deadlier to the compromised JSF.

    It doesn’t really matter how smoothly Lockheed and the government’s work on the new warplane proceeds. Even the best-manufactured JSF is a second-rate fighter where it actually matters — in the air, in life-or-death combat against a determined foe. And that could mean a death sentence for American pilots required to fly the vulnerable F-35.

    ‘Can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run’

    The F-35’s inferiority became glaringly obvious five years ago in a computer simulation run by John Stillion and Harold Scott Perdue, two analysts at RAND, a think tank in Santa Monica, California. Founded in 1948, RAND maintains close ties to the Air Force. The air arm provides classified data, and in return RAND games out possible war scenarios for government planners.

    In Stillion and Perdue’s August 2008 war simulation, a massive Chinese air and naval force bore down on Beijing’s longtime rival Taiwan amid rising tensions in the western Pacific. A sudden Chinese missile barrage wiped out the tiny, outdated Taiwanese air force, leaving American jet fighters based in Japan and Guam to do battle with Beijing’s own planes and, hopefully, forestall a bloody invasion.

    ………

    To add insult to strategic injury, one of the most modern Chinese prototype warplanes might actually be an illicit near-copy of the F-35 — albeit a more intelligent copy that wisely omits the most compromising aspects of the U.S. plane. It’s possible that in some future war, America’s JSFs could be shot down by faster, deadlier, Chinese-made JSF clones.
    The Chinese J-31 appears to be based on the F-35. Via Chinese Internet
    The F-35 that could have been

    At least twice since 2007 Chinese hackers have stolen data on the F-35 from the developers’ poorly-guarded computer servers, potentially including detailed design specifications. Some of the Internet thieves “appear to be tied to the Chinese government and military,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel claimed.

    The September 2012 debut of China’s latest jet fighter prototype, the J-31, seemed to confirm Hagel’s accusation. The new Chinese plane, built by the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation, bears an uncanny external resemblance to the F-35: same twin tail fins, same chiseled nose, same wing shape. “It certainly looks like the Chinese got their hands on some [F-35] airframe data,” said Richard Aboulafia, a vice president at the Teal Group, an arms industry consultancy in Virginia.

    But the J-31 lacks many of the features that were included in the F-35 “mainly or entirely because of STOVL,” according to Aviation Week writer and fighter expert Bill Sweetman.

    Namely, the J-31 does not have a lift fan or even a space for a lift fan. The omission apparently allowed Chinese engineers to optimize the new plane for speed, acceleration, maneuverability and flying range — and to add good pilot visibility and a second rearward engine — instead of having to build the plane around a pretty much useless vertical-takeoff capability that slows it down, limits it to one motor and blocks the pilot’s view.

    ………

    Jet design like any engineering practice requires disciplined choices. The JSF is the embodiment of ambivalence — a reflection of the government and Lockheed’s inability to say that some things could not or should not be done. “It’s not clear with the F-35 that we had a strong sense of what the top priority was — trying to satisfy the Marines, the Navy or the Air Force,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Dan Ward, an expert in weapons acquisition who has been critical of complex, expensive development efforts.

    By contrast, the Chinese J-31 does not appear compromised at all. Surrounded by rivals with powerful air forces — namely India, Russia, Japan and U.S. Pacific Command — and with no grudge-holding Marine Corps to hijack fighter design, it would make sense that China prioritized the air-combat prowess of its new jet over any historical score-settling.

    That apparently apolitical approach to (admittedly illicit) warplane design appears to have paid dividends for the Shenyang-made jet. “With no lift fan bay to worry about, the designers have been able to install long weapon bays on the centerline,” Sweetman wrote. The centerline bay helps keep the J-31 skinny and therefore likely fast and maneuverable — in any event, faster and more maneuverable than the F-35, which in a decade’s time could be pretty much the only new U.S. jet the Chinese air force might face in battle.

    If Stillion and Perdue’s simulation ever comes true and the U.S. goes to war with China in the air, F-35s dragged down by their lift fans could be knocked out of the sky by Chinese-made F-35 clones that are faster and more maneuverable, because they never had lift fans.

    A couple of notes here.

    First, much of the baggage of the lift fan occurs even with the non-lift fan variants, the tubby fuselage, the poor aft vision, and an engine that has a thrust to weight ratio of engines from the 1970s.

    I would also note that the 20 year long development process did not help.

    Bummer of a Birthmark, Boeing

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    A Boeing 787 caught fire at Heathrow, though there are no indications that batteries are involved:

    Investigators classified the fire that broke out on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner parked at London’s Heathrow airport as a “serious incident” but have found no evidence it was caused by the plane’s batteries, Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said on Saturday.

     The question of whether the fire was connected to the batteries is crucial because the entire global fleet of Dreamliners, Boeing’s groundbreaking new flagship jet, was grounded for three months this year due to battery-related problems.

     The AAIB designation fell just short of a full-blown “accident” on the scale it uses to describe investigations. The agency’s preliminary probe is expected to take several days, opening up Boeing to more questions about its top-selling plane.

    When Boeing decided that it would be a good idea to outsource most of its expertise to “risk sharing partners”, it was pretty much inevitable.

    As I noted 2 years ago in the case of Dell Computer, this is penny wise and pound foolish:

    So the decline of manufacturing in a region sets off a chain reaction. Once manufacturing is outsourced, process-engineering expertise can’t be maintained, since it depends on daily interactions with manufacturing. Without process-engineering capabilities, companies find it increasingly difficult to conduct advanced research on next-generation process technologies. Without the ability to develop such new processes, they find they can no longer develop new products. In the long term, then, an economy that lacks an infrastructure for advanced process engineering and manufacturing will lose its ability to innovate.

    Boeing’s problems are further complicated by the fact that its partners did not have the time to develop the expertise to do the job right, so now we have a troubled airliner where the sum of the parts is less than the whole.

    OK, I’m Impressed With this Vid of the PAK-FA

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    Here is a video of the Russian PAK-FA in flight test.

    It appears to be in a flat spin that it recovers from fairly easily.

    It looks like the “stinger” between the engines has been slightly modified, probably to accommodate an anti-spin chute.

    I think that this video highlights a difference between Russian and US philosophies on stealthy airframes.

    Specifically, the US focuses a lot more on the stealth aspects, while the Russians are more focused on outright aerodynamic performance.

    An example of this is the cooling arrangements.

    The US F-22 and F-35 are constructed much like thermos bottles, with the cooling being accomplished by dumping heat the fuel before it is burnt.

    It makes for an airframe free of radar reflectors that might be created by cooling scoops, but it also means that about 10% of the fuel on an aircraft is unusable, because it needs to stay on the aircraft as a heat sink.

    By the comparison, the PAK-FA prototypes (This may change with the final model) seem to have a fair numbers of inlets and exhausts.

    I am not sure how this will all play out, though I think that the Russian aircraft will be easier for a low tech military to maintain, though that has been the case since WWII.

    H/t The DEW Line