Tag: Military

The Costs of a Military Establishment

Costa Rica abolished its military in 1949.

A major has now shown that this is associated with a 0.8% annual increase in per capita GDP:

This article estimates the causal long-term developmental effects of Costa Rica’s constitutional abolishment of its army in 1949 after the 1948 civil war.

This is done by performing synthetic control estimates and analyzing the political history of Costa Rica in the 1940s and 1950s. We find that upon the abolishment of the army, Costa Rica’s annual average per capita GDP growth increased from 1.42% to 2.28% in the 1950-2010 period relative to a counterfactual Costa Rica that did not abolish its army. This implies that Costa Rica doubled its per capita GDP every 30 years rather than every 49. These estimates are robust to different model specifications and we show that this shock is exclusive to Costa Rica in Latin America. Furthermore, we provide evidence that the positive effects associated with this increase in the per capita GDP growth rates have endured over time; namely because the abolition of the army granted a political and institutional context that allowed the country to devote more resources to public spending, which in turn contributed to its long run development. Our case study findings are evidence that committing to peace and democracy pays off in the long run.

Running the numbers, this means that Costa Rica’s per capita GDP is 75% larger than what it would have been with a military.

Obviously a part of this difference is because the resources of Costa Rica have not been diverted from other purposes.

To quote Dwight Eisenhower, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

Another reason for this is that the presence of a military in Latin America has led to repeated coups against military governments, and repeated insurgencies as a result, which are likely even more disruptive to the well-being of the nation.  (Google the School of the Americas to better understand how this was largely an artifact of US Policy)

So Not Reassured


“Helicopter Destroyer,” my ass!

I read this yesterday, December 7, and for some reason, I was not reassured at reports that the Japanese Navy will be reconstituting its aircraft carrier fleet:

The Japanese government announced on Nov. 27, 2018 that it plans to modify its two Izumo-class helicopter carriers to support F-35B Lightning II stealth fighters.

The announcement follows years of speculation that began even before Izumo commissioned into service in 2015.

“Since we are equipped with such vessels, it is desirable that we will use them for various purposes,” Japanese defense minister Takeshi Iwaya told reporters. “We would like to advance our research and studies on this.”

………

Japan’s post-war constitution forbids offensive military operations. For decades, the country’s leaders have interpreted the prohibition to mean the Japanese navy legally could not possess aircraft carriers.

The Japanese fleet sidestepped the carrier-ban by acquiring what it called “helicopter destroyers” — that is, surface warships with hangars and unusually large flight decks.

The Izumo class stretched the credibility of the “helicopter destroyer” moniker. The type lacks major weaponry. Its flight deck extends from stem to stern. It’s a carrier in everything but name. In practice, Izumo and sister ship Kaga, which commissioned in 2017, only have embarked helicopters.

Each 814 feet long and displacing 27,000 tons of water while fully loaded, Izumo and Kaga are small for carriers. The U.S. Navy’s supercarriers each are a thousand feet long and displace more than 100,000 tons. The Americans’ amphibious assault ships — which support helicopters, AV-8B Harrier jump jets and F-35s — are around 850 feet long and displace 41,000 tons.

Yep, nothing to see here, move along.

This Business Will Get out of Control. It Will Get out of Control and We’ll Be Lucky to Live through It.


A Sh%$ Mess of Planes and Guns


Geography is a Bitch

Russia and the Ukraine are having confrontations over ship transits in the black sea, which has culminated in the Russians seizing 3 Ukrainian military vessels after a ramming, and a possible exchange of gunfire.

In response, the Ukrainian President is calling for martial law:

The Ukrainian president has proposed the imposition of martial law after Russian forces shot at and seized three Ukrainian navy vessels in the Black Sea, injuring six crew members according to Kiev, in a major escalation of tensions between the two countries.

On Monday, Ukrainian MPs will vote on whether to declare nationwide martial law in response to the attack following an emergency war cabinet held by the president, Petro Poroshenko. He said that the imposition of martial law would not imply a declaration of war and was only intended for defensive purposes.

The UN security council will also hold an emergency meeting on Monday about the incident following a request from Ukraine, the US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley confirmed.

Sunday was a day of rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine, with hostilities focusing on the Kerch strait, which connects the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea. Russia has constructed a $3.69bn (£2.7bn) bridge over the strait following its occupation of Crimea to link the Russian mainland and the peninsula. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, officially opened the bridge in May.

The FSB, Russia’s principal security agency, said its patrol boats had seized three naval vessels from Ukraine and used weapons to make them stop, adding that the boats had entered its territorial waters illegally.

About the only thing that could make this worse is if the, “Very Serious People,” in the US foreign policy and defense establishments, aka, “The Blog,” decide that this should be a problem for them to fix.  (Which, of course, they will)

We are completely screwed.

This is Going to Become a Disaster


I propose that it be named Zeitverschwendung


France and Germany are starting to set up requirements for their next generation fighter, and it will be a complete disaster.

I know this from one data point, it’s size.

The aircraft will have 2 engines in the 30,000 lb thrust class, which implies a massive, and massively expensive, aircraft.

This is the start of a cycle.

It starts with over aggressive specifications and unrealistic schedule and budget, and as the already excessive cost climbs, the program slips, and is restructured in the quest to find cost sharing partners, and finally, a fleet hobbled by inadequate numbers and excessive costs:

France and Germany’s pursuit of a next-generation combat aircraft for the 2040s may have been plagued by quarrels over workshare and export opportunities in recent weeks, but behind the scenes there appears to be agreement about the way forward.

National internal studies into the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) have concluded that advanced future threats need to be met with a system of systems that has a manned fighter at its heart, supported by and connected to legacy fighters and a family of ground- and air-launched unmanned aircraft systems-—some expendable, some recoverable, and others with very-low-observable attributes.

………

Few details have been broadcast about the NGF’s architecture, but the proposals certainly indicate a large twin-engine, low-observable platform. Studies call for the development of 30,000-lb.-class powerplants. The resulting platform is likely to be larger and heavier than the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Dassault Rafales it is envisaged to replace, more in the size class of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor or even the Northrop Grumman YF-23.

………

Dassault presented this tailless, twin-engine NGF design at the Euronaval defense show in Paris in October. Credit: Dassault Aviation Concepts

Some sense of scale could be drawn from the potential size of the weapons bay, which likely will be sized to fit a future French standoff nuclear weapon.

The current weapon, the ASMP, is a 5.38-m-long (17.7-ft.) ramjet-powered weapon. The French are reportedly studying hypersonic performance for the next generation, ASN4G, which likely will be a similar size.

Another consideration of scale will be France’s ambition to develop a carrier-
borne version, to replace the Rafale M deployed on its Charles de Gaulle carrier. Carrier operations will result in size and weight limitations. The naval version of the Rafale has a lower maximum takeoff weight than its land-based counterpart. However, France plans to replace the Charles de Gaulle with a new carrier, to be operational in the late 2030s, which will be developed to operate with the NGWS.

We already have the unrealistic specifications down pat.

This Has Fiasco Written All Over It


Expensive to Acquire, Expensive to Operate

The US Air Force is looking at their next tanker, and the mission creep is insane.

This sounds like it will make the F-35 debacle look like the Skunk Works:

Very little has changed in the configuration and performance of airlifter and air-refueling aircraft since the mid-1950s. Lockheed Martin’s C-5A dramatically expanded payload volume in 1968, and Boeing’s C-17 introduced a strategic airlifter with the ability to make short takeoffs and landings on unprepared runways. Besides those improvements, the U.S. Air Force’s mobility mission has been almost untouched by the survivability requirements that drove radical changes to the design and operation of fighters, bombers and intelligence-gathering aircraft in the last half-century.

As Air Force planners now embark on the early stages of a process to acquire a new class of refuelers and airlifters over the next two decades, there is a clear emphasis on designs that overcome the vulnerability of existing aircraft to detection and interception. That potential shift in the requirements follows a new strategy of air warfare that transforms the role of mobility aircraft from a purely supporting one to an active part in combat operations as forward-based command-and-control nodes and even strike platforms.

And in case you are wondering just how far overboard the USAF is planning to go, have a slice of this guaranteed winner in the next bullsh%$ bingo competition:

It is a transformation that senior Air Force officials are still trying to socialize with the community of cargo and tanker crews. Underscoring the unfolding transition was a key theme of Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein’s address at the Airlift Tanker Association (ATA) annual conference on Oct. 26. “I had the chance to fly the KC-46 a few weeks ago,” Goldfein said before several hundred ATA members. “But what I strapped on was not an aircraft. What I flew was a node in our future network, [with] computing capacity that we can connect at the speed of light to other platforms, sensors and weapons to bring creative solutions to the fight.”

If they are at this level of complete bullsh%$ at this stage of the program, this presages a Death Star sized debacle.

Kamov Advanced Helo


Looks a lot like the S-79


Sikorsky S-79

Kamov, which has been the leading producer of coaxial rotor helicopters for decades, is proposing an advanced helicopter that bears a strong similarity to the Sikorski advancing blade helicopter.

What is notable is that the two rotors are further apart than those of the S-79, it has wings, (and canards) and the propulsor is a turbofan rather than a propeller.

First, it’s pretty clear from this that the rotors are probably not as stiff,  and that the controls are less sophisticated, requiring more space between the two rotor disks to avoid the blades striking each other.

The wings, and the turbofan propulsion, imply that it is designed for a much higher speed, probably at the expense of range, noise, and low speed accelleration

That being said, I am profoundly dubious of their claim of a top speed of 700 km/h (440 mph/370 kts) for any rotorcraft:

Pictures of a Kamov design for an advanced attack helicopter have appeared on a Russian website.

The images appear to have been leaked amid competition between the Kamov and Mil Moscow Helicopter design bureaus within Russian Helicopters to develop the country’s future high-speed combat helicopter, called SBV.

Russian Helicopters announced at the Army 2017 forum in Moscow last September that it had signed a two-year contract with the Russian defense ministry to refine concepts for a high-speed attack helicopter, with both Kamov and Mil working on designs.

………

The leaked photographs show Kamov General Designer Sergei Mikheyev presenting the bureau’s concept, a winged coaxial-rotor, twin-turbofan compound helicopter reportedly capable of up to 700 kph (380 kt.) This compares with a speed of more than 400 kph claimed for Mil’s single-main-rotor design.

………

Propulsion is provided by what appear to be a pair of turbofans mounted in the aft fuselage and driving the rotor gearbox via a pair of shafts that project forward from the engines—an arrangement reminiscent of the shaft-driven lift fan in the Lockheed Martin F-35B.

The engines likely direct most of their power forward to shaft-drive the rotors for takeoff, hover and low-speed maneuvers, then shift more of the power to thrust as forward speed increases. The rotor system has a pair of contra-rotating three-blade rotors with swept tips.

Not a Surprise

Congress thinks there are too many generals and flag officers holding positions in the Defense Department.

It’s something the 2017 defense authorization act directly addressed by telling DoD to reduce the number of general and flag officer billets by 110 by 2022.

Now, a new RAND study commissioned by the Pentagon finds there are just about that many general and flag officers that are unneeded.

The study revealed that after looking at the requirements for general and flag officer positions, about 132 of the 615 positions didn’t meet the need for such a high ranking official.

“We tried to look and see to make sure each of the positions that were on the books were adequately justified,” Lisa Harrington, associate director of the Forces and Resources Policy Center at the RAND Corporation told Federal News Network. “Our method tries to look at these positions from a different perspective, either organizationally, the characteristics of the individual position, what opportunities are there for reductions and then what are inconsistencies across the services?”

RAND concluded that about 10 percent of those positions can be downgraded to leadership below a flag officer or be eliminated altogether.

Congress and other critics of flag officer inflation feel the issue has gotten out of hand.

Gee, you think?

It’s not just general officers.  The ratio of officers to men in the military has been 10:1 for hundreds of years, since before the founding of the Republic, and these days, its 5:1.

Bloated administration seems to be a good first step to determine where we should cut the military.

Doomed to Repeat It

In 2013, General Ray Odierno ordered that the military would conduct an extensive and far ranging analysis of its occupation of Iraq, so that future leaders could learn the lessons from their mistakes.

The military promptly buried the report:

Army chief of staff Gen. Ray Odierno issued the marching orders in the fall of 2013. Some of the Army’s brightest officers would draft an unvarnished history of its performance in the Iraq War.

A towering officer who served 55 months in Iraq, Gen. Odierno told the team the Army hadn’t produced a proper study of its role in the Vietnam War and had to spend the first years in Iraq relearning lessons. This time, he said, the team would research before memories faded and publish a history while the lessons were most relevant.

It would be unclassified, he said, to stimulate discussion about the intervention—one that deepened the U.S.’s Mideast role and cost more than 4,400 American lives. He arranged for 30,000 pages of documents to be declassified. For nearly three years, the team studied those papers and conducted more than 100 interviews.

By June 2016, it had drafted a two-volume history of more than 1,300 pages. H.R. McMaster, the former national security adviser to President Trump, reviewed the tomes while a three-star general. He said in an interview last month it was “by far the best and most comprehensive operational study of the U.S. experience in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.”

The study’s title: “The United States Army in the Iraq War.”

It has yet to be published.

Gen. Odierno retired before the team could finish the history, which then became stuck in internal reviews and procedural byways. Under new Pentagon leadership, Army priorities changed from counterinsurgency to countering powers such as Russia and China. Senior brass fretted over the impact the study’s criticisms might have on prominent officers’ reputations and on congressional support for the service.

Concern over, “Prominent officers’ reputations?”

Oh you poor delicate snowflakes.

The lesson to be learned is that of George C. Marshall who purged the ranks of incompetents.

We don’t do that any more, because we need to protect, “Prominent officers’ reputations.”

Teaching an Old Plane New Tricks


Two versions of the MiG-31, one carrying the Kinzhal missile, top, and the other carrying what might be an updated version of the Kontact for anti-satellite use. Credit: Piotr Butowski

Specifically, the MiG 31 Foxhound, which looks to be leveraging its high speed and high altitude performance to perform as a satellite launcher and ASAT platform:

The Mikoyan MiG-31 interceptor has found a second life—in fact, more than one. Not only has the aircraft known to NATO as the Foxhound been extensively upgraded, but it has also taken on new tasks: as an air-launcher for the Kinzhal ground-strike system and as an aerospace missile system to deliver small satellites to orbit or fight enemy satellites.

In September, at the Russian aviation industry’s test center in Zhukovsky near Moscow, an experimental MiG-31, No. 81, performed its first flight with an extremely large unknown missile suspended on the centerline pylon. The first high-speed taxiing of this coupling was done several months earlier.

The current program is supposed to be a follow-on of the 30P6 Kontakt (Contact) satellite intercept program of 1984-95, under which the MiG-31D aircraft using the Fakel 79M6 missile was made, and the improved MiG-31DM with the Fakel 95M6 missile was being designed.

………

The advantage of an airborne anti-satellite system over a ground-based one is longer range: The MiG-31 can deliver a missile over a distance of up to 1,000 km (621 mi.) before launch. The characteristics of the current system remain unknown. But they are probably similar to those of the previous Kontakt system, which was intended to destroy nonmaneuvering or maneuvering satellites in low orbits.

The 79M6 missile, weighing 4,550 kg (10,000 lb.), was launched by a MiG-31D flying at a speed of Mach 2.55 and altitude of 22 km. Its target was at an altitude of 120-600 km, depending on the distance. The missile flight time was 100-380 sec. The satellite was to be destroyed by a direct hit or detonation of a small, 20-kg explosive charge. The target was designated for the MiG-31 by the ground-based 45Zh6 Krona (Crown) system, consisting of a large decameter and centimeter-wavelength electronic-scanning radar and optical-laser locator and rangefinder. The Krona system was overhauled and upgraded in 2009-10.

………

The Russians have offered several systems for launching commercial satellites using the MiG-31 platform, but none of the designs has materialized. In 2001, Russia Aircraft Corp. (RSK) MiG MiG unveiled the MiG-31S project, a platform for two vehicles developed by the Astra Research Centre at the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI): the Micron rocket and Aerospace Rally System (ARS) rocket plane. The Micron was to be able to launch a 200-kg satellite to an altitude of 100 km, or 50 kg to 300 km. The ARS was to be a three-seat vehicle for suborbital flights (to an altitude of 130 km), intended for astronaut training in weightlessness conditions (up to 3 min.), research of the upper layers of the atmosphere and tourist and advertising flights.

This is contrasted with the US aviation forces, where the closest they come to reusing old airframes is converting them to target drones.

That;s the First One

An F-35 has crashed in South Carolina its pilot ejected safely:

An F-35 fighter jet crashed in South Carolina, the US Marine Corps said, in the first such incident to affect the most expensive defence programme in the world.

A statement said the crash occurred in the vicinity of Beaufort, South Carolina, at approximately 11.40am on Friday.

“The US Marine pilot ejected safely,” the statement said, adding that there were no civilian injuries and both the health of the pilot and the cause of the crash were being evaluated.

If it’s the Marines, then it is the “B” model.

I’m wondering if this is just the normal course of things, or if it is another glitch in the program.

Support Your Fighting Men

The Trump administration feared it would be a “public relations nightmare”: a major federal study that concluded contaminated groundwater across the country, especially near military bases, was more toxic than the government realized. Political aides to President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt pressured the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry against releasing the results.

“The public, media, and Congressional reaction to these numbers is going to be huge,” an unidentified White House aide wrote, according to Politico. “The impact to EPA and [the Defense Department] is going to be extremely painful. We cannot seem to get ATSDR to realize the potential public relations nightmare this is going to be.” The study was not released.

That is, until Wednesday. Amid a media firestorm about the administration’s immigration policy, the ATSDR—a division of the Department of Health and Human Services—quietly published its 852-page review of perfluoroalkyls, or PFAS, which are “used in everything from carpets and frying pan coatings to military firefighting foams,” according to ProPublica. “All told, the report offers the most comprehensive gathering of information on the effects of these chemicals today, and suggests they’re far more dangerous than previously thought.”

These chemical compounds pose health risks to millions of Americans. They’re in roughly 1 percent of the nation’s public water supply, according to the EPA; in roughly 1,500 drinking water systems across the country, according to the Environmental Working Group. People who drink from these systems, even if their exposure to PFAS is low, now have a potentially increased risk of cancer; of disruptions in hormones and the immune system; and of complications with fetal development during pregnancy.

But military personnel and veterans are particularly at risk, because PFAS compounds are in firefighting foams, which have been used in training exercises at military bases across America since the 1970s. Those foams have leached into the groundwater at the military facilities, and often the drinking water supply. Nearly three million Americans get their drinking water from Department of Defense systems.

The DOD has reported widespread contamination at its bases and posts, as well as their surrounding areas. In a March report to the House Armed Services Committee, the department provided a list of 126 military facilities where nearby water supplies contained PFAS levels above the EPA’s standard, and 36 bases with drinking water contamination on site. “In all, 25 Army bases; 50 Air Force bases, 49 Navy or Marine Corps bases and two Defense Logistics Agency sites have tested at higher than acceptable levels for the compounds in either their drinking water or groundwater sources,” the Military Times reported.

This is amazingly f%$#ed up.

Stupid, but Consider the Alternative

Donald Trump wants a US Space Force be established as a, “Separate but Equal,” 6th branch of the military.

My first though was, “Racism much?”

My second thought was, “This is really stupid.”

My third thought was, “Yes, but it’s still probably going to do more, for less money, than the United States Air Force.”

Personally, I’d like to fold the USAF back under the army and go to 4 (really 3½) services.

Your Military Industrial Complex in a Nutshell

As a part of supporting the Afghan military, the Pentagon is upgrading Kabul’s helicopters.

There are a few small problems though: In addition to the Afgan military not being able to maintain its new Black Hawk helicopters, the Russian Helos that it is replacing outperform the Black Hawk by almost every metric:


A report from a top U.S. military watchdog has finally acknowledged that the UH-60A+ Black Hawks that the United States is supplying to the Afghan Air Force are less capable and harder to maintain than the Russian-made Mi-17 Hip helicopters they have now. The review raises concerns that this could limit Afghanistan’s ability to conduct operations across the country unless steps are taking to mitigate the loss of capability, something we at The War Zone have long warned could easily be the case.

………

“The transition [from Mi-17s to UH-60s] presents several challenges that have yet to be fully addressed,” the report says in a section dedicated to the issue. “Black Hawks do not have the lift capacity of Mi-17s.”

“They are unable to accommodate some of the larger cargo items the Mi-17s can carry, and in general, it takes almost two Black Hawks to carry the load of a single Mi-17,” the review continues. “Furthermore, unlike Mi-17s, Black Hawks cannot fly at high elevations and, as such, cannot operate in remote regions of Afghanistan where Mi-17s operate.”

………

“The Mi-17 is ‘much more conducive to the education level available in the general Afghan population than the UH-60As’ when it comes to maintenance,” the 9th Air Expeditionary Task Force-Afghanistan (AETF-A), the U.S. Air Force’s top command for operations in Afghanistan, which also oversees advising the Afghan Air Force, said, according to the Pentagon Inspector General’s review. “The expectation is that the AAF will be almost entirely reliant on contractors for Black Hawk maintenance in the near- to mid-term.”

That reliance on contractors is a feature not a bug:  This is more of the deferred compensation for general officers program that appears to be the raison d’être of the Pentagon these days.

Whoever made this decision will secure a well remunerated post military retirement sinecure with Sikorsky, one of its suppliers, or the contractors that the Afghans (actually us) are paying very well for support services.

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Tell Lies

Westmoreland did it in Vietnam in the 19602, and the Pentagon is doing it in Afghanistan today:

It is challenging enough that the war in Afghanistan has gone on for almost 17 years. But now the Trump administration is raising hackles in Congress by cloaking in official secrecy an unusual amount of data about the longest armed conflict in American history, including, until very recently, the dwindling size of the beleaguered Afghan military.

Information contained in a recently issued government report provides a window into what the Pentagon has been keeping secret since last year: The Afghan army has shrunk by 11 percent and insurgents have gained territory, raising questions about whether the Pentagon has been concealing a strategy gone awry.

………

But just as the Pentagon began sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan, it also began classifying key war metrics it had previously made public. That included ways of measuring the success or failure of America’s mission: training and funding the Afghan military so it can beat back the Taliban and other insurgents.

The latest report by John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction — who objected strongly to the new program of secrecy and pried some of the data out of US military leaders in Afghanistan — contained some worrisome figures.

There has been a long history of the US military lying to Congress, and in come cases lying to the President to continue with their wars, whether it be Vietnam, or Iraq, Lebanon, or (to a slightly smaller degree) Korea, we know that the military will attempt to restrict information given to the civilian leadership so that they can continue fighting.

To quote Georges Clemenceau, “War is too important to be left to the generals.”

Abolish the Independent USAF

In response to having Congress requiring the US Air Force to keep flying the A-10, they are slow-walking wing upgrades which will likely result in many of the aircraft being sent to the boneyard before they can be fixed.

The wild blue yonder guy hate it because it is cheap and because they hate the close air support mission:

In a victory for supporters of the battle-proven A-10 close air support aircraft, Congress provided the necessary seed money to extend the fleet’s lifespan for at least another decade in its last spending bill. The U.S. Air Force had announced in 2017 that 110 A-10s were in danger of being retired because their wings were rapidly approaching the end of their useful service life.

The seed money is not as clear-cut a victory as many have supposed, however. The $103 million Congress appropriated for the A-10 re-winging project will only produce four new pairs of wings and it will likely take six years before new wings are installed on any operational A-10s. These funds will mainly be used to start up an entirely new production line.

The Air Force claims it needs all this money and time to get competitive bids to start up the new wing production line. All the while, the men and women serving in combat for the next six years badly need to be able to count on an A-10 force that is not shrinking rapidly due to a failure to replace worn out wings.

The unnecessary time delay and expense of the Air Force’s chosen path should frustrate everyone committed to responsible and effective government spending and life-saving close air support for our troops.

Re-winging the A-10 is not a new problem. In 2007 the Air Force awarded the Boeing Corporation a $2 billion contract to build new wings for 242 A-10s. In 2014, F-35 program managers and Air Force leaders started another campaign to retire A-10s in order to free up funding for the F-35.

After strong Congressional pushback the Air Force submitted a budget in 2016 that claimed to give up their efforts to retire the A-10.

Air Force leaders, long hostile to the A-10 and the mission it performs, cut this initial re-winging effort short by allowing Boeing’s contract to lapse in 2016 after only 171 wing sets had been delivered.

Now, due to the intransigence of Air Force leadership in calling for the shutdown of the earlier production line, taxpayers are paying $103 million just to create a new production line and to produce only four wing sets. That is approximately $25 million per set with all of the capital costs included. For comparison purposes, a set of wings cost approximately $3.8 million in 2013.

………

The Air Force has established a schedule for the re-winging project that can generously be called leisurely. Contracting officials sent out the bid solicitation documents on December 22, 2017. If they stick to the draft schedule, the interested contractors will be submitting their bid proposals the first week of June 2018.

………

More evidence of the lack of urgency to get new wings to the A-10 fleet can be found buried in the draft contract solicitation. The winning contractor will be required to deliver the first set of wings within 1,095 days of when it was announced that the contract was awarded. That means that in addition to the year it will take Air Force contracting officials to sort through their paperwork, the contractor will have an undemanding three years before they have to make their first delivery.

………

To put this all in perspective, the Air Force leaders have repeatedly attempted to shrink or cancel outright the A-10 fleet for at least the past twenty-five years which is particularly striking since the A-10 has consistently proven its battlefield worth in every war since 1991.

The reason for this is simple. Air Force generals don’t like the airplane because it lacks the complexity and expense to justify ever-expanding budgets. Furthermore, they despise the mission: it places them in a supporting role to ground forces.

Fold the USAF back under the US Army. 

The original justification for splitting it off was the idea that the nuclear delivery by the Strategic Air Command, and conventional strategic bombing, would allow them to win the war on their own.

Thankfully, the former has never been tried, and the latter has never happened despite repeated efforts by air arms around the world to justify Giulio Douhet’s delusional theoriess for the past 100 years, and we have created a prohibitively expensive and profoundly military branch as a result

Faster, Better, Cheaper

An uptick in exports has led Saab to increase spending on its Gripen E program:

Strengthening interest in the Gripen E has prompted Saab to accelerate its investment in the programme, with the step to include the introduction of enhancements intended to heighten the product’s attractiveness to prospective buyers.

“Due to the strong interest in Gripen E/F, Saab has now accelerated the pace of investment to develop the system for future exports,” the company disclosed in a quarterly results announcement on 26 April.

Chief executive Håkan Buskhe describes the measure as relating to “industrialisation, and also some key development on features for the export market”. While he declines to identify specific updates, he notes: “There are things that will enhance the product that we have seen during the development time for the Gripen E.” This process began for launch customer the Swedish air force in 2013.

Buskhe says Saab received fresh interest in the new-generation fighter from several undisclosed nations during the first three months of this year. The company cites a long list of prospective customers for the type, including Austria, Bulgaria, India and Slovakia.

Saab will deliver its first production examples of the Gripen E to Sweden and export buyer Brazil next year and the nations will receive a combined total of 96 examples up to 2026. Buskhe says the level of interest being shown in the product is consistent with previous forecasts of a total production run of at least 400 units.

The Gripenis less than half the size, and less than half the direct operating costs, of its competitors, while being (at least) nearly as capable in terms of everything but payload and range.

It’s been on budget, and on schedule, and (unlike the F-35) nations have the information to incorporate their own weapons into the aircraft.

It’s not surprising that it’s doing well:  It’s in a very similar position to that of the Mirage III in the 1960s.

Great Googly Moogly

White House Doctor, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, has been accused of being an abusive manager, over-prescribing drugs, and being drunk at work:

President Trump acknowledged Tuesday that Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, his nominee to lead the Veterans Affairs Department, is in serious trouble amid accusations that as the White House doctor he oversaw a hostile work environment, improperly dispensed prescription drugs and possibly drank on the job.

………

Members of Mr. Tester’s staff said that they had been given several credible accounts of Dr. Jackson being intoxicated during official White House travel. In several cases, they said, he had apparently grabbed his medical bag and was “attempting to assert himself,” to show he was in charge.

On one trip during Barack Obama’s presidency, White House staff needed to reach Dr. Jackson for medical reasons and found him passed out in his hotel room after a night of drinking, Tester aides said. The staff members took the medical supplies they were looking for without waking Dr. Jackson.

The frightening thing is that this would make him one of Donald Trump’s more qualified nominees.

I Guess that they Don’t Need to Put a Contractor in Every Congressional District Now

Early in the process, the goal was to spread work around to as many Congressional districts as possible, but now that the proram is too big to fail, they are looking for people who can actually do the work competently for a reasonable price:

The Pentagon is embarking on a comprehensive effort to examine the entire F-35 supply chain from top to bottom for opportunities to compete components and repair work, a top Defense Department official says.

The move is aimed at incentivizing suppliers to reduce cost and increase efficiencies, as the F-35 enterprise faces severe parts shortages and a skyrocketing sustainment bill (AW&ST April 9-22, p. 40).

The department’s efforts to inject competition into the supply chain comes as the F-35 program faces challenges on the production line. The rate of mistakes by suppliers or skilled workers during the manufacturing process is too high, according to F-35 Program Executive Officer Mat Winter.

………

As the government and Lockheed work to get support costs under control, competition and alternative parts sourcing could be key, Robert McMahon, assistant secretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness, said during Aviation Week’s MRO Americas conference in Orlando, Florida, April 11. The F-35 operations and sustainment bill has been pegged at more than $1 trillion over the life of the program.

The current structure was driven by politics, not competence or efficiency, and it is a remarkably wasteful way to create jobs.

To quote Ike, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

Michael Moore Could Explain This to You

The military’s fighter pilot shortfall is reaching alarming proportions — and a new report from the Government Accountability Office shows just how bad the problem has become.

The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps are each short about a 25 percent of the fighter pilots they need in crucial areas, according to the GAO report released Wednesday, titled “DOD Needs to Reevaluate Fighter Pilot Workforce Requirements.”

The problem has grown worse in recent years. And because it takes the Air Force, for example, about five years of training — and costing anywhere from $3 million to $11 million — before a fighter pilot can lead flights, holding on to these pilots is vital to recouping the military’s investments and making sure the services can carry out their required missions.

Over the last two years, the Air Force has particularly sounded alarm bells over its pilot shortfalls. The service has stood up a team led by a one-star general to find ways to stem the bleeding of its pilot ranks. Efforts include dramatically increasing retention bonuses, cutting out paperwork and other non-flying duties that keep pilots out of the cockpit, and taking many other steps intended to keep pilots in the service.

Last November, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said the service was short 2,000 of all its pilots, or about 10 percent, and sounded a dire prediction of what it would lead to.

………

But these stop-gap measures come with a cost, GAO said. Squadron leaders and fighter pilots told GAO that the high pace of operations for senior fighter pilots — some have been used to fill vacant junior positions, for example — limits their ability to train junior pilots. And that makes it harder for the military to grow the ranks of pilots with specific qualifications.

Deploying fighter pilots more frequently causes family instability and leads to career dissatisfaction, GAO said.

………

Retention of fighter pilots is also declining. Although the Air Force has dramatically increased the maximum retention bonus for pilots — first from $125,000 up to $225,000 in 2013, and finally up to $455,000 last year ― fewer and fewer pilots are taking them. Between 2013 and 2017, the take rates for fighter pilots declined from 63 percent to 35 percent, a 28 percentage-point drop.

One of the sources of recruitment for pilots of all kinds are people who want to become commercial airline pilots.

With changes in the industry making the positions far less pleasant, (Michael Moore discussed how the treatment of airline pilot by airlines have become increasingly abusive in his movie Capitalism: A Love Story) fewer people are considering putting in 5-10 years of military service as a entree into commercial aviation.

You see the same thing with truckers, where pay and benefits have been decimated over the past few decades.

If you have a job that requires specialized skills and training, and you devalue that job so as to overpay the banksters, fewer people will get the skills and training necessary for that job.

It’s Econ 101.