{"id":180334,"date":"2017-05-21T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-21T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/21\/well-they-would-say-that-wouldnt-they-2\/"},"modified":"2017-05-21T18:30:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-21T23:30:00","slug":"well-they-would-say-that-wouldnt-they-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/21\/well-they-would-say-that-wouldnt-they-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Well, They Would Say That, Wouldn&#8217;t They?*"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Boeing is suggesting that <a href=\"http:\/\/aviationweek.com\/aviation-week-space-technology\/evolve-fa-18ef-rather-build-new-fighter-boeing-urges-us-navy\">the US Navy would be better served by evolving the existing F\/A-18 rather than spending two decades to develop another hyper-expensive stealth fighter<\/a>. (<i>paid subscription required<\/i>)<\/p>\n<p>Boeing is making a statement in own interest.  It sells the F-18.<\/p>\n<p>Boeing also happens to be right in this case:  Development programs that are egregiously expensive and span decades do not produce weapons that work properly.<\/p>\n<p>Either they perform poorly, or they are too expensive to deploy in the numbers in which they would be needed:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Boeing has cautioned the U.S. Navy against getting locked into another 20-year aircraft development program as it reaches for the F\/A-XX, the service\u2019s next carrier warplane. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"> The company says continuing to evolve the F\/A-18E\/F Super Hornet through Block 3 beginning in fiscal 2019 and a potential Block 4 follow-on modernization program as a complement to the Lockheed Martin F-35C Lightning II is the most prudent path forward to satisfy an immediate need for greater numbers of strike fighters with advanced capabilities.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"> Boeing says low-radar-cross-section airframes are useful for the first day of war and flying into denied areas guarded by X-band radars. But the integrated air defense radars of potential adversaries such as Russia and China have moved into different bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, such as C-band and S-band. Buying into a next-generation stealth aircraft development program under F\/A-XX might not be the best answer to meet current and future threats, Boeing believes.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"> \u201cFor the Navy, and I think for a lot of countries, don\u2019t lock yourself into a 20-year development cycle and a platform you\u2019re stuck with for X amount of years,\u201d says Larry Burt, a former naval aviator and now Boeing\u2019s director of global sales and marketing for global strike programs. \u201cDon\u2019t make a big revolutionary step. Keep evolving what you\u2019ve got. You could keep evolving the mission systems, sensors and capability of the Super Hornet and maybe eventually put a new wrapper on it.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>With the 2<sup>nd<\/sup> most protracted and dysfunctional weapons development program in the world (India&#8217;s is worse), they are right.<\/p>\n<p>US defense procurement is a racket, with the contractors spreading sub-contractors to the districts of powerful Congressmen, and providing lucrative sinecures to the generals involved in their retirement.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">Yes, this is a reference to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mandy_Rice-Davies\">Mandy Rice-Davies<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Boeing is suggesting that the US Navy would be better served by evolving the existing F\/A-18 rather than spending two decades to develop another hyper-expensive stealth fighter. (paid subscription required) Boeing is making a statement in own interest. It sells the F-18. Boeing also happens to be right in this case: Development programs that are &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[384,381,379,504],"class_list":["post-180334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-aviation","tag-defense-procurement","tag-military","tag-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}