{"id":194024,"date":"2008-10-31T05:50:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T10:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/10\/31\/the-usafs-broken-procurement-program-and-remedies-for-this\/"},"modified":"2008-10-31T05:50:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T10:50:00","slug":"the-usafs-broken-procurement-program-and-remedies-for-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/10\/31\/the-usafs-broken-procurement-program-and-remedies-for-this\/","title":{"rendered":"The USAF&#8217;s Broken Procurement Program, and Remedies for This"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The USAF is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aviationweek.com\/aw\/blogs\/defense\/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&amp;plckScript=blogScript&amp;plckElementId=blogDest&amp;plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&amp;plckPostId=Blog%3A27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3A9e97388d-a3d1-44a2-8028-7e29756767da\">looking to cut more than 250 fighters from its fleet<\/a>, in order to make budget space for the increasingly expensive F-35.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that, once again, the aircraft are too damn expensive. More is the enemy of &#8220;good enough&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime,<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/warisboring.com\/?p=1423\">David Axe points to a book which proposes a solution<\/a>, which suggests smaller and lighter aircraft, <a href=\"http:\/\/donvandergriff.wordpress.com\/2008\/10\/16\/americas-defense-meltdown-pentagon-reform-for-the-new-president-and-congress\/#more-369\">America\u2019s Defense Meltdown<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>They propose two aircraft: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A 9 ton class air-to-air fighter with a 16 ton class engine with a, &#8220;cutting edge, all-passive with 360-degree infrared and radar warning gear&#8221; that is supposed to be cheaper than an F-16.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<p>I do not find this one particularly realistic. Whenever you insert the phrase &#8220;cutting edge&#8221; in a phrase, you <strong>never<\/strong> get low cost.<\/p>\n<p>The other one is more interesting: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A higher performance aircraft to replace the A-10.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<p>Given that the rate of fire of the A-10 of the GAU-8 cannon has been reduced by about 1\/2, because the accuracy requires further rounds, simply by reducing the size and weight of the cannon, and the ammunition loadout, along with using a more modern engine with a higher thrust to weight ratio, you easily get to a thrust to weight ratio at combat weights that approaches unity. With advances in things like Aluminum alloys and ceramic armor, performance could be further improved.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that while the Army would love such an aircraft, the USAF <strong>hates<\/strong> it, and has been trying to kill the A-10 since sometime around 1981, and so is completely uninterested in developing a successor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The USAF is looking to cut more than 250 fighters from its fleet, in order to make budget space for the increasingly expensive F-35. The problem is that, once again, the aircraft are too damn expensive. More is the enemy of &#8220;good enough&#8221;. In the meantime,David Axe points to a book which proposes a solution, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1008],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-defense-procurement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194024"}],"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=194024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}