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Nice analysis Lex. I would only add to remember that mixing legal opinions and the facts based on inquiry. Your appraisal rightfully assigns blame for both sides. Check this document for that inquiry:

http://www.suu.edu/faculty/christensend/beacha-1.pdf#search=%22navy%20a-12%20case%20study%22

In retrospect, like you, I think the A-12 program was in the wrong place for all the right reasons to be chopped notwithstanding all the technical issues that weren’t resolved at CDR (nothing insurmountable) and the schedule slide.

Personally, I wish we had chopped some heads and continued to fund the program. Today’s nominal airwing would have a different look & capability…

B2

Cancellation might have hurt Naval Aviation, but I’m not sure buying into that luh-suh wouldn’t have hurt more.

Look at the other aviation programs that we have bought into in the past 20 years – not sure they were really what we needed, but they are what we’ve got! (Throws that gernade into the conversation and then backs out quietly and waits – hoping B2 or another Grumman loyalist weighs in…)

Nost

There is a half way decent book written by a former Pentagon insider about the A-12 fiasco. It is called “The $5 Billion Dollar Misunderstanding: The collapse of the Navy’s A-12 Stealth Bomber Project” by James P. Stevenson. He is pretty critical of how the whole operation was mis managed and mentions in pretty good details of some of the laws, regulations, and just general mistakes made by those inside the 5-sided wind tunnel and over at Cyrstal City with trying to get a stealth aircraft project started with the Navy.
Some of the things he mentions is how the Navy was still funding an R&D project that hadn’t fully meet its R&D goals yet before rushing head long into low rate inital production, how by General Dynamics and Northrup/Grumman were forced to re-invent the wheel with regards to a flying wing since the USAF was unwilling to share thier lessons learned with the B-2A project, how the Navy hid its failures to meet major acqusition milestone reporting to congress under the guise of “National Securtity”.
This book was written in 2000 so it was written before the final set of court cases was decided. Also if you do read this, understand that the author had a minor axe to grind with some of the politicos over at the 5-sided wind tunnel that forced him out of a job after blowing the whistle on the F-16 and F-18 and B-1B projects. So for a few people like the under SecDef for Acqustion under Weinberger he doesn’t really paint in a good light.

This whole project in my opinion did more to put a dent into the Naval Aviation budget. Since it was an example used by the anti-defense politicos of fraud/waste/abuse of taxpayer moneys and a good reason to cut back on the defense department budget. We are paying dividends because of this, on top of this project is what has keep people from doing more then debate and draft ideas for requirements on what to replace other aircraft such as the C-2A, E-2C, S-3, ES-3A, etc on the carrier decks.

I feel sorry for a few of the mid-level folks that were caught up in this project and now have a tarnished repudation.

And I agree with SJS on the impact the A-12 had on Naval Air – budget battles for the E2 program were fierce in the days I was there. Watching the A6 die and seeing that the F14 struggle was disheartening to say the least. By the time I left it was all F18 all the time. I felt the tac towards a single multi-mission platform was narrow-minded, but the A-12 seemed to have forced that on us. Oh, and the political fallout from Tailhook at that time didn’t help either. Tough times, those were…

Brian