It’s hard to believe that it’s gone on this long, but a federal appeals court has backed the government’s position on the 1991 cancellation of the flying dorito:
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the government was justified in canceling a multibillion-dollar contract with a Boeing Co. unit and General Dynamics Corp. to build a new Navy stealth fighter, the A-12 Avenger.
Then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney terminated the contract in 1991, saying the companies had failed to make progress on the project.
The parties have been in litigation ever since.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the companies’ failure to meet important milestones, along with other factors, gave the government ample reason to terminate the Avenger contract…
The companies said in court briefs that a loss in the case would force them to remit $2 billion to the federal government to repay earlier contract-progress payments.
$4.8 billion and never one aircraft to test. I wonder how much the companies – and the US taxpayers – have paid in legal fees over the last 18 years.
Meanwhile, the Avenger’s replacement looks like it’s a safer bet.
Needs more aircrew.
The beginning of the end of Naval Aviation. Or at least the ability to project power ashore in a hostile environment.
I’m bettin’ the fly-away price will be close to a manned platform (minus pilot tng & support costs) and, while useful, will lack the flexibility of manned ac and be susceptible to jamming and detection beyond what is advertised and, surprise, surprise, not too many yrs down the pike the calls will come for a complimentary manned platform. PS: How do you hide em’ during the daylight? Is it night-time ops only?
It probably will be. I don’t know where people ever got the notion that unmanned=cheap, but I’ll state categorically (based on nearly 15 years of experience in the field) that it’s a crock.
But remember, UCAS isn’t a replacement for manned aircraft. It’s a supplement. You use it for high-risk missions like SEAD and tactical recon.
Mike M@ 2June on Avenger thread:
Mike M, don’t know why I didn’t comment /reply before, but while you’re right about UCAS being a supplement ( what it should be) for hi-risk ops, that’s NOT how it’s being sold. You don’t think they’re planning to lay out all those $illions and justify/sell it to Congress for just a few “niche” platforms, do you? And remember, you’ve got some true believers out there pushing the thing who think it IS a “do-all” concept. Plus you’ve got the Pentagon/OMB bean-counters salivating like Pavlov’s dogs at the prospect of all the pension and dependent medical cost savings that will supposedly materialize with no pilots.
It’s the beginning of the end of manned combat aviation. We WSOs would joke – “Yeah, we’ve only got 15-20 years until the Rhino is gone, but the pilots are on the chopping block too… another couple of decades with the F-35 (enjoy that single engine beast around the boat…)”
I’ll just quote the good General Yeager from earlier this month:
“That’s progress, said Yeager, just like before we had jets,” said Yeager, 86, a World War II flying ace and the first person to break the sound barrier. “This is the way wars are going to be fought and won in the future, and it’s good.”
Let’s face it, we just need to lay down our slide rulers and move over for the next generation.
I mean, all of this pre-supposes the air superiority the F-22 was supposed to provide, n’cest pas? How does one keep these things from being picked off by high-speed Piper Cubs during daylight hours otherwise? There is only so much deck/hanger space avail. What happens after the opening shot night stealth attack fails and a day-time re-attack is needed? Or if additional AD is needed, is the plan to leave everything in the hands of the SA missile assets and screw ac AD msn because there’s no room for the ac due to maximizing strike msn? I mean, since the F-14 and the Phoenix went away and along with it the long-range multi-track BVR capabilities, isn’t that pretty much what’s happening now?
And as the # of carriers are reduced, the pressure is only going to grow to maximize the strike msn and pack ‘em with nothing but strike ac/UAEs (I mean, what ARE we spending all that $ on those Aegis Cruisers for anyway, if not to depend on ‘em?) else the AF will claim they can do it a whole lot cheaper with xtra tankers for UAVS
in lieu of carriers–with the ability to surge WAY MORE UAV/Es off dry land supported by tankers than the Navy can off a carrier deck.
Look, if you substitute the term F-111 for the long-range UAV/E you’ll get the EXACT same rationale the British used for abandoning their “East of Aden” commitment by the RN, justifying it by claiming everything could be supported by large numbers of cheaper F-111s–which never materialized after the Royal Navy was down-sized anyway. This has nothing (or very little) to do with strategy or tactics and EVERYTHING to do with bean-counting.
“I didn’t want those grapes anyway, ” said the Fox, as he waived by-by to the carriers….
Back in the day, I saw some specs on that thing – what a frackin abomination! Heavy, slow (except on approach) almost no fuel on the ball (which equals no bringback).
Ug. Ly.
Going to see the NUCAS/UCAS/UCAV/WhatEverYaCallIt and a couple other sweet toys in a couple of weeks.
Oh, I dunno – it seemed that at least during the Clinton administration they preferred using Tomahawks because they didn’t have any aircrew.
This might have the same advantage.
Whew, glad I got my nearly 6000 tax payer funded flight hours when I did. So just how do you log UCAS flight/combat time? Do them pilots get wings-on-a-chair? With no aircrew who is gonna be at mid-rats? Inquiring minds want to know.
Be afwaid – be vehwee vehwee afwaid.
Why, the UAV operators will be at midrats.
UAVs aren’t like manned aircraft…you don’t get the luxury of working in daylight. No, it’s the 2000-0600 shift for you.
No, I’ll operate the UAV from the comfort of my own home… why even be on the CVN? 1400-2200 back in the states!
Hell, banging off the front end of the carrier everyday for some freedom was the ONLY thing that kept me sane…
Stuck on the “big grey bitch” (as my wife calls the CVN) for 7-8 months with no actual flying. No thanks.
I can do nothing just as easily stateside, thank you very much… better food, better liberty, and King sized bed!
Hey, now, that is nothing compared with the $50B taxpayers are giving GM…
As a McDonnell Douglas employee from 1978 thru 1992 (commercial electronics projects for the most part, not military aircraft) I hope it’s clear to everyone that the A-12 cancellation is NOT resulting in the companies raking in a bunch of unearned taxpayer cash.
What the courts are saying is that the government is to be paid back about $2 billion of advance progress payments, leaving the companies holding the bag for a whole bunch of full scale development costs.
I’m not saying my former company was without fault, they did make a really stupid decision to sign a fixed price contract to accomplish a task whose difficulty and costs could not be predicted in advance with any precision, probably with an eye to making it up on production contracts.
But the company paid a terrible price for that – one I’m reminded of every time I drive past the place where I used to work and see the Boeing sign out front. The McDonnell of 5000+ F-4′s, of Mercury and Gemini, and who knows what else, is no more.
Frank
Nose,
re “…. Heavy, slow (except on approach) almost no fuel on the ball (which equals no bringback).”
Gee, almost sounds like a Rhino or a Hippo. Tee Hee.
b2