In the view of the New York Times’ editorial board, the military in good economic times is an irredentist force with suspect loyalties to progressive orthodoxy. Which hates women. And gays. The military is for fighting wars, and there really oughtn’t to be wars, our intellectual betters believe. They’re very expensive, harmful to the ecology and senseless, violence never having settled anything. And the military draws funds away from Helping People.
Without a military, well: We couldn’t have wars. Bake sales for bombers, etc.
When hard times comes, the military adds to those crimes self-evident unaffordability. If cuts to government spending simply must me made because the plebs are agitating against their self-interest by whipping themselves into a frenzy about the size of the national debt (and flagellating right-thinking politicians who only want what’s best for you), the Department of Defense represents the lowest hanging fruit to be culled from the discretionary spending account. Mandatory accounts being sacrosanct, despite their mushrooming costs and we’ll just have to find a way to “grow our way” out of that, or raise taxes. Perhaps both.
Because it’s entirely possible that we could tax our way into economic growth, for some people.
Military personnel are expensive, but you can’t go around railing about people, not if you’ve got the correct mindset. You have to pity the common soldier, sailor, airman and Marine – if not his general officers – for not having done well enough in our insufficiently funded public school systems to avoid going to Iraq. It’s far easier to go after the weapons systems that our military victim classes are expected to operate in (eww) combat. Therefore practically every weapons system produced during the modern welfare state has been criticized at one time or another, from the M1 Abrams tank, to the FA-18 Hornet, to the F-22 Raptor. Don’t lets get started on Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, quickly labeled “Star Wars” by those in the press. Naming having a unique brand of primal power.
In that criticism the media will find allies within the Pentagon, allies keenly aware that DoD budgeting is a zero-sum game, and that for every program funded “above the line”, there are unfunded “requirements” with pet sponsors who got a goring in the budget scrum. They will also be aided by armies of perfectionists who insist that the weapon system isn’t perfect enough for the sums being expended, well-intentioned, informed critics who nevertheless seem ignorant of the fact that it’s the last five percent of capability which drives the greatest proportion of both risk and cost, and who have seemingly never heard of incremental improvements to existing systems.
Which brings us to this 1400+ word softly-softly jeremiad in the Times from national affairs journalist Elisabeth Bumiller:
As a joint Congressional committee appears paralyzed days from a deadline to agree on a plan to cut the nation’s deficit, the Pentagon remains vulnerable to forced reductions over the next decade that would slash its spending by $500 billion, on top of $450 billion in cuts already in the works — a total of more than 15 percent of its operating budget.
But as Mr. Panetta considers scaling back major weapons programs, the Osprey illustrates the challenges in downsizing the world’s most expensive military. The aircraft has survived after repeated safety problems during testing, years of delays, ballooning costs and tough questions about its utility.
Even Dick Cheney, when he was the defense secretary under the first President George Bush, could not kill it.
“Don’t bet against the Marines as budget warriors,” said Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va.
In just the last few weeks, the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James F. Amos, has talked up the Osprey at the Council on Foreign Relations and in written testimony to Congress, branding the aircraft “revolutionary” and the arguments of its critics ill informed. The contractors who built the aircraft have been running advertisements in defense industry and news publications in Washington, celebrating its 100,000 flight hours and lauding it as the “safest Marine rotorcraft” of the last 10 years. Reporters have been flown on Osprey media flights, including with Mr. Panetta to New York.
The real target is the F-35 program of course, and the bullseye at the center of that target is the Marine Corps’ STOVL F-35B variant. But bringing up the admittedly troubled MV-22 birth is a strange way to go about it: The Osprey tried to do something that had never really been done before, mate the vertical take-off performance of a troop lift helicopter with the endurance and dash capability of a turbo-prop fixed wing aircraft. The F-35B may be technically risky compared to the USAF and USN variants, but the component elements of a vertical take-off strike platform and a stealthy fighter have been done.
Perhaps it was a slow news day. Ms. Bumiller goes on to cite how difficult it is to derail a program once its in full-fielding, but this should not surprise the veteran journalist: There’s a tremendous ramp-up investment in research and development, testing and logistical support to field the first operational unit of a production line. That cost is amortized successively over each new item that leaves the factory floor. And the Marine Corps, having invested not just treasure but time and blood in the MV-22, is right to trumpet the new aircraft’s capability. Killing it now would be mere spite, and poor economy as well.
What defense acquisition critics often fail to note is the “lost time” factor involved in killing weapons systems. It takes time to develop high technology weapons systems, and time is money. The operational need that drove the research, design and manufacture of the system will probably not have gone away in the intervening period, and during development the existing force structure becomes increasingly obsolete and expensive to maintain. (The cancellation of the in-production F-22 Raptor, designed against Soviet-era threats is a potential example of a system that outlived its operational need. On the other hand, the development of the for-export Sukhoi PAK-FA might argue otherwise.)
As the Pentagon’s single largest weapons system in development, the F-35 series in general, and the F-35B in particular, are attractive candidates for vertical cuts for those who know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. It’s too late to kill the MV-22, and probably too late to kill the F-35. What else would we replace it with, and when?
See also, “Fighter gap.”
The F-35 is too weak to take on high end threats over its alleged service life. And, it is too expensive to do second tier work done by existing platforms better/cheaper.
As for STOVL; that capability is over-rated. What if the U.S. had a war and didn’t have a STOVL jet? The results would be the same. And, Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan show we rarely used STOVL capability where an A-10, or F-16 or Hornet couldn’t do it better. And we certainly don’t need to be handing out a blank-check for STOVL capability to the second land army. That, and refighting Tarawa isn’t operationally viable.
The F-35 and other things like the LCS use up cash needed by other worthwhile defense communities.
Also, Aboulafia is about as accurate as a Vietnam-era Sparrow when commenting on mil aircraft issues.
Getting rid of the F-22 was dumb. Keeping the F-35 isn’t going to help that mistake.
Killing the Raptor was dumb? You have a gift for understatement, my friend. But, using the words required to describe that decision would not be acceptable on this family friendly blog.
Though all, or at least most, of us are thinking those words.
Perhaps, like Lazarus, the Raptor can be resurrected. My understanding is that we still have the hardware and software -but how long is the shelf life of the wetware?
It strikes me that there are only two questions to ask, here.
Q #1. Does it work right!
A #1. I dunno.
Q #2. Can we afford it?
A #2. Probably not.
Another 100 F-22′s, YES!
Keep the MV-22, YES! Build more.
F-35B, screw it!
Lets buy some AT-6′s for CAS!
The SPADS are long gone.
The AT-6 could take their place for CAS
“vertical take-off”? F-35B STOVL Short Take Off Vertical Landing
Technically it could do a vertical take-off, if it had no stores loaded and at minimum fuel. That’s the whole point — short take-off while loaded, expend the loaded parts like ordinance and fuel, you get to make a vertical landing.
Which, how often do you need that capability, and if you need to land vertically how in the heck are you planning to take off again with anything of use to another attached?
There’s an old saying that you can have it fast, reliable, and cheap, but you can only pick two. There’s another old saying that quantity has a quality all its own. Our problem is we want low quantity because we don’t have a million men in our armed forces, and we want to make up for those numbers with fast and reliable kit. Oh, and we want it for cheap.
Maybe, instead of investing in aircraft that weigh 25 tons and try to make them land vertically, we invest in something a little lighter, perhaps with a STOL capability over unimproved fields, and just build a lot more of them so the unit price is less?
I’ve heard good things about helicopters.
We seem to be in a rut of wanting a universal tool capable of hammering a multitude of different types of nails in any conditions from up close and from far away. Perhaps it’s time to consider giving a cheap but flexible hammer to every squad instead.
– Max
MD, “…try to make them land vertically..”? Surely the F-35B pair have only recently demonstrated with 72 combined VLs & STOs off USS Wasp that the concept (including some more than 130 VLs ashore) is by now well proven? Sure more testing will be and is being done. And if an operational VL is done it would be reasonable to expect the aircraft to VL where it will be suitably restored? And yes I have read that vertical takeoffs will be tested – like a lot of other odd things will be tested – such as flying in STOVL mode with the wheels up.
With enough power you could make the Empire State Building take off and land vertically. My point was that making 35 tons of aircraft do the same thing a 10 ton Blackhawk is designed to do from the outset will be a very expensive proposition, both in money and in terms of other capabilities that aircraft could have had. Couple that with the rare actual need for such a capability and the project looks even more silly. Having more assets, each capable of performing a specific task much better than other compromises, has merit.
Of course, one of those assets was the F-22 and we’ve all seen how that bit of merit survived the chopping block. Given the super-committee will have agreed upon nothing more than press releases by next week, that the defense budget will be gutted is a given. This is the time to not have a wish list of equipment but a minimum needs list.
– Max
Well apparently our USAF shoppers have ruled out the AT-6 and the 1400 American jobs it represents, in favor of Brazil’s Embraer. Way to go guys.
TC
Apparently, our Brazilian friends sold Tucanos to Iran. But yet, the DOD prefers to buy the Super Tucano rather than the formerly Pilatus AT-6? I don’t get it.
These progressives don’t believe in a fighter gap. I’ve heard the argument “Well, the F-15 and the F-16 are dominant and can stay dominant.” Well, the problem with that is: nothing lasts forever, especially not fighter aircraft. Shoot, the Teen series fighters were new when I was a young pup just starting 30 years of government service and I’ve been retired for five years this month. The threat is catching up with us. Think the F-15 can outfight the Su-30Ms owned by the likes of Venezuela? Doubtful.
I don’t like the F-35. It’s a big, fat single-engine monster with little combat persistence. I think stealth is highly overrated. I definitely wouldn’t want to fly a single-engine bird over water. But it’s all we’ve got. Barring restarting F-22 production, it’s the only game in town.
The Navy is building two LHA replacement ships without well decks. They can carry any of the rotor craft in the inventory or MV-22s, but they can’t put anything heavier than a unarmored HUMMV on the beach, unlike the LCACs. The REAL reason for the ships is that they can carry 20 F-35Bs, so they are pocket carriers for the Marine Corps. Without the F-35B, we will have two huge, but pretty useless ships.
Which is why the Marines are buying British Harriers, Navig8r
Lex,
re “…the military in good economic times is an irredentist force with suspect loyalties to progressive orthodoxy. Which hates women. And gays. The military is for fighting wars, and there really oughtn’t to be wars, our intellectual betters believe. They’re very expensive, harmful to the ecology and senseless, violence never having settled anything. And the military draws funds away from Helping People.”
You are still a power hitter! Outstanding. If I could only find the time to catch up in here.
BTW, my position is the same it was 5 year, and about 1.8 F-3B billion ago in these here pages re the Marine version. It’s gotta go- sorry use all those Harrier parts you got from the Brits or get off your hi-horses and buy some SuperHornets Commandante. USN ain’t exempt-Having the same inklings on the “C”..can’t seem to catch a wire and it seems bigger than a Rhino! Louder too, if you can believe it. Ain’t what I thought it would be. BTW, I see them contraptions flying every day. Just an old mans observations.
VR/ B2
Well, it seems from your comments at least your geezer eyesight isn’t totally gone yet, B2..
Welcome back, brother! It had been so long, I almost called 911.
Lex, you replace the F-35 with a mix of platforms.
The USAF gets a mix of additional F-22s (about 350) and late-model F-16s.
The Navy gets additional E/Fs, and carte blanche for NGAS. Including a waiver to the acquisition regulations that turn procurement into an endless paperwork drill.
The Marines get AT-6s, maybe Super Tucanos.