AF Secretary and Chief of Staff Dismissed

[Ski]

Steve's exactly right - too much crying wolf is going to get the USAF argument shot down before it gains any traction.

The Air Force has continually - since the inception as a seperate service - received more funds on an annual basis within the base budget than any other service. They have not lacked for anything. It is the Air Force's fault, and perhaps we can add some Congressional flavor into the mix, that they have continually designed and manufactured aircraft that are more expensive and complex.

The F-16 is the only aircraft in the history of the USAF to cost LESS than it's predecessor. The capability still exists to make a fine aircraft without all the bells and whistles that is cheap to design, manufacture and sustain.

As Norfolk states, the Army has undergone incremental change to the Abrams and Bradleys since they were introduced in the 1980's. They were designed that way BTW. The only really new vehicle has been the Strykers. The Marines are even worse off (and a lot of that is their own fault by putting all their eggs in the AAAV program basket) because they rely on the Army for a lot of their weaponry.

I don't disagree about the necessity of the USAF to provide air dominance. The USN and USMC help out here as well. The USAF just doesn't spend it's money wisely from what I can see. I think the C-17's are close to $150M a plane, I've seen numbers as high as $200M a plane for the F-22, and the F-35 is rising by the day (it will be closer to $100M a copy than the $35M a copy that is being claimed). Meanwhile, flight hours are down in training...why do training funds always go by the wayside when it is clear throughout history that the better trained pilot/unit will beat one that is better equipped but less trained? And if we really do get into a drag down knock out fight with the Chinese, there are far worse things to worry about than aircraft. That is really the only possible peer competitor on the horizon, and the PLAF hasn't been in combat since the late 1970's. Are we really that afraid of that potential boogeyman? Geez...

[Van]

Army has undergone incremental change to the Abrams and Bradleys since they were introduced in the 1980's. They were designed that way BTW. The only really new vehicle has been the Strykers.

To be fair, the enabling technologies of ground forces have not changed as much as the enabling technologies of air power in the same period. Comms and sensors are shifting this dynamic a bit, as new tools become availible to ground forces, but protection and lethality mechanisms have gone through any huge changes in a while.

Back on thread, Gates pick for CSAF comes out of the special ops world. This bodes well for the AF role in Small Wars (and not so well for the fighter community, and we'll just have to live with that )

[Fuchs]

Isn't it funny?

In late '99 till at least late '02, the Army feared to be(come) "irrelevant".

Now it's the AF's turn (at least in regard to Iraq and to stealth planes).

[Ski]

Van - I just don't buy it. The sensors and comms systems are parts of the integrated aircraft - they should not be the major cost drivers. If they are, that is a major problem.

I have no experience with aircraft design but my understanding is that the major cost drivers are the airframes themselves (especially with the various lightweight materials), the stealth technologies, and the engines. I stand to be corrected...

[J Wolfsberger]

Van - I just don't buy it. The sensors and comms systems are parts of the integrated aircraft - they should not be the major cost drivers. If they are, that is a major problem.

... my understanding is that the major cost drivers are the airframes themselves (especially with the various lightweight materials), the stealth technologies, and the engines. I stand to be corrected...

The avionics - radars, optics, comm, signal processing, flight management, etc. - really are a cost driver. For example, todays fighters are inherently unstable, which means they obtain stability in flight by constantly monitoring conditions and adjusting the control surfaces to achieve "stable" flight. That requires not only a lot of instrumentation, but processing power; on the F-16, three militarized computers that "vote" on the correction, at a cost in the neighborhood of $100K each. The phased array radar in the nose of the AC could easily add upwards of $2M.

I wouldn't be surprised if the avionics was 30% or more of per unit cost.

However, a lot of the avionics can be upgraded.

[Ski]

So there could be incremental upgrades to existing designs...correct?

[Entropy]

So there could be incremental upgrades to existing designs...correct?

Yes and there have been. Both the F-15 and F-16 have had many upgrades which are designated by letters and then blocks. So a first-generation F-16 is an F-16A. The F-16C is the most common variant, but even that is divided into "blocks." A "block IV" aircraft, for example, is more advanced than a "block I" aircraft.

We could certainly keep upgrading F-16's/F-15's, but you run up against two limitations. First is airframe life. Second is the limitation of the basic design which sets a ceiling for the performance of the aircraft no matter how many bells and whistles you add on.

But as I've said before, the F-22 argument is now moot. Congress has already committed to funding the full buy of 187 aircraft and 2/3 of them are finished or under construction. Congress has also set aside money to either close the production line in 2011 or buy more aircraft and is leaving it to the next DoD to decide.

[Van]

Ski,
I was refering to the impact of emerging comm and sensors on ground forces.

The AF was getting a handle on planes when jets showed up. Jets are under control when space technology gets busy. etc. Until the current round with the various, competing technological advances like UAVs and some of the propulsion systems on the horizon. And they've had about 3-5 years between major technology.

The Army has had much more gradual change until the emerging comm systems started getting practical for us in the past few years. I'm not convinced we're really appreciating the potential or the impact yet.

But J Wolf is right, avionics in its various forms is a serious wedge of an aircraft's cost. In the case of the initial purchase of the Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin, a French airframe, the avionics package was extremely robust, to help ensure the "buy 51% American" requirement was met, and was something like 25% of the total price.

[Ski]

Ok- yeah, you are correct. The sensor and digital revolution has made quite a difference. Agree 100%

Thanks for the update on the avionics piece. Something just seems a little out of whack when the CPU's for actually flying the aircraft cost so much...

[Entropy]

There was also a great deal of internal downplaying of the Minot incident, and the Taiwan shipment didn't make much of a ripple that we could see down here. Once you combine all that with Mosley's ties to the Thunderbirds fiasco and a recent letter in either AF Times or AF Magazine (don't remember which) that basically suggested that generals were above the law, I'm not surprised in the least that Gates acted. Wynn and Mosley were products of a particular culture...one that does not take criticism well and really isn't wired to look at itself in a critical way. That's been shown throughout the years. Hopefully the AF as a corporate whole will learn something from this other than "they're all out to get us."

While I agree that Gates is partially going after cultural issues with these latest leadership changes, these issues exist in all the services. Furthermore, I might suggest that none of the services take criticism particularly well. Rather than singling out the Air Force, I think an argument can be made that the entirety of DoD isn't "wired to look at itself in a critical way." It may be true the AF is worse in this regard, but I would like to see some evidence the AF is worse than any other service.

And, like it or not, there is a basis for the Air Force believing that "they're all out to get us." There are the many articles and commentaries that have made the rounds for decades that advocate the disbanding of the Air Force or at least consider it a serious option to consider. One can hardly visit anyplace that discusses AF issues without this desire being raised by someone. The comments in an AM post from today is but one example of thousands.

Then there are Gate's comments which are almost always mis-reported and interpreted as being critical of the AF and not the other services. Probably the worst was Gate's comments about a month ago in Colorado Springs which are discussed in another AM thread (see the comments). When Gate's says something about the services not doing enough for the current war, it's the F-22 that is inevitably highlighted as "proof" of the AF's malfeasance, yet the billions spent by the other services (including the Army) on capabilities with no utility in Iraq and Afghanistan go completely unmentioned. By the same token the need for an air superiority fighter is endlessly questioned while other capabilities that are arguably less important go unmentioned. If you want to see defensiveness, try suggesting to the Marines that amphibious warfare is perhaps not as important as they might think.

Add in the fact that many making these arguments are clearly advocates for the Army and their arguments are parochial in intent and I think the AF has some justification for being defensive.

All this isn't to excuse the AF in any way. I've said many times before in this forum and others that the AF has serious problems that need addressing, but its extremely frustrating when so much criticism directed against the AF is just plain wrong and based on what appears to be parochial hatred of the service. These invalid criticisms do not go unheard by AF leadership and they certainly do affect how the leadership acts and reacts.

In closing and rereading this post, I want to make clear this post is venting a general frustration and is not directed at you in particular. Your post just happened to be the springboard.

[George Raihala]

Software takes a looong time to code, test, fix, and retest.

Take, for example, something relatively simple like putting Link-16 into the B-1 (something I have direct experience with). The software effort alone for that will take the better part of 3 years, long after the hardware is ready. And that's for one application. Aircraft like the F-22 and F-35 are completely software-driven aircraft, from the radar to the displays to the flight control system. We are talking millions of lines of code for a new aircraft. That all takes time. If you are designing a new airframe, you are then talking about new flight control laws, envelope expansion, etc, etc...that can take years to test. The notion that we can afford to wait until we are in a shooting war to develop new aircraft is simply not practical in any sense.

I would also disagree with some on this board that have suggested we go with simpler aircraft. Our enemies surely aren't. The latest versions of the SU-27 have very sophisticated avionics, radar missiles, and thrust vectoring. Simple aircraft with unsophisticated sensors simply have no chance against a modern fighter aircraft, especially in the BVR arena. The F-22 is defeating F-15s in simulated air combat virtually every time...even a well trained pilot in a 4th-gen machine doesn't have a whole lot of options against a less well trained pilot in a 5th-gen jet.

And the simple fact also remains...our fighters (and every other type) are old...coming apart in mid-air, actually. The design factor for the F-15 was 9g, and the St Louis-based ANG jet that came apart broke after a 7g turn. No matter how much we upgrade our Eagles, we are still talking about 25 year old airframes. Older jets also cost more to maintain, and that cost increases every year, which in turn means less money to buy new aircraft.

One could argue that we won't fight an opponent with 5th-gen jets, which is a possibility. Maybe we won't. Its probably in the unlikely category, even. But, do we really want to take that bet?

[Entropy]

I don't disagree about the necessity of the USAF to provide air dominance. The USN and USMC help out here as well. The USAF just doesn't spend it's money wisely from what I can see. I think the C-17's are close to $150M a plane, I've seen numbers as high as $200M a plane for the F-22, and the F-35 is rising by the day (it will be closer to $100M a copy than the $35M a copy that is being claimed). Meanwhile, flight hours are down in training...why do training funds always go by the wayside when it is clear throughout history that the better trained pilot/unit will beat one that is better equipped but less trained? And if we really do get into a drag down knock out fight with the Chinese, there are far worse things to worry about than aircraft. That is really the only possible peer competitor on the horizon, and the PLAF hasn't been in combat since the late 1970's. Are we really that afraid of that potential boogeyman? Geez...

C-17's are more like $220 million last time I checked. This may have come down. F-22 flyaway cost is variable, but the final aircraft in the 187 buy are going to cost about $135m IIRC.

Training is not down because of procurement costs. Training is down because O&M money is being spent on operations. Air-to-air is not in demand so that is where the money gets cut. The fighter guys don't like that, but no one is happy when they don't get the training they think they need.

As for the PLAAF and others, you have too look long term. The F-22 is going to be our main A2A fighter for forty years or more. The AF understands that it's going to have to live with this aircraft for a long time. Yes, it's overkill for today's threats but the gap is already closing and will be much diminished in ten years. A big reason the AF wants more than the planned 187 aircraft is because it's doesn't think that 187 airframes are gonna last that long given the inevitability of accidents and losses in future conflicts.