Liberals never met a weapons system they liked.
Conservatives never met a weapons system they didn't like.
Centrists like me try to make more nuanced judgments. And even if you don't have any intrinsic interest in weapons systems, surely you care about where an impressively big chunk of your tax dollars go: to fabulously expensive weapons systems--all of which are nearly impossible to kill off, whether they work or not, because military contractors always subcontract components and subsystems all over the country, so every Congressman has a stake in keeping it alive. Thus we have one zombie system after another lurching across the landscape, which will only be replaced if we use it in a shooting war and it fails spectacularly.
In WWII the Brewster Buffalo was such a fighter plane. The first week it saw combat was its death knell. You probably haven't heard about this aircraft because it sucked so mightily.
The opposite also happens. The best piston engined fighter of WWII (in any air force) was the North American P-51--a private project that the Army Armed Forces only adopted reluctantly until its spectacular success in combat proved its worth.
Something like this also happened with the Fairchild A-10, a relatively cheap, ugly, slow ground attack aircraft that the Air Force loathed and tried to kill repeatedly, because Air Force generals see their role as dogfights and bombing runs at 50,000 feet--not ground support. But the grunts loved it because it could kill a tank with one five second burst from its 75mm gatling gun and was nearly invulnerable to small arms fire from the ground, and it could loiter around the battlefield for a long time, thanks to its using fuel-efficient airliner engines.
The Air Force replaced it with a ground attack version of the F-16, a fine high altitude fighter utterly unsuited to ground support. The A-10 engines are mounted above the tail (for less exposure to ground fire), and it has two of them, either of which can get the plane home if the other gets shot up. And its crucial wiring and plumbing run along the top of the fuselage, not the bottom. And the pilot sits in a titanium tub. The F-16 has none of this, and it can't fly slowly--something the A-10 needs. And it can't destroy a tank without using expensive missles, whereas the A-10's cannon could do the same job far more cheaply.
The Air Force argued that using one fighter plane for everything achieved great economies. Maybe. But at the cost of pressing the F-16 into a role it wasn't designed for, wasn't suited for, and wasn't good at.
Now the same argument is being made for the F-35. But often one size fits none, or few--not all. Like the F-16, the F-35 isn't suited for ground support. It isn't suited for Marine use either. It's so much bigger than the Harrier it's supposed to replace that its engines melt runways when their thrust is directed straight down for takeoff.
It's great for fighting the Soviet Air Force at 50,000 feet.
Oh wait. There is no Soviet Air Force. OK, scratch that.
It's great for putting live pilots into situations that are usually better served with UAVs (remotely piloted drones).
Oh wait. We can use drones for most things piloted planes are now used for, and for many things piloted planes are really hard to use for, such as loitering over a battlefield for many hours, or close ground support when the enemy has shoulder-mounted RPGs and Stingers that can down a 747.
What we really need is a new class of small aircraft carrier that mainly hosts armed and reconnaissance UAVs, many more UAVs of different types (much to the annoyance of old-time ex-flyboy generals and admirals), and a ground support fighter for Marines that isn't VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing), which is really, really difficult, but rather a pretty radical STOL (short takeoff and landing) vehicle that only needs a few hundred feet of gravel to get off the ground, is simple to maintain, tough to shoot down, and cheap to build because its engines don't have to swivel and its wings can be optimized for short takeoff, not supersonic flight.
It's like the military works from the needs of the systems to the needs of the troops, rather than vice-versa. And the F-35 looks to me like an exercise in nostalgia for the good old days of air combat during WWII...
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4 comments:
There's no doubt that the military orders new aircraft based on what the "system" needs as opposed to what is most effective for battle. I suggest you read the book "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War" if you're interested in the politics and pentagon drama that went on behind the scenes for the F-16 and the A-10. The F-16 was designed for air-combat (not ground support), and it's ability to outmaneuver an opponent was forefront in its design. In that sense, the strength of the F-16 is similar to the A-10: They're both really good at doing what they're designed to do. Of course, both aircraft are obviously ill-suited to operate outside these conditions as you mentioned about the F-16.
It's really too bad that the pentagon is so determined to ram through expensive programs such as the F-35. Lockheed pushed through some amazing aircraft (such as the Blackbird), but I too am skeptical of the F-35. There's no such thing as a one-size-fits all solution when it comes to military weapons. I suspect that the requirements for the F-35 came from a large committee meeting in the pentagon.
As far as UAV's go, I'm optimistic about future designs since they aren't prohibitively expensive to take on for small companies.
I generally agree with you. My only concern about UAVs is that they may be vulnerable to electronic countermeasures, so we have to make sure that development in this area matches airframe and power system development, and that perhaps UAVs can/should be equipped with autonomous "go home" functionality if they detect that their link to the pilot has been compromised.
This will be especially important if we ever have to fight the Chinese, who are no slouches in this area.
I should have added that NIH (not invented here) syndrome is also a problem. Thus the Brits summarily rejected Fokker's Dutch-invented propellor-synchronized machine gun early in WWI, while the Germans eagerly bought his design and his fine aircraft.
My brother pointed out that the military tried another one size fits all system during the Vietnam War--of which the F-111 is the best known. It was a huge, mega-expensive failure that foisted a family of lousy aircraft on our armed services.
You'd think they'd have learned their lesson.
I've heard that the best thing that ever came from the F-111 was the the russians copied it(the SU-24). So, perhaps its colossal failure was slightly offset that by the Russians dumping lots of cash into a copy-cat money pit.
A recent story in the news outlined how UAV's were sending unencrypted video surveillance, and that a very low-lost system was being employed by the insurgents to get this info. Perhaps this outlines the vulnerability of UAV's, but I'm cautiously optimistic that small companies would be able to crank out a faster-better-cheaper result that can come up with solutions faster than the bad guys can. UAV's have enough resistance from old cold war fighter pilots-turned-generals. If anything, it's pentagon politics that would hurt UAV's the most! It is encouraging to know that Obama is supportive of UAV's.
On the Chinese, maybe I'm being naive and overly-stereotypical, but I tend to think that the US will still remain the leader in new technology innovation for quite some time. However, the Chinese seem to be really good at improving an existing process or product. Especially since you're from the San Francisco area, I'd be interested in hearing your views of the Chinese culture in relation to the shape of the world's future powers.
Every emerging industrial power starts by improving existing processes. That was America's rep in the earth 19th century, for example--and Japan's in the 1950-70s.
OTOH Asian thought may be priotized a little differently than Western thought. I read a fascinating book on this topic titled "The Geography of Thought" which was a thoroughly researched cross-cultural study.
The author described how Westerners tend toward hierarchical, categorical thinking, while Asians tend towards relationship fields--the former favors scientific/technological thinking, the latter business thinking.
However, in a country of over a billion people it's not hard to find a few million hierarchical thinkers. Including ones we've trained in our universities.
And it sure doesn't require democracy. Look at the innovative stuff the Germans cooked up during WWII (such as the Me-262, a wild assymetrical Blom & Voss (sp) recon aircraft, a rocket propelled interceptor, the V1, the V2, and a lot more). Never underestimate the power of patriotism, even in a totalitarian society.
Nobody--including the Chinese--can predict where China's going in the next few decades. The leadership is riding a tiger, with an increasingly restive peasantry, tens of millions more young men than young women (due to gender-selective abortion under China's one child rule), current growth resting in part on using currency manipulation to steal industrial production from the entire rest of the world, a simmering war for natural resources from the entire world between all the industrial powers, the implosive powderkeg that's North Korea, the ongoing friction with Taiwan, conflict with Vietnam over China damming the Mekong, competition with India across many fronts, and possibly unmeet-able expectations of China's burgeoning middle class, starting with their desire for a judicial system that actually provides justice.
My biggest fear is that the Chinese dictatorship will become desperate and start a war to trigger people's patriotism and draw their attention from the failures of the rulers.
My biggest hope is for a peaceful revolution like Russia or South Africa had. Despite those countries have huge problems today, at least they avoided civil wars.
As for UAVs--yes, the old flyboy generals are/have been the biggest problem by far. Reminds me of all the nonsense Billy Doolittle went through in the 30s.
My innovative idea that I haven't heard anywhere else is UAV pocket carriers. They could make mincemeat of Somali pirates, for example, which our current military vessels there can't do because they're all designed for a different kind of war, and it would cost too much to deploy enough of them to really stop the pirates. But one UAV carrier could rain silent death from the skies.
For that we need UAV gunships, though, or at least ones that can fire cheap RPGs instead of fabulously expensive missles.
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