Debunking Close Air Support Myths, 2nd Edition: Part 7

Sourcing ‘AF Hates A-10’ Nonsense

We tackled the ‘big’ myths in a while back Parts 1-6. This post, at the root of things, is about the little myth that if the Air Force retires the A-10, that somehow means the Air Force doesn’t care about the mission, the Army, or both. I believe it is based upon other little myths that are sometimes based upon big lies and/or uniformed opinions more than anything else. The lies and opinions get planted as ‘fact’ in places where they line up neatly with already well-entrenched points of view. Then over time, if they get repeated often enough, they become ‘facts’… that aren’t.

The Current Sequester ‘Crisis’ and Close Air Support

At last week’s Air Force Association convention Air Force Leadership statements, acknowledging the reality of how Defense Sequestration was making the military a hollow force. As reported by Defense News:

With the F-35 coming online to take over the close-air support role, the venerable Thunderbolt II will be a likely target, Gen. Mike Hostage told reporters at the Air Force Association's Air and Space Conference.
“This is not something I want to do,” Hostage said, explaining that no decisions had been made.
Hostage said he had already talked to Army officials about losing the A-10 and using other jets to take over the close-air support role. The Army was “not happy” about the possibility, Hostage said.
“I will not lose what we have gained in how we learned to support the Army,” Hostage said. “I had to make sure the Army understood that I am not backing away from the mission.”
Hostage said the service can do the close-air support role with the F-35, but it would be more expensive and “not as impressive” without the famous GAU-8 Avenger 30 millimeter gun.
“In a perfect world, I would have 1,000 A-10s,” Hostage said. “I can’t afford it. I can’t afford the fleet I have now. If I cut the fleet in half, do I save enough to get through this problem?
“My view is, while I don’t want to do it, I would rather lose the entire fleet and save everything I do in the infrastructure.” 

Hostage’s comments follow similar statements from both acting Secretary of the Air Force Eric Fanning and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh that single-mission aircraft would need to be cut if budgets continue to decrease.

“If we go into [fiscal year 2014] with sequestration still in effect, and we need to achieve those savings, you have to look at cuts,” Fanning said Monday…

What is facing the Air Force right now is same for all the services: they must plan on doing ‘less with less’ because of the current ‘budget reality’ [Though it is arguable that is really about a lack of defense-as-a-national-priority ‘reality’]. Within the framework of the ‘budget reality’, the services have to figure out how can they fulfill as many of their responsibilities, and to what extent, with the ‘less’ budget they will be left to work with going forward.

The Lesser of Evils?

It now appears that part of the best way (or least ‘worst way’) forward, involves the possibility of retiring the entire (such as it remains) A-10 fleet

Aside from the sentimentality of General Hostage’s statement, I have no problem with it, and there is one part that sums things up perfectly:

“My view is, while I don’t want to do it, I would rather lose the entire fleet and save everything I do in the infrastructure.”

Got that? Retire selected weapon systems and save all the capability (“everything I do”).

The A-10 is Going Away Anyway

This is certain to cause a groundswell of emotion and irrational fear in some quarters if the A-10 fleet is forcibly retired. I would say ‘retired early’ but that would be less correct than stating ‘earlier than planned’, as we have kept the A-10 past it’s freshness date. the A-10 was considered as rapidly obsolescing AND rapidly aging when the Air Force first proposed replacing it with A-7Fs and A-16's the first time in the late 1980's. All but the last A-10s built (~1983-84) were manufactured with known deficiency in structural strength to begin with.

A-10s in AMARG: The Largest Supply Source for Keeping Operational A-10s Flying.  

"...fourteen airplanes sitting on the ramp having battle damage repaired, and I lost two A-10s in one day..."

Desert Storm Air Boss Made the Call: Pulled A-10s Off the
Iraqi Republican Guard Due to High Attrition

Tales of  the A-10's effectiveness in Desert Storm overshadowed it's shortcomings, which no one wanted to talk about (see Gen Horner's observations in Part 6 of this Debunking CAS Myths Series ) . Between Desert Storm and Congressional dabbling in matters they did not understand, the A-10 got a reprieve. The reprieve has lasted this long because we have not had to fight a war like Desert Storm again (Yes, there were significant differences between then and Operations Allied Force, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom).

Once again, there will be the ubiquitous ‘some’ who will complain that the AF is abandoning the needs of the Army by abandoning the Close Air Support (CAS) mission. In reality, the complaint will/would be over little more than a ‘hardware’ and ‘tactics’ change in the mission, NOT a retreat from the mission itself. Let us note here, that such complaints ignore the fact that the current plan already has the F-35 replacing the A-10 in the CAS role. If the A-10 fleet is retired due to sequestration, then sequestration is only causing a change in schedule for something that was going to happen anyway and NOT changing an inevitable end-state (not that changes themselves are good things, they usually cause chaos and added costs themselves).

Here We Go Again

With this emerging probability that the A-10s will finally be retired, we can expect a repeat of past experience: someone (or rather, many someones) will, in their ignorance, decry such a move as yet another example of the Air Force trying to get rid of the A-10 ‘they never wanted’ in the first place. Never mind that the reason for retiring the A-10 is clearly articulated in the present time: In the future the mythology will be that it was just another exhibit of ‘proof’ that the Air Force has ‘never wanted the A-10’ or never ‘took CAS seriously’. One in a laundry list of other examples. The problem is that laundry list, is a list of myths as well: a compendium of untruths, perversions of the truth, and biased opinions promoting a theme masquerading as the truth.

And I can back up my claims with hard evidence.

Taking Down the Myths, One Myth at a Time

To me, one of the most annoying myths about the Air Force and the A-10 is the one that asserts that when the AH-56 Cheyenne program was cancelled, the Air Force “tried to back out of the A-10 commitment” but it was “made” to keep it by some greater outside force, See "Close Air Support: Why all the Fuss?"  (Garrett, P.10) .

 I’ve picked the ‘Garrett’ (Thomas W. Garrett) reference to use as a starting point for a few reasons. First, when he stays away from the politics involved and deals strictly with the whys and wherefores of the logical division of responsibilities and missions between the Army and the Air Force, the paper is quite admirable. (His snarky delivery however, which no doubt raises a chuckle or two in Army quarters, comes across as snide and mean-spirited in its essence when experienced by this Airman.) Second, He reprised his War College paper in the Army War College quarterly Parameters under a different title (Close Air Support: Which Way Do We Go) . Over a dozen papers written later directly cite these two Garrett papers, and even more papers spring from these.
Third, the paper was written shortly before Desert Storm when Garrett was a Lt. Colonel. Later in Desert Storm “he commanded, trained and led the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) Aviation Brigade, the largest Army Aviation rotary wing task force in conventional land warfare history”. Garrett also served in Vietnam, retired as a Major General, and has been inducted into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame, so he has sufficient ‘street cred’ to be a reliable reference on this topic.

Myth: The Air Force Tried to Kill the A-10 After the AH-56 Cheyenne Program was Cancelled.

When you go to the bibliography to find the source of the claim as quoted in Garrett above, you are taken to a reference:

Horton and David Halperin, "The Key West Key," Foreign Relations. Winter 1983-1981, pp. 117.

This source took me longer to find than I thought it would, because the citation is wrong (It should read “Foreign Policy” ). I initially thought it was some State Department trade publication, but instead find it was in a magazine we’ve all probably seen many time at Barnes & Noble. A magazine that describes itself thusly:

“Since its founding in 1922, Foreign Affairs has been the leading forum for serious discussion of American foreign policy and global affairs. It is now a multiplatform media organization with a print magazine, a website, a mobile site, various apps and social media feeds, an event business, and more. Foreign Affairs is published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a non-profit and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs through the free exchange of ideas.”

References to the web, mobile, apps and social media aside, I suspect their self-perception hasn’t changed much since the Halperin & Halperin ‘article’. Put succinctly: Foreign Policy is a magazine for self-identified ‘movers and shakers’. In the referenced article we find multiple complaints and examples of “interservice rivalry” causing ‘problems’. Close Air Support was but one example:

The Army next tried to build the Cheyenne, a large antitank helicopter priced at $8 million. This time the Air Force feared that the Army, with its new weapon, might be able to acquire officially the close-support function. While the Air Force still had no interest in providing close support, it wanted to protect its bureaucratic territory. Thus it developed the Fairchild A-10, which Easterbrook notes, "many aircraft observers believe is one of the best planes ever built." And priced at $3 million, the A-10 could do a far better job than the Cheyenne at less than one-half the cost. 

The Cheyenne was canceled. But having headed off the Army, the Air Force saw no further use for the A-10 and attempted to cut the plane from its budget. Congress has insisted that the A-10s be built. But Air Force reluctance has sent the Army back to the drawing board, once again in the no-win realm of the helicopter.

There’s A LOT wrong with the above besides the claim the Air Force tried to ‘back out’ of the A-10, such as tying what would become development of the AH-64 Apache to some sort of Air Force ‘reluctance’ ‘Halperin x 2’ were apparently unaware the Army began pursuing what would become the AH-64 the day after the Cheyenne was cancelled. The Air Force was fast in those days, but it wasn’t that fast. The Army simply went back to the drawing board trying to replace perhaps the longest-lived interim system ever: the AH-1 Huey Cobra. But we’ll let the niggling things slide and keep our focus on the task at hand.

First, who were the authors of this ‘article’ and who was this ‘Easterbrook’ they were citing?

The Halperins

Around that time including before and after, Morton Halperin was the Director of the Center for National Security Studies, on the board of the ALCU, and a Brookings Institute ‘scholar’. He was nominated to be THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR DEMOCRACY AND PEACEKEEPING under Les Aspin (Spit!). When nominated in 1993, he was a very well known ‘quantity’. It did not go well.

The other ‘Halperin’ was his son David, then a senior at Yale, and he has not fallen very far from the tree. By the way, Nowadays ole’ Morton is running George Soros’ Open Society Institute. So one might file this data away for future consideration: Perhaps this Father-Son duo were/are not that keen on defense in the first place?

 

We Keep Pulling the Thread: What is The Halperins’ ‘Source’

The ‘Easterbrook’ above was one Gregg Easterbrook writing for the Washington Monthly. The current WM website describes the publication thusly:

The Washington Monthly was founded in 1969 on the notion that a handful of plucky young writers and editors, armed with an honest desire to make government work and a willingness to ask uncomfortable questions, could tell the story of what really matters in Washington better than a roomful of Beltway insiders at a Georgetown dinner party. In our cluttered little downtown DC office, we’re still doing what we have done for over forty years, and what fewer and fewer publications do today: telling fascinating, deeply reported stories about the ideas and characters that animate America’s government.

When you get right down to it, the Washington Monthly is a political ‘alternative’ news outlet. It has been largely run, and overrun, by people like James Fallows whose merits I briefly noted in a sidebar here. So file that away for future consideration as well.

Easterbrook’s ‘article’ was called “All Aboard Air Oblivion” in which he rambles through a no-holds-barred screed: 

• Decrying the wastefulness of hugely-vulnerable helicopters, 
• Asserting the Air Force with a penchant for technology was requiring an expensive unnecessary “smart bomb” called the AGM-65 be carried on top of the internal 30mm gun.
• Laughably describing the Maverick as having only a “15%” probability of kill per “pass” and being impossible to operate effectively in combat.
• Making baseless claims that the Air Force Chief of Staff only pursued the A-10 because of the Army's Cheyenne.
• Citing James Fallows’ writings criticizing the TOW missile, and mocking the idea that the next missile in the works, the Hellfire in combination with the “Son of Cheyenne” (AH-64 Apache) will be any better.

 Among many, many other transgressions against logic and truth. 

And buried inside Easterbrook’s nonsensical diatribe is this little gem of our real interest:

With the Army challenge deflected, anti-close-support generals once again ascended within the Air Force. They wanted to stop wasting money on an Army-oriented project and reserve all Air Force funds for superplanes like the F-15 and B-1. So each year, the Air Force tried to cut the A-10 from its budget. Fortunately, each year politicians put the funds back in. (This year, for, example, the Air Force cut 60 A-10s, but Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger reinstated them.) Next, the Air force shunted 72 of the first 400 A-10s straight to the National Guard, the only front-line aircraft ever assigned directly to the Air National Guard

ALL the above is patently, and demonstrably untrue. All of it.
Beside there being no evidence of ‘anti-close-support’ generals in the Air Force (names?), the ‘tried to cut the A-10 from its budget’ isn’t supported by the history either. I know from a personal friend that briefed the AF budget to Members of Congress (Circa 78-79) that there was constant pressure to increase the original objective of 600 planes to something greater. The numbers WERE increased, because they had to be: just to get the budget past a Committee Chairman or two. Three years after this article was published, at the end of production there were 715 A-10s. So yeah, after the Air Force got all they originally wanted, MAYBE then they stopped asking for more. So what?

Here’s another little factor to consider. Since we don’t know the number from which Easterbrook is subtracting that 60 A-10 figure, perhaps at least some of the 60 aircraft that the Easterbrook alleges the Air Force tried to have taken out (in 1980-81) was related to the 1979 GAO report that ‘came down’ on the Air Force for buying too many total A-10s? From the GAO Report:

… We believe that our current work on reducing Defense aircraft time in maintenance further demonstrates the necessity to reevaluate aircraft needs for depot maintenance float. We focused on the potential procurement of 61 A-10 aircraft as substitutes for aircraft undergoing depot maintenance--currently called backup aircraft inventory for maintenance. Specifically, we found that: 

--Even though the A-10 is being procured under a concept designed to eliminate the need for depot overhaul, the Air Force is still using a 10-percent factor to justify the purchase of 61 A-10 aircraft for maintenance float purposes.
--While Air Force criteria also allows substitutes for aircraft undergoing modifications, the full extent of the modification program for the A-10 is not known.
--In developing the lo-percent maintenance float factor Defense has not systematically determined how quickly aircraft In the depot could be "buttoned up" and returned to their units under a wartime compressed work schedule and the influence of this rapid return on the requirements for maintenance float aircraft. 

The A-10, as well as other newer weapon systems, are being procured under a concept designed to eliminate the need for depot overhaul. New design features and reliability-centered maintenance concepts have improved maintainability and reliability so that work which used to be performed in depot facilities can now be performed in the field and at intermediate facilities. In spite of this change, we find that the planned procurement for the 61 A-10 maintenance float aircraft is still being justified using a 10-percent factor. Historical experience has been used in the past to justify the procurement of float aircraft as substitutes for those aircraft undergoing periodic overhaul. Since the A-10 is not scheduled to undergo periodic overhaul, the justification for 61 A-10s is questionable…


Funny how we never hear about this little development, eh? Congress' "watchdog" complains about too many A-10s one year, and a drive-by journalist hammers you the next. Such is life.

 

Finally, everyone and anyone who has ever played the 'budget game' knows that if someone up the chain is going to support buying system X, whether you want it or not, you can let that someone spend political capital getting more of system X, so you can spend it on system Y. Congress makes the rules, everyone else just plays the game. If the Air Force ever chose to reduce numbers of the A-10 to be bought in an annual budget, it was part of a larger strategy.

As to the characterization the Air Force “shunted” A-10’s to reserve units, and doing so was 'without precedent', the A-10 WAS the first ‘front-line’ system to go directly to reserve units, but hardly the ‘last’. The year after this article was printed, it was announced that the first F-16s would be going to reserve units beginning in 1984. I presume it would be Easterbrook’s argument that the F-16 was ‘shunted’ as well? My damning counterargument to any accusations that anybody in the Air Force was ‘shunting’ anything would be to point to a little thing we (the Air Force) had going on with a full head of steam at the time: Making Total Force a viable force.

So we’ve now pulled this thread, whereby it is claimed the Air Force “tried to back out of the A-10 commitment” all the way to it's frazzled, unattributed end. We've found NO substance to the claim at all, only B.S. 'hearsay'

 

Do I Have Suspicions? Feh. Its 'The Usual Suspects'

I don’t think you have to be much of a detective to read between the lines for Easterbrook’s sources. Aside from referencing Fallows, I see some of the same verbiage that’s been thrown around by Pierre Sprey and Winslow Wheeler for years. I also don’t find it much of a coincidence that this article found it’s way into a particular compendium of lunacy, a copy of which I own. A little book of perversions produced by the predecessor to Project on Government Oversight (POGO) in 1983; the much more verbose “Fund for Constitutional Government”, under their so-called “Project on Military Procurement”.

The title? “More Bucks: Less Bang: How the Pentagon Buys Ineffective Weapons” (If you buy a copy for goodness sake buy a used copy will you?). In this little (in more ways than one) book many weapon systems come under fire. I would say there were only 3 ‘reports’ (out of 30+) that I would call 'materially accurate'. One of those was written post facto: about the tribulations of the by-then long-fielded M-16 so it doesn't count as 'prophetic'.
The rest? Among all the other tall tales, written by a who's who of muckrakers, activists, and 'reformers', we learn that the Trident submarine and Aegis Cruisers won’t work, the Stealth Bomber is a ‘joke’, Low Probability of Intercept Radar is a ‘homing beacon’, the Abrams and Bradley are failures, and the Maverick, Pershing and Tomahawk missiles will be useless.

I marvel at the 'expertise' on display within.(/sarc)

I suspect Easterbrook was spoon-fed his article’s scary parts from the so called ‘reformer’ camp. His output then later gets rolled into the Reformer Noise Machine which then echoes down the years.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. That is how these myths are born.

I further suspect the next thread I pull will lead me right to the same noisemakers as I found this time.

The Next Myth? (Part 8)

'The Air Force only started/proceeded with the A-X/A-10 because they 'had to' due to external pressure.

Note: I'm having formatting (font and case mostly, with some copy/paste gaps) issues with Blogger on this post for some reasons. Please bear with me as I find problems and make adjustments.

    

F-35 Cost Estimates Drop; AvWeek Makes Motorboat Sounds

But...But...But...But...

Tonight, I was curious as to how Aviation Week's ARES Blog would cover the news that F-35 Sustainment cost estimates were being lowered dramatically, and how the CAPE estimates to-date apparently involved some wildly unrealistic Ground Rules and Assumptions (GR&As). I should have let that 'itch' pass.

I suspect AvWeek must have taken exception to getting scooped by 'Slow Tony' Capaccio on a big aviation story, the kind that perhaps they should have found first. I 'suspect' so because when I dropped in to see what they had written, all they had was Sean Meade's '8/22 Frago' link to someplace with the rather dismissive title:  Analysis: Lower F-35 Operating Costs Should Be Taken with A Pinch of Salt.

I clicked on the link and...gasp! It was the oh so cogent (/sarc) Giovanni de Briganti I've taken to task before. I (or anyone else for that matter) could go to his faux aero-news website almost any day to find some low-hanging fruit to debunk, so I'm usually not even tempted to bother....unless a presumably 'authoritative' website points to it, and even then I've resisted because of the whole "fish/barrel" thing. As usual, there's A LOT wrong with de Brigante's nonsense, but because it's late, and it's not worth too much of my time to beat down on this kind of stupidity, I'll just note the most egregious nonsense I found in de Brigante's so-called  'analysis' has the added benefit of also being the easiest one to explain to John Q. Public. I quote (bold emphasis mine):

The Marine Corps has also radically changed its F-35 operations to claim lower costs. Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle, deputy Marine Corps commandant for aviation, told Reuters that the Marines would fly their F-35Bs “in STOVL mode just 10 percent of the time, far less often than the 80 percent rate factored into the initial estimates.” ... 

...If STOVL is needed only 10% of the time, then it is, at best, a secondary capability, and is no longer enough to justify the F-35B variant’s exorbitant cost, both in terms of acquisition ($153 million, without engine, in LRIP Lot 5) and of operations ($41,000 per flight hour).   

Furthermore, if STOVL operations are limited to 10% of flight activities, it is hard to see how Marine pilots will ever gain enough experience to fly STOVL missions from small, unprepared landing zones on the beachhead – the main, if not only, reason the Marine Corps says the F-35B is indispensable.

Wow. Just. Wow. Let us note that Lt. Gen. Schmidle said they would be flying their F-35Bs (get ready to look for the key word here) “in STOVL MODE just 10 percent of the time".

STOVL "Modes" are for Doing 2 Things   

And you only want to be in a  "STOVL Mode" when you are doing those two things. Can you guess what they are Mr. de Brigante? No?



How about 'take off'.....


100th Short Takeoff
Source: LM Aero Code One Magazine

and 'land'?

BF-4's First Vertical Landing
Source: LM Aero Code One Magazine

Want to guess about what percentage of a normal sortie is spent taking off and landing? Way less than 10%. Which tells me the Marines will be practicing those STOVL takeoffs and landings quite a bit more than de Brigante's  so-called 'analysis' was able to identify. Pffft. Not much of an analysis.

de Brigante's 'logic' above is akin to telling you that your car doesn't need brakes 90% of the time, so that must mean you don't need brakes.

Seriously AvWeek?

You don't even cover the cost estimate reduction news, but you point to a juvenile attempt to diminish positive F-35 Program news.

I remember when Aviation Week was run by grownups for the aerospace community. Now?
Welcome to...

Frago Rock: Like another enterprise with a lot of silly nonsense, but with very little singing. 

   ~Sigh~

Pierre Sprey: Expert?

Pffft! More Like POGO's 'Circus Barker'

(File Under "Know Your Reformer")
Hat tip 'munny' at F-16.net

Pierre Sprey: Old Whine in a Cracked Bottle

There's a new You Tube Video (link here) up with Pierre Sprey blathering his usual nonsense about 'complex' vs 'simple', 'heavy' vs. 'lightweight' fighter performance... blah... blah... blah. As if he ever knew d*ck about the topic at hand. Virtually everything he says is just as wrong or worse than the first time he spouted it off.  Remember, this is all part of the POGO P.A.C.E. propaganda strategy.

I left a few comments that were smaller than I would've liked because the format doesn't allow me to put together a larger coherent one such as:

Pierre Sprey has never ‘designed’ anything with wings, and he still doesn’t know diddley-squat about aircraft design OR air warfare . He played a bit role in developing top level requirements at OSD for a couple of years, basically parroting whatever John Boyd or Everest Riccione were hawking that day. His ‘expertise’, as well as much that which is claimed about the rest of the so-called ‘Reformers’ was pure fabrication by James Fallows. Those fabrications have been echoing in the halls of the anti-defense lairs for consumption by the useful idiots ever since.
Best summary* of Sprey I’ve read:

While working on the F-X, Boyd met Pierre Sprey, a weapons system analyst on the OASD/SA staff, whose background was similar to [Alain] Enthoven’s but much less distinguished. By his own account, Sprey was a dilettante with an engineering degree but no military experience. After graduation from Yale, Sprey became a research analyst at the Grumman Aircraft Corporation for space and commercial transportation projects. He came to OSD/SA in 1966, where he declared himself an expert on military fighter aircraft, despite his lack of experience. Sprey admitted being a gadfly, a nuisance, and an automatic opponent of any program he was not a part of.   

*Source: Pierre Sprey, Oral History Interview by Jacob Neufeld, 12 June 1971, K.239.0152-969, AFHRA, 9, passim. , as cited in THE REVOLT OF THE MAJORS: HOW THE AIR FORCE CHANGED AFTER VIETNAM, Marshall L. Michel III, 2006 (PDF).

Michel gets a little too 'Fighter Pilot Uber Alles' in his thesis, and I found myself having to force my eyes to read past those parts, but it still is a good read. If you want to read a really cold-blooded delivery of a takedown concerning the so-called ‘reformers’--including Sprey-- buy and read “Military Reform: the high-tech debate in tactical air forces” by Walter Kross.

Clearly POGO is focused on Canada as a 'weak link' in the JSF coalition at this time.

Charter Cable: Media Malpractice

Charter News, 'Isn't'

(Still working on a lengthy 'aircraft/F-35 maneuverability' post, but this HAS to go up tonight.)

Charter Cable is my cable provider. NO complaints about the internet speed or connectivity, not even though I suspect their move to 'all digital' last week wreaked havoc with signals (off and on) as thousands of users finally added even more thousands of cable boxes and cards to the network in just a few days. It now seems to have stabilized, so 'no problem'.

But Charter Cable's 'homepage' has a section with rotating 'news' headline pictures and captions. All too often the caption and photo make it appear that some tragedy has happened in the US or even just the 'Modern' world, and you click on the link talking about a school being bombed with what appears to be a typical American elementary school (they've done school buses too if I recall correctly) and the story is about a school in some war zone in a 'turd world' country. The Chief and I just chalked it up to lazy web content developers and editors.

Today, they went beyond 'lazy' and deep into 'media malpractice' . I got home and booted up the laptop to check the web and this is what greeted me (left headline):



Charter Home Page 9 April 2013 ~1920 Hrs CST

 



WTFO? "Veteran Kills 13"?

I clicked on the link, and this is what popped up:

Charter 'Article' 9 April 2013 ~1920 Hrs CST

Oh. A Serbian 'vet' in Serbia loses it and goes on a rampage. Tragic in it's own right. Why the 'trick' headline?

You would have to be either incompetent or agenda-driven to put this one up.  Either way it doesn't 'inform' but misleads and distorts several issues in one nice swoop.

Besmirching veteran's mental health? Check!

'Tragedy' as background for upcoming 2nd Amendment legislation? Check!

The Chief likes to try and calm me down when some unthinking slug nearly kills us because they're doing something clueless in traffic. She says something like "I'm sure they didn't see us". She forgets what makes me the MOST angry is the fact that they probably were clueless as to what was going on around them. If I assume Charter was just being 'brain dead' in this, it just p*sses me off more. tell me again: What business are they in? Do they have any standards?
 
Either way, Charter's website is Media Malpractice writ large in a Low Information Consumer world.

Are There ANY Adults At Charter Cable?

POGO’s Propaganda Circus: F-35’s “aft visibility will get the pilot gunned every time”

A Case Study in How the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) Demagogues Against National Defense Programs.

I’ve considered something similar to what you are about to read many times, but I never pulled the trigger because I hadn’t yet figured out how to cover it without either making most people’s eyes glaze over from too much psychological exposition on the one end of the spectrum, or oversimplifying to the point that the explanation does violence to the phenomenon on the other end. I was at a symposium this week that I believe provided me with a way to reach the middle ground I’ve been seeking. One of our Keynote Speakers (yes, there were several) spoke on the subject of how we humans ‘Innovate’ and how organizations and individuals can overcome barriers to innovation.

The speaker presented us with four fundamental characteristics of the human psyche that affect our ability to (among other things) be “insightful” and “innovate”. She also reviewed how those characteristics are inhibited or disrupted by outside influences. It occurred to me at the time, that what she was describing was, among other things, a pretty good explanation as to how propagandists are also able to manipulate public attitudes. Shortly afterward, I realized it would be helpful in achieving my goal of getting a substantial explanation as to how POGO/Winslow Wheeler and crew operate. By showing how POGO and fellow travelers manipulate the elements of Perception, Attention, Context, and Emotion (PACE) we are able to adequately grasp the manner in which they exploit human nature to further their agenda of subverting national defense acquisition programs.

P.A.C.E: A Tour Inside POGO’s Meme Machine

Winslow Wheeler and POGO have provided any number of examples of what I’m about to cover, but their latest machinations concerning the recent “F-35A Joint Strike Fighter Readiness for Training Operational Utility Evaluation” report is as perfect an example as any to use for this discussion.
The report in question was issued by DoD’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, J. Michael Gilmore, and is as close to being more of a political document than a technical one as any I’ve seen issued from that office (but that is another topic for another time). But the most interesting aspect to the report was in how it was apparently leaked to POGO/Winslow Wheeler ahead of the public release, and the ONE thing POGO/Winslow Wheeler chose to lift from that report to propagate was a statement by an evaluation pilot that the F-35’s “Aft visibility will get the pilot gunned every time”. That ‘money quote’ was then repeated throughout the mainstream media before anyone had the chance to really digest the contents of the report in their entirety.

POGO,Winslow Wheeler and “Perception”

In this example, POGO and Winslow Wheeler were continuing the long-standing practice of ‘poisoning the well’ against any positive perception that might arise from any public reporting on the F-35. In this case, the ‘report’ in its totality is remarkably unsurprising. What the OT&E evaluators found concerning the training program after a limited exposure to early configuration F-35s is pretty much what one would expect. But in highlighting a single comment in the report POGO made the report about the F-35 itself and not the status and readiness of the training program. The Director of OT&E was an enabler (codependent?) in this development due to the report’s excessive regurgitation of ‘old news’ that didn’t belong in this report, but POGO is the ‘perp’ that picked the forbidden fruit.
When each of us perceives something, it is estimated that only 20% of that perception is based upon what we actually sense as new, and 80% of the perception is due to what we’ve already experienced in life. As most people have little or no working knowledge of what it takes to field advanced technology and designs, that makes their ‘80% experience’ base highly vulnerable to any manipulation of the ‘20% new’ information. POGO selected and amplified a quote concerning how a pilot felt about rear visibility in a plane that does not yet have the key technology installed that makes such rear visibility concerns moot. That pilot brought his experience and training to a new aircraft and applied his old knowledge to a new situation. Without his experiencing what is the baseline F-35 EODAS and HMD capabilities that were yet to be delivered, his comments should have been noted in the backup data. But in an objective document this never would have been a feature in the report.
In cherry-picking the “get gunned every time” quote, POGO and Winslow Wheeler exploit the general ignorance of the public as to how the jets and training program are still in development, how the F-35 program is structured and how capabilities are scheduled to be brought on line by deliberately injecting into the public’s consciousness the misperception that the F-35s now being used for initial type training are representative of the capability that define the baseline F-35. This is only the latest in a long series of flagrant misrepresentations of F-35 truths, in effect LIES, committed by POGO, and the F-35 is only the latest in a long line of weapon systems to receive that special POGO/Winslow Wheeler ‘touch’. We can expect nothing but more of the same from POGO and Winslow Wheeler because they dare not let any positive or neutral development concerning the F-35 go without preemptory and presumptive criticism, as the façade of failure that they work so hard to build up from nothing requires constant maintenance to prevent it from crumbling around their ears.

POGO, Winslow Wheeler and “Attention”

Long-time observers of POGO, Winslow Wheeler and other so-called ‘reformers’ will note that the ‘get gunned every time’ sound bite will be dropped fairly quickly and something else concerning the F-35 will be targeted as a ‘failure’, ‘mistake’ or ‘criminally negligent’ decision/design feature/performance characteristic, perhaps from the same report, or from one to come later. This is because POGO et al are acutely aware that an extended exchange or dialog with anyone who disagrees with them will expose the misdirection they (POGO et al) endeavor to sustain. POGO and Wheeler go for the sound bite to plant negativity into the public’s consciousness knowing that the general public’s attention span is short. By the time anyone dives deep into a POGO/Wheeler claim and cries “Hey! Wait a minute!” the public has moved on to other circuses. Such ‘Hit and Run’ tactics, along with their careful cultivation of media enablers, allow POGO/Wheeler relief from ever having their methods, biases and motives undergo serious public scrutiny. This is classic guerrilla warfare of the information domain.
Once the initial ‘buzz’ is past, if the ‘get gunned every time’ line is ever again referenced by POGO/Wheeler, it will be as only one item in a litany of similar perversions of reality in support of some general condemnation of the F-35 or as an introduction to the next misdirection issued by POGO/Wheeler. It is a clear testimony to POGO’s and Wheeler’s confidence in the public’s inability to critically examine information POGO/Wheeler spoon feed the media, that POGO and Wheeler have felt comfortable posting the source documents which they pervert at their own websites.

POGO, Winslow Wheeler and “Context”

If there is a hallmark to POGO/Wheeler PR announcements, it is that whatever is being decried or derided will be framed in as little context as possible. What context that is provided, will be selectively added to support the official POGO/Wheeler meme du jour. In this instance, the “get gunned every time” comment is highlighted without any reference to the inconvenient (to POGO and Wheeler) fact that the F-35s EODAS and Helmet are still being developed, the software releases to exploit these systems were not sold off for the aircraft used for the training readiness evaluation, or that if later version aircraft that are now flying had been available, the ‘get gunned’ claim would probably never have been uttered.
As individuals, we perceive reality in terms of context. When we see two circles, one drawn within the other, depending upon where our heads are at the time, or depending upon what else is drawn beside the circles determines whether we view the circles as representing a bagel, a wheel, a ring, or any number of other similarly- shaped objects. Stripping the context from the ‘get gunned’ comment allows POGO/Wheeler to insert their own meaning and relevance: a constructed perversion for consumption by the uninformed and only marginally-interested public.

POGO, Winslow Wheeler and “Emotion”

Indignation and inflammatory statements about defense acquisition programs are the stock and trade of POGO and Winslow Wheeler. Consider how in the original ‘story’ at TIME Winslow Wheeler attempts to paint a ‘horror story’:

Perhaps the biggest horror story is the poor showing of the Lockheed plane’s complicated, expensive helmet-mounted display system that distorts and obscures – rather than enhancing — the pilot’s vision and awareness of the outside world.

Wheeler seeks to elicit the reader's emotion by making an assertion that the F-35’s HMD’s performance is deficient (oh woe is us!), by obliquely referring to much (at least two years) earlier technical development challenges as if they were still current and relevant. Yet Winslow Wheeler, if he was honest when asked about the HMD, would have to acknowledge that the F-35 program is fairly confident in the current state of HMD performance and sees no ‘show-stoppers’ in delivering the desired capability. Lockheed Martin was discussing positive HMD developments nearly a year ago. It is notable that the latest GAO report did not highlight any definitive problems with the HMD system, only the usual ‘concerns’. When the ‘alternative’ just-in-case helmet being developed in parallel is cancelled (possibly this year), don’t expect any surrender from POGO or Wheeler on this point: “DOOM!” will always be just around the corner.
Using our neurons takes considerable (relatively) energy and it is estimated that we can only have about 2 ½ % of our brain active at any one time. When we are irate, our limbic system/amygdala can compromise, to varying degrees, our reason and judgment. Thus, when POGO, Winslow Wheeler, or others appeal to our emotions (Waste! Corruption! Conspiracy! War Mongering Military-Industrial Complex!) they are really attempting to subvert our ability to see through the flawed logic that binds whatever nonsense they are peddling at the moment.

Know Your Reformer Bonus Content: About Winslow Wheeler’s Move to POGO

I still consider Winslow’s move under POGO a positive development. In May of last year I noted the move from the Center for Defense Information (CDI) to POGO and as I also noted, I like it when targets bunch up. The tendency of radical activism to date has been to splinter and re-label itself when caught in the daylight. This may be a consolidation for survival (one can only hope).
CDI had been slipping for years but was often extremely entertaining to watch – it was like a zoo for disillusioned and misunderstood ‘military geniuses’ founded by possibly the biggest crackpot ever to reach ‘flag’ rank.
At the time, I didn’t know that the ‘Strauss Military Reform Project’ moved with Wheeler to POGO, so the same ‘photographer’ cum ‘radical chic’ trust-fund baby must still be paying Wheeler’s salary. The ‘Strauss Military Reform Project’ is little more than a one-job program for Winslow Wheeler. Strauss, when he isn’t producing forgettable photography, or financing disgruntled, ex-Congressional staffers’ caterwauling and rabble rousing, is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of that iconic bastion of American culture (/sarc) “Mother Jones”. How cliché can you get?

DoD Buzz-Job

"Buzz-Job".
1. Noun: A colloquialism for what happens when commercial military-oriented websites  "disappear" their mistakes down a memory hole instead of acknowledging them.
2. Verb: The act of erasing an e-publishing mistake on the internet in leiu of admission of same.

Usage: "Hey! They just pulled another "Buzz-Job" by posting that lame article called "Phantom Bombers Weigh Down Military Budget" and then pulling it without comment."

The "Phantom Bombers Weigh Down Military Budget" that, apparently, "aren't".

I'd link to the 27 December DoD Buzz article by Michael Hoffman that has the title as in quotes above, except it isn't "there" anymore. (Update: See end of this post for a link to Hoffman's 'do-over').

I noticed the link to it was missing from the DoD Buzz main page on the 4th of January. Thinking I must have incorrectly remembered where it was , I went looking for it elswhere. Nope. It WAS on DoD Buzz as the screen capture below of the 'Google cached' version then showed:

At the time, Google showed over 1500 hits for "Phantom Bombers Weigh Down Military Budget":

Here's a screenshot of the article as it was when it was 'disappeared'.

Here's my comment made the day it was posted.... with +33 'thumbs up'? (on DoD Buzz? Surprising, I know):

As of 6 January, the Google 'cache' link leads us to:

No preview available, and no web bots allowed. Tsk.

So the article is REALLY disappeared now. Except of course for the screenshot above.

One of the few merits of having a printed 'press' is the inherent accountability from not being able to recall their mistakes once distributed. The inverse of the same is the great scourge of e-journalism. They can make mistakes, relay falsehoods and publish propaganda press releases as 'news', complete do-overs, or even just lie.

They can do these things because in the end they can always just pretend it never happened if they can 'pull' the offending piece... and nobody notices.

Hey! Just checked again and DoD Buzz's Hoffman now has a ''Do-over" article up. In it he acknowledges his earlier 'mistake' - something I wish more journalists would do. I still think a correction to the original would make a better audit trail.

Feel free to compare the two stories.

Smacking Down Gun-Grabber's (Cough) 'Reasons' (Cough)

Hat-tip to Instapundit (who is bumping this story to keep it in view).

Larry Correia.  Source

The author Larry Correia got his start in writing by 'self-publishing' a young adult fantasy best-seller that got the attention of mainstream publishing. But before that, he was firmly established in firearms and law enforcement circles. He's got a GREAT summary of all the intellectually effete 'anti-gun' crowd's so-called 'arguments' once again being trotted out in the wake of the latest mass murder of innocent children and teachers at Sandy Hook elementary.


Correia's blog post can be read in its entirety here, but here's his conclusion: 

In conclusion, basically it doesn’t really matter what something you pick when some politician or pundit starts screaming we’ve got to do something, because in reality, most of them already know a lot of what I listed above. The ones who are walking around with their security details of well-armed men in their well-guarded government buildings really don’t care about actually stopping mass shooters or bad guys, they care about giving themselves more power and increasing their control.  

If a bad guy used a gun with a big magazine, ban magazines. If instead he used more guns, ban owning multiple guns. If he used a more powerful gun with less shots, ban powerful guns. If he used hollowpoints, ban hollowpoints. (which I didn’t get into, but once again, there’s a reason everybody who might have to shoot somebody uses them). If he ignored some Gun Free Zone, make more places Gun Free Zones. If he killed a bunch of innocents, make sure you disarm the innocents even harder for next time. Just in case, let’s ban other guns that weren’t even involved in any crimes, just because they’re too big, too small, too ugly, too cute, too long, too short, too fat, too thin, (and if you think I’m joking I can point out a law or proposed law for each of those) but most of all ban anything which makes some politician irrationally afraid, which luckily, is pretty much everything.  

They will never be happy. In countries where they have already banned guns, now they are banning knives and putting cameras on every street. They talk about compromise, but it is never a compromise. It is never, wow, you offer a quick, easy, inexpensive, viable solution to ending mass shootings in schools, let’s try that. It is always, what can we take from you this time, or what will enable us to grow some federal apparatus? 

Then regular criminals will go on still not caring, the next mass shooter will watch the last mass shooter be the most famous person in the world on TV, the media will keep on vilifying the people who actually do the most to defend the innocent, the ignorant will call people like me names and tell us we must like dead babies, and nothing actually changes to protect our kids.  

If you are serious about actually stopping school shootings, contact your state representative and tell them to look into allowing someone at your kid’s school to be armed. It is time to install some speed bumps.

As 'they' say, go to the link and read it all.

Gun Control

As chance would have it, yesterday was my Texas Concealed Handgun Law training course and qualification.  Two nights before, I was studying the latest Texas CHL manual online, and wincing as I went over the parts that delineated the 'gun free zone' areas, and thinking, in the wake of the Oregon mall shooting, in most cases it is pretty stupid to create what is actually a 'target rich environment' zone for the sick and twisted who would try and commit mass killing of innocent others.
While the rest of my family spent the day trying to avoid all the 'news' and constant revision thereof, concerning the elementary school killings that happened the day before, one of the first things we covered was WHY Texas was a CHL  'shall issue' state. Surprise! It was largely the result of  a mass killing, the Luby's Cafeteria Massacre on October 16, 1991, in Killeen, Texas, and the efforts of one of the survivors, Suzanna Gratia Hupp. Ms. Hupp's story and energy in making the laws more protective of the individual was a powerful weapon. Her testimony before Congress even managed to subdue the perennially pompous a** Chuck Schumer for a time:

Time will tell if Chuckie starts bloviating again as if the above never happened.

This was my Target and Scoring Used

Texas uses the B-27 target for qualification:

This is the Course of Fire:

Stage 1: Twenty shots (20) will be fired from 3 yards.
A. Five (5) shots fired in a “One Shot Exercise” 2 seconds allowed.
B. Ten shots (10) fired in a “Two Shot Exercise” 3 seconds allowed.
C. Five (5) shots fired in 10 seconds

Stage 2: Twenty shots (20) will be fired from 7 yards – fired 5 stages.
A. Five (5) shots will be fired in 10 seconds
B. Five (5) shots will be fired in 2 stages:
  1. Two (2) shots will be fired in 4 seconds
  2. Three (3) shots will be fired in 6 seconds
C. Five (5) shots fired in a “One Shot Exercise” 3 seconds allowed.
D. Five (5) shots fired in 15 seconds.

Stage 3: Ten shots (10) fired from 15 yards – fired in two 5-shot strings.
A. Five (5) shots fired in two stages:
   1. Two (2) shots fired in 6 seconds.
   2. Three (3) shots fired in 9 seconds.
B. Five (5) shots fired in 15 seconds.

This was my 'grouping':

IMHO, not bad, especially since the 50 rounds represent about a fifth of all the rounds I've put downrange with this weapon. I've decided it shoots a 'tidge to the right and will be adjusting the sight appropriately.

This was my 'score':

Texas only records Pass/Fail. The 249 out of 250 only serves to make this shooter cry in his beer. 'Dang! So close...'.  I took comfort in acing the written though.

The above is an example of  'Gun Control'

BTW, Have you heard? Evidently the Oregon Mall shooter only shot two people before he took his own life BECAUSE he was confronted by a person licensed to 'concealed carry'. 

 

Canada Cancels F-35?

Canadian Liberal Politicians and Their 'Operatives with Bylines' are Headhunting

Libs in the Great White North, who are no doubt just as brain dead as their south of the border brethren, seem to have a target painted on the F-35. Only the F-35 isn't really what they're going after: they're after the politicians who backed it.

This latest round seems to be an attempt to manufacture outrage over 'estimated' life-cycle sustainment costs.

One Big 'L' Liberal rag reports their wet dream come true:
"Federal government cancels F-35 fighter purchase"

Other outlets, including ones who should know better, report what the Big L Liberal rag reported. They did so with varying degrees of scepticism or enthusiasm (you can guess which reports what with alarming predictability),

But wait!

 Now it is reported the initial report was wrong, in an article full of leftard political ranting no less.

The Conservative government says it has not made a decision on the F-35 as a replacement for Canada's CF-18 fighter jets, but it now appears to concede that alternative fighter purchase options will be considered. 

The Prime Minister's Office denied a media report Thursday that the F-35 purchase was dead, calling the report "inaccurate on a number of fronts" and promising to update the House of Commons on its seven-point plan to replace the jets before the House rises for the Christmas break at the end of next week.

Even Reuters didn't over-commit on this meme (yet). It doesn't matter. The "STORY" is really about sliming the people who made the decision to sole source the F-35 vs. compete it against a bunch of 4th Generation targets. Not because of the decision really, but just because they can (think Scorpion and the Frog)  

If the Canadian Government does decide to reopen the issue with a 'competition' (which won't surprise me either way) it will be for one reason only: politics. If a competition is held and the F-35 isn't selected it will be for one reason only: politics. No 'story' there.

BTW, I note the offending paper 'who cried wolf' is the same rag that created the "Spitfire vs. F-35" fairy tale I eviscerated earlier. A**hats.

     

Oh Noes! Bill Sweetman Keeps Bringing back the 80's

Looks like another generation gets to deal with the problem child that won't grow up. 

CUDA vs. SHOULDA (NOT)

I'm still working on 'guesstimates' of the performance and design nuances of the LM in-house CUDA missile project. It's not a 'secret program' and from what I can tell, not even a government program. (Though there is almost certainly some classified technology involved about which I won't hazard to even guess about in private). From all indications so far, based upon the verbiage I've seen, the 'difficulty' the LM marketeers are having in releasing info is related to 'Proprietary' concerns. If I find out otherwise, I'll probably drop it and STFU.

Contrast talking about a company-funded concept slow-leaked by the marketing department, with Bill Sweetman's latest offal.

A few observations ought to sufficiently express my... distaste shall we say, with anyone actively trying to delve into national secrets as if it is either some noble public service or even a respectable endeavor.

"Sources"

The 'sources'  who can't be  named should be tried and shot if they're 'credible' at all. If they are 'credible' they are probably Congressional Staffers, or people who have a habit of stroking Staffer egos they should be shot twice.

Texas Sharpshooter Approach 

Sweetman covers a lot of speculative ground concerning what might be black budget activities. he throws enough up against the wall and he MIGHT get something close to right that he can point to later. He's probably hoping he does better than he did in the 80's and 90's. I'm hoping he keeps repeating the Aurora and Stealth Aircraft debacles.

Love/Hate

I usually LOVE Sweetman's retrospectives on historical aircraft or aircraft already in the public eye. That which I don't like is whenever he substitutes 'narrative' for actual 'history'.  It's his speculative stuff that serves no purpose other than to perhaps reveal or point to secrets that those responsible for the defense of the nation have deemed necessary to keep secret, that drove us up the wall in the 80s-00's.

The Cognitive Dissonance of  Lamenting High Defense Budgets While Subverting Defense Program Objectives

Has Bill Sweetman EVER pondered how much of the utility of the U-2 and  SR-71 and their relatively long service lives were due to the secrecy that surrounded them? Has he ever postulated how many weapons programs didn't NEED to be developed, so long as the SR-71 was effective?

The Next Generation Warrior's Burden: It's 'CRAPTASTIC'!

Looks like an entirely new generation of weapon system developers and secret squirrels gets to deal with Sweetman's overwrought hand-wringing ( Is There Too Much Secrecy? Answer: NO.), perennial heavy-handed fishing expeditions, and fanboy fellow-travellers propagating his mythology across the world wide web.

BTW: I winder if ole' Bill even noticed the irony of sharing the byline on this piece with a guy... in China?  Who needs Wikileaks when we've still got AvLeak?

F-35 and the "Crackpots of Doom" (Redux)

(Updated and Bumped for comparison.)

Gee, has it been a year already?
In the original post below, among other things I demonstrated/showed:
1) That the official F-35 cost projections at the time had been  complete 'fails' and that production costs were tracking closer to LM's projections than anything else and much lower than the CAIG's.  
2) That there was a disconnect between what the Government was 'budgeting' and what they expected the costs to be.
3) The scary Mod dollars that will be needed to retrofit LRIP 1-4, when added to the initial costs appeared to STILL be within reasonable estimation of LM's production numbers.
  
The USG has negotiated the LRIP 5 production numbers and it looks like the trend continues. Here's the relevant part of the official news release (Bold italics mine):

Principle Agreement Reached on Fifth production lot of Lockheed Martin F-35s WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 30, 2012 – The U.S. Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin have reached an agreement in principle to manufacture 32 F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters as part of Low-Rate Initial Production 5 (LRIP-5). The contract will also fund manufacturing-support equipment, flight test instrumentation and ancillary mission equipment.
“It’s been a long journey, but I’m pleased we’ve achieved an agreement that is beneficial to the government and Lockheed Martin,” said Vice Admiral Dave Venlet, F-35 Program Executive Officer. “Production costs are decreasing, and I appreciate everyone’s commitment to this important negotiation process. The LRIP-5 agreement will end the year on a positive note and sets the table for the program to move forward with improving business timelines for the greater good of all the nations partnered with us.”

Under the contract, Lockheed Martin will produce 22 F-35A conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) variants for the U.S. Air Force, three F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) variants for the U.S. Marine Corps and seven F-35C carrier variants (CV) for the U.S. Navy. Aircraft production was started in December 2011 under a previously authorized undefinitized contract action.

There's already the usual crowd trying to do 'math' beyond their ken, simply dividing the total by the number of jets, and not realizing that not all in the $ amount is accountable against the unit cost. You've also got the usual mixing of cost numbers in the usual quarters.

But lets play the 'stupid' game for a moment and just divide the total by the number of jets like a Rube, thus averaging the cost of the variants in the process shall we? Using a 'popular' source we get a total cost of $3.8B for the buy, which translates into a $118.75M 'estimate' for the LRIP 5 jets. Now trace down to the graphic below from last year (I'll post an updated version with the latest actuals later) showing an official Canadian government chart with cost projections and actuals for just F-35A (the least expensive) aircraft.

That's right. Even using the inflated simpleton-math estimation method above, the F-35 is STILL tracking to slightly below LM's lower cost predictions and nowhere near the 'feared by some and hoped-for by others' "official" numbers.    

Oh dear. What WILL the 'haters' do by LRIP 9 or 10? Accuse the F-35 program of hiding costs?

**********************Original Post Begins Here***************
12/2/11 8:08 PM CST

Skip the breathlessly headlined Bill Sweetman "Article of Doom" for now (it will make it just that more entertaining if you go back to it) and go to slightly less 'vapourous' article he linked to as the source at AOL  (I know! Whooda' guessed AOL was still around?).
There are many parts of the original article that I find most interesting, given the responses to it in the blog comments I've seen so far.
In no particular order:

But slowing production would help reduce the cost of replacing parts in jets that are being built before testing is complete, Venlet said. Although fatigue testing has barely begun -- along with "refined analysis" -- it's already turned up enough parts that need to be redesigned and replaced in jets already built that the changes may add $3 million to $5 million to each plane's cost.
The price of the F-35, being built by Lockheed Martin Corp. in three variants, has averaged roughly $111 million under the most recent Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) Lot 4 contract.

So now the unit retrofit mod costs estimates are 50-70% lower than the previously "feared" $10M/unit costs that were 'estimated' only three months ago? Hey! That's 'Crack-ing' GOOD news! And since the LRIP contract costs to-date have BEAT predictions, that means that even with the retrofit costs, it looks like the the total unit costs are coming in at or near program predictions and are still nowhere near the widely circulated B.S. CAPE estimates.
But doesn't this 'Cracks of Doom' thing kind of' support the assertion that the F-35 is the (to quote a Sweetie*) "most incompetent and wasteful fighter program in history"? Umm - no.

*A member of the 'Sweetman' Tribe

Nor are the weaknesses surprising in the world of fighter jets, he added. The discoveries are "not a quote 'problem with the airplane,'" Venlet said. "It's a fighter made out of metal and composites. You always find some hot spots and cracks and you have to go make fixes. That's normal.

Gee. I wish I had known that. Oh yeah. I do. The article doesn't go into the 'why' this is so, but it is simple enough. For performance reasons you have to make the plane's structure as light as possible and it is always easier to put weight in where it is needed than take it out. Structural tweaks are usually a mix of both in the end, with the emphasis on adding structure for durability.
When Vice Adm Venlet is claimed to be calling for 'slowing down' F-35 production. In what "way" is it meant? 

Venlet declined to say how much he thinks production should be slowed. Earlier plans called for the Pentagon to order 42 F-35s in fiscal 2011, but that was cut to 35 and more recently it was dropped to 30. Previous plans, which Venlet's comments and the unprecedented pressure to cut the defense budget make clear will change, had been to ramp up orders to 32 in fiscal 2012, 42 in fiscal 2013, 62 in fiscal 2014, 81 in fiscal 2015 and 108 in fiscal 2016 before jumping to more than 200 a year after fundamental fatigue and flight testing is done

.The Admiral is concerned about the steeper ramp up that exists as a result from Congress cutting the buys on the front end? Surprise! (Not.) (Think of trying to climb a flight of stairs where the first 5-6 steps have been lowered but the rest still lead to the top floor). This approach has risk advantages and it has risk disadvantages (as from time to time I've had to expand upon for the some of the more obtuse among us), and must say that I disagree with the idea from a 'risk' and 'total cost' POV. I disagree because I believe it is better to aim high and possibly fall a little short 'sooner' than to aim lower and only possibly hit your target 'later'. The reason being is that the near term risks are always better known than those that might transpire in the future. Vice Admiral Venlet knows this as well, so what would REALLY drive him to consider it?
This next bit is the most bothersome part for me.

Venlet also took aim at a fundamental assumption of the JSF business model: concurrency. The JSF program was originally structured with a high rate of concurrency -- building production model aircraft while finishing ground and flight testing -- that assumed less change than is proving necessary. 

"Fundamentally, that was a miscalculation," Venlet said. "You'd like to take the keys to your shiny new jet and give it to the fleet with all the capability and all the service life they want. What we're doing is, we're taking the keys to the shiny new jet, giving it to the fleet and saying, 'Give me that jet back in the first year. I've got to go take it up to this depot for a couple of months and tear into it and put in some structural mods, because if I don't, we're not going to be able to fly it more than a couple, three, four, five years.' That's what concurrency is doing to us." But he added: "I have the duty to navigate this program through concurrency. I don't have the luxury to stand on the pulpit and criticize and say how much I dislike it and wish we didn't have it. My duty is to help us navigate through it."

I find it hard to accept this passage as written. The second paragraph containing the quote is harmless (though kind of emotional for a PEO of a major weapon system program) as it stands, but the first paragraph that prefaces it smells of willful misdirection. Most people would read the passage as Venlet is asserting 'concurrency' was a miscalculation. But more likely the passage should be read as estimates of the amount of change that would be needed as the program progressed was a miscalculation. Why do I believe this? Because 'concurrency' itself has been analyzed and studied to death (Though Congress uses it as an effective bogeyman). I'm certain Venlet wanted to deliver the first jets in final configurations, but certainly he has the training and background to be aware of the realities in the job. I wonder what, if anything, the author of the original article is leaving out?
The AOL article closer has the bottom line:

"The question for me is not: 'F-35 or not?'" Venlet said. "The question is, how many and how fast? I'm not questioning the ultimate inventory numbers, I'm questioning the pace that we ramp up production for us and the partners, and can we afford it?"

"Can we afford it?" Ah! There's the rub. It strikes me that from earlier in the article there's a kernel of what might be the 'real' cost problem.

"We negotiated the LRIP 4 contract with a certain amount of resources considered to pay for concurrent changes," Venlet said. "We were probably off on the low side by a factor of four. Maybe five. And we've discovered that in this calendar year, '11, and it's basically sucked the wind out of our lungs with the burden, the financial burden."

That is most interesting in the sense that the comment relates to what was 'budgeted' and not what was 'estimated'. Remember this chart? (It's in some of the linked material above as well.)

I suspect the budget shortfall has as much to do with how the costs have been amortized across fiscal years as it has to do with the fact that the contracts were negotiated for amounts less than even the JSF projected cost curve. Notice when this chart was made, the LRIP 4 jets were to cost approximately $128M in the end. Use the dollar figures provided in the AOL article: $110M plus $3-$5M for the retrofits. What is 'missing' from this equation?  The LRIP 4 share of the weight reduction effort? [I cannot let an opportunity pass to also remind readers, once again, that even WITH all the "costs" being thrown about so carelessly, the totals to date STILL more closely track the lower internal program estimates than any other estimate and the B.S. CAPE estimates are still the outlier by far.]

This whole 'slow the ramp up' story IMHO is a narrative constructed to explain constraining the program more for reasons of immediate budgetary convenience than anything else. The program's successes this year may have brought about the need for the narrative.

"Cracks of Doom"?  Heh. The 'beat' goes on......