Nature Fakers (Enviros)

They've been around longer than most people realize.
I was just telling someone this week why, as a lifelong Conservationist, I hate Nature-Faking  'Environmentalism'. In the future, I'll just refer them to the link.

F-35 Tail Hook Risks? Meh.

Other than using the word ‘blame’ in the headline to draw the reader’s eye there’s a pretty good piece at the Navy Times on the F-35 tail hook ‘issue’.
While I don’t know who made the “claim” mentioned within this excerpt, this seems to contain a series of reasonable observations:

Richard Aboulafia, an analyst at the Teal Group, Fairfax, Va., said the claim that the F-35C could never land on a ship was always highly dubious. ''They turned the YF-17 into a carrier plane, why couldn't they correct carrier-hook problems here?'' he said. ''This does not appear to be a killer problem.'' Flight testing is designed to uncover and fix problems with a new aircraft, Aboulafia said. ''This is the kind of problem that might come out during the flight testing of a carrier-based plane,'' he said.

Lest someone think arresting gear functionality should have been a ‘slam dunk’ out of the box, “History” has shown it more to be something that has to be worked out with every plane. See this excellent blog for a pretty decent survey of past designs and challenges. Even if the 'first round redesign' doesn’t provide the final ‘answer‘ to the problem, it will probably provide more data to support further tweaking of the arresting gear. But if the problem isn’t fixed the first time, I can almost guarantee there will be near-instantaneous 'doomsayer' claims that something much more draconian/costly/delaying 'will have to be done’. I am just mentioning it now so you can get some ear protection before the caterwauling commences. I'd wait to get the data from the next round of tests, and get excited only if the data told me I should.
PS: I’d discuss the technical challenges of successful arresting gear development in more detail, (beginning with the fact that when it comes to an aircraft system interacting with the ship system what we are talking about is essentially a chaotic meta-system) but most people’s eyes would glaze over before I was finished. OK, I admit it, since I deal with this kind of stuff from 9 to 5 it would be no fun for me either. The article linked above covers what may be the critical bits in this case anyway.
Just think about ALL the variables that might be involved and you’ll get the idea.

Nice short F-8 tail hook...but a loooooong way back from the landing gear. Image from Wikipedia Commons

F-35: STILL Just a Typical "High-Tech" Program

But the point seems to gets lost on the casual observers, the Druids and the 'droids. I wonder if pictures would help them understand?

I've been considering for some time doing a graphic or series of graphics that would show the comparable development milestones and the fielding of technical capabilities of the F-35 and the planes it is slated to replace or other 'successful' legacy programs . I think this would help get the point across to the illiterate, innumerate, and just plain lazy. Of course it won't do a thing for the 'Haters', but they're more manageable without their chorus of enablers.

This is actually more time consuming than just iterating the facts in words, but points can be more compelling when graphically shown.  For example, when someone trots out the F-16XL as a 'simple' replacement for the F-16, do they know exactly how different the two designs are?

F-16 Block52 vs. F-16XL

The recent Admiral Venlet Vent-let has stirred much of the "hater" noise making the last few days and   graphics, a timeline perhaps,  might prove handy to point to in the future when beating down hysteria over the next gasping F-35 factoid-of-doom that comes up. 

Constructive and serious suggestions as to the design(s) to get the point across are welcome.

Inside the Pentagon: JSF Faces Potential $3 Billion Bill To Reconfigure Early Production Aircraft

...and it is NOT as big a deal as you might think, and is certainly less than the JSF-Haters fantasize. 

50th F-35 Center Fuselage Delivery Ceremony

20 July 2011 (Northrop Grumman Photo)

'Inside the Pentagon' reports on 'outside' estimates to bring LRIP F-35's to Production Baseline Standard (link Subscription Required-- sorry). The 'Teaser' at link contains the bottom line:

DefenseAlert - 09/16/2011 The Defense Department is facing a potential $3 billion bill to modify early production Joint Strike Fighter aircraft to final configuration, roughly an additional $10 million for each fighter jet that is not accounted for by Pentagon unit-cost estimates, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

This is the same Committee using 'Concurrency' as a red herring to recommend holding back the F-35 production ramp up discussed here. In fact, this 'story' is part and parcel with the 'concurrency' angle. Other tidbits:

...The Senate panel, in a report accompanying its mark of the Pentagon's fiscal year 2012 spending bill, estimates this cost by comparing the Air Force's experience developing the F-22 with the F-35. 

..."Based on F-22 experience, a common configuration modification for the Joint Strike Fighter program would cost approximately $10 million per aircraft resulting in a $1.67 billion to $2.29 billion modification program," the Senate panel's report states  

...These costs are in addition to the $771.2 million in additional costs -- disclosed this summer by the Pentagon -- to reconfigure the first three F-35 production lots. Combined, the Senate panel estimates the total retrofit bill could reach $3 billion.

 So, before the 'Oracles of Doom!' (Mainstream Aero Blogs and Boards) get a hold of this story and blow it into another 'F-35 Nightmare' fable, let's consider what these costs "mean" within context of  the estimates and the actual costs of aircraft delivered to-date:

Remember this chart from a Canadian briefing? (I first used it here in discussing the earlier $771M cost upper for weight reduction)

 Look at the LRIP 3 Contract Settlement and the LRIP 4 Contract values on the chart. What is the first thing you notice? That's right, adding the $10m+ costs to retrofit the LRIP 3 & 4 aircraft will bring the total production costs in line with the LOWEST cost estimate curve plus or minus a small percentage.

Any bets at least one mush head out there on the defense boards will add the "new mod costs" to the highest estimate cost curve line to make even more outrageous cost claims?  What are the chances that the Congressional estimates for the mods are high in the first place, given the crude F-22 parallels used?

And remember the earlier $771M was to cover the weight reduction effort. A Total Ownership Cost perspective was taken in discussing that change.

Was Lockheed Martin 'lucky' or 'good' in bringing the costs in so low on initial production that they can essentially include the mod program and still keep close to the lowest cost curve?

Deliver Us from Beancounters: Learning Curve Edition

Learning Curves and Production Breaks
Dancin' with 'Engineering_Economist' a.k.a. to me as 'EngeCon' again at Defense Tech, and again the DT comment limits prevent material responses (by design I'm sure - which is understandable on a couple of levels) to outrageous posts so here we are again.


This thread is related to my last post, so I don't mind expanding on the point here at all.


(Note: Ignore the Ad Hominem parts of the comments I repeat here, they are only included because I didn't want to be accused of selective editing)


At the DT thread below a post about the Senate Appropriations Committee recommending a two year extension on the current F-35 LRIP production rates, I made the comment:

No doubt in the future, if it is found that the costs of running a fighter factory in first gear for two more years exceeds the total lifecycle cost (or APUC for that matter) impacts that would have been incurred if the conventional alternative (of proceeding with increasing production rates and retrofitting fielded early aircraft) had been followed, that the good Senator (D-Hi) will be the first to admit the strategy was wrong and that he and the other Senators will be the ones to blame for the cost increases. I know that on the other hand, if such a delay does actually save total costs (vs, just playing a convenient ricebowl to plunder for the short term) and has no negative impact on the same costsI will be happy to publically proclaim I was 'wrong'

I won't bother with the preliminary back and forth and the early Ad Hominem but the thread rapidly got to EngeCon posting:

that wasn't even an ad homenim. i asked a question and expressed an opinion. once again the communication process has broken down. also according to learning curve theory it doesn't matter if the lot quantity increases, as long as there is not a production break. so no matter how much you misapply learning theory, you can't blame this on the Senate. the learning effects will not be achieved for a variety of other reasons, such as the unstable production configuration and inevitable obsolescence. there are probably some great introduction to logic and proof classes at your local community college which might give you an appreciation for axioms of math, science, and engineering. i'm sure if we keep repeating the educational process with you, sooner or later something may stick.

The only thing worth noting in this comment was the part about 'Production Break' and 'Learning Curve'. This was funny: A guy trying to 'count coup' while demonstrating a lack of in depth knowledge of the point he was trying to use to refute my argument. I followed with:

Re: Fallacious Ad Hominem – I take the general and to-date unsupported “your obfuscated, hubristic, and biased views” as a personal (not to mention unsupported to the point of nonsensical) attack.
Re: ‘Production Break’ observation. Interesting, but your offhand dismissive use of the term indicates you probably have no idea that a ‘Production Break’(as the term relates to Learning Curves) does not have to be temporal or complete. In fact, your answer reeks of a ‘numerical’ and not ‘operational’ awareness of ‘Learning Curve’ [ I would note that it comes over as arrogance in your own ignorance, but that would mean bringing up “Hybris” again and I’ve noted how that seems to have rankled you some. So I won’t mention it. ] Now go back and try to conceptualize how many of the five categories of ‘Production Breaks’ as identified within the Anderlohr Method are relevant to an operation on the scale of the F-35 and the planned expansion to the manufacturing effort (scope) and speed (production rates). Hint: All of them are relevant.
Re the rest of your poor scratchings: Infantile projection

I don't know why, but I expected EngeCon to at least do a little research on the "Anderlohr Method" before he came back, but nooooooooo:

what is your reference for definition of the term 'production break'? then show how what has happened in the past or in the future indicates that a production break has or will occurr. Congress is not at fault for any production breaks. i understand the frustration in the Appropriations process, but in the F-35's case, Congress has faithfully appropriated billions of dollars into this caper per year, and the program should still be expending dollars that were obligated in past years. the whole experience is ANOTHER lesson in how foolish the concurrency approach is. you need to prove you are ready for production, via a MS C decision, before starting LRIP. what's the status of that DAB to rebaseline the program??

 Aside from the obvious fact that EngeCon hasn't gotten the latest word on Concurrency yet, and aside from attempting to shift the discussion back to the Milestone BS meme he so desperately clings to at the end...there's not much here.  I obliged him with a reference, and would have posted at DT all of what I'm about to post here, except it would have had to be broken into about 6-7 unconnected comments, subject to cherry picking. In 'replay' what I wrote at DT was:

Have you noticed that you often begin with challenging an assertion by asking for ‘support’, then attempt to preemptively refute (poison the well) any support provided in response? And before you have ANY idea what the response will be? Interesting. I assumed you would have just Googled up the ‘Anderlohr Method’. From the second or third hit on my computer: https://acc.dau.mil/adl/en-US/30391/file/5384/Learning%20Curve%20Workshop%20Production%20Breaks.pdf  

RE: MSC/DAB & other formalities. I'll refer readers to our earlier dance :http://elementsofpower.blogspot.com/2011/07/deliver-us-from-bean-counters.html            

What I WANTED to post in addition to the link was the actual categories of "Production Breaks":

My comments in brackets []; feel free to cavil away.

George Anderlohr…. divided all learning lost, by an organization, due to a break in production, into five categories:

"1. Personnel Learning: In this area , the physical loss of personnel, either through regular movement or layoff, must be determined. The company's personnel records can usually furnish evidence on which to establish this learning loss. The percentage of learning lost by the personnel retained on other plant projects must also be ascertained. These people will lose their physical dexterity and familiarity with the product and the momentum of repetition." [From my next door neighbor who works on the F-35 production line, I know that LM is (again) already shuffling key people around into less desirable (read: dirty or at night) work because the production ramp-up is being delayed (again). They are trying to retain the experience and skills of as many less-senior but more ‘F-35 experienced’ line workers as they can--in anticipation of possible layoffs which, given it is a unionized workforce, would otherwise be ‘out the door’ as the more senior ‘protected’ mechanics and electricians are retained.]     

"2. Supervisory Learning: Once again, a percentage of supervisory personnel will be lost as a result of regular movement. Management will make a greater effort to retain this higher caliber personnel, so the physical loss, in the majority of cases, will be far less than in the area of production personnel. However the supervisory personnel retained will lose the overall familiarity with the job so that the guidance they can furnish will be reduced. In addition, because of the loss of production personnel, the supervisor will have no knowledge, so necessary in effective supervision, of the new hires and their individual personalities and capabilities. [We should suspect this will particularly affect those people who were involved in planning the ramp up of production itself, some of whom will start the replan, and others who will now go fight other fires]

"3. Continuity of Productivity: This relates to the physical positioning of the production line, the relationship of one work station to another, and the location of lighting, bins, parts, and tools within the work station. It also includes position adjustment to optimize the individual needs. In addition, a major factor affecting this area is the balance line or the work in process build-up. Of all the elements of learning, the greatest initial loss is suffered in this area." [How much additional production infrastructure had LM and (hundreds of?) suppliers already put into place to support the coming ramp up and will now have to work around it or set it aside?  How much will have to change (do over) if the profile of the ‘ramp up’ has to change (steeper or slower – still a change)? How much more expensive will it be to work through the ramp up in later years, for all the categories and for all the suppliers?]

"4. Methods: This area is least affected by a production break. As long as method sheets [now computerized work instructions- see below] are kept on file, learning can never be completely lost. However, drastic revisions to the method sheets may be required as a result of a change from soft to hard tooling." [ not just ‘soft’ to ‘hard’ tooling – any tooling change driven by scale. BTW I disagree with this being ‘least affected’. The effect is dependent upon the availability of people who understood the intent of the instructions when they were written.]

"5. Special Tooling: New and better tooling is a major contributor to learning. In relating loss in the tooling area, the major factors are wear, physical misplacement and breakage. An additional consideration must be the comparison of the short run or so called soft tooling to long run or hard tooling and the effect of the transition from soft to hard tooling." [Unlike relatively simple manufacturing products, like a microchip or even some F-35 subsystem components, scaling up the tooling for high rate production involves more than just cloning a production line or station. Scaling up the F-35 production will involve reconfiguring and rearranging new tooling. I believe the process of transitioning to full rate tooling has already started with LM subs (remember reading about it in the last year someplace). Will they have to change their processes again to efficiently use the tooling at the lower rate?]

'The definitions presented by Anderlohr have been modified and expanded, since 1969, to accommodate today’s manufacturing environment. For example, some of today’s modern factories operate in a “paperless environment” where method sheets are no longer used. However, these factories normally produce all of their shop instructions on computer files, these computer files sometimes have the same “ability” to get lost as their paper counterparts. Therefore the Methods portion of learning may deal with these computer files (i.e. lost files, changes to files due to new equipment, etc.)." 

Thus it is shown that when the term 'Production Breaks'  is used in reference to 'Learning Curves' within the "Anderlohr Method" (the most widely used application in aerospace as far as I know) it does not just mean cessasion and restart of activity, but applies to any disruption in the current production system that renders prior knowledge ineffective of less effective for future application. As
1. the current F-35 production system had a plan and was executing to that plan, and
2. must now change their execution to meet the next plan's objectives, and
3. that the people and equipment they were putting in place must now change,
new learning will have to begin again or be refreshed.
As the learning curve will now be applied/achieved in later years, the curve can be expected to cost more 'then' than 'now'. If the production rate ramp up under the delayed plan is different from the previous plan, that too will require new knowledge and understanding of the impacts and used to develop the new plan.

Like I said: Cavil away! 

Congressional Bloviation On The 'Concurrency Bogeyman'

There's no 'There' there...
I was initially going to post on this when it was first announced, then I decided to just let this latest F-35 development lie where I thought it belonged (in the ‘Political Doublespeak ‘roundfile’) because the major blogs and news outlets weren’t giving it much play. I moved on to other interests, but should have anticipated that the more inflammatory of the pundit perches were merely saving up for a weekend rabble-rouser squawking. Defense Tech, in an unattributed piece started the red-meat varmint call early last Friday. The post itself was on the whole quite innocuous -if incomplete - but it was the rhetorical “we’ll see what happens next” at the end that calls out to the innumerate and the ignorant along with the casual observers to proffer uninformed opinions en masse. This would be, of course, perfectly acceptable as long as they are offered AS opinions. The problem with much of the DT/Military.Com crowd these days is that too often opinions and personal preferences offered are masquerading as absolute statements of fact without any specific evidence of same. Heck, we’re lucky if they even bother with a fallacious argument, and when they do, if one points out the argument is fallacious it will result in fallacious ad hominem thrown back reflexively. ( I'll check out the responses to my comment at DT after I get this up, but as I have noted before, JSF 'haters' are woefully short of logicians (link).

The WHOLE story and nothing but....
To quote the actual (and corrected) statement (link here)

"We recommend a $695 million reduction to the Joint Strike Fighter program. We continue to strongly support this program and believe that the F-35 is showing progress since it was restructured last year. However, excessive concurrency in development and production still exists. The test program is only 10 percent complete, yet the request continues to ramp up production of aircraft in fiscal years 2012 and 2013. We recommend maintaining production at the fiscal year 2011 levels for two more years in order to limit out year cost growth. For each aircraft we build this early in the test program, we will have to pay many millions in the future to fix the problems that are identified in testing.

Instead of employing a teaser ‘let’s see what happens next’ approach, how about we ask ourselves ‘What might this (Senate decision and rationale offered) really mean?”

I. Decomposing the Appropriations Committees’ Recommendations
Note: Readers may skip this section and proceed directly to Part II if they desire, and revisit this section if they have questions as to my summary of the Committee’s core argument. In fact, unless you are predisposed for classical rhetoric, I STRONGLY recommend it.

We can accept the statement at face value or assume there is deviousness and deception involved. Being a ‘Theory Y’  kind of guy, I would normally tend to look at a statement and first take it that Senator Inoue and the Committee really mean what is stated.  But are their assumptions and reasons given correct? Can we assess their logic and find it sound?

The Explicit…

First, let’s summarize what it is explicitly stated:

1. The Appropriations Committee recommends a $650M reduction to the JSF program budget.
2. The Appropriations Committee asserts that the F-35 program concurrency is “excessive”.
3. The Appropriations Committee continues “to strongly support” the Joint Strike Fighter program.
4. The Appropriations Committee believes the program has shown “strong progress” since last year.
5. The Appropriations Committee recommends maintaining the current production level at 35 aircraft per year for two more years (2012 & 2013) for the express purpose of “limiting out year cost growth”.
6. The Appropriations Committee asserts that each aircraft built “this early” in testing will require “many millions in the future to fix the problems that are identified in testing”

…and The Tacit

The above is rather straightforward, and normally not worth reiterating. I only took the trouble of identifying these explicit statements to help differentiate between what is expressed -- and what is ‘presumed’ or ‘implied’.  What presumptions and implications should we feel confident in deducing from the explicit statements? I assert that until contrary information is available, the following may also be seen as contained within the Committee’s statement.

 I assert that we can safely deduce, given the totality of the Committee’s statement, that:

A. All or the significant portion of the budget reduction is coming out of the proposed production budgets for 2012 and 2013. We should note here that the 2013 reduction could be reversed (or increased) next year, but that probably would not have a significant effect on the actual production because the dollars taken out now for 2013 will affect long-lead procurement items and you cannot accelerate their acquisition by simply turning on the ‘money tap’ again.   
B. The Committee believes that this delay in ramping up production will reduce “excessive” program concurrency.
C. The Committee believes that reducing program concurrency will save the program “millions of dollars”. 

We can further deduce from the above that IF the Committee believes it makes economic sense to delay production, they must believe the savings from not having to retrofit the aircraft somehow exceeds the cost of maintaining the inefficient utilization of manufacturing resources for two years, and increased costs of production in the out years.  This must include the adverse impacts on hundreds if not thousands of suppliers, large and small.  Of course, if some of those suppliers are having difficulty meeting engineering and/or production schedules (typically a small minority in any program) they will benefit from such a delay (and there are simpler and more certain remedies for such problems other than slipping the entire program).

II.  The Senate Appropriations Committee’s Central Argument

Thus we see from all of the above that the Senate Appropriations Committee’s expressed rationale for cutting the F-35 budget rests solely on the following argument:

“High-concurrency programs involve having to ‘fix’ early production articles and the costs incurred in these programs can be minimized (i.e. monetary savings will be realized) by stretching out the production to make the program less concurrent.”

To evaluate this claim, I em>WAS going to proceed with a scholarly investigation of literature dissecting the pros and cons of program concurrency, its relationship to cost overruns and schedule delays. I assumed getting to the bottom of the story would be complicated.
It is not.
It is simple.
In spite of well over two decades of fear-mongering by detractors, 'Concurrency' in and of itself has been shown to be nothing to fear - only managed.

All you need to know to judge whether or not the Senate Appropriations Committee action made sense is found in the following few documents. You can look at others, but you wont find much difference among the earlier work and the last reference is the latest and most complete research on the topic.

Concurrent Weapons Development and Production, CBO, August 1988 (link)

In this study, the CBO went looking for the adverse effects of ‘concurrency’ and came away ….somewhat contrite (emphases mine):

This study examined concurrency, cost growth, and schedule data for 14 major weapons systems that were developed during the 1970s and have been subsequently produced and deployed. The systems include a variety of types of weapons from each of the military services, and all of them have been reviewed by the Defense Systems Acquisition Review Council (DSARC). The analysis showed that no strong relationship exists between concurrency and schedule delay (see Summary Table). A statistical regression analysis found that only a couple of percentage points of the variation in schedule delays are explained by concurrency. A modestly stronger relationship exists between concurrency and cost growth: approximately 14 percent of the variance in cost growth is explained by concurrency. (Page vii-iix)

The report noted all the changes that have occurred in years leading up to the report that reduce concurrency and its ‘effects’ –tenuous linkages or no – but that didn’t stop the authors from suggesting MORE limitations for Congress if they so desire:

Given the ambivalent statistical evidence concerning the effects of concurrency on costs and schedules, and the fact that current laws and regulations limit its use, the Congress may wish to take no further action regarding concurrent programs as a group. On the other hand, in view of recent problems with certain programs, the Congress may wish to have more information on high-priority programs that are employing concurrency (Page xi).

BTW: No data or detailed discussion of methodology was included in the report so it would be hard to really get your teeth in the study to judge its completeness and efficacy.
Then we get to Congressional testimony in May 1999 by Frank C. Conahan, Assistant Comptroller General, National Security and International Affairs Division of the GAO (link here):
Within, Mr, Conahan insists problems with 5 of 6 then-‘highly concurrent’ programs were related to concurrency (without any supporting rationale as to why concurrency is a problem) and took a swipe at the then-emerging DDG-51 program. His ardor was as palpable as his data was invisible. It drips with the fear that somebody must be doing something wrong someplace therefore the standard GAO response of 'more oversight' gets an entire section.

But there simply MUST be something to this concurrency thing, right?  Well people kept looking. A team of analysts from CNA reported in the Defense ATL magazine (link) late last year:  

Our results (located at [link fixed by me], based on examining 28 programs across all Services, are very similar to those of the Congressional Budget Office and RAND [example] studies with one surprising exception: While from a purely statistical point of view we found that the relationship between both planned and actual concurrency and cost growth was very weak, in both cases, there seems to be a “sweet spot” of about 30 percent concurrency. That is, programs that plan on spending 30 percent of RDT&E funds while concurrently spending procurement funds actually experience the lowest average cost growth. Similarly, those programs that actually do spend about 30 percent of RDT&E funds while concurrently spending procurement dollars, even when not originally planned, also experience lower cost growth. Furthermore, programs with planned or actual levels of concurrency below 30 percent experienced higher cost growth than those with higher levels of concurrency. In other words, lower levels of planned or actual concurrency were actually worse than higher levels of concurrency. This is the complete opposite of what many in the acquisition community believe. We speculate that lower levels of concurrency may expose the program to higher levels of external changes.  

At the end of the AT&L article, the authors Donald Birchler, Gary Christle, and Eric Groo close with the following:

What to Do About Concurrency?
So far, no conclusive evidence exists that concurrency (no matter how it is defined) is generally a problem. This does not mean that concurrency is never a problem. But most likely, concurrency leads to cost and schedule growth under very particular circumstances. What these circumstances are is not very clear just yet. Nor is it clear why in our study, the sweet spot for concurrency is somewhere around the 30 percent mark. What is clear is that there are definite advantages to concurrently designing and building a weapons system that most program managers take advantage of, to some extent or another.
The [1988] Congressional Budget Office study advised that “Congress may wish to take no further action regarding concurrent programs as a group,” given the very weak relationship between the concurrency and cost growth. Instead, the office argued that Congress should simply ask that DoD develop a consistent measure for concurrency to be published in a program’s acquisition report and then monitor programs to see how they are performing relative to their planned level of concurrency. More than 20 years later, this advice still seems to be appropriate.

Alas, I fear the CNA team’s sensible findings and advice will go unheeded – as long as the “Concurrency’ Bogeyman serves as a useful tool in the quiver of bloviating politicians.

Senators! – this time I’m talking to you!

Question of the day

Here.
(The comments were great.)

Answer: Yes. Yes it is.

Full disclosure: I am of the school that the best choice is the one you are most likely to have with you.

Army of JSF-Haters STILL Short of Logicians

I'm back home (as of 00:30 hrs) Thursday from a business trip. Blog-wise, my immediate aspirations are to try to 1) ferret out the real Next Gen "Semi"-Long Range Strike story and 2) close out a substantial CAS Mythology post in my little 'spare' time.

BUT! since someone 'asked' for a comment on the latest "F-35 is Evil" drumbeat (especially one so loaded with snarky false confidence) and it is such an easy request to fulfill....I figure, eh-why not?

Latest 'Isn't This Just Awful' F-35 scare headline from Flight Global: "Lockheed adds $771 million to early F-35 production bills."  I suspect Steve Trimble might not have written the original headline, but if he did.... 'meh'. Headlines, if done properly, should draw the reader in. If the story is boring, it is not unheard of to have the 'zing' come from careful phrasing of both headline and story. Such careful delivery allows interested and targeted readers to overwrite their own bias and beliefs into the piece.
This headline gets transformed into the less accurate: "Early F-35 costs increase $771M, Lockheed says" at DoD Buzz.

So.... 'why' are these 'early' bills/costs/whatever "increased"? Trimble's original Flight Global article contained the 'bottom line', faithfully parroted at DoD Buzz:

    The $771 million reflects the impact of the 2004 weight reduction redesign on the Lockheed’s production system, the company said. The redesign carved off thousands of pounds of excess weight, but suppliers could not keep up with the flow of design changes. That led to late delivery of parts, then extra labour hours to install them outside of the normal manufacturing sequence, the company said.
    As the F-35 continues to be developed even as the first production models are delivered, the $771 million bill also includes the cost of future modifications to make the aircraft standard with jets delivered after the development phase ends in 2016.
    It is possible that the bill for LRIPs 1–3 could be reduced in the future. “The F-35 team is focused now on any opportunity to reduce the concurrency estimate and improve the final cost-to-complete on these early production lots,” Lockheed said.

Ahhh....so the cost of the 'production system' weight-reduction redesign, for building all three variants in the entire fleet built between then and the last F-35 to be delivered someday probably decades from now , as well as its impact on the aircraft built during the weight reduction redesign effort, is 'billed' in the present time, and this 'bill'  might even be reduced in the future, since it assumes future costs included in the 'bill' as well?

At the end of the DoD Buzz article, the fever swamp known as the 'comments section' does its usual 'kill the witch' thing until a commenter "Another Guest"  tries to inject a little sanity:

    I'm sure an Australian, other fighter manufacturer marketing rep, or nauseus dog will try to correct this uninterested observation. Trimble's article implies these costs were related to 2004 weight reductions to meet F-35B STOVL requirements by shaving weight off parts common to all variants and unique to the Marine model.
    An assumption then follows that this is a one-time expense...caused by the Marine requirement that no other aircraft can duplicate. It constitutes one quarter of one percent of total program costs while ensuring better performance of all aircraft types to include decreased fuel consumption that may retrieve some of the cost.
    From LRIP 5 on, LockMart will assume more, if not all over and above costs. BTW, a Gripen/Raptor/F-15SE (or F-16, F/A-18) mix would be nowhere near as effective with most aircraft obsolete against future threats at far higher acquisit[i]on costs than Tee claims. Seen any F-22s flying lately, bombing Libya or Afghanistan, being sold to allies, or replacing Naval service aircraft?

Well said.  Of course now the denizens of the fever swamp are furiously trying to 'down-rate' his comment, as if that means anything. But let us look at the hard numbers behind 'Another Guest's cogent observation on the costs involved in this 'bill'.

Compare these two charts:

 Extract from a Canadian briefing on the F-35

How the $771M 'Bill' breaks down over the whole program 

From these two charts we can readily see that even with a massively reduced F-35 buy, the 'cost' of the weight reduction re-engineering amortized over the number of units built comes under a piddling $1M/unit. In any case the end cost is still far, far, (millions $ for the A model, and I would guess similarly for the B and C) below the unit cost difference between 'actuals' and internal estimates.

In short: Add the cost of the weight reduction and to-date you are still delivering aircraft well under internal cost estimates on the curve and those costs are trending orders of magnitude lower than the bulls*** CAPE estimates.

Thus we now understand what the 'bill' is.

Now Let's Talk "Value"

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

--Oscar Wilde

What did we as taxpayers get in return (Besides ensuring an 'executable' STOVL version)? We could do an analysis of the design changes to see where lower weights translate into lower stress and wear and tear and in turn higher reliability and fewer failures and balance that against the ledger where reduced weight may have increased probability of failure or loss, but we don't have sufficient data. I would suspect the balance is positive in 'reliability', but cannot prove it. All I do know is that the entire program is being managed to constrain Total Life Cycle Costs.

What we CAN easily perceive is that since the airplanes weigh 'thousands' of pounds less at the lighter weights, the fleet will almost certainly burn BILLIONS of Dollars LESS fuel over the operational life of the fleet. A common aircraft design rule of thumb that shakes out from the Breguet range equation is that for every 1.00% of aircraft weight removed, ~0.75% less fuel is required.  3000 aircraft, 8000 hr operational life, SFC ~.7 as basis for fuel consumption......do the math.

BTW...
The 'McCain' angle is just a red herring. McCain is (still) just a self-aggrandizing, hot-headed a**hat. What else would anyone expect from him?

Hat tip Solomon at SNAFU: Heh. Bill Sweetman 'double-downs' on the topic. I should have used the words 'Anti-JSF drumbeat' more. Honestly, what brand of stupid do you have to sniff to try to amortize the total 'bill' for re-engineering production capability for the entire fleet against just the first 31 aircraft?   Whomp, Whomp, Whomp.

From "The Hill" --Think tank to Obama: Defense budget not your domestic ATM

H/T Instapundit.

From an article at The Hill ...
The Heritage Foundation marks the moment when President Obama lets the mask slip and reveals his real priorities:

“The nice thing about the defense budget is it’s so big, it’s so huge, that a 1 percent reduction is the equivalent of the education budget,” Obama said, immediately noting he was “exaggerating” the exact numbers.

 Only by an order of magnitude Mr. President. Only by an order of magnitude (~13X).

Mr. President, the 'nice thing' about the defense budget is that it is one of the few things in the Federal Budget that actually belongs there....unlike all that other crap you want to spend it on.

The Heritage Blog Post that was the source of The Hill's article also mentions some specific problems with how "Defense" is (not) managed by the current Administration:

What the President left out is the impact his “modest changes” are having on our men and women in the Armed Forces. The poster child for stupid defense budgeting is the F–35: how the Administration has stretched out, exaggerated the costs of, and played politics with funding for the military’s next-generation fighter aircraft. Today’s air forces are the oldest in the history of U.S. air forces. Replacing old airframes and ensuring the U.S. maintains its superiority over potential adversaries is a national security priority.
Yet Obama has done little to show he takes the challenge of modernizing the air fleets seriously. Particularly troubling is his penchant to let the Pentagon slow-roll the fielding of the F–35B (the vertical takeoff and landing version of the fighter for the Marine Corps). The answer may be, as one defense analyst notes, “Put the Obama Administration on Probation, Not The F–35B.”
Today, the Marines are stuck with aging airframes that have limited capabilities and are expensive to operate—a double problem. In contrast, the “B is a winner on both counts. The impact on the fleet is significant. The Marines go from three to one aircraft; and it gets a new aircraft with significant reductions in cost of maintenance.”
The fate of the F–35 is a case study in the President’s penny-wise, pound-foolish approach to defense spending. 

President Obama's early successes depended on enough people believing "He surely doesn't mean that!" when every stupid idea was brought forth. His problem now is that more people take his Regime's machinations at face value.
P.S. I had NO idea there was an F-35 story at the end of this string when I started pulling it.

Fear of Unknown and Almighty $ = Turn off Your Phone After Boarding

(H/T Instapundit)

Every time I fly, listening to the flight attendant's sincere directions containing the simplistic assertion that personal electronic devices (PEDs) may interfere with aircraft operations and directives that I must turn off my electronic devices ALMOST makes me forget I had just played a bit role in the latest episode of Security Theater. There is an ABC News piece with the headline "Is It Really Safe to Use a Cellphone on a Plane?" that attempts to build a mountain, not out of a molehill, but from a couple of grains of sand.

I have DECADES of avionics systems laboratory and flight test experience, including conceiving, developing, and executing System and Subsystem EMI, ALT, HALT, Functional and Failure Mode Effects Test procedures. IMHO, this issue is about lawyers, liability law and the inherent imperfection and fallibility of ANY man-made device, and the certainty of failure given enough time. From this perspective, I have multiple beefs with both the article and many of the comments (44 of them at the time I read the article).

1. All 'incidents' presented are anecdotes about occurrences in either uncontrolled or unrealistic/simulated  environments. There is NO evidence presented as to ‘root cause’ nor even enough evidence to dismiss the possibility that any might have been random events. Certainly the almost immeasurably small number of possible incidents identified ("75 separate incidents of possible electronic interference") globally over a 6 year period, is for all practical purposes statistically insignificant,

2. Events presented may or may not have had something to do with operation of the personal electronics devices, but even if they did, they still not point towards root cause. The problem could be with the electronic devices OR aircraft systems, as the possible failure modes for either, while not infinite ARE inestimable.

3. Airframe manufacturers and airlines have a vested interest in pointing at the PEDs as the ‘problem’. It prevents them from having to deal with additional design requirements, testing and the associated costs or having to improve designs in existence for operating in the modern environment and servicing the 21st century public.

4. Funny that the article suggests that ‘older’ planes may be more of a problem. The author should bum a ride in the back of GE’s engine test bed. It is one of the oldest 747s still flying, and during test missions you will find the back end filled to the max with rows and rows of equipment racks with panels off running at full tilt, ad hoc instrumentation data lines, laptops up and running, and guys on cell phones and radios talking to the data download facility, and the last I heard (from THE guy who would know) they’ve never had a problem.

5. RE: Commenter ‘spsooz’s “Most of us aren't impressed with the common sense of the traveling public, nor do we appreciate the hostile reactions we get when we are just doing our jobs.”

That’s alright 'spsooz'. While I can’t speak for ‘most of us’ on the other side, I stopped being impressed with cabin crew performance right after they stopped turning into Kiwis and started turning into crones (and I’m not talking about ‘age’ here). It’s HOW one does their job that makes the difference, and today the traveling public gets to see a broad range of what gets defined as ‘professionalism’.

"If an airplane is properly hardened, in terms of the sheathing of the electronics, there's no way interference can occur."
The best quote in the article comes from ABC's aviation expert (who unlike most in the news game actually has experience on the subject beyond observing real experts):

There are still doubters, including ABC News's own aviation expert, John Nance.

"There is a lot of anecdotal evidence out there, but it's not evidence at all," said Nance, a former Air Force and commercial pilot. "It's pilots, like myself, who thought they saw something but they couldn't pin it to anything in particular. And those stories are not rampant enough, considering 32,000 flights a day over the U.S., to be convincing."
Nance thinks there are alternate explanations for the events. "If an airplane is properly hardened, in terms of the sheathing of the electronics, there's no way interference can occur."

After this passage comes a "yes, but" follow-on from Boeing's experts that provides another but not necessarily contradictory POV. Nance's last statement is irrefutable.

First Rule of Problem Solving: Is it My Problem?
It makes perfect sense to require PEDs to be turned off during critical flight phases, but stop blaming the PEDs in advance. This tactic allows the airline and airframe manufacturers to continue to assert a defacto  loophole from being held liable and allows them to continue to not deal with a possible problem that should be their responsibility.  Any ‘incompatibility’ can be due just as easily to insufficient or unfortunate aircraft systems design, installation or maintenance as anything else. IMHO, the problem should be considered to be on the ‘airplane side’ since the purpose of the plane and airline is to serve the 21st Century travelling public vs. the other way around.

F-35 Haters Evidently Aren't Logicians

Been spending a little time the last couple of days trying to keep the JSF Haters at Military.com from hyperventilating over the latest F-35 'scare story' that broke Friday. See Here and Here.

From the Dod Buzz version of the story provocatively titled "The F-35’s legs might not be long enough", and based upon the deceptively-named Federation of American Scientists' release of the DoD's  F-35 Selected Acquisition Report for 2010, we discover that the F-35A model is apparently estimated to be 6 nautical miles short of its Key Performance Parameter (KPP) Combat Radius (584 instead of the KPP's 590 nautical miles).  In engaging the hand-wringers I purposefully did not make a point (but I dropped lots of hints and typed 'estimate' as often as I dared). The weekend has come and gone and no one I saw picked up on what the story was really about. Which is amusing, because the DoD Buzz story practically spelled it out at the end:

But programme officials are also debating whether to change how the range of the F-35A is calculated, the source said. The equation does not include a buffer margin of 5% of fuel capacity, which is intended to be preserved through the end of the flight test period in 2016. Eliminating the buffer margin adds another 72.4km to the aircraft’s combat radius, the source said.

 This paragraph could have been written in Linear A as far as the Anti-JSF crowd was concerned. Let's take a moment to decompose what the paragraph actually says and implies.

RE: But programme officials are also debating whether to change how the range of the F-35A is calculated, the source said. The equation does not include a buffer margin of 5% of fuel capacity, which is intended to be preserved through the end of the flight test period in 2016

So evidently:
1) The program had a conservative methodology in place to help ensure the KPP was achieved.
2) Part of that methodology was installing a 5% margin above and beyond that needed to achieve the KPP.
3) The Program planned to use the buffer until 2016.
4) It seems that the purpose of the extra 5% margin was established by the program to act as a tripwire for taking action.

RE: Eliminating the buffer margin adds another 72.4km to the aircraft’s combat radius, the source said.

Now we see:
1) In reality, even the 'estimated' combat radius really doesn't break the KPP metric based upon expected aircraft performance, but only breaks a program-instituted fudge factor.
2) This fudge factor when added to the KPP threshold means the REAL number 'not being met' via actual performance-based factors in the estimate is ~629nm and not the 590nm KPP.

So the JSF-Haters spent an ENTIRE weekend venting over a 'scare piece' claiming a KPP wasn't being met as it is currently measured, when in reality a fudge-factor based tripwire instituted by the program was barely breached and is still well above the KPP. Instead of observing and noting the wisdom of the program's  approach, the Anti-JSF crowd beats them up over a faux "issue" (vs. a risk being managed). I'll be interested in knowing what the program comes up with as a solution. I would think the fuel-level sensor adjustement (software or hardware) will be the most attractive. I can't help but think a realtively easy answer could be found in tweaking the FADEC at the margins, but the division of labor between Airframe and Powerplant contractors could make it impractical. In any case the program should continue to work to the current methodology and use the tripwire for the original purpose: as a reason to take action as the prudent thing to do.

Be sure and visit the threads, they're a riot -- Including one little (OK, a 'complete') troll I 'Pwned' and his associated meltdown. He was last seen begging for my attention and futilely downrating my comments. If you run into him, and just can't or don't want to ignore him, call him 'Sweetheart'. He likes that.

The F-35 and "Texas Sharpshooters"

Well, the 'Ragin Hedge Baby from the Shires' tried to make a buzz (if link doesn't work it is because it is too long for Blogger) over the latest GAO report on the F-35 program almost exactly as predicted, including closing his piece trying to cite the GAO's 'Texas Sharpshooter' skills as proof of something or other.

The drumbeat is getting tiresome, and I'd 'Fisk' his entire post AND the GAO report, except I'm feeling sentimental at the moment having read an earlier magazine article online today written by Mr. Sweetman where he quoted an old colleague of mine who, sadly, passed away a few years ago, and who I am missing very much these days. So in lieu of a long parsing of the 'Ares' post, we'll just go with.....

A Short Quiz:

This is the latest GAO report on the F-35 program. 

Joint Strike Fighter: Restructuring Places Program on Firmer Footing, but Progress Still Lags GAO-11-325, Apr 7, 2011

Now here are some older GAO reports:

The F-16 Program: Progress, Concerns, and Uncertainties C-MASAD-81-10, Feb 28, 1981


The Multinational F-16 Aircraft Program: Its Progress and Concerns  PSAD-79-63, Jun 25, 1979


F/A-18 Naval Strike Fighter: Progress Has Been Made But Problems and Concerns Continue  MASAD-81-3, Feb 18, 1981

Q1: Do you see a 'trend'?

If you want to get into the nitty-gritty, compare my predictions last week with the latest GAO report. Note the DoD response. Most of it falls under "We're doing that already".

BTW: The "F-16 Program: Progress, Concerns, and Uncertainties" and "The Multinational F-16 Aircraft Program: Its Progress and Concerns"  reports are not that different from another report I used to illustrate pretty much this same point a few years ago.

Ragin’ Hedge Baby on the Loose!

Forget that missing zoo cobra (they found it last week). This is much worse.

That “Ragin’ Hedge Baby from the Shires” (aka Bill Sweetman) is beating his ‘Anti-JSF’ drum again. This time, it appears he’s laying the groundwork for more negative F-35 stories in April:

"The Canadian debate will be influenced by the second April news story, the release of the full Government Accountability Office annual report on the program. Notwithstanding all the standard criticisms leveled at the GAO -- "It's old data", "The GAO criticized the F-16/M-1/Bradley/Trojan Horse etc" -- the fact remains that the GAO since 2007 has predicted the trajectory of the program much more accurately than the program's managers."

This represents what IMHO is among the most disingenuous ploys common to partisan journalism. Can you say ‘poisoning the well’ boys and girls? I find this a rather transparent attempt to preempt and diminish any criticism of the GAO ‘report’ once it is released.  I must say it causes a part of me to wonder: does Mr. Sweetman  already know that it is going to be, in the current vernacular of the White House, a ‘turd sandwich’? Nah. It's that's probably just my old C-I mojo acting up.

The implied claim that the GAO’s reports may have predicted anything on the F-35 since 2007 is unadulterated BS: GAO warns about ‘maybes’, ‘mights’, ‘coulds’, and ‘if-thens’. They never predicted anything – that would make them too easily accountable and subject to direct ridicule.

GAO reports (at least since Mr. Sweetman’s 2007 date) concerning the F-35 have been typical of most GAO reports on defense acquisition programs. They wail and moan over ‘risk’ as if it was THE most important concern. Contrast this with program managers who must manage the risk to cost, schedule, and performance while actually executing the program to meet a stated mission NEED. …And by the way, program managers make this point clear at every opportunity. They understand their charter and work to fulfill it – they do not work to make a GAO auditor’s day.

The two entities, the GAO and the JSF (or just about ANY) program simply talk past each other on the subjects of risk and “what-ifs”. The difference is, that while the programs deal with reality, and actually seek to identify and manage the risks that exist in all enterprises -- without certain knowledge of all possible futures, the GAO on the other hand, does a ‘drive-by’ on programs. The GAO then barfs a laundry lists of risks that they assert as needing avoidance. In later follow-on reports the GAO will point and cackle whenever some risks (rarely unforeseen and/or mitigated by the program’s management as well) become ‘issues’.

I find GAO 'defense' reportage in most cases a most cynical form of the 'Texas Sharpshooter” fallacy', and holding up a GAO report as the ultimate word on just about any defense program topic is as big a misplaced appeal to authority as you can make. The GAO can crunch numbers, but if their track record on predicting anything related to Defense topics can be called “consistent”, it is ONLY in the sense that they always predict there’s ‘too much risk’ and that things are or will be ‘bad’. The GAO is hardly alone in the naysayer role. Today’s programs must run a gauntlet of criticisms and predictions of doom from eternal experts and pundits, but since they are not inside the program day to day, usually their commentary is of little use, and is typically ignorant and unhelpful (a point I believe I sufficiently drove home in an earlier post on B-2 development).

The GAO also gets to cherry-pick ‘worries’ based upon whatever task their Masters have assigned while carefully avoiding implicating their Masters as having a role in creating the worries in the first place. For instance, the GAO can bemoan the immaturity of F-35 production processes year after year in their ‘Selected Acquisition’ Reports without ever having to reference the Congressional funding decisions made annually that deliberately slow production, and the GAO can avoid mentioning without recrimination that the F-35 program is in Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) ramping up to Full Rate Production, which is actually when production processes are EXPECTED to be mature. We need a GAO: we just don’t need the GAO we have*.

Sweetman’s piece, like oh-so-many of his recent posts, is focused on discrepancies between various ‘Cost Estimates’. It also, like oh-so-many of his recent posts, carefully avoids noting that of all the ‘estimates’ of costs, actual unit costs to-date are most closely tracking to (and actually beating) Lockheed Martin’s cost-curve estimates.  This includes up to and including the latest LRIP 4 aircraft lot buy, which is under a Fixed Price with Incentive (FPI) contract.

This ‘FPI’ contract arrangement is significant.
This is the first time in the history of modern defense acquisition that I am aware of that a contractor agreed to a Fixed Price contract while the program was still in the LRIP phases. This includes the equivalents in the paradigm before (back when SDD was ‘sorta’ EMD) the current one. In fact, according to my Defense Acquisition University course materials, the first Full Rate Production contract is where the transition from 'Cost Plus' to a Fixed Price contract structure is supposed to occur. Right now the program is about halfway through the planned LRIPS, although that could change if the lot buys keep getting reduced up front. Since ‘costs’ seem to be a really big issue** with Mr. Sweetman, I find this transition, occurring years ahead of what should be expected under traditional timelines, as curiously absent from his chant as his lack of willingness to give weight to the fact that actual costs are even beating the most optimistic (LM’s) estimate curves. Like climate models, cost estimates that cannot predict the present cannot be relied upon for predicting the future. And it must always be kept in mind that even ‘good so far’ estimates are subject to revision when new data becomes available and must be continuously revised, albeit less and less as more of the risk of a program falls in the past and issues are avoided and put to rest.

Sweetman closes with a sort of curious ‘damning with faint praise’ comment concerning the Australian Williams Foundation that now urges Australia to ‘delay’ their F-35s, apparently to Mr. Sweetman’s surprise. If one follows the link provided, it takes the reader to an earlier post by Mr. Sweetman where he questions the foundation’s objectivity based upon their funding sources. If this current article is somehow a nod to his earlier, apparently unfounded questioning of bias on the part of the foundation, and an expression of his subsequent regret, it was pretty weak. But it was an indication that the ‘logical fallacy’*** might be a tool that Mr. Sweetman will reach for all too frequently on the subject of the F-35, and that subsequent events just might highlight the use of the fallacy.

*I’m tempted to preemptively neutralize accusations that I am committing a logical fallacy in my criticism of the GAO, but I’m curious enough to see if any materialize and am in an evil-enough mood to enjoy debunking any such claim. BIG Hint: relevance of evidence factors large in determining if something is a ‘fallacious argument’ or not. If I was arguing the GAO’s performance on Defense issues was an indication of their performance on say, Housing and Urban Development issues, would that be different?

**BTW: The program is being managed to minimize total ownership cost (TOC), which allows for increased unit costs if the costs are offset with equal or greater savings when operating and supporting the F-35. Q: Why does no one discuss TOC in detail? A: TOC requires understanding of 'Cradle-to-Grave' Program Management, i.e. Too Hard?

***I’m torn on categorizing this one. It comes down to ‘intent’. If Mr. Sweetman’s primary purpose was to cast doubt about what the Foundation was asserting at the time, it was a commission of the ‘Genetic Fallacy’. If his primary target was the Foundation’s future statements, it could be considered ‘Poisoning the Well’.

Disclosure: Me and the F-35
Since I’m posting a lot about the F-35 these days, and the controversy that SOME in the Aviation Press seem intent on promoting doesn’t make it look like that is going to change any time soon, to help readers more completely understand where this source (moi) is coming from and in the interest of ‘disclosure’, I should remind readers of the following:

1. As with all my posts, I never discuss anything that isn’t open source and public. Fortunately, much of the F-35 is in the public domain and can be easily referenced….even if it is generally spun and twisted by the critics.

2. I don’t work for LM but have vested interests in LM and the F-35. They’re not as deep as they used to be (since I’ve minimized ALL my publically-traded stock exposure).

3. I’m not a ‘fighter fan’. I’m a ‘guided-weapon/kill-the-enemy-as-efficiently-as-possible’ guy. If a brick works best – then throw it. But as a general rule, I think fighters get way too much attention to the detriment of everything else. I assert: “Fighters make noise and kill things. Bombers make policy and change governments.”

4. Having said #3, the current situation we are in (having to replace a lot of assets at once) was caused by three things:

a. The simultaneous procurement of the AF’s High-Low mix (F-15 & F-16) in the 70s-80s. It should surprise no one that concurrent acquisition increases probability of concurrent obsolescence. The F-16s are in a little better shape wear-and-tear-wise than the F-15, but the Stealth Revolution and advances in near-peer fighter and air defense technology is bringing obsolescence to both fighters at about the same rate.

b. The failure of the Navy to execute the A-12 program. A large gaping hole was created in Naval Strike when that program failed and after the A-6s were retired.
c. An earlier Congress pressing on combining Air Force and Navy needs, then requiring the absorption of the Marine Harrier replacement effort. This forced three efforts that could have been developed at their own pace which would have spread out the costs and risks to be rolled into one schedule and one set of budget line items paid for at the same time. Combining three efforts into one creates program complexity that should be avoided if it can be avoided, but given a. and b. above, this arrangement became unavoidable. You can argue the ‘unavoidable’ part only if you are willing to assume a completely different set of risks as acceptable. The DoD doesn’t believe it was/is avoidable and I don’t either.

5. I think the best mix of offensive airpower would have been (when it was doable) for the AF to buy ALL the F-22s they wanted, 30-40 more B-2Cs, and 700-750 F-35As, with the Navy minimizing their ‘stop-gap’ F-18E/Fs and buying many, many, more F-35Cs and F-18Gs. But that mix isn’t doable anymore.

6. The mix the US is pursuing IS the best mix that is most executable now. This is fortunate, because a reset would be even more un-executable.