Guest Post at Op-For

Many thanks to 'DaveO' and 'LtColP' at Op-For for the opportunity to give a guest commentary today, to explain and expand upon a comment I made in an earlier thread on Op-For  .

This is particularly 'timely' considering there's a 60 minutes segment on the F-35 tonight. I myself am prepping a quick viewer's guide as it concerns the topic of 'Concurrency'.  Should be up before it airs in most time zones.

F-35 Math is Hard. Analysis is Harder

Apparently Too Hard for Bill Sweetman Anyway

Bill Sweetman takes exception with Loren Thompson’s ‘math’. Let’s take a look at the complaint for any validity, shall we?
(Note: I’m not a big fan of Thompson or any ‘policy’ type for that matter that delves into the technical issues – they tend to grossly oversimplify the irreducible, but Thompson appears to be on target this time)

Taking a gander at the key bits of Sweetman’s editorial we find:

As Thompson says, “these numbers can be verified easily by perusing the Pentagon’s Selective Acquisition Reports.” The latest SARs for the F/A-18 and F-35 can be found here and here.

So let’s look at the key claims.

"Even if we include the electronic defenses and targeting systems not usually subsumed in a Super Hornet price tag, the unit recurring flyaway cost of a single-seat F/A 18 is about $80 million in today’s dollars. The corresponding cost for an F-35C is $130 million.”

The URFC of the F-35C is about right. But in then-year dollars, the URFC of the Super Hornet over 2011-13 averages $60 million (page 18 of the Hornet SAR). So what are the "electronic defenses and targeting systems” that would raise that number by $20 million? Targeting pods run about $2 million, and the ALQ-214 jamming system has been under $1 million per aircraft historically. (The SAR is not very clear as to whether those are included in the URFC.) The new Block 4 version of the jammer is higher, but any identifiable mods to the Super Hornet are still a fraction of the $20 million that Thompson is adding. Today, the F-35C costs more than two Super Hornets.

Swing and a miss!

Bill took his figures off a page (Page 18) titled “Annual Funding TY$”. For this report, we can use those numbers although I always prefer to use base year values and adjust. Sweetman’s fatal error was in not reading and understanding the totality of what he was trying to quantify,

On Page 28 of the same report, we find one entry under called “Quantity variance resulting from a decrease of 13 FA-18E/F from 565 to 552.” This entry, combined with the 2014 'blank' space in the table columns he was looking at should have prompted Sweetman to look at the previous F-18E/F SAR for more info.

It turns out, the FY2011 F-18E/F SAR had an entry (pages 17-19) for 13 units in 2014. Depending on which data you choose to use in the 2011 SAR, and in one case how you adjust from $FY2000 base dollars, it works out that those 13 units would cost between $78.9M and ~$80M each.

• Page 17 values are 13 units for $1.026B (Then Year Dollars) = $78.92308M each.
• Page 19 values, 13 units for $61.07M (Base Year 2000 Dollars) + adjusted for inflation to 2012 dollars* = $79.4M each.

*Inflation adjuster only goes to 2012, 2013 data not calculated yet

$78.92308M or $79.4M?

Call it “about $80M”, just as Thompson asserts. So why the unit cost jump? Look at the SARs. From a glance it looks to be all about Quantity and FMS price support.

Like They Say on TV: But Wait, There's More!

Sweetman goes on (in more ways than one):

Next: “When 100 single-seat Super Hornets had been produced, the unit recurring flyaway cost—with all necessary electronics included—was about $110 million in today’s dollars, which is where F-35C is likely to stand at the 100th airplane.”

The 100th Super Hornet was delivered in the Fiscal 2001 batch. According to the SAR, the then-year URFC was $61 million. A standard Pentagon inflation calculator raises that to $77 million in 2012 - $33 million less than Thompson’s figure. The F-35 is 43 percent more expensive if it is indeed $110 million.

I call 'Caviling'

Without the quantification of all “the necessary electronics included”, or estimation method used Thompson’s figures aren’t really debatable.

Sweetman citing a ‘standard Pentagon inflation calculator isn’t very descriptive, but the 2001 Superhornet values he chooses to use comes close to adjusting the 2001 F-18E/F URF the same as if using the Historic Opportunity Cost inflation adjustment ($77.6M), which is a far better choice than most make, but it still does not invalidate Thompson’s claims if he uses another recognized inflation adjustment method, such as that for ‘Economy Cost’.

Economy Cost adjustment of the 2001 URF yields $95.5M per aircraft (without electronics) in 2012.

If the Economy Cost method was used by Thompson, $95.5M without the 'electronics' probably would be equal to about ~$100M with electronics,

If anything, the Economy Cost is a more inclusive measure of a project’s value:

Economy Cost of a project is measured using the relative share of the project as a percent of the output of the economy. This measure indicates opportunity cost in terms of the total output of the economy. The viewpoint is the importance of the item to society as a whole, and the measure is the most inclusive. This measure uses the share of GDP

In Closing

Sweetman appears to be just trying to pile-on with the last complaint. Overall, his editorial fails to ‘disprove’ or cast doubt on anything except some people’s grasp of economics and defense spending. Perhaps Sweetman’s well-known target fixation on the F-35 was his undoing this time around? No doubt the innumerate will still be impressed.

UPDATE 28Jan13 : at the 'Ares' site, after trying more than once, it was still impossible to post a substantive rebuttal to Sweetman's mischaracterization of this post in the comment thread so I posted it here.   

Elitists Lament: Their Kind Do Not Serve (Awwwww)

Andrew Bacevich and Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo Call for Compulsory Service

That means 'The Draft' boyo's  

Hat tip Instapundit (where I pretty much left this post as comment, plus of minus)

Cripes. Not this again...

Some reporter is buying into and spreading Andrew Bacevich's call for the return of the draft/universal service.

      It has been my experience that when this unhinged call for the return of the draft and 'universal' service comes from a Veteran, it invariably comes from draft-era Veterans, almost certainly Army, and usually sporting an advanced liberal-arts degree: all pinin' for those egalitarian days of yore... that never were.
      I enlisted in 1972 at 18, when they were only drafting 19 year olds and up. I entered into an Air Force full of people who didn't want to be there but they were there because they REALLY didn't want to be in the Army. I can't describe how much better it was being in the Air Force after all the draftees who didn't want to be there left. good unit cohesion, high esprit de corps, and generally all around good times, with a miniscule fraction of the number of problem-children, for 20 years --right on through Desert Storm and early Somalia when I retired. NOBODY who ever served in both a draft-era and post-draft era military misses the former. Cucolo wasn't there - he hasn't a clue.

800 Pound Gorilla...
     Which brings us to the 800-pound Gorilla in the room that is REALLY bothering guys like Bacevich: What they really lament deep down in their gut is that those from their neck of the political woods, all the so-called 'elites' (actually self-proclaimed 'exclusives' IMHO) DON'T feel the call to service themselves. So instead of promoting the "everybody in the pool" mentality that will make everyone unhappy, he needs to start finding a fix to the 'wrong' of a political class that by and large does not feel a 'call' to duty of any kind.

'Dorky Pants' Thinking...
     If there is a  gulf between the military and community where you live, chances are you are in a Blue State or a nice big Blue City. Given that most of the military come from the 'Red' states (and Southern ones at that), the problem isn't about the communities where most of the military come from, it's about those who don't join, where they live and WHY they don't. Bacevich's call for universal service falls under what I like to refer to as the Dogbert School of Thought, AKA the 'Dorky Pants Solution'.

Gee Andrew....EVERY "American"? 
     Oh yeah! He 'coincidentally' has a new book out: “Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.”

     Bacevich calls himself a Conservative, because y' know, nothing screams 'Conservative' like COMPULSORY SERVICE.(/sarc). 

     That boy's got a Fascist streak eating away at him that I can't abide.

F-35 Critics: Same Sh*t, Different Century

Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One Before

(Update with the missing bits filled in and additional content after the original post below)

Fill in the Blanks:

Despite its ability to dominate the XX arena, the F-XX attracted a vocal and influential group of detractors who continued to fight a battle for small, cheap dogfighters. Gathering advocates from several walks of life, a splinter group of congressmen, journalists, aircraft designers, former fighter pilots, and military analysts marched under the banner of XX XX XX XX to demonstrate the folly of the F-XX…

...The XX who focused on money saw the F-XX as too expensive at $XX million, seven times the cost of an F-XX and twenty times the cost of an F-XX. They further argued that the airplane was XX XX and easy to XX that the pilot of a XX F-XX XX fighter could easily get inside the F-XX pilot’s OODA loop and wreak havoc. Ironically, the very argument XX XX used proved the case against them. The XX was XX, but its XX and superb XX not only gave the F–XX pilot the first chance to observe, orient, and decide, they also gave him the first chance to act. The XX had good arguments, but they were based on old information. A new paradigm XX XX, and it was the paradigm of a very large battlefield, with reliable missiles that could truly “reach out and touch someone.”

Hint: There is no correlation to word length and number of X's, 'XX' was used for every blank.

I’ll fill in the gap and blanks, along with the paragraph that followed and a link to the source tomorrow night.

Everything about warfare changes over time,,,,except 'man' 

And yes, I meant for the panorama pic to 'go wide'. Everything was too small otherwise

*********End of Original Post :: Update Below*********

  

The original of the excerpt above at the source reads:

Despite its ability to dominate the aerial arena, the F–15 attracted a vocal and influential group of detractors who continued to fight a battle for small, cheap dogfighters. Gathering advocates from several walks of life, a splinter group of congressmen, journalists, aircraft designers, former fighter pilots, and military analysts marched under the banner of the Military Reform Caucus to demonstrate the folly of the F–15. James Fallows eloquently expressed their credo in his best-selling book, National Defense. The reformers who focused on money saw the F–15 as too expensive at $20 million, seven times the cost of an F–4 and twenty times the cost of an F–5. They further argued that the airplane was so big and easy to see that the pilot of a small F–5-sized fighter could easily get inside the F–15 pilot’s OODA loop and wreak havoc. Ironically, the very argument the reformers used proved the case against them. The Eagle was big, but its radar and superb missiles not only gave the F–15 pilot the first chance to observe, orient, and decide, they also gave him the first chance to act. The reformers had good arguments, but they were based on old information. A new paradigm was emerging, and it was the paradigm of a very large battlefield, with reliable missiles that could truly “reach out and touch someone.”  

From: SIERRA HOTEL: FLYI NG AIR FORCE FIGHTERS IN THE DECADE AFTER VIET AM  by C.R. Anderegg., Pg 164.

What immediately followed the above was of interest as well:

This did not mean that the day of the dogfight was over—far from it.

Aggressors often found a way to deceive and befuddle Eagle pilots, and the huge F–15s could end up in a tiny furball with the little F–5s. Nonetheless, the battle arena was getting larger, and the training was improving as dissimilar air combat training spread to every Air Force fighter unit. To many, the issue was starting to change from who had the best hands to who had the best head. A new fighter force with new jets, new missiles, and new ideas was starting to define the parameters for aerial combat at the end of the twentieth century.

I've never heard anyone knowledgeable on the subject ever claim that the close in dogfight will never happen - It's just that now it will happen only after a lot of other things that you have to worry about first, that will kill you first, just to even get to the 'merge'

“If you come straight down the snot locker today, I will shoot two Sparrows at you and call you dead. If I am out of Sparrows, I will rip your lips off with a Lima [AIM-9L]before you can get to the merge. Questions?”

In reading Anderegg's accounts (written in 1999) of the relative dogfighting capabilities of the F-4, F-16 and F-15, there is a passage (pg.163) of particular interest to me:

At the F–4 Fighter Weapons School, Larry Keith and his band of radical, firebrand tactical thinkers—led by Joe Bob Phillips, Ron Keys, John Jumper, Dick Myers, Buzz Buzze, Tom Dyches, Jack Sornberger, Dave Dellwardt, and others—pressed hard to devise scenarios that honored the threat of a Sparrow streaking out at long range. Theirs was a losing battle, though, because the Sparrow’s record was dismal on the F–4. In the early 1970s, if an F–4 pilot briefed his adversary that a Sparrow shot from ten miles would be counted as a kill, he would be laughed out of the briefing room with hoots of “Get a grip,” or “You need a tally on reality.”

Gradually, though, the impact of the F–15’s combat capabilities started to sink in across the fighter forces. When F–15s from Langley went to Eglin to shoot missiles in WSEP over the Gulf, the AIM–7F success rate was four to five times higher than it had been on the F–4. Even more astounding was the success rate for the AIM–9L, which confirmed the engineers’ hopes for a one-shot-one-kill weapon.

It was a good thing the F–15 systems proved to be reliable at long range, because the aircraft sometimes did not do well in the classic, roiling dogfights. The F–15 was more powerful and more agile than any other fighter in the world. However, it was also the biggest fighter and very easy to see. When nose on, it had a relatively low visual profile, but as soon as it began turning, its enormous wing could be seen for miles. Some called it the “flying tennis court;” others called it “Big Bird.” F–4 pilots and WSOs licked their chops at the opportunity to get in a fight with Eagles before the F–15 got the Lima. The WSOs especially made no effort to hide their disdain for the new, single-seat jet. One Langley F–15 pilot went on a tour of F–4 bases to brief crews on what the new Eagle could do.

He was stunned to find that F–4 back-seaters at every stop could only focus on how the new jet would die wholesale in combat because it did not have that extra set of eyes to watch for threats.

Ultimately, the Eagle pilots could not be denied. They started walking into briefing rooms and telling their adversaries, “If you come straight down the snot locker today, I will shoot two Sparrows at you and call you dead. If I am out of Sparrows, I will rip your lips off with a Lima before you can get to the merge. Questions?"

In response, adversaries studied the lessons learned by AIMVAL-ACEVAL pilots on how to survive in an all-aspect missile environment. As the reliability of the missiles improved, the culture of long-range missiles slowly spread throughout the fighter force. Of course, clever pilots developed ways to defeat some of the long-range shots, but as they devised one counter, the F–15s developed new techniques based on the lessons of formation discipline, radio discipline, radar discipline, and shot discipline learned in the weapons schools and at ACEVALAIMVAL. The cycle of counter vs. counter vs. counter continued, but the fight did not start at 1,000 feet range as in the days of “40-second Boyd.” The struggle was starting while the adversaries were thirty miles apart, and the F–15 pilots were seriously intent on killing every adversary pre-merge.

The above (and the rest of Sierra Hotel) was interesting to me this time around for different reasons than the first time I read it. It is a fair summary of the difference between air combat capabilities in John Boyd's era and the present. If you read the whole book and a few other sources, you come to start clicking off in your mind things about the F-22 and F-35 that bring the fight to an even higher level. Things like what enables F-16s to even find F-15s in the first place to get a first visual is the radar and ground/AWACs control. This is not an option against the F-22 or F-35 if you are not flying in a 5th Gen fighter. Another is the ability of the F-35 to track, sort, an maintain contact with far more targets at one time without losing lock in the merge: the F-35's sensor fusion removes the ability of one 'Red Force' opponent to 'sneak by' while their opponents are otherwise occupied. I've said elsewhere that a plane with the F-35's capabilities (systems, range, stealth) won't be 'fought' like fighters of the past. Think of F-35s being fought as a pack of "wolves" or "velociraptors": the opponents will see what the F-35 drivers want them to see... and get shot down by the F-35 they don't see.

I 'do' game theory.

One of the most important facets of any game is 'who gets the last move?' Low observability, while employing techniques and hardware that enable you to keep situational awareness at all times, virtually assures you get the 'last move', and outside of bad luck or negligence you should get the first move as well.


Bonus! Know Your Reformer Sidebar:

James Fallows: Just another Liberal, Know-Nothing, Blowhard.

If you had to pick one person to blame for the lingering after effects of the so-called Military Reform Movement, you might have to pick James Fallows, I am in agreement with these parts (and most of the rest) of Marshall L. Michel III's  Doctoral Thesis as it frames James Fallows' role in bringing the Reformer Pox into the public domain and upon us (emphasis mine):

The problems with the F-15 led to heavier and heavier criticism from a small but vocal group of defense Critics who maintained America needed larger numbers of less costly systems, but their calls generally went unheeded until the liberal journalist and neoliberal James Fallows joined the Critics’ ranks in 1979. Fallows was anti-military and a perfect example of Samuel Huntington'’s thesis of significant tension between American liberal beliefs and the naturally conservative military establishment. At the time, Fallows was researching an article for The Atlantic Monthly considering new ideas about how to cut the military budget, and to find those who agreed with this view he went out on the “fringes” of the defense establishment. He became interested in the Critics, whom he found “kookie but convincing.” In the resulting October 1979 article, “Muscle Bound Superpower,” and later works Fallows decreed the Critics were military combat “experts” and unquestioningly took up their basic arguments: the American national defense strategy was flawed because the military leadership was incompetent, the weapons acquisition process corrupt, and high defense budgets were linked to high inflation; what America needed was a new strategy that embraced a much greater number of simple, reliable, and less expensive systems. Unspoken was the idea that the money saved would go into social programs. (Pgs 8-9)

and...

Because Fallows believed that the large defense budgets were caused by “experts,” he eschewed anyone who was seriously associated with the defense establishment because they would understand, if not agree with, the philosophy behind the weapons the military was procuring. He also knew -- or sensed as a reporter that as Samuel Huntington noted, Americans love “defense iconoclasts and military mavericks.” To find them, Fallows later said he “deliberately left the mainstream of defense analysis and moved towards the fringe.(Pgs 295-296)

What a schmuck.

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.

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.

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?

Questions for Aerospace/Defense “Journalists”

A few questions for the Aerospace/Defense “Journalists” out there.

What are the odds that two different ‘news’ sources (one, two -- and two is worse) would come up with--shall we say, “twisted” articles concerning the standup of the first USMC F-35 squadron in Yuma within a day of each other without pre-coordination or as a reflex to information coming from a common pro-active source?

4:10 (F-35) to Yuma

What are the odds that the articles would also have the same basic twist (emphasis on the work ahead and not goals achieved, consistent repetition of old problems minimizing or ignoring progress made on known issues, and using the same sort of breathless reporting to make relatively minor technical problems appear as if they were of grave consequence) ? Again, without pre-coordination, or in reflex to information from a common, pro-active source?

What are the odds of these same articles being issued at essentially the same time after months of nothing but a long string of good news and successes coming out of the F-35 program?

What are the odds this ‘coincidence’ occurred after the election by design? It seems the closer we got to the election, the quieter the anti-JSF crowd became.

I don’t smell conspiracy coming from the usual circle of defense writers.

I smell sloth, smug ignorance, gullibility and possibly the spoor left behind by the usual suspects in the rabid Anti-Defense Establishment.

Fess up boys. Who’s writing your first draft these days?

Did your 'sources' get wind of this version of the story ahead of time and exhort you to perform damage control?   

GO VOTE!



Election 'After Battle' Report: 

It 'Aint Over'-The job just got a whole lot tougher.

 

With the exception of the usual brain dead zones (including Moscow on the Brazos), and the usual NAACP illegalities in Houston, Texas pretty much did what it could against the Rise of the "Loser Nationtm" . Too bad about much of the rest of the country. Expect more polarization at the state level as the sentient beings who can cut their strings with the 'Blue' states move to where Makers outnumber the Takers. Welcome! -- just leave any silly ideas at the state line. Concealed Carry permit applications are first door on the right.

 



Image Courtesey of the Chicago Boyz

F-35 Program Deputy Memo

Via Elements of Power’s Global Intel Network I’ve received the following memo. While we cannot completely ascertain its authenticity, the contents are hardly surprising or controversial. EoP offers the following as just another data point in the historical record of the journalism’s F-35 meme machine.

Internal F35 Program Memorandum

From: MG Christopher Bogdan
To: F-35 Teammates
Subject: AFA Statements 

Hi There!

Well by now I’m sure most of you have seen the reporting on my comments concerning the state of the F-35 program. I’m also pretty certain most of you have also figured out my motives for saying what I said, in the manner that I said it as well. But I want to be certain there are no misunderstandings between ALL of us on the F-35 team, so I’m going to describe what I said, and why I said it the way I said it, and do by covering my main points in as plain and clear terms as possible. Ready?

JSFPO-Contractor Relationship

When I said the relationship was the "worst I've ever seen" I meant it. But heck, even a wife-beater in his heart of hearts knows it takes ‘two to tango’ so while the press jumped on the statements as my telling the contractors to ‘shape up’, and just as I expected, think about it for a second: I’ve only been on board the program approximately two months. Two. Months. Two months on ‘the largest acquisition program ever’ is just about long enough to figure out there IS a problem and maybe get a feel for where my own side of the house is having problems. It’s certainly not long enough to determine root causes and failures. Even if I DID believe, as some claim, I single-handedly saved the KC-X  program, I STILL couldn’t possibly have enough chutzpa to think I had everything about the F-35 program ALL figured out in only two months. Rummage around in a few of those articles away from the headlines, and you’ll see I don’t lay the ‘relationship’ solely at the feet of any one group. After all it’s not like I can pretend there’s a surplus of experience and knowledge on the Government’s side of the relationship can I?

No More Money

No one in this business should be surprised the press has glommed on to the money angle: citing in their articles my point of having “no intention of asking Congress for any more money for the F-35 beyond what’s already in the pipeline”. While among us rational folks, that had to have come off as me just being “Major General Obvious” (Duh!) there IS method to my ‘madness’ as it were. This is the one comment that will buy me—our program—a little time out of the Petri dish to get our job done with minimal carping from the ignorant and uninformed. We will of course find the money we need that is already within the pipeline, and you can expect me to be open to suggestions in where to find it. Right now I just have a lot of questions and suspicions about things, such as perhaps those rather crudely constructed and outrageously high and unsupportable life cycle cost estimates. But in any case, WE will find a way. Even Major Generals can’t do it alone.

Technical Challenges

Make no mistake, we all know anything worth doing is never easy. If the United States and her International Partners didn’t NEED the capabilities the F-35 will bring to the Warfighter, we could have just squeezed a little more capability out of the basic legacy aircraft designs. By my acknowledging where we ALL already know where our challenges are and are actively working to conquer, when those successes come in the natural progression of time and engineering, WE will get credit for the accomplishments and blame for any shortcomings. It is an awful good thing we’re already well along in meeting those challenges, isn’t it?

Helmet Mounted Display (HMD)

The media still talks about the problems with the Helmet Mounted Display as if it were just found yesterday. That is to our advantage.  One would think that my mentioning the upcoming tests ‘in the next 60-90 days’ SHOULD tip them off that we believe our difficulties are substantially behind us:  just from our stating we are about ready to begin testing.
 

 

Software

Since when is software not a challenge? It’s the ‘death and taxes’ of systems development: software is always HARD. Of course I mentioned it.

Complex Logistics

That I’m citing logistics as a ‘hurdle’ we have to overcome should have been another ‘No Duh’ moment. Think about it. NINE partner nations around the globe with Foreign Military Sales customers like Japan also coming on board. Eventually, the F-35 will have the global footprint of the F-16 or greater. That’s a lot of airplanes to support in a lot of different places. But the planes they’re replacing are in some cases more numerous and in all cases have more maintenance overhead. This means the entrenched government bureaucracy will be fighting tooth and nail to make the replacement F-35 workload grow to protect their so-called ‘core capabilities’.  We’re not only going to have to stand up a global support system, we’re going to have to do it while parts of the US Government are trying to squirrel some of it away and out of our control.

F-35C Tailhook

The tailoring of the F-35C tailhook redesign isn’t yet complete, but we’re going to complete the task pretty quick. While the usual Palestinian Apologists at Reuters will frame my statements as we ONLY caught the wire “five of the last eight times”, real journalists will pick up on the trend and recognize the trend is three of the last five, and the two that weren’t caught was because the pilot didn’t hit his mark.  Maybe the smarter ones among their readers will eventually figure out that unlike our test configuration, that’s the reason there’s more than one wire on the big deck carriers. 



That’s all for now, but I’m sure we’ll be communicating again real soon as part of improving our team communications which is in turn a critical part of rebuilding our team relationships.

Chris

Introducing Suzie Dershowitz Part 4

‘Provoking Accountability’…Of the ‘Unaccountable’ 

Or,

Defusing CATO’s “Precisely Guided Analytical Bomb”

Back to Part 3

POGO's Banner Carrier, Suzie Dershowitz. (Source: POGO)
Hopefully, this is the LAST time we'll be seeing her, but don't bet on it.

(To make each segment better as a ‘standalone’, I'm getting a little repetitive at the start of each post. If you’ve been following the segments all along, you may proceed to the subheading “CATO/POGO: Fuller Multiplier is an Outlier!” without missing the heart of the post.

Major Ploy Du Jour #2 (Continued):

“This Proves/Refutes Our POV/Their POV” (In this case both). Only.... it doesn't. Hint: You could lay all the economists in the world end to end and you still wouldn't be able to reach a conclusion.
 
As we noted in Part 3:  

“…for this exercise we will focus on problematic areas of the CATO analysis (because it is not a study, but is merely an analysis that is critical of the Fuller study) where Ms. Dershowitz unwisely attempts to use in support of her assertion that ‘left, right, and center’ agree with POGO: that there will not be the kind of damage that the industry-sponsored study warns us will happen.”
 As we also noted in Part 3, there are two aspects of the CATO analysis upon which POGO relied as evidence ‘supporting their position’. These perceived points of ‘support’, unfortunately for POGO do NOT provide the support they claim. 

We exposed POGO/CATO’s Fatal Flaw #1 in Part 3 by illustrating CATOs critique of the Fuller study’s methodology amounted to no more than a pique over academic taste. The CATO complaint over the Fuller Study not going further than it was designed to do, and not doing anything other than that needed to achieve its intended explicit objective was rather sad. Claiming the Fuller study should have been burdened with additional layers of abstraction to answer a question different from the question asked, with the claim rationalized by the unsupported assertion that it would have been more meaningful, all without adequately describing the specific controls (ground rules and assumptions), modeling, or processes involved, seems to be rather self-serving caviling.

In closing Part 3 and in preparation for this segment, I asserted:          
I believe the CATO players fully understand the notion of ‘usefulness’, and that it wasn’t enough to claim their study was more useful, when at best it is perhaps useful in a different way, and at the worst less than helpful through introduction of excessive ambiguity. What MAY explain why CATO went to great lengths to employ (and POGO parroted) the complaint that the Fuller study ‘didn’t go far enough’ is that they sought to use it as a smokescreen to cover their more ‘tangible’ complaint that Fuller overstates the net economic ‘multiplier’ of defense acquisition spending. Strip away the ‘Fuller didn’t take into consideration X,Y,and Z’ obfuscation and CATO’s weak attempt to ‘sell’ the idea that Fuller’s multiplier was outside some ‘economics mainstream’ not only looks even weaker, but intentionally contrived (more on that later).   
By using CATO's own references, I will show how CATO not only does not show the Fuller multiplier lies outside some contrived norm, but they actually lend support to idea that the Fuller multiplier is possibly more appropriate than either the Economic Aesthetes at CATO or the Progressive Proles at POGO would have us believe.
 
Thus, on this adventure, we will cover Fatally-Flawed POGO/CATO Point #2.

2. Dershowitz/POGO relies on CATO claims (and claimed ‘evidence’) that the Fuller study overstates the net economic ‘multiplier’ of defense acquisition spending.

 CATO/POGO claim: Fuller Multiplier for Defense Spending is an Outlier!

CATO asserts, and POGO’s Dershowitz promotes the notion that the Fuller study used an inflated ‘multiplier’ for arriving at the economic impact values for reduced defense spending. 

CATO Analysis:

 The Fuller analysis summarized above suggests a GDP multiplier effect of 1.92 for 2013 as a result of a $45 billion reduction in defense procurement. The modern scholarly literature on the GDP effect of government spending growth casts significant doubt on any multiplier effect of that magnitude, even under the assumption that the concept of a multiplier effect is consistent with sound economic analysis. 

POGO’s Dershowitz claim: Fuller Is (Gasp) “Overblowing”!

POGO’s Dershowitz applies a blatantly biased spin on the CATO claims: Thus, it appears that Fuller is overblowing the impact of defense spending on GDP by almost twice as much as other estimates. The table in Zycher's analysis (reproduced below) provides a visual representation demonstrating just how out of sync Fuller's study is…

Ms. Dershowitz was kind enough to replicate the CATO table involved:

Author	Estimate	Notes
Fuller	1.92	defense procurement
Cogan et al.	0.65	large stimulus
Mountford and Uhlig	0.65	spending "shock"
Barro and Redlick	0.6-0.9	increases in defense spending
Ramey (2011)	0.6-0.8	defense spending after WW2
Hall	0.7-1.0	all government purchases
Parlow	0	defense spending
Ramey (2012)	0.5	all government spending

Let’s look at these comparative references just a little closer, to see “how out of sync Fuller's study is” shall we?

The Cogan, Et Al. Paper

The first reference we’ll look at is Cogan, Et Al. The title, “New Keynesian versus Old Keynesian Government Spending Multipliers”, gives us a fairly good indicator the paper itself presents.
From the abstract of the paper, we see that the thrust of the analysis is not only just about “New vs. Old” Keynesian modeling, but also about how those models apply to estimating the effects of one of the recent, large, so-called “Economic Stimulus” packages (You know – the ‘stimulus’ packages…that weren’t):

Renewed interest in fiscal policy has increased the use of quantitative models to evaluate policy. Because of modelling uncertainty, it is essential that policy evaluations be robust to alternative assumptions. We find that models currently being used in practice to evaluate fiscal policy stimulus proposals are not robust. Government spending multipliers in an alternative empirically-estimated and widely-cited new Keynesian model are much smaller than in these old Keynesian models; the estimated stimulus is extremely small with GDP and employment effects only one-sixth as large and with private sector employment impacts likely to be even smaller.

If that isn’t bad enough, the ONLY place the .65 ‘multiplier’ figure of merit proffered by CATO and repeated by POGO has nothing to do with defense spending:

 In any case, by assuming that the impact on consumption of the extra 1 percent discretionary increase in the deficit is .3 percent of GDP and using the above mentioned multiplier of .63 the impact will be to increase GDP by an additional .19 percent. If we add this to the .46 percent GDP increase from purchases, the total impact will be to increase GDP by.65 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 compared to what it would otherwise be (P.17).

In fact, the words ‘defense’, military, or even ‘durable goods’ appear nowhere in the paper. It is a Keynesian modeling love-fest that lumps all government spending in one bucket from what I can tell. Interestingly, the focus is on the impact of adding new generic government spending with all sorts of multiplying effects versus estimating the negative impact (shock and long term) of suddenly withdrawing funds which would impact innumerable and ongoing economic activities. This point is even acknowledged in the text of the CATO paper (p.6):

”Cogan et al. estimate an effect of only about 0.65 in the quarter with the highest impact of a large government “stimulus” policy, which obviously differs from a change in defense spending alone”. 

How typical of POGO to NOT mention that little quirk behind the entry in the nice shiny ‘table’ they hold up as an example. 

BTW: If you like the back and forth of Keynesian economic model arguments (I don’t) you can always pull this thread and see where it takes you.

 
The Mountford and Uhlig Paper 

In  the Mountford and Uhlig reference CATO is again forthcoming in the text about what the .65 multiplier means (p.6):

“Mountford and Uhlig, employing a different type of economic model, arrive at a very similar finding of 0.65 in the first quarter of a spending shock financed with debt.”

 More specifically, the Mountford and Uhlig source document reveals the .65 figure in a table, and in the note below that table we find:

 “This table shows the present value multipliers for a deficit financed tax cut policy scenario and for a deficit spending fiscal policy scenario.” 

The entire thrust of the Mountford and Uhlig study is to characterize the effects of deficit spending overall – NOT what is the economic impact of defense spending. At least the Mountford and Uhlig study indicates that ‘Defense’ spending was accounted for in the overall lump of government spending (p.26), but we have no way of knowing whether or not the multiplier of defense spending alone is above or below the ‘.65 average’ modeled for ALL spending.

The Barro and Redlick Paper

At least this academic exercise in economics attempts to deal with the defense outlays, but by its own internal observations acknowledges several problematic aspects that call into question any direct comparison with the Fuller study. The two largest IMHO:
 
1. The authors state from their review it is their opinion that “It seems unlikely that there is enough information in the variations in defense outlays after 1954 to get an accurate reading on the defense-spending multiplier” (pg 4). Unless the CATO authors assert that there is no material differences between the economy of today and the US economy prior to the Korean War, which would be wrong, (see my post on the 50th anniversary of Eisenhower’s now-mythic Military-Industrial Complex speech ) this would seem to automatically preclude relying on this study to evaluate the Fuller report, even if it agreed with the Fuller defense multiplier.

2. The author’s abstract contains the assertion: “For U.S. annual data that include WWII, the estimated multiplier for defense spending is 0.6-0.7 at the median unemployment rate. There is some evidence that this multiplier rises with the extent of economic slack and reaches 1.0 when the unemployment rate is around 12%.” Since the paper’s median unemployment rate is 5.57% (pg.18), and we are in fact experiencing much higher unemployment rates at the moment (as high as 14.9% if you counted unemployment like we did back in the years this study analyzed)  , the question becomes would the authors’ assertions that the defense multiplier would cap at ‘1’ hold in today’s economy?

Answer: We don’t know from the data presented.

The Ramey(2008)and Ramey(2011)Papers

All we (the Public) have to go on concerning Ramey’s 2008 paper is the abstract which claims:

The implied government spending multipliers range from 0.6 to 1.1. 

…and the CATO Analysis observation within the text which claims Ramey(2008) “finds a defense multiplier effect of 0.6 to 0.8 for the period after World War II”.
That last bit is interesting. I wonder how that statement is reconciled with Barro and Redlick’s observation above—the point that being able to determine the multiplier after 1954 was ‘unlikely’?

By now, the reader should have gotten the idea that with models and the right ground rules, these studies will find whatever the authors want them to find. 

The CATO analysis claims Ramey(2011) “finds a GDP multiplier from all government spending of about 0.5”. Well, we’ve already covered the point that ‘all government’ spending does not equal ‘defense spending’, so what is CATO’s point other than attempting to ‘pile on’?
 
In reviewing the papers we’ve covered to this point, I’ve even found reference to dominating influences of state and local government spending in the ‘all government’ spending equation after the middle of the last century (No, I’m not going to reread them all again to find it for a link). That aspect muddies the waters even more.

The Parlow (Ahem) Paper

When I first read this paper my first thought was: WTFO? But the author apparently isn’t a functional illiterate, but instead a German studying for his Econ PhD in the US. Apparently no one proofreads his work. Once you get past the poor grammar, you find little more than a ‘this is how I used the models and made them work using fake expenditures and wars’ discussion.
The author claims that his analysis, using quarterly data vs. annual data, is a ‘better’ approach than the norm. Apparently the author is unfamiliar with how long it takes to invoke a change in defense acquisition or see the impacts thereof.
The author, as noted in the CATO/POGO table, claims ZERO economic effect from defense spending. There is no account provided for how the author actually handled the “all other things held constant” economic variables. But if I knew more about this paper, I would probably encourage the reader to also take a look: for it reeks of classic GIGO. As it stands, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, and it makes me wonder if CATO was THAT desperate to come up with a longer table for their pagination and printing purposes rather than content.
With the claim of ZERO impact from defense spending (the only one in the list), what makes this Parlow paper NOT the outlier compared to all others in CATO’s eyes?

Finally, The Hall Paper

This is another one that the web provides only the abstract on this side of firewalls [bold emphasis mine]:

During World War II and the Korean War, real GDP grew by about half the amount of the increase in government purchases. With allowance for other factors holding back GDP growth during those wars, the multiplier linking government purchases to GDP may be in the range of 0.7 to 1.0, a range generally supported by research based on vector autoregressions that control for other determinants, but higher values are not ruled out. New Keynesian macro models have multipliers in that range as well. On the other hand, neoclassical models have a much lower multiplier, because they predict that consumption falls when purchases rise. The key features of a model that delivers a higher multiplier are (1) the decline in the markup ratio of price over cost that occurs in those models when output rises, and (2) the elastic response of employment to an increase in demand. These features alone deliver a fairly high multiplier and they are complementary to another feature associated with Keynes, the linkage of consumption to current income. Multipliers are higher—perhaps around 1 .7—when the nominal interest rate is at its lower bound of zero, as it was during 2009. 

In fairness, the CATO analysis mentions Hall’s reference to the multiplier moving to the higher end of the range as interest rates approach zero included (pgs 6-7). POGO’s Dershowitz conveniently omits that fact in her little hit-piece. If one would care to review the current rate at which the Government can borrow, one would find it much closer to zero than I think any other time I’ve seen in my adulthood (.25%--a quarter of one percent at this time). Which brings us to observe, that even without necking down the dollars in Hall’s paper to just Defense spending, the Hall paper’s findings are not very far apart from the Fuller report’s multiplier.

By CATO’s own reference to Hall, they prove that while Fuller may be on one side of a range of modeled results, the Fuller Report is NOT an ‘outlier’ by any means.

Summary

The assortment of studies that the CATO authors rounded up and how they applied them reeks every bit of the sort of advocacy research that they attempt to claim is a fault of the Fuller report. For about the last decade and a half (or so), when I read this sort of advocacy masquerading as analysis I mentally file it under a category named for the first half of the title of a favorite paper: A Precisely Guided Analytical Bomb.