This Fighter Program's Problems are Outrageous!

Time for another round of Name That Program!

(Any of this seem familiar?)

XXXXXXXX noted that:  

(1) XXXXXXXX has revised the XXXXXXXX flight test program by decreasing the data collection requirements that were originally planned; 

(2) program documents state that, although flight testing is behind schedule, program decisions to reduce test points will enable the XXXXXXXX to regain lost time and complete development testing in XXXXXXXX, as originally planned;  

(3) XXXXXXXX program documents identified numerous deficiencies relative to the aircraft's operational performance;   

(4) the most challenging technical issue is XXXXXXXX; 

(5) until these issues are resolved through software or hardware changes that have been adequately tested, the cost, schedule, and operational performance impact of resolving these deficiencies cannot be determined;

(6) the XXXXXXXX remains confident that it can correct these deficiencies;  

(7) in addition, XXXXXXXX that assesses risk areas in the XXXXXXXX program stated in XXXXXXXX, that operational testing may determine that the aircraft is not operationally effective or suitable;

(8) a XXXXXXXX preliminary operational assessment report, which is classified and based on limited data and analysis, identified 16 major deficiencies with the XXXXXXXX aircraft but concluded that the XXXXXXXX is potentially operationally effective and suitable;  

(9) the XXXXXXXX has consistently stated that the XXXXXXXX will be developed and produced within the cost estimates established for the program;  

(10) certain key assumptions on which the cost estimate was made have been overtaken by events;  

(11) program documents state that the current development effort is funded based on the assumption that problems would not occur during testing;  

(12) unanticipated aircraft deficiencies have occurred, and most of the program's management reserve has been depleted;  

(13) since the flight test program has about 1 year remaining, it is probable that additional deficiencies will develop;  

(14) correcting current and potential future deficiencies could result in the development effort exceeding the congressional cost cap;  

(15) the XXXXXXXX unit procurement cost estimates are understated;  

(16) these cost estimates were based on what has become unrealistically high quantities of XXXXXXXX aircraft that will be bought; and  

(17) more realistic assumptions indicate that, although the total procurement cost will decrease, the XXXXXXXX unit cost will be more than the XXXXXXXX currently estimates.

Answer below the fold. Drumroll.....

LRS-B Contract Award to Northrop Grumman Found to be Correct

Which means the protest was found not too valid. Hooray for sanity!
Read about it here.
Ignore the grossly incompetent journalistic failure in the last paragraph. Laura just forgot to ctl-alt-desnark at the end.

Update @ 22:56 Central: The Defense News piece I linked to has since been updated. the offending paragraph I was referring to is no longer last. It read in (offending) part, with the offending bit highlighted:

The timing of the news raised questions about implications to the protest decision, but the Air Force maintained that the official, Richard Lombardi, was not involved in the LRS-B source-selection process and was not the service acquisition executive at the time. The Air Force reassigned Lombardi to duties outside the acquisition portfolio and referred the issue to the Inspector General.

It is a known and verifiable fact that Lombardi was not the responsible "service acquisition executive" at the time. It is known that he was brought in as the responsible executive's replacement, and we know who Lombardi replaced by name and when. Lara Seligman (or her editor) needs to save the 'maintained' verb for unverified assertions.
As to maintaining Lombardi was not involved in the source selection at all, we know 'you can't prove a negative', but you can at least research your subject to get a feel for the probability or possibility that something IS or IS NOT true. For example, I may maintain Lara doesn't strangle puppies for entertainment in her leisure time, but a modicum of research on my part would probably prove it to be VERY UNLIKELY, and therefore not worth mentioning.      

Faux Reform's Camel Already Has Her Nose Under the LRS-B Tent

The Faux Reform Crowd are hilariously heavy-handed. May it ever be so.

Embedded in the bottom in an otherwise very fine article at Breaking Defense about Northrop Grumman winning the LRS-B contract we find this nugget from Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA):

“We need to keep the Long-Range Strike Bomber on track and hold the Pentagon to its promise of delivering a tested, reliable airplane for $550 million a copy [in 2010 dollars],” Speier said in a statement. “The Rapid Capabilities Office has made some good decisions to use proven technology and accept the recommendations of independent weapons testers and auditors in their development process. But there are warning signs, including a clerical discrepancy that resulted in a $16.7 billion misreporting error to Congress.”

(I suspect this and the oblique 'emerging critics' reference early in the piece were Sidney's contribution. He likes to cite politicians as if they are soothsayers.)

LOL! Well THAT didn't take long. 

A clerical error, in only one of many documents, on a number everyone knew beforehand, and was corrected as soon as it was noticed, after being so out of place it was noticed quickly is a 'warning sign'? I got Jackie's warning sign for her right here: It's called the revolving door between faux military reform operations and Prog legislators teamed in a pernicious self-licking ice cream cone with Punk Journalists . That IS the "Faux Reform Message Machine".

I could take these people if they were honest with their arguments, but if they were honest with their arguments they couldn't stand the laughing.

Mmmmmmm. #SmellsLikePogo

Dave Majumdar's F-35 'Punk Journalism'...Again

Whereby 'boy journalist' double downs on David Axe's 'Dogfight' B.S, ignores reality and dances around Libel in just a few paragraphs. 

But hey! Its always fun to watch someone debase themselves for pennies a word right?...right? 

Today, Dave Majumdar, once a promising aero reporter, apparently needed some rent money. Why else would he fabricate another F-35 click-bait hit piece for the lower-brow crowd, (update: the Punk is now the 'Defense Editior' of the digital rag) rehashing the pap that David Axe used to set off a disinformation cascade? Now I could spend all night Fisking Majumdar's craptastic article to include "27 8x10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence" but there's only a couple of things worth my time, nailing Dave to the wall, that should cast the rest of his 'pap' under the proper spotlight. The first is his apparent (willful?) inability to discern information from 'spin':    

Meanwhile, proponents of the F-35—primarily Lockheed Martin and the JSF program office (JPO)—tried to dismiss the results—aggressively calling out the War is Boring outlet by name. The company and the Pentagon claimed that the tests were not truly representative because the F-35 test article involved in the trial versus the F-16 was not equipped with a full set of avionics, didn’t have its stealth coatings, and did not use the jet’s helmet-mounted display and, moreover, was not equipped to simulate high off-boresight missiles like the AIM-9X Sidewinder. Besides, the F-35 was designed to fight from long-range—the JPO and Lockheed claimed.Both sides of the debate are correct—but neither side is telling the whole story. As a good friend on the Hill recently told me: “In political communications, facts are an interesting aside, but are completely irrelevant. What we do here is spin.” That’s exactly what’s happening here—both sides are selectively cherry picking facts to make their case—spin.

Dave...Tell your 'friend' to F.O.A.D.

"Tried to dismiss the results" Dave? Facts are not "an interesting aside" to people who design and build weapon systems.  What the JPO and LM responded with was 'The Truth'. It was a post-stall agility test, testing for areas where it might be worthwhile to 'open up' the control laws (CLAWs) and was not a 'dogfight'. 

The Testing in Question was Described Ahead of Time Last Year 

Not only was what the JPO/LM response the TRUTH, it was one that was KNOWN and in the public domain the year BEFORE the test ever occurred and therefore it is also a delightfully 'provable' truth. I buried the lede with this point in an earlier post, but I recreate an excerpt here:  

From the 2014 AIAA paper "F-35A High Angle-of-Attack Testing"[1], authored by a Mr. Steve Baer, (Lockheed Martin "Aeronautical Engineer, Flying Qualities" at Edwards AFB), and presented to the Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Conference held between 16 and 20 June 2014, in Atlanta, Georgia we find that F-35 High AoA testing was designed to follow in the following progression:  

"The test objectives for high angle-of-attack testing are as follows:

1) Characterize the flyqualities [sic] at AoAs from 20° to the control law limit regime with operationally representative maneuvers.  

2) Demonstrate the aircraft’s ability to recover from out of control flight and assess deep stall susceptibility 

3) Evaluate the effectiveness and usefulness of the automatic pitch rocker (APR)  

4) Evaluate departure resistance at both positive and negative AoA with center of gravity (CG) positions up to the aft limit and with maximum lateral asymmetry.  

5) Assess the handling qualities of the aircraft in the High AoA flight."

Now, in case a 'punk journalist' or other factually-challenged reader wanders by (am I psychic or what?), we need to be clear that #5 has nothing to do with "dogfighting". We know this because Mr. Baer makes two points shortly thereafter within the paper. 
The first point is relevant to the state of the testing at the time of his writing. I observe that this paper was written during Objective #4 testing and published at about the time it concluded. This observation is supported by the paper's passage [emphasis/brackets mine]:

With intentional departure testing [Objective #4] wrapped up, the team will soon move into departure resistance [Still Objective #4] and plan to remove the SRC now that these systems have been verified. In this phase of testing, the jet will test the CLAW limiters with much higher energy and rates than previous testing, fleshing out and correcting areas that may be departure prone. Lastly, select operational maneuvers [Objective #5], such as a slow down turn and a Split-S, will be used to gather handling qualities data on high AoA maneuvers. With the completion of this phase, the F-35 will be released for initial operational capability in the high AoA region.

Note: 'SRC' is a 'Spin Recovery Chute'.

Clearly the testing was not yet at step #5 at the time of writing but to emphasize same, the author followed the above paragraph with [brackets/emphasis mine]: 

While the flight test team will explore legacy high AoA maneuvers for handling qualities, it will be the Operational Test and Evaluation team that will truly develop high AoA maneuvers for the F-35. In the operational world, a pilot should rarely be taking the F-35 into the high angle-of-attack regime, but the ability to do so could make the difference between being the victor or the victim in air-to-air combat....

So with this paragraph, not only does the author expound on the exploring of "legacy high AoA maneuvers" that is to come, he specifically identifies Objective 5 test "Handling Qualities" objectives and assigns the kind of testing that will "truly develop high AoA maneuvers for the F-35" (vs. 'legacy' which may be differed 'from') to the Operational Testers and NOT part of the Edwards AFB Developmental Test Team activities.

In a nutshell, just within these two paragraphs that Baer wrote in early/mid 2014 is precisely what the JPO/LM stated in their official response to Axe's so-called 'article'. 

Therefore the "reasonable man" may logically and confidently conclude the LM/JPO response:

• WAS NOT simply something that was contrived in response to Axe's made up bullsh*t but...
• WAS accurately asserting what the testing was truly about..

Go ahead Dave, spring the few bucks to buy a copy from the AIAA. Have someone with the requisite knowledge explain it to you.

Majumdar's incompetence takes him into another reprehensible act, whereby he uses David Axe's idiotic output as the justification for insinuating Billie Flynn lied to him:

The company has repeatedly made assertions about the F-35’s performance that have later proven to be false. One example I can cite immediately is when Lockheed test pilot Billie Flynn told me how a fully laden F-35 has better high AOA performance and acceleration than all comers save for the F-22. The test report that David Axe managed to obtain clearly shows Flynn’s assertions to be false. 

Nice one. Does 'Majumdar' mean 'A**hat' in English? Aside from the fact Majumdar implies Flynn is a liar, there's also the comparatively minor commission of a non-sequitur to boot.  

The rest of Majumdar's 'article' is crap too, just not worth bothering with in light of the above affronts to reality. A 'great' day for aero journalism, eh?

[1] AIAA #2014-2057

F-35B IOC is Imminent

Prepare for all the Handwringing

Word on the street is that F-35 IOC is all done except for the signatures (which always leaves the political angle, but ya gotta have faith).

I remember all the angst when the B-2 IOC occurred. How did that work out?

Like this:

IOC is the beginning, not the end. People who think you can field a perfect airplane out the door don't know airplanes, people, or how weapon systems become operational.

Note the critics were still acting in accordance to their SOPs even after B-2 IOC. Although the GAO pretty much threw in the towel after they published the report they had already written before Allied Force in 1999 (with only a cursory nod to the reality that just smacked around their paper pushing exercise.  

By the time F-35 FOC occurs, the critics will have lost all their teeth and will be gumming it to death. 

P.W. Singer and August Cole? 'Game Show' Quality Defense Analysis

(Apologies to Game Shows Everywhere)

AKA: The "Axe is Boring Disinformation Cascade" Continues...

Ersatz sound-bite providers cum defense 'thinkers' P.W. Singer and August Cole have piled even more B.S. on the F-35 non-story that was made up out of whole cloth earlier over at 'Axe is Boring'.

To summarize the authors (in sequence):

1. Help propagate the disinformation cascade by repeating the nonsensical hit-piece-on-a-report that neither they nor the original author propagating such drivel apparently are capable of understanding. 
2. Misrepresent the official response to said hit-piece and critique their own misrepresentation. 
3. Repeat a tired old ‘we tried missiles only’ trope. (Only interceptors designed to engage nuclear-armed bombers at a distance were ever ‘missiles only’ armed). 
4. Misrepresent the Navy’s actual design objective of the F-4, which was as a "Fleet Interceptor" of aforementioned bombers, and armed with A2A missiles designed to intercept those same less-than-maneuverable bombers and at very high altitudes (unlike how the ROEs shaped SEA combat). BTW: The Air Force ALWAYS wanted a gun on its F-4s in the fighter role. Robert the ’Strange’ said ‘NO’ to the AF until the F-4E. 
5. Provide a cartoon snapshot of the fighter pilots' post-1968 experience in SEA. 
6. Then reassert the bogus F-35 hit-piece masquerading as ‘reporting’ and analysis as if there were 'facts' involved.

So then.... 

Q: What IS there about the rest of the authors' so-called ‘analysis’ that would make their ‘blog post’ anything other than 'intellectual' booger-flicking?

A: Nothing.

By way of a palate cleanser, lets compare Singer and Cole's B.S. with some, y'know...FACTS.

Contrary to what some might believe, I try not to just point at the stupid people and their stupidity without also providing some positive and countervailing content. So in passing, let us review some information that at least provides some information as to what that 'test' Axe & Co. got their beta-boy panties in a wad over  REALLY means -- instead of what they want it to mean (apparently just because it fits their preconceived life-positions).

The Testing in Question was Described Ahead of Time Last Year 

From the 2014 AIAA paper "F-35A High Angle-of-Attack Testing"[1], authored by a Mr. Steve Baer, (Lockheed Martin "Aeronautical Engineer, Flying Qualities" at Edwards AFB), and presented to the Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Conference held between 16 and 20 June 2014, in Atlanta, Georgia we find that F-35 High AoA testing was designed to follow in the following progression: 

The test objectives for high angle-of-attack testing are as follows:

1) Characterize the flyqualities [sic] at AoAs from 20° to the control law limit regime with operationally representative maneuvers. 

2) Demonstrate the aircraft’s ability to recover from out of control flight and assess deep stall susceptibility 

3) Evaluate the effectiveness and usefulness of the automatic pitch rocker (APR) 

4) Evaluate departure resistance at both positive and negative AoA with center of gravity (CG) positions up to the aft limit and with maximum lateral asymmetry. 

5) Assess the handling qualities of the aircraft in the High AoA flight

Now, in case a 'punk journalist' or other factually-challenged reader wanders by, we need to be clear that #5 has nothing to do with "dogfighting". We know this because Mr. Baer makes two points shortly thereafter within the paper. 

The first point is relevant to the state of the testing at the time of his writing. I observe that this paper was written during Objective #4 testing and published at about the time it concluded. This observation is supported by the passage [emphasis/brackets mine]:

With intentional departure testing [Objective #4] wrapped up, the team will soon move into departure resistance [Objective #4] and plan to remove the SRC now that these systems have been verified. In this phase of testing, the jet will test the CLAW limiters with much higher energy and rates than previous testing, fleshing out and correcting areas that may be departure prone. Lastly, select operational maneuvers [Objective #5], such as a slow down turn and a Split-S, will be used to gather handling qualities data on high AoA maneuvers. With the completion of this phase, the F-35 will be released for initial operational capability in the high AoA region.

   Note: 'CLAW' is Control Law and 'SRC' is Spin Recovery Chute.

Clearly the testing was not yet at step #5 at the time of writing but to emphasize same, the author followed the above paragraph with [emphasis mine]: 

While the flight test team will explore legacy high AoA maneuvers for handling qualities, it will be the Operational Test and Evaluation team that will truly develop high AoA maneuvers for the F-35. In the operational world, a pilot should rarely be taking the F-35 into the high angle-of-attack regime, but the ability to do so could make the difference between being the victor or the victim in air-to-air combat....

So with this paragraph, not only does the author expound on the exploring of "legacy high AoA maneuvers" (the 'legacy' part is important) that is to come, he specifically assigns the kind of testing that will "truly develop high AoA maneuvers for the F-35" (vs. 'legacy' which may be differed from) to the Operational Testers and NOT part of the Edwards AFB Developmental Test Team activities. 

In a nutshell, just within these two paragraphs that Baer wrote in early/mid 2014 is precisely what the JPO/LM stated in their official response to Axe's B.S.

Therefore the "reasonable man" may logically and confidently conclude the JPO response:

1. WAS NOT simply something that was contrived in response to Axe's made up bullsh*t  but...
2. WAS accurately asserting what the testing was truly about...

....debunking all and any claims to the contrary.

[1] AIAA #2014-2057

Minor changes for clarity, readability and typo corrections made 23 July 15 @ 1944 hrs.  

. 

An Open Letter to Ed Driscoll: Power of CAS Myths

Guest 'Pundit' at Instapundit, Ed Driscoll, links to a craptastic "Save the A-10" editorial (unattributed) at Investors Business Daily.... SIX MONTHS after it was published?

I thought the editorial at the link was so bad at the time it came out (along with a bunch of similar A-10 puff pieces), I don't remember paying it much heed.  But Driscoll's resurrection of this poorly 'informed' op-ed illustrates--- once again-- the power of the CAS Mythology and "narrative". Just look at the comment thread at Instapundit. Yikes!

Normally, I like what Ed Driscoll writes, and writes about, but he's waaay out of his area of expertise this time.

Dear Ed: That IBD Op Ed could have been written by one or more squirrels.  

No, the A-10 wasn’t designed to stop Soviet Tanks. This is a common misconception I've heard General Officers utter. We are so ahistorical.

The A-10 was conceived as a weapon that could attack “hard targets” and cooperate with Army Airmobile forces in SEA. After Vietnam, the Air Force HOPED it could be survivable in the NATO order of battle and did all kinds of things to make/keep it relevant. In Europe, its main advantage was the ability to get below typical rotten Euro-weather that would keep fast-movers off the target. We have sensors and communications now that remove the weather restriction for fast movers. the F-35's The weapons the A-10 was designed to survive against predated MANPADs, Integrated Air Defense Systems and even radar controlled AAA that even the NVA were pushing into the South at the end of the Vietnam War. (Google Lam Son 719).

The A-10 wasn't fielded in 1972. It first flew, in a fly-off, in 1972. (I was there) It didn’t hit IOC until 1976 or FOC until 1978.  Core operational concepts for Europe weren't developed until 1979 (I was there too).

The A-10 HAS to fly low and slow because it doesn’t have the kinds of sensors (SNIPER pods are an improvement, but not enough) and communications capabilities to sort out the battlefield well prior to the attack. It often HAS to loiter longer just because it takes longer to set up an attack.

The cockpit armor and other design features make it harder to shoot down that it would be otherwise, but having bits and pieces shot off you is not a long term survival strategy. A-10s in Desert Storm saw the most intense air defense environment they have seen before or since. They did not do well. A-10s were pulled off the Iraqi Republican Guard units and tasked against weaker units as a consequence.

Yes “A supersonic fighter pilot flying miles above the battlefield will not see enemy forces the way a Warthog pilot can” – They will see it better. I’m always fascinated by people who cite 'low and slow" as an advantage: as if flying there gives one more time to view the ground. That maybe true at Piper Cub speeds. But I’ve 'done' low and 'A-10 slow' a the same time and the scenery is whizzing by pretty fast. It ain't that great for picking up and following specific specs out of all the other specs.

A fast mover may cost more $ up front, but if the attrition rate is even a few percentage points lower, the savings, not to mention the ability to sustain operations, far outweighs the operating costs—even if you don’t factor in the fewer 'dead aircrew' part. THAT is the proper context for framing a statement like “Force requirements should be dictated by battlefield requirements, not budget restraints.”

The F-35 will provide CAS in its own way and not in the manner the A-10 provides it, so the open question is not whether or not the F-35 “can take the punishment the A-10 can”. The open question is:

Why do people think you have to take punishment like an A-10 to fly CAS?

The Warthog is still a low-intensity-conflict “hammer”: A Completely appropriate design (ignoring they are worn out) solution if ALL you are going to do is flatten insects. It is NOT so appropriate if you have to also be ready to face  Thor who is swinging his own hammer. Unless you have the extra dollars to buy and support both kinds of weapons systems to deal with bugs and Old Norse deities, you want the one that can beat the gods without getting beat yourself.

May I Suggest Some Remedial Reading?
Start at Part 1 (Links for Part 2 through 8 at bottom of Part 1).

Just found out where and how Driscoll got suckered in.
~Sigh~

William Hartung: You got Yer'self a Reckoning a'Coming Boy!

I'm going to take this craptastic, yet all so formulaic and predictable op-ed piece by William Hartung apart ...... piece by piece.

William Hartung describing the most inches of column he ever wrote without perverting
reality to serve his ideological bent. 

Everybody ready? All settled in? Then without further ado let’s throw ole Hartung’s Op Ed up on the slab, drain the corpse, and do the postmortem.

Don’t rush forward on the F-35 

By William D. Hartung 

To hear Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon tell it, the myriad problems with the F-35 combat aircraft are all behind us, and it is time to dramatically ramp up production of the plane. Nothing could be further from the truth. The plane continues to have basic problems with engine performance, software development, operating costs, maintenance, and reliability that suggest the Pentagon and the military services should proceed with caution.

This is a CLASSIC ‘Hartung’ opener. He begins with a scurilous attack: calling a dehumanized Lockheed Martin and Pentagon ‘liars’ [Hartung claims “they” say ‘x’ but Hartung says it is not ‘true’!]. Hartung then follows with an intentionally over-generalized laundry list of things that he asserts are in the ‘present tense’ (“The plane continues to have basic problems”) instead of observing these things he lists have occurred (more or less--usually less than how he describes them) and are either already in the past, or are being addressed per a viable plan now in execution. In any case, his over–generalization obfuscates events and encourages the casual reader to assume all the problems are significant and peculiar to the F-35 in the first place, when for the most part, these kinds of ‘problems’ have been part and parcel with any advanced aircraft development program since…..ever.

Hartung’s opening is ‘battlefield prep’. We’ve noted before the use of P.A.C.E. by the faux ‘reformers’ and this is a Hartung-style invocation of same. Hartung employs it for the same reason(s) POGO et al employ it: It is critical to the trite and cliché polemic-to-follow that Hartung bases his pitch upon two fundamental assumptions--which the Faux Military Reform crowd unvaryingly ground the bulk of their argumentation. These bases are:

1) A ‘problem’ is something that is never overcome or overtaken by events until it is proven to the ‘reformers’ satisfaction. And one wonders if it can ever REALLY be proven to be a thing of the past to the ‘reformer’ mind.

2) Closely related to #1 is the usually inferred assertion that no weapon system should be fielded until it is ‘mature’ (as decided by the ‘reformers’) vs. ‘mature enough’ (as decided BY THE OPERATORS). I would call the assertion “a belief” except I’m not nearly naïve enough to think they really believe what they want everyone else to accept.

Neither of these bases have any logical relationship to any generic real-world problem-solving nor program management activities, much less any proximity to weapon-system specific development experience. While it is exceedingly rare for a ‘Reformer’ to openly acknowledge these tenets, they are among the pillars of their basic doctrine.
Both bases of ‘reformer’ argumentation will be seen in full display through the rest of Hartung’s bloviating, but I consider the second basis the more onerous. It is easy for the average reader to catch on when the ‘reformers’ inevitably cling to claims about a specific problem too long after it is apparent it is no longer a problem to the average person. But as Hartung and his ilk are chronic agitators and manipulators of the technologically ignorant, those whom the ‘reformers’ gull into actually believing a weapon system COULD be ‘matured’ (to some unspoken and/or poorly defined standard BTW) before it is in the hands of the operators are MORE vulnerable. After all, most people have no idea of the amount of work is behind even the most trivial technology they use every day. Without these presumptive non-truths propping up the protestations, their  hollow arguments immediately crumble and their motives become openly suspect to anyone applying the 'reasonable man test. I bring out this point upfront because just by remembering these are the key major premises, the reader is forewarned (and thus forearmed) to enjoy the rest of this ‘Fisking’ of Hartung’s yellow-press editorializing.
The ‘reformers’ chant their mantras of “risk”, “maturity”, etc.to explain their motivations, but this in spite of the fact that no one can show us such a case EVER occurring where a fully-functional weapon system emerged as a fully effective ‘whole’ coming out of the development phase. Nor has anyone ever adequately described how it could even be ‘possible’ without introducing more unspoken and equally erroneous ‘reformer’ assumptions into the equation. I’ve stated what I believe, but I leave it to the reader to decide if Hartung and his ilk are victims of their own bizarre ideology and rhetoric and therefore are of a kind with the people J.R. Pierce (I never tire of that guy!) identified in his famous dictum

Novices in mathematics, science, or engineering are forever demanding infallible, universal, mechanical methods for solving problems.

....Or not.

Let’s continue dissecting Hartung’s rant….

If the F-35 isn’t ready for prime time, what’s the rush? The answer can be summed up in one word: politics. The decision to approve the Marines’ version of the plane for Initial Operating Capability (IOC) before the end of this year and the recent proposal to fund over 450 planes in the next several years are designed to make the F-35 program “too big to fail.” Once production reaches a certain tipping point, it will become even harder for members of Congress, independent experts, or taxpayers to slow down or exert control over the program.

See how after setting up his presumptive preface (“If the F-35 isn’t ready for prime time..”) Hartung works from the assumption the reader has accepted his presumption and THEN builds a Strawman argument (or “begs the question”) :

” … what’s the rush? The answer can be summed up in one word: politics.”?

Hartung then attempts to suck the reader into his way of thinking by making more unsupported assertions up front. Hartung desires the slow-witted among us to view the F-35 program as HE says it is, not what those who are working the program say it is. And on a program that has seen its share of delays due more to preemptive programmatic decisions (risk avoidance) and external influences (stretching SDD to reduce concurrency) than from any real manifestations of technical issues (2 years), 

Hartung slimes on the idea that working on a bulk buy to lower unit costs at this time is a “rush”? Eventually Hartung will get around to listing ‘problems’ but not until (in typical Hartung fashion) he beats the jungle drums more in the effort to get the tribe lathered up and buy into his coming attempts at misdirection. 

I note that in his observation about when a program moves further down the road it becomes harder to ‘control’ he REALLY means it will be harder for the Faux Reformers to terminate it. After all, it is part of basic program and project management common knowledge that the further any project gets down the road, the fewer opportunities there are to change it, if only because there is less in the future that can be influenced as the present becomes past. So…. Freaking…. what? Even Hartung’s publisher of his execrable books knows that is even a truism for a simple book project. 

Note the reference to 'independent experts'. While there are always a few outside a program, they are never who the 'reformers' are really referring to. When a Hartung, or other 'reformer' say this kind of thing, what they are referring to is their fellow travelers in the anti-defense industry (more on this later).

What next?……

What needs to be fixed before the F-35 is determined to be adequate to join the active force? Let’s start with the engine. On June 23 of last year an F-35’s engine caught on fire while the plane was taxiing on the runway at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Now, nearly a year later, a new report from the Air Force’s Accident Investigation Board attributed the fire to a catastrophic failure of the engine. So far, no long-term solution has been found to the problems identified by the accident investigation board. An April report by the Government Accountability Office has described the reliability of the engine as “very poor (less than half of what it should be).”

Hartung often goes more than two paragraphs without making any concrete assertions before he starts introducing any specificity. I presume there was column-space limitation that curtailed his stem-winding this go-around. In any case, here he asserts, knowingly or unknowingly, two falsehoods.

In the first case, he characterizes the state of the permanent fix for the F135 engine as “no long-term solution has been found”. He would have been more accurate and far less deceptive if he had stated “no long-term solution selection has been publically announced”, as it has been ‘in all the papers’ that Pratt and Whitney had identified a number of options for the program to pick from, and that it is essentially a matter of evaluating the options and selecting the best option to follow.. But that isn’t hopeless sounding at all, certainly not as dire as Hartung’s little misdirection makes things sound does it? There is also no guarantee, because there is no need, that a detailed description of the final fix will even be announced.

In the second assertion, Hartung commits the Biased Sample (Cherry Picking) logical fallacy by holding up the GAO report as evidence and conveniently excluding uncontested Pratt and Whitney responses to same.

Hartung now proceeds to speak of the past as if 1) It matters and 2) treat the past as indicative of the present and future. This time, it is ‘ALIS’.

Problems have also plagued the plane’s Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), which is needed to keep the F-35 up and running. As Mandy Smithberger of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight puts it, “ALIS is the core to making sure the F-35 functions.” A report last year by the Pentagon’s independent testing office noted that the system had been “fielded with deficiencies.” In April, F-35 maintainers told members of the House Armed Services committee that 80 percent of the problems identified by ALIS were “false positives.” In addition, as Smithberger has noted, the rush to deployment means that there will be no careful assessment of how changes in ALIS affect other aspects of the aircraft’s performance.

The funniest thing about this paragraph is I’m pretty sure neither Hartung nor Smithberger really know what the true scope and function of ‘ALIS’ is, but wha-ta-hay, let’s dissect some more.
First off, these guys apparently didn’t get the memo that the portable ‘ALIS’ was used in the Recent OT-1 aboard the USS Wasp. Software and hardware updates are pretty much going to plan. One exception is the 'downlink' to maintenance on inbound jets, which won’t be seen until Block 4. Personally, I don’t think that is a bad thing, as it is really evolved DoD security requirements driving the delay. The ‘false positives’ Mandy is quoted as all worried about are on their way to being overcome already. Maybe if Mandy had gone to a better school, y’know—an “Engineering College”, then advanced technology wouldn’t seem so daunting to her. That is, assuming she believes the crap she writes.

Mandy Smithberger, for those who haven’t been following the ‘reformer’ industry as closely as I have lo these many years, is the next-gen ‘Winslow Wheeler’ at POGO. For those who don’t know what “the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight” is…it’s a long story. Bottom line, it is a jobs program for anti-defense miscreants sponsored by one Phil Straus: an under-achieving-trust-fund-baby-cum-itinerant-‘photographer’ who is also, BTW, the Chairman of the Board of “Mother Jones”.

Chairman Phil Strauss: Intellect held hostage by Ideology

Mandy Smithberger, is a long-time POGOette who has only recently returned to the POGO sty from a finishing school of sorts. She dropped off POGO’s payroll for a while (to get her network mojo going with Congress and elsewhere I presume) spending time as a part-time “National Security Staffer” for a cheapa** Leftard Congresswoman whose main claim to fame is she didn’t get kill’t in the runup to, or climax of, the Jim Jones tragedy. Sure, Mandy looks pretty “cleaned-up’ nowadays, but just a few of years ago she was showing a more candid side:

Mandy Smithberger (2011) letting out a little more of the inner feral SJW than thse days, Nothing says 'serious defense thinker' than a little body-modification involving piercings in places prone to infection.     

So why is it important you know the relationship between these people? Because, as it has been known for quite some time, the ‘reform’ crowd collude and collaborate on their special targets, Their very tight clown network habitually use each other’s quotes and mutually cite or refer to each other as 'experts' in fields where the real experts wouldn’t let them in the door to call for a tow. It is more classic application of the P.A.C.E. approach.. 

Let's move on to the next bit of spittle on the floor shall we?

There have also been serious problems with the helmet that is supposed to serve as an F-35 pilot’s eyes in the sky. Until the helmet is working to full capacity, the ability of an F-35 to drop bombs accurately or recognize enemy fighters will be impaired. And in April, the Pentagon’s office of independent testing noted that in the event of a failure of the helmet, a pilot would not be able to see what is happening below or behind the plane.

In typical ‘Reform’ fashion, Hartung artfully ignores 1) the fact that the helmet’s capabilities are every bit under development as the rest of the plane, 2) the needed capabilities weren’t even known to be possible when the program began but were seen as desirous and worth the effort, and 3) that the capabilities are coming online in accordance with the current plan. 

He makes his unqualified and un-quantified assertion that the operators will be ‘impaired’ until the helmet is developed without acknowledging with the fact that the operators consider the initial capability sufficient for now (and some already say it is better than what it replaces) AND the Gen III helmet is planned by AF IOC next year. 

It IS quaint that Hartung and his fellow travelers feel qualified to presume they know better what is good for the Marine Corps than the Marine Corps does. That is if you believe THEY believe the drivel they are spreading and aren’t just trying to stop or curtail yet another program. BTW: the second option would make them lying b*stards of the worst kind…among other things.
The last assertion Hartung makes is a howler. Somebody tell him 1) no one else can even see through their plane on their BEST day and 2) the pilot doesn’t have to look behind him or use his helmet to ‘see’(eyeball) anything behind him as he can ‘see’ it on his panel if he or she desires. In any case, the rest of the F-35 systems still provide the pilot with situational awareness superior to any other candidate Hartung could imagine….if he could 'imagine' that is.

Declaring planes ready before they can actually meet basic performance standards is not a responsible approach to fielding an aircraft. Down the road, many of the problems that have yet to be resolved will require expensive retrofits of planes already in the force.

I could really pick on Hartung here and challenge him on exactly what he means by ‘basic’ performance standards, but the real problem is he’s F.O.S. about what kind of capability EVER can be initially fielded, because EVEN IF A WEAPON WAS PERFECT from the first article rolling out the door, the operators are the ones that will mature the capability over time. His claim is essentially 'not doing the impossible is irresponsible'. No. What IS irresponsible, is his penchant for making these kind of asinine assertions. It is yet another typical ‘Reformer’ tactic: ignore the real expectations set by the acquisition system and complain that the possible isn’t ‘enough’.

Hartung begins his signoff by making the now-cliché assertion that the F-35 is somehow ‘flawed’ because it is a multi-role fighter and attack aircraft:

The specific performance issues cited above don’t address a more fundamental problem with the F-35. The program is grounded in a basic conceptual flaw. Expecting variants of the same aircraft to serve as a fighter, a bomber, a close air support aircraft, and a plane that can land on Navy carriers and do vertical take off and landing for the Marines has resulted in design compromises that means it does none of these things as well as it should, given its immense cost.

Why, oddly enough, the above is EXACTLY the kind of stupid-think one would expect from a ‘journalist’ who came out years ago as a peace-at-any-price social activist and who I note STILL has NO relevant experience or knowledge base upon which to make such a judgement. If one did have the relevant qualifications, one might ask oneself why it is then that among the most produced aircraft in the post Korean-War era, nearly all of them are multi-role fighters? Hartung is just being an over-the-top idiot on this point, but he’s not alone. This has become ‘Reformer’ Canon, so expect it to persist years after FOC.

Current plans call for an average expenditure of over $12 billion per year for procurement of the F-35 through 2038, a figure that will be unsustainable unless other proposed programs like a new tanker, a new bomber, and a new generation of more capable unmanned aerial vehicles are substantially scaled back.

Gee. More Hartung-Brand pronouncements (“will be unsustainable unless X, Y, or Z”) that exclude the little point that the F-35 costs are coming down into current 4th Generation cost territory (as planned) and I think what Hartung fears most about the bulk buy is that if it happens then the costs will almost certainly continue to drop faster. I note here (again) that the only way the procurement of the F-35 goes through to 2038 is if they are successful AND the need for as many as planned continues. The most important thing for keeping total acquisition cost down is not the total number to be bought, but the rate at which they are bought: more ‘early’ equals more ‘cheaper’.

‘Dropping names’ as he does when mentioning new 'bombers' and new 'UAVs' reminds me of another favorite ‘reformer’ tactic: always promote the last program or the next program over the current program: lather, rinse, repeat.

Unless further, realistic testing can demonstrate that the F-35 can adequately perform all of its proposed missions, it’s not worth the cost. The Pentagon should slow down and make sure it knows what it’s getting before it spends tens of billions of additional taxpayer dollars on the F-35. And Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) should subject the program to close scrutiny during his committee’s proposed strategic review of major acquisition programs.

Ah, the final ‘pronouncement’. The DoD Customers (even the Navy) , US Partners, and FMS Customers know exactly what they are getting. Hartung just wants everyone to agree with his crap. This last paragraph does perhaps identify who his real target audience is though. I don’t think even McCain is that stupid, but maybe his constituents are?

Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy.

No. Hartung’s a rabid anti-defense shill from within the Faux Reform Astroturf Noise Machine. He'd be a loyal babbler if he was still a journalist, and the CIP has it's toes in many things 'left', so Hartung could be considered a Stalwart operating inside a Fellow Traveler network.

Stupid Journalist Tricks: Gun Control Edition

A 'Pulitzer-Prize Winning' journalist named Cynthia Tucker  has commited an 'EPIC fail' in trying to  'Shame' Texas legislators and citizens over the soon-to-be-signed  'campus-carry' law just passed in Texas.

You see, the old Prog' made the mistake of invoking the 1966 UT Tower Shooting tragedy as her vehicle for the shaming attampt. It has been said that the mass murderer who did the shooting  “introduced the nation to the idea of mass murder in a public space” . Ms. Tucker ignorantly and arrogantly opens her rant with the title:

"With campus gun vote, Texas lawmakers trample the memory of 1966 shooting victims"

And then offends again by closing her opinion 'piece' with:

"...the Texas Legislature has trampled the memory of the dead"

In-between is nothing but the usual gun-control drivel.

How Ignorant Can this Crone Be?

But the problem with Ms. Tucker's screed is that there were several private citizens, gun owners, who sprang into action to suppress the shooter (I won't repeat his name, he doesn't deserve it) and with their own rifles. One was a student who kept a gun in his (gasp) own room on campus. These Citizens took the gunman under fire to keep him from continuing to shoot at will any innocents  he could see over an area spanning several city blocks. Until the citizens started shooting back, the shooter was killing people at a high frequency. When the first law enforcement officer arrived on the scene, he took one of the civilians up the Tower with him thinking he was a lawman at first. Three men went up the tower but many if not most press accounts these days only mention the two lawmen and never mention the civilians who were involved.

At first, the press reported only one of the lawmen as having assaulted the gunman's perch. While the civilians below kept the gunman's head down, the lawmen who reached the roof had to be careful to keep theirs down as well, but there is no doubt the civilian;s suppressive fire from below, and the civilian who held a flank in the top of the tower helped the lawmen make the successful final assault on and the killing of the gunman.

So the story isn't quite what Cynthia thinks it is, but thanks 'Cyndi' for pointing out how private gun ownership can stop criminals on campus.

'Journalist', 'Professor', 'Prog'.

Hmmm. She left out 'Moron'.
(Probably got distracted by a butterfly or something shiny.)  

The One DOT&E, er DoD SAR Quote You Probably Won't See Anywhere Else

Now with Don Bacon! 
(As in Corrected, Updated and Bumped with Hat Tip to Same)

Don't expect the Punk Journalists, Loyal Babblers, or Faux Reformers (abetted by Punk Journalists) to bother with putting proper perspective around all their little doomsday accounts of what is going on inside the F-35 program. Remember, its all about either trying to kill a program and/or coming up with enough rent money. "P.A.C.E." is the vehicle that they'd drive off the cliff before they'd ever move away from it.

So there is one DOT&E DoD Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) quote out of all the reports and testimonies that comes out of the unexpurgated December 2014 (for 2015) DOT&E Report DoD SAR that I don't see anyone pushing out to the uneducated masses anytime soon. It is the final paragraph of the report's Executive Summary, Page 10:

In summary, the F-35 program is showing steady progress in all areas – including development, flight test, production, maintenance, and stand-up of the global sustainment enterprise. The program is currently on the right track and will continue to deliver on the commitments that have been made to the F-35 Enterprise. As with any big, complex development program, there will be challenges and obstacles. However, we have the ability to overcome any current and future issues, and the superb capabilities of the F-35 are well within reach for all of us. 

Everything else in the media that surrounds the F-35/DOT&E, DoD SAR, GAO, blah ,blah, blah, reportage is about either rallying the mouth-breathers or herding the sheep.

About the Update: I had meant to identify the report I linked to as the SAR, but let myself get in a hurry and used the incorrect reference at the link that originally led me to the document instead. My 'bad', but it doesn't change the essence of the post or the point either. This update exists because I loathe inaccuracies, even mine and no matter how they are identified.
If anything, the quote is more relevant to my point coming from the SecDef Office SAR than the DOT&E annual report:

John Q. Public Making Up F-35 Stuff

Make you a bet....

Hat Tip Op-For

Op-For has a post up linking to a post at a blog called John Q. Public. The JQP post regurgitates elements of the POGO-annual-diatribe-against-something (won't link to POGO here--maybe later if I deconstruct Mandy's rather wan opening act in POGO's center ring (replacing now retired Winslow Wheeeler).

I posted a comment in response at OpFor, and wanted to post the essence of it at JQP, but JQP has that d*mn DISQUS on 'full invasive' and not anonymous enough for my taste, so I'm doing it here for posterity:

Note the usual suspects that have been against just about every weapon system since about 1970 listed in JQP's blogroll, What this particular post does is echo the annual (March) CDI/POGO diatribe against whatever weapon system they are most against this year. Now, I normally advocate arguing the data and not the source, except POGO has never (to the best of my knowledge) ever argued facts without prevarication, or presented a 'fact' that was ever without a perversion of truth applied. This time is no different. But in this case however, the most irksome part of the JQP post is the anonymous author's references to an anonymous F-35 'pilot', whose ALLEGED comments reek of somebody lying someplace. Since it is anonymity upon anonymity, it could be the pilot in question is lying and/or a weak sister. It could be the author is making up pilot quotes out of whole cloth, or adapting past JSF 'news' and 'rants' to fit what the author believes or wants the readers to believe, or it could be any combination of all the above. I have a good friend whose Sister is now retired from Journalism and who has related that in her experience most of the time 'unnamed sources' are journalists making sh*t up. I could pick apart every one of the alleged quotes and posit likely true origins for most of them before their perversion, but that could put us into a gray area where I don't care to go . So lets make a wager on something the so-called pilot claimed knowledge about: The F-35 doing poorly in 'recent' High AOA/BFM "tests". 

I will bet dollars to donuts that IF the program chooses to respond to such hooey, that we will discover the first two BFM "tests" were in the middle of January, the first two flights were on two consecutive days, the missions were flown by two different pilots, and both of them had nothing but glowing reviews about the jet's performance. If I find eventually a public source to validate this 'guess' I will be happy to also share who I 'guessed' were the pilots, which flight they flew, and which plane(s?) was/were flown.And perhaps even quote the pilots.

We shall see what develops....

Update: JQP is a blog published by a Mr. Tony Carr. I thought it was a group blog with an unsigned author.

Update II (18 Mar 15, 2134 hrs): I had posted a response to 'Xandercrews' at F-16.net  (who had asked a rhetorical question in jest), where I also expanded somewhat on what I've already noted. When I came back here, I found comment from JQP's own Tony Carr responding to my first observations. My response to Xandercrews, seems apropos and so in part is repeated here:

Naw. I looked him up at lunch today. He's attending law school now. Ret. (early?) LtCol C-17 driver. Commissioned after I retired, and retired after less than 20 unless he had prior enlisted time. I would probably be most interested in almost anything he had to say on Air Mobility/Air transport topics, but on Acquisition? Fighter tech? Rank amateur.
Trust me, he has to have had something on the ball at least at once upon a time to have made it through his Freshman year at ERAU: the distractions in Daytona Beach tend to weed out the less disciplined students pretty quick. So I've filed him under "intellect held captive by ideology and inexperience".
If his pilot friend is real [we'll now assume he is], he's just another disgruntled meat-servo, perhaps having a tough time transitioning to the F-35 so... 'It's the plane!'. Little 'tells' like....  

...Surprised he wasn't b*tchin about the number of controls on the HOTAS. In any case, the claim about BFM maneuvering was total BS and I'm willing to wait until the program talks about it.  

I would find reliance on any one operator's opinion on PVI laughable either way-- given the number of pilots that were involved in the design, development and maturation of the 'office'. There was extensive testing of the Pilot Vehicle Interfaces (perhaps hundreds of pilots' inputs; from 'mock up' to labs to simulators to flight test) and the overwhelming positive public attributable statements from the drivers taken as a whole. 

Of course, for some people it is simply much easier to apply the standard Fallacious Circumstantial Ad Hominem and cry 'disaster!' and 'cover up!' to suit their predisposed views or mood. But you'll never get to the root of their 'argument' you'll never find one that isn't just a tarted-up opinion built upon some distortion of reality. Hey! I'm now mildly curious if his 'pilot friend' was one of those "get gunned every time" guys from a couple of years ago. It would explain much.

To save time and avoid useless back and forths with the "foot-soldiers" and "loyal babblers" through the rest of the Congressional silly season, it looks like I'm just going to have to do a Know Your Reformer update on this 'Mandy Smithberger' person AND 'Fisk' her little rant that is now echoing (as designed) and kicking up this crap all over the usual corners of the web. Heck, I may do so if only to emphasize how the Faux Reform Meme Machine will attempt to keep marching on, now that the "Old Guard" are falling away and the 'echo-reformers' are taking over.
Teaser: If I do it, the post will have the best pic of Winslow Wheeler in his most natural (transactional analysis sense) state EVER captured.

There's Legal Analysis, and then there's REAL Analysis

I usually enjoy Eugene Volokh's stuff. Though his move to the WP was disconcerting, I got over it.

But Volokh has a BIG swing and a miss in describing a 'growing' rationale for an argument that the Supreme Court should revist/reverse previous court opinions and enforce Interstate Sales Tax collection the way the greedy little state and local politicos/taxmen WANT it enforced.

The ' rationale' goes like this:

This argument has grown stronger, and the cause more urgent, with time. When the Court decided Quill, mail-order sales in the United States totaled $180 billion. 504 U.S., at 329 (White, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). But in 1992, the Internet was in its infancy. By 2008, e-commerce sales alone totaled $3.16 trillion per year in the United States.

Sorry, those are RAW numbers. What does the trend look like factoring the overall economic environment.  I'm  assuming internet sales have supplanted most catalog sales:  a pretty safe assumption I believe.  And even if it's not, if someone can compare them directly across the timeline--well then! So can I.

Here's those two numbers Volokh used, lined up against GDP figures for private and government consumption and investment:

Correction: I had fat-fingered $3.16T as $3.6T , Heh. Now my point is even 'Truer'

The big number for 2008 compared to the little number in 1992 overstates the growth in interstate sales. Complaints about 'missing revenues' from politicians reeks of unwillingness to compete, and worse a certain sense of entitlement to other people's dollars--no matter what the source--to feed the allmighty 'state'.

A rising tide lifts all boats

As the 'Barf Box' at the bottom of the chart indicates, NO ONE ever seems to ever ask the question as to what entities receiving all that internet revenue spend it on -and where? I would normally presume states with the better internet-friendly tax laws would benefit most and the local governments would be happy about it. But I realize we're dealing with people whose lives are often immune to the direct effects of the real economy, and I think more than a few resent the denial of an "opportunity for graft".

And I'm not buying any argument that the Local and State governments NEED those taxes on internet revenues: All hail the rise of the "Social Spending-Entitlement-Complex...

  State and local government is THE 'Growth Sector' of government. 

When the data is on your side, argue the data....

Sorry Eugene.

Loyal Babblers, Pawns, Fellow Travelers, and the Old Guard Losers of the ‘Military Reform Machine’

How to tell who the Faux Military Reform Players are and the name of the ‘Show’… Since they won’t give you the REAL program.

Like many, I frequently begin the day perusing the web over coffee. One of the things I often check for these days is ‘breaking news’ about the F-35. My main interest in keeping on top of the F-35 story has little to do with my past or current associations with the program (contrary to the Crack Circumstantial Ad Hominem Suicide Brigade’s belief). I expect soon I will be shifting to the next big ‘target’ of anti-defense crowd: the Next Gen LRS program just because it will BE the big target like the F-35 today.

Usually, the legionnaires of F-16.net manning their remote keyboard outposts around the globe have the ‘latest and greatest already posted’ before I’m even awake, and I need go no further to find a trailhead for the day’s trek through F-35 Newsdom. Sometimes though, I’ll just ‘Google’ “F-35 News”. Early yesterday just the other day that tactic yielded a ‘jackpot’ of sorts. I’ve been working on a “transonic acceleration” post in the little free time I can find, and will have it up eventually, but I’ve had a post on the back-burner even longer looking for just the right platform on which to roll it out. Today, er Yesterday, I mean TWO THREE FOUR days ago was “THE DAY”… (Delay explained in blub at end of post)

Brad Plummer
'Serious' (Just not when
it comes to "Defense") 

The Great Google spit this article out right at the top yesterday that morning. It’s a pretty vapid lamentation, written by some tech-deficient ‘writer’ named Brad Plumer. The article is titled “This military program lost 100 times as much money as Solyndra — yet no one talks about it”. The article has since begun descending to its rightful place in the deepest depths of Google anonymity. It is also hardly worth mentioning anything in detail about the ‘piece’: Brad does a lousy job trying to draw an analogy between the F-35 program cost increases to Obama’s Poster-Child-for-Crony-Capitalism, aka “Solyndra!”, and he loses all credibility when he reveals he based his overwrought title on an Atlantic ‘piece’ by James Fallows (introduced in some detail to regular readers here), opening with:

James Fallows has a long, excellent essay in this month's Atlantic….

That is our first clue….that Brad doesn’t have one.

I say Brad’s title was “overwrought” because, to quote ‘Brad’, “Fallows estimates that taxpayers could end up losing 100 times as much money on the F-35 as they did on Solyndra”. Annnnd…to quote Brad quoting Fallows:

Total cost overruns, losses through fraud, and other damage to the taxpayer from the F-35 project are perhaps 100 times that great, yet the "Solyndra scandal" is known to probably 100 times as many people as the travails of the F-35.

Setting aside unsupported allegations of ‘fraud’, in what reality do “estimates” and “perhaps” translate into a definitive statement of fact, ESPECIALLY when drooled out of Fallows' pie-hole? To be fair, ‘Brad’ probably had an editor write the title – writers often suffer the editor's imprimatur. If so, then Brad’s editor is a worthless producer of Bulls***. Brad is a worthless producer of Bulls*** for writing the rest of the worthless ‘article’. From his portfolio of writing, it appears Brad has his own agenda for using Fallows ‘piece’ in his interpretive dance-cum-journalism routine. If so, that makes Brad an “Opportunist” and a “Fellow Traveler”. In the ‘Reformer’ sense he is merely a “Pawn” but he could with time work his way up to "Loyal Babbler" if he minds his manners (more on these characterizations later). But Brad’s electronic effluence is only the quick first stop on this journey.

Next Stop: Fallows’ Epic Cultural Hit Piece

James Fallows: Boy Speech 

Writer for the second worst 

President in my life-time 

has parlayed that gig into 

quite a career promoting 

bad ideas. One of Thomas 

Sowell's 'Intellectuals: 

Believes Inconsequential 

Knowledge should have

Consequential application.

So we follow Brad’s link to Fallow’s Atlantic ‘editorial’, where he re-sows some ground in his ‘fallow’ field of left-wing fantasy. This one is ostensibly about an America ‘disconnected’ from its military. He could have titled it ‘An Aging Leftist Regrets His Kind Do Not Enlist’. There’s all kinds of falderal inside the margins. Here’s a short list of Fallows’ most typical foibles that I would feel remiss if I let go by without pointing the reader to them.

1. Fallows expresses a wonderment that the percentage of people who are immediate relations to a (I presume living) veteran has dropped:

Among older Baby Boomers, those born before 1955, at least three-quarters have had an immediate family member—sibling, parent, spouse, child—who served in uniform. Of Americans born since 1980, the Millennials, about one in three is closely related to anyone with military experience.

Yeah, Total War for 5 years (1940-45 counting the call-ups in 1940, 0r 1941-1946 counting the time it took to return home – your choice) and an active ‘draft’ that ran right up to the early 70s will artificially raise the average until a few years past those factors fading won’t it? Want to feel more connected to the ‘Military’ Fallows? Move to a Red State. Then shed every silly Fascist urge you may feel a) to champion America’s return to a military ‘draft’ or b) that doing so would be ‘good for America’.

2. Fallows weaves a tale of cultural media (film, electronic and print publishing) ‘shifts’ in attitudes towards the military and how it is portrayed by the media. He provides enough cultural comparisons between days of yore and now to make the point but yet does so without ever observing that the shift is entirely due to today’s media and entertainment industries being controlled by the Left, not to mention carries the Left’s water on all things anti-military. But of course, if he did, he would be tacitly admitting his own complicity in attempts to ‘manage reality’ wouldn’t he?

3. Fallows drags up the ‘Missed-It-By-This-Much-Darn-You-Gary-Hart-Libido Reformer’: William S. Lind. Lind’s (keeping with the 'hyphenizin') much-debated-at-one-time-and-still-generally-seen-as-‘derivative’ Fourth Generation Warfare ‘shtick’ is used thusly: l

The most curious thing about our four defeats in Fourth Generation War—Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan—is the utter silence in the American officer corps. Defeat in Vietnam bred a generation of military reformers … Today, the landscape is barren. Not a military voice is heard calling for thoughtful, substantive change. Just more money, please.

Perhaps the (asserted) utter silence in the ‘officer corps’ is more due to the widespread knowledge that the cockup ain’t with the military Mr. Lind, but with the ‘political class’ of which you and Fallows belong. The political class these days behave as self-annointed Archons of ‘truth’ with presumptive rights to define reality for the rest of us. The ‘Political Class’: the ones that Goldwater-Nichols’ed the military a generation ago. In Lind’s case here, he attempts to obfuscate what has really been occurring since the latest President took office: a retread of the Left’s canned ‘Vietnam’ strategy. That is the one that illustrates there is no military ‘Victory!’ the American military can secure that the Political Left will not turn into a political defeat if given the chance.

Full disclosure: There's a lot of Lind's stuff I like (see here). It's just that none of it has to do with 'defense'.

Oh, and Lind’s old meal-ticket Gary Hart (as part of his political rehabilitation?) makes a return from exile in an appearance later in Fallows’ dump.

Lind’s contribution actually seems a little out of place, as much of Fallows’ complaints seem pointed at the politicians and ‘Mericunizm in general. But the cognitive dissonance of lamenting a lack of ‘military reformers’ when ‘political reform’ is what is needed is…. palpable.

Fallows’ and Lind’s problem in selling this ‘stuff’ is that there is too much information and too many sources to get the information from for the gatekeepers to control the ‘message’ like they did the first time they hit the scene. Too bad for them.

Franklin C. 'Chuck' Spinney.

Good with 'Cost', lousy with 

'Value' 

Fallows, as a ‘Loyal Babbler’, continues to roll out nearly all the still-active Old Guard Faux-Reformers from his National Defense days. (If you must read it, please check it out at your local library or buy it used will you?) Besides Lind, he treats us to a mention of Chuck Spinney, whose fabulous (as in ‘fable’) “Defense Facts of Life: The Plans/Reality Mismatch” briefing book got him a TIME magazine cover once. Too bad his analysis sucked then and it still sucks now. I keep a marked-up copy of a ‘Westview Press’ edition in a binder because if I marked up the original the way it needed to be, I couldn’t read it. You could pick about any page number and I’d tell you where he was most ‘wrong’ on it, but IMHO most of his ‘sins’ derive from three fatal flaws. The first is a total lack of understanding of ‘complexity’ (origins, drivers, effects), The second was complete discomfort with not knowing the unknowable before it can become knowable. That boy had a textbook “High Motive for Certainty” and probably does still. The third was Spinney’s analysis relying on assuming the U.S. economic conditions at the time (particularly the high inflation rates) were “the” reality relevant to future spending, and then using them in his ‘projections’. From where I’m standing, Spinney suffers from a life-long and over-inflated concern for ‘costs’ with, like most of the ‘Reform’ blowhards, a vestigial (at best) grasp of the greater concept we call ‘value’.

Full Disclosure: I have a ‘bias’ when it comes to ‘Cost Analysts’. I do combat and logistics operations analysis (mostly the latter these days). It’s a side gig that I get ‘called in’ on now, but it once was my main job. One of my great professional frustrations has been when I have to closely deal with cost analysts for any length of time. They’re usually good people (like most people) and they do a job I would never want to do. The problem is they seem to rarely have the depth of technical experience needed to understand all the cost drivers they attempt to characterize, and I end up spending an inordinate amount of time every occasion I do deal with them just 1) keeping them for declaring something they’ve done in the past as ‘equivalent’ or 2) getting them to understand a nuance to a cost driver that took me or somebody else years to distill properly. Almost invariably, I’ve found myself presenting and standing behind my technical analysis including the explicit, and clearly-defined caveats, but having to explain some ‘hidden’ or overly abstract cost element on something that the cost analysts accepted and treated as somehow ‘real’ without bothering to caveats. It is almost as if the cost estimates become real dollars in their minds, and it is an affliction that is too often shared by some managers—it’s not a good ‘synergy’ when they get together.

Ricks: Long Time 'Go To'

Guy for getting the 'Reformist'

Propaganda out to the public.

There’s also a cameo appearance by semi-retired ‘Loyal Babbler’ Thomas E. Ricks. But more significantly, there is a ‘Reformer’ presence that isn’t explicit but it is clearly sitting there to anyone familiar with the subject. This unattributed ‘Reformer’ presence is of particular interest and will be used to wrap up this dissection of Fallow’s Fallacies. It is important because it can be clearly shown as the basis for the fallacious representation of reality: using gross oversimplification to dupe the unaware. It didn’t require particular insight to tickle out the fraudulence, as some of it has been used before by the ‘Reformers’. Specifically, there is not one but two presentations containing the same data (a graphic and a similar representation adapted for the embedded video) sourced from POGO (or were sourced TO POGO by Fallows? –whichever direction, the link is there). The data was used by CDI/POGO’s point man, Winslow Wheeler, a few years ago for much the same purposes, and I caught it that time as well.

Winslow Wheeler: CDI
Ringmaster at POGO

Wheeler and CDI/POGO fingerprints are all over Fallows’ craptastic article. As a bonus, Dina Rasor, founder of POGO and now running the high-grade idiocy collector and low-grade information dissembler called ‘Truthout’ (won’t link to it. Yeccchhh!), links to the Fallows video from their Buzzflash feed. 

The only guy missing from this Old Guard Faux Reform ‘all-star’ production seems to be Pierre Sprey.

Here is the graphic from the Fallows piece:

 Source: The Atlantic

This is a fraudulent (intentional or not) mishmash of unsourced (but largely traceable) numbers posing as ‘facts’ that is used in such a cavalier manner by Fallows et al. The acquisition costs are meaningless without knowing the fiscal year dollars involved, and comparing aircraft that do not perform the same mission is folly anyway. This chart is a typical 'fool the innumerate' propaganda that regularly comes out of the Faux Reform camp. The interesting thing to me here is the perverse representation and comparison of operating costs across aircraft types, especially the bit about:

“…the efficient A-10 Warthog has the lowest per-flight-hour cost, because it needs so little maintenance—yet the military plans to phase it out. The F-35, which was supposed to bring new efficiency to plane design, costs five times as much per plane and three times as much preflight hour.”

One must presume the target audience has no idea of the differences in the full-up capability between the two airplanes, among many other factors (perhaps a topic for the future?) that make such a comparison ludicrous.I slapped some of this ‘operating cost per flying hour’ horses*** down when Wheeler trotted it out the first time.  

POGO conveniently provides an updated version of the data Wheeler misrepresented at the time and it, along with all of the other operating cost data now shown by Fallows deserves the exposure it is about to receive. No direct link, but here's a screen capture showing how to get it:

The data Wheeler and Co. use is (ostensibly) from the Air Force itself. We have no reason to suspect otherwise. However, we have very good reason to call out the representation of the data as “highly-misleading”. This ‘data’ seems to be subject to annual exploitation by POGO/CDI now. Emerging (not fully 'conditioned' yet) Loyal Babbler Mark Thompson used it in March 2013 at Time’s 'Babbleland'. Wheeler and Pierre Sprey (Hey, he made it to the dance after all!) also rolled out the same meme in early 2014 (Google “Chuck Hagel’s A-10 Legacy”- I won’t link to that place if I don’t have to), where they did a Kaleidoscope-on-reality in a number of ways via the now-standard Reformer non-sequiturs. The only value of the article here is that it identifies the AF Comptroller’s office as the source. 

 Again, I have no problems at this time with the numbers Wheeler/POGO use: just the nefarious way in which they use it. 

The Numbers in the Fallows’ Atlantic ‘Cost’ Graphic

Now that we have identified just how widely and frequently this cost ‘scare tactic’ is deployed, let’s return our focus on this specific invocation: Fallows’ using sketchy O&S cost numbers that even if they were ‘correct’ are used in a way designed to mislead the public.

First, the only operating cost data shown above in the Fallow's graphic that we can trace to the same source and characterized in the same way as Wheeler’s 2011 hit piece is the B-2 and the V-22 (Note: The only rational explanation for the V-22 numbers that Fallows uses are if they are for the AF Special Operations Command CV-22s in 2011). The rest of Fallow’s numbers could have been randomly pulled from anywhere EXCEPT ‘an official source’ with the same provenance/ timeframe as what Wheeler used. Here's some of the big stuff missing from Fallow's graphic:

Dear James Fallows and the Atlantic: Sharing Numbers without Context is NOT DATA

As the inclusiveness of cost accounting has broadened over the decades, the Faux Military Reformers strived to exaggerate weapon system cost increases in an attempt to misshape public perceptions on ‘Defense’ and ‘Defense Spending’ in particular. One of the tactics of the Leftist Anti-Defense ‘activists’ has been to present the Operations & Support (O&S) Costs of a weapon system in terms of ‘Cost in Dollars Per Flight Hour’. When costs are presented in this manner, the unwary Public is left with the perception that it costs the Taxpayer these dollar amounts EVERY time, and for every hour these systems operate. In reality, these amounts include dollars that are spent whether the aircraft fly or not, dollars that have no direct connection to the weapon systems or their operation, and dollars that would be spent if there were no weapons systems present just to have the ability to support a weapon system. The dollars sourced from POGO contain every operational cost element listed in the graphic below as noted:

Everything except the Kitchen Sink. Well...actually that's in there too.

If you get the Excel spreadsheet from POGO, there are other cost numbers you may be interested in. 

Since Fallows’ Atlantic piece, another arm of The Atlantic media machine has spit out a screed titled "The F-35 Has to Phone Home Before Taking Off" (really), repeating out-of-date information as if it were somehow relevant to the F-35 ALIS system's current state. This was done when with only a modicum of journalistic inquiry, the issue could have been shown to be past.

Patrick Tucker, who wrote the piece had to reach past all current news, pushing newer well known developments out of the way to retrieve his moldy chunk of information ‘cheese’. From the ‘Reformer POV’ the author would be a ‘Pawn’, and perhaps the Pawn was moved by Fallows, the Atlantic’s Loyal Babbler’?

Update 8PM: Tucker has added an update from the JSFPO: 

Joe DellaVedova, Public Affairs Director F-35 Lightning IIJoint Program Office contacted Defense One about this story. He says that while previous versions of ALIS did not allow for a human override, ”this has been corrected in the latest fielded release (ALIS 1.0.3).”
He adds: “ALIS continues to mature per its development roadmap and we currently have it installed aboard the USSWasp today to support of an operational test and evaluation of the F-35B air system which will happen this spring. There is also a more portable, modularized version of the ALIS Standard Operating Unit server for shipboard and expeditionary operations that is currently in final integration and test. This version will support the U.S. Marine Corps initial operating capability later this year.”

Sounds like...

...to me!

Kudos to Mr Tucker for not playing a 'Pawn'.  

Why I took the time to lay this all out.  

It’s kind of anti-climatic, but this entire sequence of events was perfect for making the following point:

The Old Guard of Military Reform are feeling the end is nigh. They have been operating within a certain framework for years now:

Indirect (Dotted Lines) Influence on Lawmakers and Strong Parallel Coordination With Fellow Travelers

But this is not the model under that they wish to operate. In this model, they have no ‘insiders’ in elected government and it irks them (Just read some of their published ‘work’) They yearn for the heady days of the 70’s and ‘80s when their crazy ideas about weapon systems being 'too complicated', 'too costly' were actually considered within the halls of government (Desert Storm knocked them off their game for an election cycle or three). This is the model they USED  to operate under:

The Old Days: When Reformers had a Toe-hold with the 'Ins' (May they NEVER return) 

The 'Reformers' want this arrangement to return, so they don’t have to spend so much time distorting reality and duping the Hoi Polloi. They’d like to just have to whisper in some politician’s ear, and party with their Loyal Babblers again. There’s been some rumbling by some politicians lately about ‘reform’ again. If one or more of the Old Guard hasn't been 'working' them already, I’d be amazed.

We covered everybody I wanted to cover in the system except the 'Foot Soldiers'. those are basically Old Guard 'wanna-bes', whose primary interest isn't just providing a conduit for the 'Reform' Message, but instead want to generate the Message as well. Not a lot of those guys around these days thank goodness, Although Thomas E. Ricks, through his activities at the fake defense 'Think Tank' the Left has set up called Center for a New American Security and 'serious' writings for the self-perceived serious 'Foreign Policy' audience seems to want to fill the shoes of a loyal 'Foot Soldier' in his semi-retirement.    

Why this took so darned long

The Excel spreadsheet POGO offers had some 'delimiting' problems when I grabbed a copy. On top of that, The original post I did on POGOs numbers was based on what Flight Global had at their site, and their 'interactive graphs that were....aren't anymore. An interesting thing to note about the AF Comptroller numbers (as represented by POGO) is that they are subject to correction. For instance, in my first post, I wondered why the WC-135W had a spike in one year's $/FH:

2011 POGO Data: 2006 Spike in Cost for WC-135W 

In this year's version of the data, the 'spike' is gone, and the numbers are completely different. take a look at the data, I may point out some things I noticed in some detail in a later post. Quick observations are that if the F-16C/D O&S cost trend continues, it will pass the F-35's estimated $/FH by about 2020, and the low density aircraft have the most sensitivity to support costs, groundings and airframe losses--and it shows in the data:

Chart added 11 May 15 to illustrate point made concerning estimated F-35 O&S Cost vs F-16 O&S cost trend