Lt General Bogdan: F-35 Noise “Good to Go”

F-35 No More Noisier Than Other Fighters the VANG Has Flown

Hat Tip Spazinbad @ F-16.net

In fact, the F-35 will very often be quieter taking off than the F-16s it is replacing because afterburners will not be required for the F-35 under more weight, operational, and environmental (density altitudes) conditions than the F-16.

From AF Magazine's website (Google cached) :

F-35 Noise “Good to Go”
—John A. Tirpak  10/31/2014 

Studies of F-35 noise relative to legacy fighters will be released Friday, and will show that “on the ground, at full military power,” which is full power without afterburner, the F-35 is “actually quieter, by a little bit” than legacy aircraft such as the F-15, F/A-18, and F-16, F-35 Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan said Thursday... 

...This “real noise data” should dispel rumors that the F-35 will be much louder than its predecessors. Part of the reason is that the F-35 is “very sleek in its outer mold line, without a lot of drag,” Bogdan said. Using afterburner, however, the F-35 is considerably noisier than its predecessors, as it generates 43,000 pounds of thrust. Its noise will be on a par with the old F-4 Phantom, Bogdan reported. Although its character is different, the F-4 noise is deeper than that of the F-35, he said.

That's Great News!  

The F-4 started flying out of the Burlington VT  airfield in 1982 (preceded by Canberras, Delta Daggers, Scorpions, and Starfires) and were replaced by the F-16s in 1986. That makes the F-35 the quietest jet since 1981 to operate out of Burlington. To help the 'Stop the F-35 in Vermont' crowd (website and Facebook no less!) disseminate this awesome good news faster, I've created the following graphics to drive the good news 'home':

The F-35 has a lot shorter takeoff roll than the Phantom, so it will get to higher altitude than the Phantom before getting to  the end of the runway. I also see this phenomenon regularly at Carswell JRB compared to  the JRB's F-16s and F-18s.   

When the F-35 takes off out of Carswell, only the deeper note, and the fact that the sound does not linger tells 'your ears' that an F-35 is taking off instead of an F-16 or F-18

At Burlington's 335 ft altitude and 44°28′19″N latitude, the F-35 won't need afterburner as much as the aircraft that came before it. 

 What This Means 

Overall, the residents of Winooski can expect to be more annoyed (noise times the number of airfield operations) by the airliners currently operating out of the Burlington VT airport. Just like 'now'.

Soooooo... 

When the next "bioregional decentralist", "writer/satirist" and/or "delicate flower of Yankee womanhood with a profound lack of respect for authority" starts 'going off' about the Green Mountain Boys'  new F-35s, just tell 'em:

Also, because there is NO  'Divine Right to Stagnate' (but we won't get into that).  

Update 2 November: The 'noise report' summary is now  out:

If you were too lazy to look at the notes, the blue background data is 'old' data, the white background data is 'new' data.

Looks like I'll need to do another chart for 'Approach and Go' (airfield pattern work). In the interim. an 'artist's concept' of what a 'Stop the F-35; reaction might look like:

I suppose 'some' might think I'm being a little hard on what they see as good  'civic minded citizens'. If so, that 'some' obviously never really looked at the drivel the Stop the F-35 Vermont website and Facebook page proffer. Socialists, Luddites, Aging Hippies, NIMBYers, and Opportunists --all on a bus to 'Nowheresville' man! AKA 'Rabble meets Rousers'. 

There is NO Military Industrial Complex

It’s just that dirty Hippie Commies want you to think there’s one out there.

Alternative Title: What Military-Industrial Complex? 2014 Edition

I've noticed a recent uptick in references to Eisenhower’s ‘feared’ Military-Industrial Complex in public discourse across various media outlets; in print and online articles as well as the internet comment threads for same. It is almost as if a new generation of low-information consumers has discovered the MIC, aping the old ‘Sixties Left’ paranoia and deceit. They throw out the ‘MIC’ as if it were argument-ending proof or at least ‘evidence’ of a malevolent and destructive phenomenon: something that is wreaking havoc on the American polity and economy at this very minute or, ‘trust them’- by golly there would be if ‘we’ don’t put a stop to it. Just ask ‘em!

So it is time, once again, to insert proper perspective into the discussion…and slap the Military-Industrial Complex myth silly. This time, I plan on the ‘definitive’ debunking. Barring any wild economic gyrations in the near future, I shouldn’t ever have to revisit the topic, and should be able to just point others here whenever the topic comes up for a VERY long time.

This post is in two halves. In the first half, we’ll revisit (with a little twist) what we have covered in the past (here and here) to put proper perspective to the current relative economic power of defense activities within the total scale and scope of the American economic machine. In the second part, we will reach across time to examine the scope and relative impact of the Mythical MIC from the time Eisenhower first framed his now ‘infamous’ warning and compare it with today.

Some Housekeeping Up Front

Data Source

All data shown and not otherwise labeled/attributed is from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, Downloaded in early August.  The BEA data has since been updated at the source at least once in the interim, but for our purposes, there is no material difference in newer data and the data I used here.

Define Our Terms

It is particularly important that we first define our terms, since I categorically reject (obviously) the modern, clichéd definition of what a “Military-Industrial Complex” actually IS. If the accepted definition of the MIC in modern parlance was the same “manifestation” that Eisenhower noted in the ‘MIC’ speech where he stated “We recognize the imperative need for this development” then I would happily accept use of the term ‘Military-Industrial Complex’.

However, the term ‘Military-Industrial Complex’ has been routinely and now pervasively perverted to represent something only with those characteristics Eisenhower feared would come about, as specifically stated in following the acknowledged need for “this development”:

Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society. 

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

Eisenhower above speaks of a Military-Industrial Complex that NEVER came into being. This is easily demonstrated by weighing the facts against the part of Eisenhower’s speech preceding the passages above:

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.

These passages describe the state of America’s economy at the time of Eisenhower’s speech. He saw his 1961 ‘MIC’ as part of an “imperative need” even though at the time, the US was spending more on “military security” than what the “US Corporations” ‘netted’ every year. (Which when you think about it, is not that surprising. Military Security is a whole sector of public spending. ‘Net’ profits are a small subset of the private sector.) By the time we complete ‘Part 2’ it will be obvious that not only did Eisenhower’s feared Military-Industrial Complex NOT materialize, his 1961 MIC atrophied into a shadow of its former economic presence. This real history unfolded not just through the relatively flattened or declining GDP proportions of military spending, but came about just as much, or more, through the growth of other parts of the economy.

Instead of the mythical Military-Industrial Complex, America’s defense has been and is still (perhaps too tenuously these days) supported by what we will refer to as a ‘National Defense Infrastructure’. From here on forward in these ‘MIC Myth’ posts I shall refer to the ‘MIC-that-never-happened’ as the Military-Industrial Complex (‘MIC’) and the MIC that actually came into being as the National Defense Infrastructure (‘NDI’).
We now proceed with the first half of the discussion…

Current Defense Industry Economic Impact: The Defense Industry Share of the Economic Pie.

We’ve been looking for the Mythical MIC for some time now, and once again it has failed to appear among the real powers-that-be in America’s economy. Following my past posts’ lead, here’s what the MIC’ looks like within the perspective of the Fortune 500.

No Military Industrial Complex Here

No MIC here.

The little blue scratches in the plot of this chart and the next are ‘defense revenues’ of the ‘biggest’ defense companies. As has become our custom, let’s zoom in closer to see the top Fortune 100 companies more clearly.

For completeness, I have also included the only non-publically traded company with significant ‘defense’ revenues in the position they would hold if they were a public company.
This chart actually displays some useful details. First, the biggest company with significant defense revenues (a Global Top 100 Defense company) is General Electric, but GE's defense revenues are almost insignificant compared to the company’s non-defense revenues. In fact, only Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, could be unquestionably characterized more as ‘defense companies’ than just 'non-defense companies with defense business interests' in the Fortune 100.

If one wants to be concerned about concentration of economic power, take a look at Berkshire Hathaway.

Over half the companies in the Fortune 100 took in MORE non-defense revenues than Lockheed Martin’s total income, and any two non-defense companies on the Fortune 100 list, even those companies smaller than Lockheed Martin, took in more revenue than Lockheed Martin. I observe here that each of the top 3 largest companies at the top of the Fortune 500 took in more revenue than ALL of the defense revenues brought in by the U.S. Global Top 100 Defense Companies on the Fortune 500 list, and the fourth company on the Fortune 100, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, had revenues equal to about 86% of the defense revenues of those same Global Top 100 Defense Companies on the Fortune 500 list. 

A Global, More Encompassing Perspective

In the past, I’ve focused on data sources that relied on contract awards to identify the ‘big boys’ in the American ‘Defense Industry’. This year, I took a different tack and extracted data for all listed American companies in the “Global” Defense 100: i.e. the US Companies that are among the biggest defense companies in the world. This obviously excludes state-run industries that do not report revenues, found in places like the PRC and NoKo. But then, their industries are hardly direct participants in the US economy.

The breakdown by country of the Top 100, illustrating the distinction between defense and non-defense revenues is shown here:



The US company revenues dominate the list. Note that even the ‘World Top 100’ defense revenues tail off to almost undetectable levels once the top few counties’ contributions are counted. To make it easier to see the non-US revenues, here we exclude the US total to show ‘the rest’ of the world’s Global Defense 100 economic impact: 

There are minor ‘quirks’ in this breakdown, such as tiny Netherlands shows up as a major defense player due to the Airbus Industries consortium being headquartered there, and there is a possibly-significant portion of BAE Systems US-based businesses being rolled into the UK totals, but what is important to us is the overall scale, and relative proportions of defense and non-defense revenues. This will later be put into the greater perspective.

The breakdown by country of the Defense 100 finds 48 U.S companies on that list Sorted by percentage of revenues from 'defense', with reliance on defense revenues from most to least and bottom to top we see: 

 Most of those companies are remarkably ‘small’ in size when measured against all other companies and industries. 

Revenues for the biggest US Defense 'Defense' Companies

Twenty-One (21) of those 48 U.S. ‘Global Top 100 Defense’ Companies don’t even make it into the Fortune 500 ranks. And if Non-Defense revenues are taken away from the total revenues, more than three quarters (37!) of those 48 U.S. defense companies on the ‘World Top 100 Defense’ list would not even make it on the Fortune 500 list. All but Lockheed Martin and Boeing would drop out of the Fortune 100, and those so-called defense ‘giants’ would be hanging on somewhere near the bottom of the Fortune 100 list.

Defense as a part of the GDP: 1960 vs 2013

We now return to Eisenhower’s speech, and the world that existed during that time Does the economic impact on the U.S economy by the defense industries bear any resemblance to the 1959-1961 era?

The short answer is NO.

Here is a ‘snapshot’ of Government spending as a percentage of GDP running from the end of the Korean War through to 1965:

Percentages of GDP for Government Spending in the Eisenhower Era

Note that the percentage of the GDP attributable to ‘Non-Defense Federal’ spending rose only about 1% overall in that time-frame. ‘Defense Federal’ spending expressed as a percentage of the GDP actually declined from ~16% of the GDP to less than 10% of the GDP. ‘State and Local Government’ increased ~2.5% over the same time-frame. This is the ‘kind’ way to view the changes. An equally valid and ‘less kind’ observation would also note that the percentage of the GDP attributable to ‘Non-Defense Federal’ spending increased by about 30%, the percentage attributable to ‘Defense Federal’ decreased by about 40% and the percentage attributable to ‘State and Local Government’ spending increased nearly 41%. True, the percentage increases were for relatively small numbers for ‘Non-Defense Federal’ and ‘State and Local Government’, but those small numbers can and do compound over time. The two most important things to take away from the chart above are:

1. Even at the time of Eisenhower’s farewell address, ‘Defense’ spending was in decline as a percentage of the GDP, and thus was in decline as a relative influence on the total economy.
2. Federal Non-Defense spending and State and Local Government spending were becoming larger factors of influence on the total U.S. economy.

The second point will become of greater interest a little later in our discussion.

Here is a graph comparing defense spending and personal spending (including investments) for the same time frame as percentages of the GDP:

Defense Spending Was Not Eating into Personal Spending  in the Eisenhower Era

Just looking at this snapshot one would have to wonder just what Eisenhower was so worried about? But if we consider the state of the world at the time, what we as a nation had gone through since the prelude to WW2, and what Eisenhower was facing as the Cold War intensified, it is easy to see what his fears were about. Expanding that snapshot in time to 1935-1960, we see what Eisenhower and his contemporaries had experienced and remembered all too well. 

When Eisenhower stated:

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment…

He and others were remembering what it took out of the civilian economy to mobilize and mechanize for WW2, and he knew we were headed into new and uncharted territory

On top of the (obviously) huge impact on the economy that defense spending had between 1936 and 1945, we also see a slight hiatus in defense spending levels coming down from WW2, to increase slightly in support of the Korean War and then the early Cold War, Ike knew that the Korean War caused a haitus in Post-WW2 economic growth and by 1960, personal spending had still not returned to pre-Korean War levels. He feared this might go on or get worse. He feared a future that, as we are now illustrating, did NOT happen.

 Eisenhower himself had tried to reduce Defense Spending by moving away from ‘expensive’ conventional forces via his ‘New Look’ strategy, but quickly (in ‘political’ measures of time anyway) realized he had to back well away from replacing conventional forces with nuclear forces as much as he had originally planned. By the time Kennedy took office, the buzzword had become “Flexible Response” with a marked re-emphasis on conventional forces (I touched on this back and forth in policy and how it affected the tactical force structure somewhat here). But also by the time Kennedy took office, the American economy was clearly moving beyond being a defense-driven one and it was personal spending that was on the rise. Interestingly, neither Vietnam and the war in Southeast Asia nor the much misunderstood 'Reagan Buildup' caused more than an economic ‘blip’ in the 'defense spending' vs' personal spending' timeline:
 

And all the while, the GDP itself was growing by leaps and bounds, uninterrupted (at least until 2009, when the bookkeeping rules changed) :
 

This growth in GDP was not just all due to inflation either. 'Chained' to 2009 Dollars, the GDP still shows pretty much the same steady increase over time:

 

Relative percentages of GDP is a good way to show relative impacts on the total economy, but this could still have meant relative shares of a shrinking or stagnant economy could be hiding behind those percentages. In absolute GDP dollars, what was the private sector of the economy doing?

 

It was growing, and growing far faster than Defense Spending:

So Where Might We Find Growth in  Government Spending? 

Here:
 

After WW2 we began to see a near inexorable rise in State and Local Government spending, pausing only for the Carter “Malaise” and perhaps the current (2009 and on) economy, while defense spending as a percentage of the GDP since the Korean War consistently declined to the current levels. Non-defense Federal spending appears to have just loped along at about the same level. But there is something hidden in the State and Local Government GDP contribution. That hidden something is Federal funds transferred to the State and Local ‘pots of money’ yet not accounted for as Federal spending in the GDP.

I rarely find Cokie Roberts useful, but in 2009 she provided the impetus for Politifact to check something she said on the Oct. 4, 2009 episode of This Week With George Stephanopoulos:

"You know, right now, 40 percent, 40 percent of GDP is state, local, or federal money. I mean, that's an incredible number. So that, you know, adding more [government spending] to that, I think, is going to ... distort things even more. And the public is so concerned about it."

Politifact took up the challenge to test Ms. Robert’s numbers, and related this bit to its readers:

Marc Goldwein, an economist with the New America Foundation, framed the conundrum in this mind-bending fashion: "What percent of GDP is made up of government spending is a different question from what government spending equals as a percent of GDP."
That's because when a government "transfers" money — such as through Social Security — it is shifting money around rather than spending it directly. "This can have real and large effects on GDP, but it does not directly impact GDP, since tax and transfer policies simply take money that one person could be using for consumption or investment and give it to another person to use for consumption or investment," he said.

So hidden ‘off the GDP books’ and in transfers to state and local governments is a large chunk of money above and beyond the official Federal GDP contributions (BTW, Politifact found Robert’s claim for 2009 “Mostly True” (within ~5%).

How much is ‘hidden’ from the GDP federal (overwhelmingly non-defense) numbers over time? I’ve not found ‘hard data’ to plot, but I have found significant snapshots of data and other indicators.

First, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provides this handy graphic:

This shows a fairly constant 4-5% of the GDP tied up in Federal grants to state and local governments from 1980-2010. This tells us the Federal Government gives away money to the states and localities that is about equal to the current federal spending levels on defense.

Another CBO (2013 chart of 2011 data) chart gives us a snapshot of how those Federal ‘grants’ are 'apportioned':

Thus we can see there is quite an 'economy' all in itself sitting ‘off the GDP books’, and only some trivial subset of the ‘other’ category goes to ‘national defense’. All of the rest is ‘non-defense’. 

At the ‘State’ level, these funds show up as significant portions of the State General Fund. from taxfoundation.org:

If the US Government were an official criminal enterprise, this might reasonably be viewed as a money laundering operation.

So we can now state that while State and Local Government spending has been increasing, it is clear that one of its driving forces is the Federal dispensation to the states and localities above and beyond what is found in the Federal GDP contributors.

Summary

In summary, we have shown:

1. The feared Military-Industrial Complex never materialized. 
2. The Defense Industry is relatively minute compared to the rest of the world’s and U.S. industrial base. 
3. Personal Spending as part of the GDP has risen constantly over time, even when inflation is accounted for. 
4. Defense Spending to support the National Defense Infrastructure has declined as a percentage of the GDP since 1953. 
5. As a percentage of GDP and in absolute dollars, only State and Local Government spending has grown consistently over time since the end of WW2. 
6. Defense spending has only increased in dollars, not as a proportion of the GDP, and at lower rates than all other forms of government spending over time since 1953. 
7. Much of what State and Local Governments are increasingly spending actually involves spending significant Federal ‘Non-Defense’ dollars off the record as far as GDP books. That money which is ‘laundered’ through the State and Local Governments, overwhelmingly goes to ‘Health Care’ and ‘Income Security’. 

Conclusion

There is not now, nor has there ever been pernicious and/or detrimental “acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought” by a “military-industrial complex” in these United States. Eisenhower’s fears were never realized, or if you like, his ‘warning call’ headed off one ever coming into existence. 

Instead, we have— “sought or unsought”— maintained a National Defense Infrastructure that to date has admirably supported the National Interest since WW2 without ever rising to being an unreasonable economic burden, much less a threat to the “structure of our society”.

Can the same be said for all other government endeavors? 

An Economics Riddle:

What do ALL of the following companies have in common?

1.       Apple
2.       CVS Caremark
3.       Verizon
4.       Costco
5.       Kroger
6.       Home Depot
7.       Amazon
8.       Target
9.       Walgreens
10.   State Farm Insurance
11.   Pepsi
12.   Google
13.   United Parcel Service
14.   Lowe's Companies
15.   Cisco Systems, Inc.
16.   Coca Cola

We see ‘name’ pharmacy companies, and brick-and-mortar retailers as well as online retailers. We also see leaders in IT/Communications and beverages. Getting into more details, we also see two of the largest big-box home improvement retailers, a grocery company, an insurance company and a shipping company.

So what could all these companies all have common?

Answer below

F-35 and the "Crack"-pots of Doom...Again.

They never learn.

At least it seems that way.

If the F-35 is 'plagued' by anything, it is plagued by critics who haven't a clue as to how Airframe Durability testing is conducted, what its objectives are, and how it fits into the modern aircraft development process. It seems this ignorance 'dooms' the F-35 program to an annual round of misplaced and sneering derision by people who have no idea they are broadcasting their own ignorance after every DOT&E report release.

Durability Testing Promotes the Useful Life.

Amusing as it is, such unwarranted criticism is counter-productive. I could produce a lengthy dissertation (you know I can) on the history and benefits of this kind of testing, and show how the developments to-date for the F-35 are no different than the programs before it --except for the F-35 doing it perhaps better and in a bigger fish bowl --but that would bore the cr*p out of most people.On top of that, the unrepentant anti-JSFers would only claim I was making excuses or some other equally stupid assertion. So I will default to providing an illustrative example of what I mean. Consider the following passage concerning the EARLY F-16 development (Queen's English BTW).

Fatigue tests 

In parallel with the flight-test programme a series of ground fatigue trials were carried out on the fifth development airframe. A test rig set up in a hangar at Fort Worth used more than 100 hydraulic rams to apply stress to an instrumented airframe, simulating the loads imposed by takeoff, landing and combat manoeuvering at up to 10g. By the summer of 1978, this airframe had clocked up more than 16,000 hours of simulated flight in the rig. These tests were carried out at a careful and deliberate pace which sometimes lagged behind schedule. 

As the tests progressed, cracks developed in several structural bulkheads. News of this problem resulted in hostile comments in the media, but GD pointed out in its own defence that the cracks had occurred not in flying aircraft but on ground test specimens. If the risk of such cracks during development testing was not a real one, a company spokesman remarked to the author at the time, no-one would be willing to pay for ground structural test rigs. GD redesigned the affected components, thickening the metal, and installed metal plates to reinforce existing units.  

--Source: F-16: Modern Fighter Aircraft Vol 2., Pg 18. ARCO Publishing, 1983.

Sounds kinda' familiar doesn't it?

I was tempted to employ some trickery to deceive the reader into thinking the above was written about the F-35, but I think this point is better made straight up.  Even after this testing, because the F-16 was initially the ultimate knife-fighting hot rod of a dayfighter, there were useful-life 'issues' on the early airframes. Pilots were flying higher G-loading at several times the rate as previous fighters and higher percentages of the time than that for which the airframe had been designed.    

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.

Moronic Convergence at Defense Aerospace

Mmmmm. BACON! I usually like to fry mine so it is somewhat less crispy, but tonight? ‘Carbonized’ is just fine. 

AKA 'Blogiversary Over'

Don Bacon & DeBriganti. What could go wrong?
Defense Aerospace has a ‘guest commenter’ who appears to have more ambition than to just keep saying stupid things in the comment threads at other people’s websites. He now wants to be ‘featured’ saying stupid things.

You don’t have to go there to read it.

I fisk it here, so you don’t have to take a shower afterwards.

The F-35 O&S Cost Coverup

(Source: Defense-Aerospace.com; published Feb. 04, 2014)

By guest contributor Don Bacon

The F-35 selected acquisition report (SAR) reported last Spring that there had been no progress in reducing its staggering $1 trillion, 50-year life-cycle cost. Then in June 2013 it was reported that "the company and the U.S. military are taking aim at a more vexing problem: the cost of flying and maintaining the new warplane." Not only was the total cost stratospheric but the cost per flying hour was much higher than the legacy fleet at $31,922.

What could be done to cut high operations and sustainment (O&S) costs? International customers were being scared away by high production costs, and particularly by high operating cost.

The F-35 program office had the answer. Simply announce that the costs are lower! Why not? The result:

Pentagon Cuts F-35 Operating Estimate Below $1 Trillion

WASHINGTON (Reuters), Aug 21, 2013 - "The U.S. government has slashed its estimate for the long-term operating costs of Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets by more than 20 percent to under $1 trillion, according to a senior defense official, a move that could boost international support for the program." 

That arbitrary announcement out of the F-35 program office that operating cost had dropped from $1.1 trillion to $857 million didn't fly very high. (See related story—Ed). On September 6 the Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall announced that there would be a review of F-35 operating costs. Kendall indicated that the program office's estimate might have been overly optimistic. 

In fact the GAO has reported that F-35 operating and support costs (O&S) are currently projected to be 60 percent higher than those of the existing aircraft it will replace. 

“We’re … looking at that number,” Kendall said. “The official number is still the one we put up in the SAR [selected acquisition report]. We’re going to do a review of F-35 this fall. We’ll get another estimate out of CAPE [Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation] for that and we’ll probably make some adjustments.

On October 6, 2013 Kyra Hawn, spokeswoman for the Pentagon’s F-35 program office, said a high-level Defense Acquisition Board meeting was expected to proceed on Monday despite the partial government shutdown. The meeting has already been postponed several times. 

Well that CAPE meeting came and went, with no news on F-35 operating cost. The cost data must have been bad and so it had to be covered up, just like other cost data (production cost, etc.) on the F-35. We did get some PR fluff out of the meeting, though. “While risks remain, progress on the F-35 program at this point has been adequate to support a decision to budget for increased rates,” Frank Kendall, under-secretary for acquisition, said in a decision memo.

If it was good cost news supporting an increase in production rates, then why didn't Kendall release the data? Apparently the opposite was true, the data was bad. And now we have the data, in the FY2013 F-35 test report, and it isn't pretty.

Got all that?

Bacon cherry picks old news reports and not only ponders why there’s been no operating cost updates, but asserts it must be bad for the JSF because Kendall would have released it if it were ‘good’. I could just say “proof please”, but I got a theory too—only I’ll tell you it is just a theory and not assert it as ‘fact’. As we have noted all along (one, two, three) the actual costs have consistently come close enough to LM’s ‘should cost’ curves to call LMs estimates 'accurate'. The CAPE stuff? Not so much. My theory assumes the CAPE-ers will try to cover their collective estimating a**es by bringing down their estimates slow enough that (they hope) people won’t notice how bad they were to start with. Note I do not blame the analysts themselves, just their political management that tells them what and how to compute.

As to the ‘massive’ O&S costs (Cue Austin Powers clip) ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!? Who the H*LL cares about a GUESS covering FIFTY years of future operations? Answer: No one. At least no one in their right mind that is.

Pssst, Don: Calculate the B-52s operating costs over the first 50 years, go back in time to the start of the program and tell them what it will cost in 2010 dollars. Think that would stop them? Answer: No. They, unlike you and the legions of mouth-breathers, actually understood the 'time value' of money.      

Next, Don Bacon takes us into a world where he proves he hasn’t a freaking clue: R&M.

FY13 DOT&E Report

-- Mean Flight Hours Between Critical Failure (MFHBCF)
variant--threshold/observed
F-35A--20/4.5
F-35B--12/3.0
F-35C--14/2.7

-- Mean Corrective Maintenance Time for Critical Failure (MCMTCF)
variant--threshold/observed/FY12 Report
F-35A--4.0/12.1/9.3
F-35B--4.5/15.5/8.0
F-35C--4.0/9.6/6.6

So you fly the F-35A for 4.5 hours, get a critical failure, and then it takes 12.1 hours to fix it, or nearly three hours longer than it took last year. (That's hours, not manhours; Eglin AFB has seventeen mechanics per F-35.)

Similarly with the F-35B -- fly it for 3 hours, critical failure, then corrective maintenance takes 15.5 hours (7.5 hours more than last year).

The F-35C will fly for only 2.7 hours before 9.6 hours for corrective maintenance time. (Only one engine, too, out over the deep blue water.)

~Sigh~
As I noted over at F-16.net, “Statistical Crimes Against Humanity” were about the only thing of note in the latest DOT&E report.

Bacon evidently even missed the part of the DOT&E Report that stated: “the program has fielded too few F-35C aircraft to assess reliability trends”. 
That’s OK though, because the entire program has flown too few hours, especially considering training activity and the changing and expanding operational footprint, to assess anything meaningful. The fact that reality didn’t stop some calculator in DOT&E from applying their inconsequential knowledge simply invites more abuse of math and logic. I’m surprised Bacon didn’t also glom on to that B.S. software reset ‘analysis’ inside. Maybe that much idiocy was obvious even to Bacon. 

 My 2012 post on the subject criticizing the GAO’s similar violations holds up rather well when applied to DOT&E. The DOT&E report IS helpful in one way in that it provides the bounds for measuring the R&M of the airplane. Each variant has a cumulative flight hour measuring point and the fleet cumulative flight hour measuring point. People seem to have a better time of it visualizing just how little the program is into the data collecting if you graph it for them, so the following is offered for your enjoyment:

I started the growth slope at zero, but that isn’t really important, as the initial starting point is usually an educated guess or completely capricious. Raise the start point to 5-10 Hrs MTBCF if you like: it is still a long way from where the ‘grade’ counts, and not much of a slope to climb from where the program is now.
What is most important is to show how far away the current flight hour total is away from the cumulative experience required to be even considered as showing any kind of ‘trend’, much less a ‘grade’.  The chart above shows how far the total fleet hours have to go. Here's how far the variant measure has to go:

These charts are simplified and use a linear scale, so remember Log-log scales as are the norm, as I've thoroughly described before (same link as previous). Also note the apparent bobbling in the ‘objective’ lines comes from rounding and my selecting precise flight hour data points for the current flight hours in the DOT&E report among the other, evenly spaced, ones.

Give us a ring when the planes get to about the 25K-30K Flight Hour per variant and 100K Fleet Flight Hour mark. Then we can talk trends and problems areas.

Same thing goes for the mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) figures. And bring average crew size and MMH/FH with you so it can be discussed intelligently next time.

 

So Bacon then decides he wants to beat on fictional operating costs some more. Let’s keep tagging along shall we?

If anybody thinks the acquisition cost is high, and it is, it will be totally eclipsed by the operating cost. An independent audit by KPMG has estimated the cost of buying and operating the F-35 warplanes at $600-million per jet, two-thirds of that operating cost. 

Captain Overstreet of the F-35 program office warned in November that while development costs are high for the F-35, they will be “dwarfed” by the sustainability costs. Back in May 2011 Defense Undersecretary for Acquisition Ashton Carter described current projected costs for the F-35 as “unacceptable.”

Ahem, Minor point. It is a rule of thumb that 2/3 of total life cycle costs are in the operating and support of the systems. Nothing shocking there.

 It is an accepted premise and I think it was taught in just about every DAU course I ever completed. Any bets Bacon wants to use it for nefarious purposes?

Awww, you guessed right. He does:

All of this reality runs against what the early F-35 promises were.
-- From the 1997 doc -- "The Affordable Solution - JSF": Tactical Aircraft Affordability Objective 1997: R&D 6%, Production 54%, total dev & prod 60%, O&S 40%.

-- The actual 2014 test data is way different:
dev & prod -- $397B = 26%, O&S -- $1,100B = 74%, total -- $1,497 

So the F-35 has gone from an initial-operating cost ratio of 60-40 to 26-74, and that's with much higher production costs. Nobody can afford that, especially foreign customers -- which is why it's been covered up. 

Hate to harsh your mellow there Don (OK, I really don’t mind it a bit) but you are shoveling some mighty fine hoo-haw there. The only real question is:

 

Are you doing it 'intentionally' or 'stupidly'?

 

Answer?...It's 'Stupidly'

That first set of numbers comes from a ‘document’ that is a POWERPOINT presentation. It looks very much like those numbers are talking about either the planned cost reduction percentage over legacy aircraft OR where the percentage of cost reduction opportunities resided at the time. I use the past tense, because that slide was from before either of the X-planes were built or flew, and before the Operational Requirements Document was defined and published. See Slides 3, 4, and 5 from the ‘1997 document referenced:

See anything in there about those numbers standing for the proportion of total cost? Me neither. Next slide?

 

Wow. The two X-planes aren't even built yet, and the requirements document isn't even firmed up to determine how much capability for what cost will be pursued.

 

More talking about affordability opportunities to balance before deciding what to pursue. the whole briefing is this way.

I’d love to find the original with ‘notes pages’ view for clarification just to smack the stupidity down even more for my visitors, but I guess I will have to (for now) settle for just salting the wound by pointing out the 1997 ‘document’ wasn’t an authoritative source to begin with. With only a cursory search, I’ve found three copies on the web of various versions and unknown provenance, none on an official government website. So Bacon bases his argument on a 17-year old PowerPoint slide with a unexplained message and calls it a 'conspiracy'?  

Can’t you just feel the Dezinformatsia in Bacon’s ramblings now oozing out into the interwebs and being passed around by the illiterate and the innumerate?     

So who is this 'Don Bacon' writing this drivel for the Euro-Shill?

About the author: 
Don Bacon is a retired army officer with acquisition experience, who has seen how programs go wrong in spite of the evidence, largely because of the military 'can-do' attitude which leads to harmful, ineffective results. Now he is a private citizen who sees the necessity of challenging baseless claims in order to get to the truth, and so the truth will prevail.

That’s rather verbose for “completely clueless out-of-the-loop retiree with no knowledge relevant to the subject which he so ardently, yet so flaccidly opines about” Isn’t it? No wonder the children don’t respect their elders anymore.

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.   

Debunking Close Air Support Myths, 2nd Edition: Part 8a,8b,8c…

The AF "had to" buy a CAS plane?

I confess. I wanted to do this post first in this “2nd Edition” series to keep things in chronological order, but I believed at the time that this myth required some significant off-site research of Government and other documents; it required deeper investigation of the original sources than the myth we exploded in Part 7. Part of the delay in completing my research also came from the Government Shutdown Theater last year, and an off-line 40K word writing project I completed on New Year’s Eve. Today, we go back to the roots of the modern CAS mythology to examine what drove the ‘birth’ of the A-10.

Myth: 'The Air Force only started/proceeded with the A-X/A-10 because they 'had to' due to external pressure. “Insidious” I find this myth insidious because it contains perversions of truth, and those perversions in turn have been:
1. Used to mask or obscure the greater truths that lay behind it and…
2. Employed both by the incompetent and the malevolent to create ‘cartoons’ of history.

There is no doubt that the Air Force factored in the ‘external’ pressures into its decision-making. There are always many forces when shaping major decisions, and we will be covering only a few of them. But external pressure was hardly the only or even primary reason. Nor does the mere existence of the ‘external pressures’ mean those pressures were legitimate, honest, or well-founded. I believe we can show that many, if not most of them, can be filed under ‘none of the above’.
I’ve seen variations on the ‘had to’ claim go so to such extreme wording as to actually read that the Air Force was “shamed” into fielding the A-10. I’ve purposely phrased the myth definition in this discussion as the broadly stated “due to external pressure” to allow readers to discriminate between, and discuss the nature and sources of pressure individually as well as explore their interrelationship along with some common roots as we proceed.

The myth is also tough to nail down and debunk because it is so poorly defined: there is a level of abstraction that could mean different things to different people. To deal with this complication, we will break this myth down into what I have found to be the two commonly intended meanings behind the myth. Thus, we will be exploding two myths instead of one to make sure we address the multiple wrong-headed ideas behind the statement above. If there are other meanings, I do know what they might be. But if they exist, I’m certain somebody will let me know.
The two most commonly intended meanings that I’ve encountered can be stated as something to the effect of:

'The Air Force never wanted the A-10 specifically. They 'had to' buy it.
And...
'The Air Force only procured a dedicated (generic) attack aircraft because they were ‘made’ to do so.

The first myth can be considered a specific example of the second, but we will deal with each as a separate point, because they both have been repeated often enough for each to have taken on a provenance all their own. They appear to me to exist independently in some people’s minds: one, the other, or perhaps sometimes both. By addressing both versions, we can avoid the ‘yes but’ argumentation from those who would first argue one point, then upon being shown where they are either completely wrong or oversimplifying, try to avoid facing up to the facts by simply running to the other meaning.

There is a large set of undefined “or else” implications behind both these assertions. No doubt some of those consequences factored into the Air Force’s decision-making process (no defense decisions are ever made in a vacuum), but in both cases we can show that in every step of the evolution in Air Force close air support ‘thought’ from 1960 onward the Air Force decision-makers were always focused on providing the best possible ‘Close Air Support’ to the Army within the externally imposed limits of available technology, defense policy direction and budget-limited force structure, and show that CAS capability was pursued according to the rapidly evolving criteria by which ‘best possible’ was defined.

I could have made this a very short post, if I just wanted to focus on the Air Force’s decision to specifically buy, and then defend the A-10. But this would explode only the superficial aspects of the myth. So I choose to provide the short and easy response for the typical ‘drive-by’ complainants, and then go into a more detailed follow-on discussion of the history to describe how the Air Force came to seek fielding the A-10 to satisfy the CAS mission given the following:
1. The then-current state of the necessary technologies and threats
2. The imposed presumption of a relatively permissive combat environment

Approach

I’m going to cover this myth using a different approach than Part 7. Instead of starting at the present and following the thread backwards in time, for this installment we’ll start with the moment the A-X program was initiated, covering who, what and why. Then we’ll ‘flash back’ in time to look at the activities of key actors, first picking a convenient starting point in the past and then look at their activities running up to the decision. This approach is warranted because there were many threads of concern and action, including those involving the A-7 as the ‘interim’ CAS plane acquisition program. These threads converged to create the whole history. ‘Convergence’ for our purposes is the point where the AF leadership decided to undertake development of what would become the A-10. We’ll also go a bit further to show how the AF defended the A-10 program after it was underway to further remove any reasonable doubt.


After exhaustive investigation, at the root of all the decision-making I found that the three most important players in this story were the Army ‘Airmobile’ Advocates (of course), their enablers in the Kennedy/Johnson Administrations, and a noisemaker or two in Congress. There were even deeper roots to what was happening at that time-- Roots going back to even before the Korean War. But we will spare ourselves from running down the rabbit hole it took me over two months of research to navigate just to get back to this point. The time I consider as well spent, but on top of all the other research I’ve done and experience I’ve gained on in this topic over decades, I’m pretty sick of CAS ‘hardware’ issues right now . We’ll save discussion of that earlier time for perhaps a later installment… or twelve.


Myth Meaning A: 'The Air Force never wanted the A-10 specifically. They 'had to' buy it.

The A-10 Decision: Who, When and Why

Loooooooog post after the fold. Ye be Warned.

The F-35 Issue: 'Food' for Thought?

No. Thin Intellectual Gruel

Someone in Italy named 'Gherardo Albano' has an internet ‘editorial’ up that was linked to by AV Week (for some unfathomable reason). The title: “The F-35 Issue: Food for Thought”.

But the intellectual gruel he offers is so thin, that if it were real food, an anorexic supermodel wouldn’t bother to throw it back up. It is so bad, I decided to Fisk it here for posterity.  The editorial is in italics. My comments are in purple.

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UPDATE #1 29 July 13: For 'some' reason, you may have trouble getting to the site in the above link to original post under examination. I'm getting feedback from a couple of people that the link is "broken", yet the link when entered into the browser works fine-- It is almost as if the traffic to the link is being blocked when accessed from this site (who knows?). If the link doesn't work for you, type:" http://www.lindipendente.eu/wp/en/2013/07/13/f-35/ " without the "" marks in your browser.

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We begin....

These days there’s a big discussion on whether Italy should buy 90 Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning IIs. The aim of this article is to analyze the overall picture within which such an important decision should be taken. In particular, there are two separate fields of analysis, one purely military and another related to economic issues. Let’s analyze them separately.

Sounds acceptable for the purposes of sharing information…so far. I note here, however that we must remember that ‘Economic’ Power is an equal to Military Power as two of a Nation’s Elements of Power. They support each other and the Nation itself.

Military matters
From a strategic point of view, at the moment, it is not foreseeable that a crisis may result in a conventional war. ...

Whoa! Stop. Right. There.
 
Rarely does an author open an argument with a logical fallacy, in this case a “Non Sequitur”. Usually, employers of this tactic try to lull an audience into a stupor before they try to slip one of these by their readers. Note: There’s a dash of “Begging the question” here as well, where something is first expressed as a presumed truth, and then later used to fallaciously support a claim or conclusion.
 
Casual readers, especially those of a like-mind with an author, might still miss his use of this logical fallacy because it is executed en passant; carefully avoiding the unwritten non sequitur (“it does not follow”). The ‘does not follow’ part isn’t expressed, but is presumed as unspoken fact to support the arguments that will soon follow.
I wonder if the author has legal training because this has the flavor of an ‘opening argument’, otherwise I have to doubt the author was even aware of his transgression. This does not bode well for the rest of the opinion piece, for it hints that the author is a ‘true believer’ of some sort. The only question is: a ‘true believer’ in “what?”. My main concern at this point now is how much will Albano’s remaining argumentation will rest on ‘beliefs’ instead of ‘facts’?
The ‘does not follow’ part? The fact that “it is not foreseeable that a crisis may result in a conventional war” does not preclude an ‘unforseen’ conventional war. It does not follow that because one cannot envision a conflict, a conflict will not arise. In fact, History tends to tell us that the wars we ‘see coming’ are often the wars we are able to sidestep…into the wars we don’t see coming and that usually bite us in the end. I think my first question to the author at this point would be “How many years before Operation Allied Force or even the recent military intervention in Libya, did you ‘foresee’ either/both of the conflicts coming?” The second would be “Why didn’t you do something to prevent them?”

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UPDATE #2 31 July 13: I initially was going to refernce this link to punch up the point that we tend to not see (cognitive sense) 'coming', the wars we end up fighting: 25th Annual Military History Seminar- the Keaney Session , but thought it might be a little overkill. I've revised my thoughts on the subject, in part as a response to reading the first part of "Unknown's" comment in the thread for this post.

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   …Of course this does not mean that we can dismantle the entire military. Defense continues to be necessary to every nation, in the present geopolitical framework, including peaceful countries such as Switzerland and Sweden, and certainly cannot be dismantled if it cannot be restored quickly in case of emergency.

Ahh! Pabulum designed to allay fears concerning the author’s reasonableness: An observation that only the most rabid anarchist or peacenik might find objectionable. Are we being ‘lulled’?

As far as we are concerned, the Italian Air Force now has a line of flight divided between air defense, consisting of about 72 Eurofighter Typhoon, and attack, consisting of 36 AMX International AMX and 48 Panavia Tornado PA-200. Then there are of course all the other non-combat operational units like tactical transport, refuelers, rescue, VIP transport, training, and so on. The Italian Navy has about 15 McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II Plus aircraft characterized by the ability of short take-off — the vertical take-off is militarily marginal — and short or vertical landing. This capability is an essential but expensive element of protection of the fleet which makes it different from most of the other navies in the world.

The audience is thus presented with a description of how the author, using a ‘Royal We’ editorial style, views and mentally organizes the Italian Navy and Air Force. I have no problem with the explanation, except perhaps the last sentence. It makes an assertion that may or may not be true as to the uniqueness of the Italian STOVL capability and relevance to the fleet.
But the assertion is completely unsupported, and I imagine there are several arguments that might be made against it (one comes immediately to mind). I note here that I wouldn’t disagree with the author on this point. The last sentence expresses a presumption the readers are expected to simply accept as ‘fact’.
We will see later that this sets up a ‘STOVL capability of the F-35B will be essential because I say it is essential’ argument: the author presents more build up to his “begging the question” fallacy.  

The combat aircraft lineup is now a dim memory of what it was in the eighties, when during the Cold War there were more than 200 aircraft for air defense and 350 for the attack role. They have already been reduced due to the organic decrease of the external threat. What remains can be considered a core of resources, human, material and methodological facilities to maintain the expertise, knowledge, methodologies and a minimum of military capability in case the need arises.

I have no major problem with this part except the view of ‘military capability’ as expressed is rather sophomoric. The confused taxonomy listing ‘military capability’, which is a combination of knowledge (expertise), methodologies (along with missing ‘hardware’ and ‘doctrine’), in the list itself may be a translation error. I believe a far better ‘book’ definition of military capability can be found in the definition of the Military Element of a nation’s power.

It is clear therefore that cutting or reducing it further would mean loosing [sic] a capability that needs between 5 to 10 years to build up again if a serious threat becomes visible. Italy would rebuild their forces almost from scratch hoping to have the time to do it. New combat-ready rookie pilots would need about 5 years. Ordering, receiving and organizing for new aircraft, performing maintenance, recruiting technicians, would again require between 5 and 10 years. In the case of the Navy, rebuilding would take much longer if we were to lose the aircraft carriers.

No. And though I’m tempted to go into excruciating detail why ALL of the author’s imagined timelines to reconstitute a force are pure hokum, I will resist the urge and merely point out the timelines appear to focus only on a time to train up the end-use operator/maintainer. Even if you get a cadre of “new combat-ready rookie” pilots in 5 years (a highly suspect assumption as-- unlike the children of Lake Wobegone-- not all fighter pilots are ‘above average’), how long will it take to train up enough force leaders that have the experience and knowledge/skills and doctrinal support to lead them?
I’ll call this “B.S.” but am willing to retract same if anyone can show me a contemporary peacetime military organization that has developed, fielded and employed an advanced military capability after replacing an existing capability much less creating a new capability in under 10 years…. ”successfully”. The 5-10 year time span offered clearly provides nothing for the organizational, doctrinal and infrastructure development required to actually field and execute military power by a modern homogenous society, much less a Western democracy as fractured politically as Italy (or the U.S.A. for that matter).

The above considerations lead me to say that maintaining a capacity in the defense sector by replacing aircraft that reach the end of service life with more modern and competitive aircraft (relative to hostile forces) is a crucial need. The alternative would be a great risk for our country given the current geo-political instability worldwide.

Other than the “above considerations” shouldn’t lead anyone anywhere, this may seem reasonable…on the surface.
We will soon see how the author defines “more modern and competitive aircraft”. Guess what he leaves out or diminishes? Any bets they involve aspects of combat aircraft design that F-35 was built upon?

The attack aircraft in question will still need to be replaced over the next 6-12 years for reasons of obsolescence and useful life. The older a plane becomes, like a car, the more maintenance costs until the situation becomes untenable.

This is what is known as the “setup”. I always look for this part on a point of argument. It is where your debate opposition states something he doesn’t expect an argument over then delivers a contrarian ‘but’, as in “Yes. Blah blah blah, but XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.” Some of the best advice I ever received was from an Air Force Lt Col (Engineer) during TASVAL79 who told me: “Always remember Mac, everything before the ‘But’ is Bullsh*t.  The setup indicates we are about to be spoon-fed the Bullsh*t.
Also note the author lists “obsolescence” and “useful life” yet only just touches on one aspect of the impacts at the end of “useful life”.

The current situation is the following:
• The AMX are technologically obsolete and should be replaced soon;

I’ll buy that, but for reasons I already know. WHY does the author think they (or the other aircraft for that matter) are “technologically obsolete”? It seems the author is twisting himself into contortions avoiding the details concerning what makes a fighter aircraft “obsolete”.

• Tornadoes are being updated and this standard can last another five-ten years or even more;

Even if it were true, 5-10 years is ‘tomorrow’ even if you have a replacement in hand. I note (again) the author is using a form of “begging the question”: we are expected to accept his claim is ‘true’ because he states it as a ‘truth’.

• AV-8B Navy aircraft have 20 years of operating life and do not need to be replaced now, but in the medium term, unless unexpected problems of maintenance arise.

Assuming the Italian AV-8’s haven’t been flown into the ground and won’t be in the future, I’ll buy 20 years on the airframe durability. But an airplane is far more than just the airframe, and the author somehow fails to mention the relative obsolescence of the AV-8 design itself.
 I’ll not pursue the hole in the author’s argument for now, except to first ask: “What makes this author ignore the fact that like all pre-5th Generation aircraft, obsolescence will probably overcome the aircraft before they are ever close to being worn out?”
Oh, and about the authors last turn of the phrase using the weasel words “unless unexpected problems of maintenance arise”: In my 40+ years of aerospace experience “unexpected problems of maintenance” have never failed to “arise”. Why assume otherwise? 

Let’s see now what could be the alternative having already narrowed down to the most plausible hypothesis:

Has anyone seen any ‘narrowing down’ yet? I didn’t either.

1. replace the strike aircraft with the F-35 variants A and B, taking into account that B is the only possible replacement for the Navy’s AV-8B as there are no other STOVL aircraft types;
2. replace the AV-8B with F-35B and all others with more Typhoon, Tranche 3, which have advanced attack capabilities.

What happened to #3? After all, it is only the freakin' ‘current plan’:
3. replace the AV-8B with F-35B and the AMX/Tornados with the F-35A. If the author sees fit to ignore the current plan, why then shouldn’t we also consider an expansion on that plan to come up with a ‘#4’?:
4. retire some/all Typhoons in recognition of the inherent Air-to-Air capability that F-35As bring to the Air-to-Air fight.

This suggests that for the Navy it is important to buy the F-35B while the Air Force has in fact two possible choices. Let us see the features of the two possible candidates.

Well, since the author saw fit to selectively attenuate his list of options ahead of time, of course he would reach this conclusion.

The development program for the F-35 is not proceeding well. …

“Not proceeding well”. One may argue the point using the “as compared to what?” other modern (last 50 years) and similarly advanced technical development efforts or even to simply other large, highly complex, government programs-- as the F-35 program fall into both categories. I would therefore challenge Mr. Albano to name one program in either category that did/has not experienced as many or more challenges than the F-35 program. I also challenge him to name any of them that did a better job of dealing with them than the F-35 program has to-date. This is the kind of simplistic thought that makes my Aerospace Engineer blood boil. But on the plus side, it provides me yet another opportunity to quote a favorite: J. R. Pierce.

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

(I never tire of referencing Dr. Pierce)

… Let’s say that there were basic errors: starting production of the plane when the development was still in progress and the desire to develop three versions — Standard A, B vertical take-off, C for aircraft carriers with catapult — from a single basic design coming to affect all versions with the requirements of the most difficult vertical take-off version. This has led to a significant increase in costs and the forced relaxation of specifications to be met, without which the project would had [sic] been unfeasible. …

“Let’s say?”—This is yet another ‘Begging the Question’ logical fallacy, only this one is a ‘twofer’: two popular, yet unsubstantiated/perverted criticisms in one. They are: 1) ‘Concurrency’ and 2) ‘STOVL Requirements adversely affected CTOL and CV designs’.
1. Concurrency. ‘Some’ claim concurrent development increases cost and schedule. This assertion on the F-35 has become a rather popular ‘political’ truth, but it is still not an actual truth. ‘Concurrency’ when studied by those with expertise to do so has consistently been shown to benefit advanced programs, and IMHO I’ve adequately covered this topic many times on many web domains, but have dealt with it most completely in 2011 in my Congressional Bloviation on Concurrency post, so I will not go into detail again here. But I will note that the post stands up well, especially in light of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics testifying before Congress just a month ago that “Concurrency costs are coming down faster than program estimates, and production costs are coming down as well.”
2. STOVL Requirements adversely affected CTOL and CV designs. This is perhaps one of the most tiresome canards propagated by the anti-JSF crowd. ALL aircraft design involves tradeoffs. In the case of the F-35, the dominant tradeoffs were made between the requirements to perform air-to-air and air-to-ground missions. In all the assertions that the F-35’s design was ‘compromised’ somehow because of the STOVL requirement, I have not once read once ‘how’ the design was allegedly ‘compromised’.
The author can’t name one any more than any other before him. The most dominant ‘F-35B unique’ requirement in the total design effort was ‘low weight’ in support of the STOVL operation. If anything that requirement drove better F-35 CTOL/CV designs as well. There are perhaps some dimensioning restrictions in the design for ship-borne operations, but even with those the most a critic could claim is that they ‘might’ have driven a different (not necessarily better) design than the F-35A model would have been as a standalone design.
NOTE: from this point forward, Albano’s opinion piece really starts rambling all over the place so I will be inserting comments in brackets as often as possible. If his thoughts were better organized, I would have been finished yesterday. If I don’t use brackets […], I would have to chop up his sentences as well as his paragraphs, making it even tougher for the reader to follow.

… In any case we are talking about a highly advanced aircraft not only for the use of new stealth technology — which basically means opposing radar has difficulty in detection — but also for new production technologies and the integration of a lot of electronics called sensor fusion — to put it simply, allowing better awareness of the situation around the aircraft.

Mr. Albano obviously has no idea how important Low Observables and F-35-grade Sensor Fusion are to the modern air combat equation judging by how this entire piece is written. The “difficulty in detection” is a “damning with faint praise” fallacy. Low Observability disrupts the entire kill chain at every step, from attempts to detect to terminal weapon end game, and forces an opponent to have to begin the process all over again when the chain is broken. 

The program currently sees continuation of testing, and the manufacture of aircraft is not yet at the minimum standard for combat. [So? Is this a recognition of an already recognized ‘risk’?] In short, the aircraft to the current date is not satisfactory [It is still in LRIP, Duh!], but over time it will be excellent in the attack role. It will remain however, in my opinion, insufficient in the role of air defense, since it hasn’t a powerful enough radar. [“However” is another form of “But”--See earlier note on that topic. As to “not powerful enough”, Mr. Albano has no idea know how “powerful” it is. I also seriously doubt he has any idea how the whole of F-35 ‘Sensor Fusion’ is greater than the sum of its parts, including the AESA.]

In addition, currently the F-35 can only carry two anti-aircraft missiles when in stealth mode and this severely limits the ability to deal with numerous enemy formations [Patently false. Current plans call for maximum of 4 internal A2A missiles, with provisions for more. The capability supports very favorable projected exchange loss ratios, so Albano’s “opinion” which based on who-knows-what misinformation is of no consequence]. Kinematic capabilities also contribute to a poor verdict on its air to air performances. [More opinion based upon….what? There isn’t enough information in the public domain for outsiders to pass judgment on the subject, only conjecture.]
Cost for purchase and maintenance remains to be firmly determined, which will be discussed later.

Count the internally-carried Air-to-Air missiles in the baseline plan...

Yes, it is all just ‘estimates’ now. Just like the future costs of any aircraft, even ones that are now flying, So?.

The alternative to the F-35A is the Typhoon, a European project which is already mature owing to further development with the so-called Tranche 3 (T3) that Italy should acquire, funds permitting, to complete the line of air defense. [Italy isn’t buying the F-35 to replace the Typhoon in the Air Superiority mission, so what is Albano’s point?] The T3 develops the plane incorporating a new type of AESA radar and new types of weapons for air-to-air and air-to-ground combat, increasing significantly the military value and configuring it as a true multi-role aircraft. The Typhoon does not have stealth technology, but has top rated kinematic capabilities — speed, acceleration, turning — and self-defense exceeding the F-35. [No. See earlier comment about kinematics and exchange rates] For comparison a Typhoon has at least six missile, has wider antenna coverage and can go higher and faster.

'Wider’ antenna coverage? Does he mean scan angle? Is he talking about the current or future EFA radar? In any case this can be countered by the F-35 changing operational techniques, so “So What?”. The Typhoon is far more observable at every range and angle with far less situational awareness than an F-35. It can go higher and faster than an F-35… sometimes. Such as when it’s not carrying any significant go-to-war payload.

The plane on the left can carry two 2K lb precision weapons and 2 Air-to-Air Missiles to 50K ft+ and fly 1000+ nm and dash at M1.6 in this configuration. The plane on the right with the same load? Not so much.  

A comparison of the F-35 and Typhoon T3 must be set to a period of the useful life of about 30 years which brings me to the following considerations:

1. the F-35 is more technologically advanced and this is reflected in a number of benefits including that in the next 10-15 years, a further development potential is possible to adapt the plane to new threats;

Ah. Cherry-picking a timeframe. How about for the next 30-40 years? The Typhoon conceptual design is already 30 years old, based on even older requirements and designed for a different (pre-stealth) age. It will be lucky if it is viable in any scenario in 15 years.

2. the stealth technology is the F-35′s primary means of protection from interception, but there are many plans to reduce the effectiveness of this technology and high maintenance costs of stealth protection is a sustainability issue;

I’ve lost count of the assumptions, myths and half truths presented in Albano’s piece as ‘fact’ that we’re expected to accept. These are two more.
First: Low Observability. LO is a combination of technology, techniques and tactics. It is no more ‘static’ than the efforts to defeat it, and it is always developed and applied with an eye towards of continuous improvement. This is yet another case where someone with no actual background assumes the LO an aircraft starts with, is the LO it ends with. We do pre-planned product improvements on all aircraft systems, and operational techniques always evolve over time, What makes anyone think LO is any different? Albano needs to start someplace on this topic, so he can start here, and I’ve already provided the link to Grant’s Radar Game.
Second: LO High Cost of maintenance. Mr. Albano has obviously missed all the discussions on how the F-35 had LO supportability designed-in based upon experiences of the past. If he were a serious student of maintainability and supportability, he would have observed that in all the reports that have criticized the F-35 to-date, there have been none -- zero, zilch, nada -- that have criticized the F-35 Sortie Generation Rates. You don’t get the SGR you are looking for if you have excessive maintenance burdens of any type.

3. Italy overall has few aircraft and multi-role capability, although not a main requirement, will definitely have value. In this respect, the Typhoon is great for air defense while the F-35 is marginal;

Need I point out that Albano is again ‘begging the question’? And over a point tangential to the reasons the Italians are buying F-35s in the first place? I’d like to also pose the question as to “How great are you at air defense?”, if low observable opponents will most likely ‘see’ you before ‘you’ see them?

4. in the attack role the F-35 is invaluable in the event of a confrontation with technologically advanced opponents in the early days of the war when air defenses are fully functional; when the fight shifts to trucking bombs, the two aircraft are substantially equal.

‘Substantially equal’? This is ‘begging the question’ again. Does the Typhoon have anything like the F-35’s ability to distinguish friend from foe on a fluid battlefield? Does the Typhoon have anything that provides a pilot with a clear view of the target in the day, night, in any direction and in all weather conditions? More importantly, can the Typhoon do so with a reasonable expectation of not being successfully engaged by Surface-to-Air threat? As proven in Operation Allied Force, where the Serbians elected to shepherd their air defense resources, you can never be certain to have eliminated the Surface to Air threat, you can only have varying degrees of confidence you have been able to attrit/mitigate it. Flying a non-LO aircraft over hostile territory is an invitation to eventually get shot down. How “equal’ a bomb-truck can a Typhoon be if attrition is factored in? Answer: not very equal at all.
 
A single flight line on the Typhoon would have major economic benefits  for training, spare parts and so forth  while the same proposition cannot be said for the F-35 since it is not an interceptor. 
 
We now see Albano, having praised the secondary strike capability of a Typhoon, making no examination of the F-35’s capabilities in the Air-to-Air mission. While no doubt the F-35 would have to perform the mission differently than a Typhoon (the Typhoon’s great top speed in a relatively clean configuration is a direct product of the ‘Interceptor’ mission requirement),it has not been shown that the F-35 could not perform the mission. If viewed as a ‘fleet’ vs. ‘individual fighter capability’ could an argument be made that an “all F-35” fleet in greater, same, or fewer total numbers than a combined F-35/Typhoon fleet could perform both A-A and A-G roles? Has Albano reduced this effort to a EFA Typhoon advocacy paper?

In the future, industries are developing unmanned combat aircraft vehicle (UCAV) stealth such as the X-47B. These are designed, much like the F-35, to carry out attacks in extremely dangerous air defences. Therefore, the specific strength of the F-35 could in the future be better carried out by a European UCAV.

The X-47B just now completed the technology demonstration step in the combat UAV evolution. Whatever the follow-on program produces if it even materializes, it will still be only the first step on a long journey that will take several generations of developments, and still, it may never make the manned combat aircraft 'obsolete'. File this under ‘wishful thinking’.

Regarding the choice of the Air Force to ask for 60 F-35As and 15 F-35Bs, I consider that, assuming we stick to the F-35, the best solution would be to buy all F-35As because: the B version costs 30% more than the A; is, performance wise, inferior to the A version; but most importantly because the operational motivation is rather weak. In fact, the F-35Bs were required by the Air Force to be used in support of expeditionary situations where adequate runways are not available. If this is the need, then it would be more effective to use F-35As for the Navy, considering an increased purchase to 20. To save money, in case of F-35 purchase, a unified management of today’s separate lines of flight of the two armed forces, including training, should be enforced.

This part is so disjointed I hardly know where to begin. First the F-35B is essential for the Navy because it can operate off the Cavour. Now the Navy should buy land based versions? The author’s ‘logic’ holds only if the Navy never goes farther asea than where the land-based F-35As can support it. While throwing around a ‘30% higher cost’ number is Albano aware that the STOVL sortie generation rate specification is about 33% higher than the F-35A or F-35C? What ‘costs’ are he using to compare F-35A and F-35B unit costs? Is he aware the program is managed to minimize total life cycle costs instead of initial procurement unit costs? Is he aware that in a 25-30 year weapon system lifetime, typically 2/3rds of total costs are in sustainment?

Economic and industrial matters
The Typhoon is a plane in which the domestic industry’s original share — design and production — was 21%, but in the case of additional, future purchases may be negotiated higher. [Very nice. Good luck with that. How many future EFA sales are expected? A large percentage of “very little” is ‘not much’. ] Also with the manufacturer of the Typhoon consortium, in case of additional purchases, or beyond the commitments entered into with the consortium, you could negotiate a package of financial compensation even exceeding 100%, just like the big world buyers (India, Brazil, Korea, etc.). In addition, the extension of the production of the Typhoon could lead to further sales abroad, with additional financial benefits for Italy.

In light of the procurement history and dearth of potential customers, that sounds like an awful lot of wishful-thinking to me. The Eurofighter program cost and schedule history make the F-35 look like a model acquisition program. 

In contrast, the Italian share of the F-35 project is 4% for Development and is not assessable for the production, as the supply tenders are still in progress. Italy has invested over the years about 1 million U.S. dollars in the development of the F-35 and so did Finmeccanica partnering with the MoD for the “FACO” in Cameri. We must consider that, while the percentage is lower, it is on a much larger number of planes and a hypothetical 4% of 2,000 aircraft is comparable with a 100% of 75 aircraft. Technologically, Italian companies are fully conversant with Typhoon production technologies while those of the F-35 are partially unknown. The original contribution to the development of the F-35 was finalized contingent on the acquisition of new technologies for Italian companies, but the U.S. has severely limited these knowledge transfers.[It should be noted here that is precisely the kind of criticism the F-16 Multinational program dealt with in the early days. We must observe that the technological benefits received by the partner nations brought most of them back for more with the F-35. This smacks of frustration borne on wings of unreasonable expectations.] In addition, if Italy will purchase F-35s, any national enhancement, update or integration cannot be performed without U.S. approval and involvement, so the F-35 should be considered a “limited sovereignty airplane”.

Not true. But a commonly repeated oversimplification often committed by people who ‘think’ they understand how the F-35 software design works. The author is apparently unfamiliar with MILS or EALS-7 . Users will be able to ‘nationalize’ their own aircraft if new systems are required and add weapons (the aerospace equivalent of adding an ‘App’) if they wish. But the idea behind the common core software design is to ensure commonality and in turn reduced software maintenance cost over the life of the program. Canada, Australia, and the UK are planning to jointly develop a ‘reprogramming laboratory’ of their own (page 77). There is nothing stopping Italy from doing the same on their own or in concert with another partner nation. 

Both the UK and Israel have strongly opposed the American policy in this regard, but for now, only Israel has managed to get limited access to electronic systems in order to make partial integrations nationally. To better understand the implications, if tomorrow the Italian Air Force requires the integration of a weapon or an external tank, it would have to ask the U.S. to perform it, paying and waiting for their development cycles in which, predictably, they would not be a priority. [Again, NOT true (see above). But I suppose it is a convenient appeal to nationalism and trade protectionists]
On acquisition costs for the F-35, there is an extensive bibliography, made of figures difficult to compare and review — a real jungle — so if there are two numbers are one is double the other, they could be both true since they are based on different assumptions. [And include different cost items, or ‘different year’ currency values, or both. So what?]
In addition the F-35 is in the development stage and not yet in full production, having acquisition costs that vary from year to year. We now have, for the A model, an approximate figure well above $100 million. Flight costs per hour is also a topic for fortune tellers, but the numbers are scaring the USAF. ['Scaring': A fallacious Appeal to Emotion directed at the uninformed]
The Typhoon is well known for acquisition and flight costs. [Not so much “well known” as seen as an outcome to be avoided]
Conclusions
In my view, the purchase of the F-35 should be only for the 15-20 copies for the Navy, to be purchased along a period of 7 to 10 years from now, allowing the maturation of the aircraft and the reduction in purchasing costs. To date, a fully operational aircraft is scheduled for 2019, if there are no serious problems on software development, a key component in the present day for a fighter plane. The Air Force, in contrast, has a technological option that makes it possible, even if with operational differences, to purchase the F-35A or the Typhoon.

Only if you actually believe the Typhoon will be effective and survivable for the next 30 years or so.

It is my opinion that it is useful, both economically and industrially, that Italy, since there are no orders signed besides 3 F-35As, reviews in detail the alternatives, requiring two offers, with guaranteed costs and industrial compensations, for the two alternatives: Typhoon T3 and F-35A. The timing for the purchase of the 75 aircraft, may be over a fairly long period and without immediate financial commitments. In case of confirmation of the F-35, it would be desirable that the purchases were delayed until 2018 to 2020, in time to start replacing the AMX.

Oh yes, because everything is always cheaper if you stretch out the purchase and do it later (/sarc). Apparently the author has never heard of Economic Order Quantities.

This would be a nice as we consider the current crisis that does not allow for non-essential digressions. Defense cannot be neglected, but we can certainly wait a few years before deciding and purchasing.

My Conclusion:
Mr. Albano’s screed is ill-conceived, poorly written, drivel. It remain so even when allowing for what must be lost in the English translation. He presents nothing more than a laundry list of unsubstantiated and/or perverted anti-JSF complaints with a dash of pro-Eurofighter ‘feelings’ (vs. fact). In law, it is said that if the facts are on your side then argue the facts. If the law is on your side, then argue the law. If you have neither the facts nor the law on your side, then ‘pound on the table’. Mr. Albano is clearly ‘pounding on the table’.

Veritas Locutus Est, Causa Finita Est