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| Source: Voice of America |
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| Smiling Suzie Dershowitz, with an incredibly hybris-ridden slogan. Source: POGO (and why does this reminded me of a Jonah Goldberg book?) |
A recent study by Benjamin Zycher from the libertarian think tank the CATO Institute reaffirms what we've been saying all along: Cutting Pentagon spending will not cause the economic nightmare or job loss catastrophe the defense industry wants us to fear.
In addition to CATO, other right-leaning analysts, advocates, and politicians have also been vocally challenging the narrative that defense spending must not be decreased. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, recently pledged to fight any efforts to divert tax reform revenues toward an increase in Pentagon spending or avoiding across-the-board budget cuts, known as sequestration. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), a senior Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, has called for a national dialogue on sequestration, recognizing that "the average American out there, by big percentages, wants to cut defense by twice the sequester amount."Got that? The 'spectrum' of support includes:
“We (USMC) decided that the Air Force model for maintenance training was the right way to do business,” said USMC Capt. John Park, 372nd TRS commander. “The Marine Corps, when we go to a platform, we stay there for our whole careers…so this is new to us. Having Marines move to the F-35 from the F-18 Hornet or AV-8B Harrier is unheard of, so it’s a big change in our training process.”This will go a long way towards reducing F-35 sustainment costs if the maintainers of all the services can develop an ‘F-35’ modus operandi versus everyone all going their own way. I don’t think it is particularly important which service model influences the joint approach the most, as long as it is as common as possible. Of course we would obviously expect the ‘afloat’ part of the fleet to involve the most variation in approach from the program norm. There will be tremendous direct (“Hey! I see a better way!”) and cultural (“This is how we do it now!”) pressure to make the F-35 conform to existing maintenance paradigms. But there are certain things about the F-35 (such as the nearly complete reliance on composite structures, and no scheduled depot-level repair operation) that make it so very different from the planes it is replacing, there is a very good chance a cultural change can be achieved.
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| Keep Maintenance Simple and Keep Them Flying. Source: LM Code One Magazine Archives |
“My dad calls me probably every day and asks about the F-35,” said Air Force Staff Sgt. Jeff Kakaley, F-35 crew chief instructor. “I tell him I’m proud to work on it and he’s proud to have a son who works on the F-35 too.”
“Being around this aircraft on a daily basis, both here and at Pax River (NAS), has been awesome,” said Johnson. “There’s nothing I’d rather do.”
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Students discuss a training problem during F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter training as Staff Sgt. Jeff Kakaley, right, observes during training at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., Jul. 19, 2012. The 372nd Training Squadron Detachment 19 at Eglin, part of the 982nd Training Group at Sheppard Air Force Base, trains both Air Force and Marines on F-35 maintenance. Kakaley is an F-35 crew chief instructor(U.S. Air Force photo/Dan Hawkins)
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| Source of Original: NAVAIR |
"During our first week of flying in March, we had two flights scheduled. Then in the fourth week of May we had twelve sorties scheduled and eleven flown. Now in August we are planning a standard of sixteen F-35A sorties a week," said Lt Col Lee Kloos, commander of the wing's 58th Fighter Squadron. "In September we will go to a planned twenty-sortie week as our standard."You can’t do what Lt Col Kloos describes if a plane is not reliable or generates high maintenance demands. Nor can you generate the productive test sorties/test points at the rates Barry Graff detailed at his place back in June. From the article, I get the impression that the limiting factor in sorties to-date has been the number of pilots trained and being trained. As more pilots get on board, that limitation will disappear.
“Since the GAO report fails to highlight the existence of poor MMH/FH and MTTR numbers, AND we know from the program announcements that flight test operations are ahead of current schedule for flights and test points, we can be almost certain that the internals of the performance data shine a better light on the program performance than the GAO is attempting to cast.”Based upon the GAO report contents (including that which was missing), flight test productivity, and Lt Col Kloos’ comments, I sense even more that the F-35 is at or ahead of the reliability and maintainability curve. If so, we will have to put on a keen lookout for the data. We will have to search it out because it will be merely business as usual for the F-35 program on the one hand, and ignored or minimized by the critics seeking to protect their Precious (meme) on the other.
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| Callin' the Ball! Original from ? |
Mitchell Was Wrong
In 1924, Air Service Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell submitted a report predicting that war in the Pacific would start with a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that would begin at 7:30 a.m., followed by an attack on Clark Field in the Philippines at 10:40 a.m. He later added that this would happen on a Sunday morning.
Mitchell was wrong, of course. When the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor on Sunday Dec. 7, 1941, it was at 7:55 a.m.—almost half an hour later than Mitchell had predicted—and Clark Field was not attacked until 12:35 p.m.
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| Yeah, what would a guy like this know? |
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| 1000 lb JDAM Drop. (DoD Photo) |
Impressive...if it was bad news about the JSF everybody would post...not one comment...Mr Gomes comment at this time is STILL flying solo, and on the rest of the usual 'F-35 hatin' web there is barely a rumble since the event.
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| World's Finest Bulk Exporter of Tritinol and Steel |
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| "It's ALWAYS the 'Fighter's Turn', It's just that every now and then the rest get their fair share". Even with whatever the NGB will become, this chart won't change much from when I first built it around 2000 |
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| 'Marauder' in the comments nails it (Photo Added 18 Aug 2012) |
Wednesday’s now-infamous hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, which broke from its standard script of “where’s mine” to an unusually rancorous airing of partisan talking points, showed the depth of frustration in the defense world. A few years ago, defense was a prince of Washington interest groups. With two hot wars underway and a unanimous “support our troops” mentality in the country, the Pentagon, its allies and dependents got whatever they wanted, times two, yesterday. Now that same cohort has become just another victim in today’s politics of hostage-taking.
When Barack Obama has lost even liberal Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, the White House has a problem. In Washington, that problem is known as the "sequester." In the rest of the country, it's becoming known as a jobs disaster.And (my favorite part)...
Jobs, and his own re-election, were on Mr. Brown's tortured mind this week, when he publicly called on the president to do something about Defense Department cuts that threaten to shutter his state's Mansfield Lahm Air National Guard Base—and with it, 1,000 jobs. The cuts might be "penny wise," griped the senator, but they were "pound foolish."
The White House is clearly starting to worry. In a sign of panic, the Obama administration this week moved to hide the coming job losses. The Labor Department directed defense contractors to ignore the law and skip layoff notices, since sequester remains "uncertain." (Companies may well send them out anyway, since Labor can't protect them from lawsuits for failing to give due warning.)Read both pieces and form your own opinion.
And the president knows his ranks are getting twitchy. Congressional Democrats cracked this week, signing on to Republican legislation that gives the White House 30 days to detail the sequester cuts; they aren't willing to risk looking like White House pawns for secrecy. Republicans are ratcheting up the pressure, with ads targeting vulnerable Democrats in defense-heavy districts, town halls to highlight the sequester threat, and governors calling on Mr. Obama to step up and lead.
Democrats heading home for the August recess will hear an earful from their local defense contractors. And the party is getting equally worried about the other half of the sequester, which will strip hundreds of billions out of their own cherished domestic programs. If this environment gets hot enough, Mr. Obama could find himself alone on the stand-firm-on-sequester ship.
Just picked up this issue at the Carswell BX, and thumbing through this article I saw the 'barf boxes' accompanying the photos. My first thought was: who wrote this (ahem) 'stuff'? By the time I got to the blurb claiming the F-35 has thelowesthighest wing loading of any modern fighter, I knew who the author had to be.
Odd thing though. The wing loading of the F-35 isn't public knowledge, and since the fuselage provides lift, you can't simply divide weight by wing area. And now having read the whole article, I'd say the wing loading trope is among the least of the offenses committed.Can you guess who the author might be?
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| F-22 Raptor (Source ACC) |
As part of the Distant Frontier exercise, F-22s from the USAF's 525th Fighter Squadron faced off against the German fighters in visual-range basic fighter manoeuvres (BFM) combat training...
While Grune [Luftwaffe] does not directly say that the Eurofighters emerged as the overall victors, he strongly implies it. "I put out some whiskey. If they come back with some good performances, and if you know what the goal is from a BFM setup, and you achieve that, then I will pay you whiskey," he says. "And I paid quite a lot of whiskey."...
That account, however, is strongly disputed by USAF sources flying the F-22. "It sounds as though we have very different recollections as to the outcomes of the BFM engagements that were fought," one Raptor pilot says….
USAF sources say that the Typhoon has good energy and a pretty good first turn, but that they were able to outmanoeuvre the Germans due to the Raptor's thrust vectoring. Additionally, the Typhoon was not able to match the high angle of attack capability of he F-22. "We ended up with numerous gunshots," another USAF pilot says….
Regardless of their differing accounts, the USAF was grateful for the chance to train with the Luftwaffe. "We optimise the opportunities we get to participate in dissimilar air combat training, as those opportunities are all too rare," says Lt Col Paul Moga, commander of the 525th Fighter Squadron. "Our recent BFM hops with the German air force Typhoons were outstanding….
In mid-June, 150 German airmen and eight twin-engine, non-stealthy Typhoons arrived at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska for an American-led Red Flag exercise involving more than 100 aircraft from Germany, the U.S. Air Force and Army, NATO, Japan, Australia and Poland. Eight times during the two-week war game, individual German Typhoons flew against single F-22s in basic fighter maneuvers meant to simulate a close-range dogfight....
The results were a surprise to the Germans and presumably the Americans, too. “We were evenly matched,” Maj. Marc Gruene told Combat Aircraft’s Jamie Hunter. The key, Gruene said, is to get as close as possible to the F-22 … and stay there. “They didn’t expect us to turn so aggressively.” ...
Gruene said the Raptor excels at fighting from beyond visual range with its high speed and altitude, sophisticated radar and long-range AMRAAM missiles. But in a slower, close-range tangle — which pilots call a “merge” — the bigger and heavier F-22 is at a disadvantage. “As soon as you get to the merge … the Typhoon doesn’t necessarily have to fear the F-22,” Gruene said. ...
This is not supposed to be the sort of reaction the F-22 inspires. For years the Air Force has billed the Raptor as an unparalleled aerial combatant. Even former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who in 2009 famously cut F-22 production to just 187 copies, called the stealth jet “far and away the best air-to-air fighter ever produced” and predicted “it will ensure U.S. command of the skies for the next generation.”
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| Eurofighter Typhoon (Source: Wikipedia) |
While certain uncontrollable factors such as weather and manoeuvring limitations did not allow for full-up engagements, it is suffice to say that there was much learning across the board. The details of each set-up are privy only to the pilots that flew them, as that is the sacred standard among fighter pilots...
"Its [F-22’s] unique capabilities are overwhelming from our first impressions in terms of modern air combat," [Commander of JG74, Colonel] Pfeiffer says. "But once you get to the merge, which is only a very small spectrum of air combat, in that area the Typhoon doesn't have to fear the F-22 in all aspects."...
The Typhoons were stripped of their external fuel tanks and slicked off as much as possible before the encounter with the Raptors, says Grune, who adds that in that configuration, the Typhoon is an "animal". [How ‘slick’ is still a feasible Air-to-Air configuration?]
And it’s [F-22 is] slowly getting taken off the probation it incurred after seemingly suffocating pilots... [Combat Edge Flight Ensemble has been determined to be the problem and (wait for it)….it is NOT part of the F-22]
Despite the historical facts, there persists in Air Force circles “a hypothetical vision of ultra-long range, radar-based, air-to-air combat,” to quote air power skeptic Pierre Sprey, co-designer of the brute-simple F-16 and A-10 warplanes. [Sprey is not a co-designer of either the A-10 or F-16. He participated in the development of the initial REQUIREMENTS. BTW: This is called a “fallacious appeal to authority”.]
The USAF had earlier narrowed down the potential root cause to either contamination or an air quantity problem. "We have eliminated one of the hypotheses that the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board postulated as a potential root cause for the hypoxia-related incidents and that was contamination," says USAF chief of staff Gen Norton Schwartz. "We have the data that has confirmed that."…….
Based on tests conducted inside an altitude chamber and a centrifuge, the USAF has concluded that a combination of hardware defects with the pilot's life support gear contributed to the problem. …….
Asked why the problems with the Raptor's life support systems were not caught earlier during the jet's extensive developmental and operational test phases, Schwartz says that human physiology is not well understood at the combination of altitude and g-loadings that F-22 pilots routinely operate at. "This is a unique airplane," Schwartz says. "You can pull 6Gs at 50,000ft. Tell me what other airplane, ever, can do that?" There are aspects of the Raptor's performance at high altitude, which from the standpoint of human physiology, are not well understood. "In some respects, the testing did not reveal the shortcomings we have recently discovered."I thought it would be interesting to contrast the real findings with some of the DoDBuzz/DefenseTech stories and speculative commentary that has rained down on their boards over the past year. Think about the following the next time you read the woe, doom, and outrage over future stories. Also keep in mind that the Combat Edge ensemble was NOT part of the F-22.
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| Lt. Col. Eric Smith (left) congratulates Lt. Col. Lee Kloos on becoming the latest qualified joint strike fighter pilot and DOD’s first non-developmental test pilot to qualify, May 31 at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. After completing his flight, is now a qualified instructor pilot for the F-35 Lightning II. Smith, the director of operations with the 58th FS and the first Air Force qualified pilot, served as Kloos' flight evaluator. (U.S. Air Force photo/Maj. Karen Roganov) |
“Your comments seem to suggest the F-35 has actually been completely tested and is fully ready for combat. Since it isn’t even halfway there, I’ll take your comments — barely legible as they were — with a healthy dose of skepticism. Further, since you have openly suggested on your website that I’m working for POGO itself I will go ahead and play turnabout: You strike me as nothing more than a front for the defense industry — the kind of guy paid-off to act like an independent and fill the debate with tripe to make people think twice about what is obvious. What is obvious: the plane is an overpriced piece of crap, and will never be a staple of the American Air Force. Your boys at Lockheed are on borrowed time using the Pentagon as a marketer and purchaser all at once because America is broke. Best invest that money elsewhere.” (screen capture to left)Notice the lack of any real attempt to engage on the validity of the ‘debunking’ itself? I must say I find the notion that I’m a sort of paid secret ‘front’ for the defense industry (I’m a ‘highly-compensated’ engineer/analyst, bucko!) scouring the web for evil-doers on the behalf of the F-35 for bounty….hilariously conspiratorial. I do the scouring for free! I suspect Mr. Smallwood probably also operates under the delusion that there actually IS a ‘Military-Industrial Complex’.
I just think it's interesting that 'Black Owl' has dropped the faux respectability, carefully selected phrasing, and poorly simulated gravitas that posing as a Naval Cadet required of him. Must have been exhausting.
BTW: We may logically presume that IF the F-35 still had a serious weight challenge, they, like all the other non-challenges not mentioned, would have been brought up in the most resent GAO reports. Things must be going pretty good in the weight area, since the GAO didn't even TRY to spin a negative angle on weight last time.Recently, someone apparently 'posed as the poser', imitating Black Owl, just as someone did to me not all that long ago, and he/she took the trouble to get an IntenseDebate 'identity' of 'BlackOw1l8E'.
First of all the USNA does not have cadets. That's West Point and the USAFA. We have midshipmen. Secondly: Yes, if I was to fake my identity, then a naval midshipman is the first and most obvious choice. I would never think to fake being a commissioned officer or some other member of the aviation community or something even more credible than that. USNA Midshipmen are the most ideal thing to fake because they are the most credible source ever (insert sarcasm). That makes no sense.I attempted to respond today with:
The GAO still mentions the terrible paper thin weight margins of the F-35B. They didn't mention those of the F-35A or F-35C, but that doesn't mean they're not there. I think if they had made drastic improvements in that area Lockheed Martin would have boasted more about it.
Thanks to web caching we have:
Black Owl May 1, 2012 at 3:41 pm
Well, I'm in the Navy and I too am working towards being a pilot and, God willing, if I get to fly I would pick the Super Hornet Block II rather than the F-35C. The Super Hornet is dependable, reliable, heavily armed, flexible, and it has two engines. The only thing the F-35s do that other aircraft can't is be stealthy. In order to achieve that it sacrifices heavily in all other areas of performance, especially maintainability. The advanced sensor suite of the F-35 can also easily be added to the Super Hornet. Stealth is an advantage, but it is not an absolute necessity and we can still defeat our enemies without it by utilizing good tactics and advanced ordinance. Integrating stealth into our forces is important, but not at the cost of other things, especially flexibility and aircraft numbers. We don't need the F-35 when our current jets are good enough and will continue to be for many years. The EA-18G Growler and Super Hornet Block III with some advanced weapons can easily handle all our current and future threats and last us until a 6th gen fighter is made.
(from: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8f5Om7uwO-QJ:defensetech.org/2012/05/01/pic-of-the-day-f-35-in-burner/+Black+Owl+Superhornet+Annapolis+SMSgt+Mac&hl=en&gl=us&prmd=imvns&strip=1)
So, now we have another question. Is this Black Owl posing as the 'original' Black Owl? Or: Has this Black Owl forgotten where he’s posed as a ‘Middie’?
BTW, I have a nephew who IS a Midshipman. The ‘Cadet’ mention was an oblique diminution referencing ‘Naval Sea Cadets’ (which is fine and dandy name to be called if one is a teenager, not so fine if you are a real Midshipman).
SMSgt Mac May 1, 2012 at 8:39 pm
IN the interest of understanding, might one ask what is your grade and what exactly it is that you 'do' in the Navy?
Reply
Black Owl May 1, 2012 at 11:44 pm
I'm a 2nd class midshipman at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. For the most part I take classes that are taught in a regular college (physics, chemistry,…) only ours are faster paced and more in depth. Along with those classes I take a lot of military classes about weapon systems, navigation, history, and several other things. I'm also taking Russian. My service assignment night is in November and that's when I'll find out if I'm going to be a pilot or not after I graduate.
Almost Forgot: (Update 21 July 2012) I also asked the 'cached' Black Owl what 'squadron' was he in. I asked for a couple of reasons. First, if he/she responded with a "Squadron x" kind of answer, I'd probably conclude I was dealing with a 'young un' and would tailor my responses accordingly. I was more interested in the time lag/tag of any response. it came back with a 2:22AM time tag. Even adjusting for time zone differences, REAL Middies don't have slack time to keep a comment thread busy for an entire day and into the night. (1 May was a Tuesday BTW). Hence my conclusion that Black Owl was a poser, and a Boeing F-18E/F 'Fanboy' to boot. I've pretty much just enjoyed myself watching his facade degenerate over the last couple of months. Update End .
