The F-35 and the Infamous “Sustained G” Spec Change

PART 1

Introduction

I can’t remember when I saw so many media outlets, bloggers, and just general ‘people’ with their panties in a wad over something they didn’t really understand. Honestly, who among those ‘critics’ bemoaning the Sustained G turn requirement changing from 5.3 to 4.6Gs even know everything they need to know as ‘inputs’ before they could even begin to formulate an informed opinion on the topic? There is STILL insufficient information in the public domain to come to any conclusions, but there’s a heck of a lot of presumption and assumption in spite of it.

I was neck deep in a home improvement project when Dave Majumdar at FlightGlobal’s DEWline blog put up his “What's the operational impact of reducing the F-35's performance specs?” piece. Majumdar gave a pretty big voice to an ‘anonymous’ but ‘highly experienced ‘ fighter pilot that had all sorts of negatives to pass on to the public. (I believe if you view the Majumdar/Flight Global posts and articles that followed on the topic you’ll conclude the voice in question almost certainly was coming out of a Boeing F-18 test pilot). This ‘anonymous’ fighter pilot’s views were counter-balanced at the end by someone who had actual knowledge of the F-35.

Note: I now notice that the entire post I commented on has been rewritten (down the memory hole, eh?) but the parts I lament in my comment seems to have been ‘reformulated’ elsewhere in an article here. (If I have a major complaint about FlightGlobal’s reporting, it is just this kind of ‘rewriting history’ stuff.)

I commented, in part, the following at that time:

The really disturbing aspect of this 'story' is how an anonymous "highly experienced" fighter pilot somehow is able to gin up some world-class doom and gloom from a few insufficient data points. The doom and gloom gets quoted here, and now this article is being passed around by the anti-JSF crowd-- zipping around the globe as some sort of authoritative source. However, all there is really are two insufficient sets of information that in all honesty should prevent someone from reaching any conclusion other than the program is being 'managed'.

First, let's deal with the changing of the maximum sustained g-force value for the different variant turn performance criteria.

All we know is that 1) The sustained turn g-force objective is a proxy for overall aircraft maneuverability (not even a KPP) and 2) For the particular speed, bank angle, weight, and altitude data points selected, the program office lowered the ‘g’ value after extensive testing and analysis.  

Aside from no real reason to assume the Program Office could or would do so without a good reason, or belief that the differences would not significantly impact operational performance, we should also consider the very real possibility that the F-35’s best sustained-g turn performance may have been found to lay outside the pre-selected test conditions. Perhaps by a little, perhaps by a lot. We don’t know. Not even “highly experienced” fighter drivers, unless they’re on the program, can divine the answer or what it means without more data.

On the one hand, I could have placed more emphasis on the ‘unknowns’: if only so a few of the others who were/are willfully ignoring them would have been perhaps a little less eager to jump on the ‘Lowering the Bar’ bandwagon. I COULD have typed “For the particular speed, bank angle, weight and altitude data points selected, [which are unknown to us] the program office lowered the ‘g’ value after extensive testing and analysis. On the other hand, I shed no tears for the self-identifying ignorami, and find the duping of a small number of media types merely... ‘unfortunate’.

Of course, the usual suspects took exception to my comments, and now the whole thread looks pretty silly as the article that I was critiquing, and others were defending (and OBTW also attacking me), is no longer even IN the article we all commented upon. But my prediction of the obvious, that the doom and gloom sound bites from a rather dubious source would spread like wildfire throughout the 'interwebs' while the factual counterarguments would remain alone and unloved proved all too true.

Fortunately, we have a few other data points that we can add to other information, including knowledge as to how programs and requirements ‘work’ and at least form one or more hypotheses as to what the relevance Sustained G spec change ‘means’-- based upon physics, publically released (vs. leaked) information (vs. unsubstantiated suspicions) about the F-35, and more importantly how everything relates to modern fighter design requirement priorities. We can make some assumptions (and identified as same) and use parametric modeling to more thoroughly understand the impacts of the changes, especially as they might either reflect or affect HOW the F-35 might ‘fight’ in the Within Visual Range (WVR) environment.

This post, as the title reflects, will concern itself with F-35 Sustained G-performance. I’ll get to the ‘Supersonic Dash’ spec change later.

“Sustained Flight”

Let’s begin with defining Sustained Flight, Sustained Level Flight, and what makes a ‘Sustained G’ Turn... a ‘Sustained G’ turn. If you know basic aerodynamics you can skip this section, and I don’t want to hear about anything I ‘leave out’ or ‘over-simplify’ in the comments if you don’t skip it. I’m not trying to ‘dumb it down’, I’m trying to leave out stuff I don’t need to explain to get to the larger points I’m trying to make.

‘Sustained Flight’ is the condition where airspeed, altitude, and load factor ”n” are all held constant. To be ‘constant’ Thrust “T” and Drag “D” must be equal, and Lift ‘L’ has to equal Weight ‘W’ x n. Straight and level (coordinated) flight is ‘sustained’ when lifting surfaces are level, the aircraft is not climbing or descending, neither is it accelerating or decelerating, and the bank angle is ‘zero’.

When flying straight and level, the load factor equals 1 (n = 1) as in “1 gravity” or 1g. But it is not actually ‘gravity’. The load factor n is dimensionless: the ratio of Lift to Weight (L/W), and each component has the same unit of measurement and are thus cancelled out (pounds/pounds, etc). Load factor is referred to in terms of ‘g’ because it is "perceived" as some ‘multiple’ of the acceleration of gravity on board the aircraft.

 A ‘sustained turn’ is a turn where not only airspeed, altitude, and load factor ”n” are all held constant, but also the (non-zero) bank angle of the turn is held constant. To be ‘constant’, Thrust “T” and Drag “D” must still be equal, and Lift ‘L’ has to equal Weight ‘W’ x n, but ‘n’ is no longer equal to 1 because of the vector change of the aircraft as the turn is being executed.

For this exercise (and simplicity’s sake), we’ll assume the earth is ‘down’ and the aircraft is right side up (not inverted) and just say n is now greater than 1 (n > 1). For an aircraft with a typical wing-body-tail planform to enter and sustain the turn, the pilot/controller provides input to the control system that deflects the control surfaces to induce and then hold a bank angle, while increasing angle of attack needed to increase lift generated per unit of wing reference area to keep it equal to the load factor times the weight (n x W).

This means for any given set of airspeed, aircraft weight, and density altitude values, the load factor- accounted for in terms of ‘g’s- is a function of bank angle. Specifically, g= 1/cosØ. For example, a 60 degree bank angle (Ø=60), the ‘g’ value would be 1 divided by the cosine of 60, or 1/.5 = '2gs'.

60 Degrees Bank Angle and Resultant 2g Load Factor 

Increase the bank angle, and in a steady level turn the  g’s increase as well. As the use of a trigonometric function implies, and the chart below illustrates, the relationship is NOT linear.


'G's as a Function of Bank Angle

From the shape of the curve, we can easily observe that ‘g force’ begins increasing at a faster rate than the bank angle is increasing at around 3gs (if you remember your math, it is the point on the curve where the slope (m) of a line that is tangent to the curve = 1). By the time the typical ‘hot-fighter’ max g rating of 9g’s is reached, the bank angle has increased to about 82.6 degrees.

So what is ‘happening’ in the specific region of the curve where the F-35s ‘Sustained g’ spec change occurred?

Bank Angles: 4.6 vs. 5.3 Gs

The Only Conclusion: Bank Angles.

After that we need to start making 'assumptions'.

It doesn’t look like the airplane is doing anything too ‘different’ (minimal y axis delta) on the curve to get that ‘g’ difference, does it? That’s the first surprise waiting for people who haven’t thought much about ‘Gs’: the difference in bank angle between the two ‘levels of performance’ is about 1.6 degrees bank.

The difference looks like this:

Depending on airspeed, the bank angle could translate into a ‘small’ or a ‘large’ difference in turn rate and turn radius. Without knowing for certain what the weight, speed, and altitude is for the ‘performance standard’ at either 5.3g or 4.6g, the difference in bank angle between the two figures is all we can conclusively determine. Everything else depends on the missing data.

 

A Couple of ‘Likely Truths’

I’m pretty comfortable making some low-risk assumptions on top of the one conclusion. The first one is that F-35 max sustained G capability for the unknown flight conditions and configuration is actually somewhere in between the 5.3g and 4.6g values. I’m comfortable in doing so largely because the program has already demonstrated conservative programmatic behavior with the B model’s “take-off roll” spec change.

[History Sidebar: For the takeoff roll spec change, the JSF Program Office didn’t just ease the requirement to make it so the B model would ‘pass’. They changed the requirement such that it both met military need AND would allow for further ‘bad’ surprises without having to revisit the issue. Because of this past program decision, and just using common sense, I suspect the actual performance difference between the original spec and current performance is even less than all the complainers realize.]

The second assumption I’m willing to make--with only slightly less confidence--concerns which ‘limit’ was hit going for 5.3 sustained ‘g’s under those mystery (can’t repeat it enough) conditions. Max Sustained Turn limits are either “lift limited” or “thrust limited”. I believe the ‘thrust limit’ was hit versus lift limit, for a couple of reasons, and it is important to note now that ‘thrust limited’ can be viewed as either insufficient thrust for the drag experienced at the specified conditions (weight, speed, and altitude) or higher than expected drag at the specified conditions.

I would almost bet, but have no information to confirm, that the drag rise was higher than expected for the selected set of 'spec conditions'. I remind readers again, we have no direct information as to what those flight conditions were.

Exercise: Exploring Comparative Sustained Turn Rate Performance

If we are to do ANY comparison of the JSF performance with any other aircraft benchmarks we are going to have to make what some (not me) might call a small leap of faith and presume the weight, armament, and fuel loads as well as the altitude and airspeed are the same as what is commonly referred to at F-16.net as the ‘Bowman' Paper or Brief.

[Personal Note: If there is any Cosmic Justice in this world I predict it will befall CDR Bowman for ‘phoning it in’ on his Air Command and Golf paper and the superficial analyses and ‘pronouncements’ within. If he is still active duty when the time comes, I look for him to standup one of the early F-35 squadrons, if Navy assignment desks are half as evil as Air Force assignment desks.]

For the purposes of our exercise therefore, let us ASSUME (and we all know how that word parses) that the flight conditions and the aircraft configuration for the Sustained G spec is as follows:

60% Internal Fuel  

2 AMRAAMS  

15000 Ft Altitude

Mach .8 Airspeed

I will proceed only in evaluating the ‘G-Spec’ change for the F-35A model and let others make their own analyses on other variants and other comparisons than the ones I will make. I also caution against assuming that the results for those conditions and aircraft configuration translate linearly to any other set of conditions (they don’t) and against assuming that the actual performance at that set of conditions/configuration was the ‘best’ possible at any one of the given conditions. Just one of the weight, speed or altitude parameters could vary slightly and sustained turn performance could go up or down in a manner out of proportion to the change. I’ve also noticed that while the specs usually look at a .8M sustained turn, from at least the ‘F-15 forward’ the best sustained G for US fighters at 10,000-20,000 feet altitude seems to reside somewhere between .85M and .9M.

 Keep these curves and data in mind when we move the discussion forward in the next post:

F-15 Turn Rates

These diagrams come from around the web and a personal reference I picked up at a used book store near Carswell JRB/Plant 4. The web sources are of uncertain provenance, but I found a good ref for the F-15 at a little different weight at 10K ft that correlates well to the F-15 data above. The F-18 data smells like public relations and is more nebulous. I can't tell you how many empty weight values I found for the F-18s, and early in the program the Navy was absolutely anal about couching internal fuel weights as fuel fraction percentages instead of just how much fuel would be carried internally.

The F-16 Blk15 is a good reference-probably the best available-as it has all that vaunted maneuverability the 'reformers' bemoan as ruined with later, heavier versions. The F-4 is a good data point because we have a distinct configuration attached to the performance numbers, and some disparage the F-35 as 'F-4 like'. The Mirage was interesting to me because it is a contemporary of the F-16 and represented the pinnacle of the delta-winged dogfighter (I remember reports of its debut at the Paris Air Show quoting a USAF General as saying "The French have finally perfected the F-106") until the Euro-canards started rolling off the line. In a perfect world, Sukhoi and Eurofighter will e-mail me their E-M diagrams before I go to press on the next post.

 I expect the next post to cause a furball all of its own.  

Since we’re working with ‘pictures’ and NOT real data, I’ve had to do some translating which may have brought associated minor errors with it. I don’t see anything remarkably out of place at the moment:



Aircraft Performance and Configuration Data Translated From Curves 

If anyone has problems with the table I’ve assembled below using the charts above, and can come up with either better authoritative released data or good reasons why I shouldn’t use this data, I’ll leave the door open to changes for a couple of days while I finish doing the 'turn rate' and other math.

I predict that analysis of the data, combined with certain ‘truths’ about what level of significance should be attached to differences in sustained turn rates, and other things we know about the F-35 and have already covered concerning Energy-Maneuverability in an earlier post will clearly indicate we should be thinking of the F-35 as probably being a ‘competent’ if not ‘solid’ “kinetic” dogfighter and definitely NOT ‘a Dog’ (as people who have 'agendas' or little understanding of 21st Century air combat and aircraft design would lead us to believe).

Next: Part 2  

Charter Cable: Media Malpractice

Charter News, 'Isn't'

(Still working on a lengthy 'aircraft/F-35 maneuverability' post, but this HAS to go up tonight.)

Charter Cable is my cable provider. NO complaints about the internet speed or connectivity, not even though I suspect their move to 'all digital' last week wreaked havoc with signals (off and on) as thousands of users finally added even more thousands of cable boxes and cards to the network in just a few days. It now seems to have stabilized, so 'no problem'.

But Charter Cable's 'homepage' has a section with rotating 'news' headline pictures and captions. All too often the caption and photo make it appear that some tragedy has happened in the US or even just the 'Modern' world, and you click on the link talking about a school being bombed with what appears to be a typical American elementary school (they've done school buses too if I recall correctly) and the story is about a school in some war zone in a 'turd world' country. The Chief and I just chalked it up to lazy web content developers and editors.

Today, they went beyond 'lazy' and deep into 'media malpractice' . I got home and booted up the laptop to check the web and this is what greeted me (left headline):



Charter Home Page 9 April 2013 ~1920 Hrs CST

 



WTFO? "Veteran Kills 13"?

I clicked on the link, and this is what popped up:

Charter 'Article' 9 April 2013 ~1920 Hrs CST

Oh. A Serbian 'vet' in Serbia loses it and goes on a rampage. Tragic in it's own right. Why the 'trick' headline?

You would have to be either incompetent or agenda-driven to put this one up.  Either way it doesn't 'inform' but misleads and distorts several issues in one nice swoop.

Besmirching veteran's mental health? Check!

'Tragedy' as background for upcoming 2nd Amendment legislation? Check!

The Chief likes to try and calm me down when some unthinking slug nearly kills us because they're doing something clueless in traffic. She says something like "I'm sure they didn't see us". She forgets what makes me the MOST angry is the fact that they probably were clueless as to what was going on around them. If I assume Charter was just being 'brain dead' in this, it just p*sses me off more. tell me again: What business are they in? Do they have any standards?
 
Either way, Charter's website is Media Malpractice writ large in a Low Information Consumer world.

Are There ANY Adults At Charter Cable?

A Backgrounder on Energy-Maneuverability

Because if you learned all you know about E-M from Boyd, you’re only about a half-century behind the learning curve

Housekeeping

The first two things to remember in this kind of discussion are:

1. Performance metrics are used as PROXIES for what is important in a Weapon System under acquisition or already fielded. The metrics are NOT important in and of themselves. They are only as important as the degree to which they inform developers and operators on the system’s true versus desired capabilities.

and...

2. Weapon system specifications are initially established based upon what is believed to be needed and what is believed to be feasible within the projected budget and schedule before the development is given the ‘go-ahead’. There are only varying degrees of assumed confidence in the ability to achieve what is seen as feasible, and this depends much on perceived technology maturity. Only after the project is underway will the need and/or feasibility, given the actual maturity and budget, begin to be revealed, and it may be only truly knowable towards the end of development. Adjusting the specifications as new information is acquired, while still meeting Warfighter needs is sound engineering and management. It is NOT (as someone in the POGO crowd or ‘low information media’ might claim) “cheating” or a sign of “failure”.

Beyond Boyd: A Quick Survey of the Evolution AFTER the E-M Revolution

I’ve picked two AIAA papers on the subject to illustrate the post-Boyd reality: one from the 1980’s and one from the 1990’s. There are a fairly large number of scholarly papers concerned with the inadequacy of the traditional Boyd ‘E-M diagram’ that lead right on up to the present day, but as T. Takahashi observed just last year in a paper proposing yet another ‘better way’ to visualize E-M:

For aircraft whose missions demanded combat maneuverability, the United States Air Force required production of Energy-Maneuverability (E-M) plots. The design of the F-14, F-15, F-16 and F-18 was tailored by designers working to better the E-M capability of Soviet aircraft. In this context, a government oversight driven tradition developed where industry was required to plot many aerodynamic and aircraft performance parameters as functions of speed and altitude.

To begin our review, I think one of the better overviews of how E-M factors evolved post-Boyd is encapsulated in a paper by Skow, Hamilton and Taylor (1985). They observed:

“In the late 1940's and early 1950’s, with the advent of jet propulsion, radical new wing designs and greatly expanded flight envelopes, a corresponding need for more definitive measures of merit for aircraft performance comparisons was generated. When the "century series" fighters were developed and rear-aspect IR missiles became the principal air-to-air combat weapon, point performance comparisons were found to be inconclusive and insufficient to predict superiority. Out of this need, energy-maneuverability (E-M) concepts were formulated and developed. In the 1960's. E-M came into widespread use by aircraft designers and fighter pilots. E-M provided an analog picture of a fighter's performance capabilities over a range of velocities and altitudes. It gave quantifiable credit to measures of merit which allowed the advantages of speed (energy) and turning (maneuverability) to be balanced. These measures of merit were shown to be dominant in determining the outcome of an air battle at that time.  

 ...

But, as they say, time marches on, and in the past 10-12 years, several significant advancements have been made in the capabilities of fighter aircraft and air-to-air weapons. Three of these advancements; the all-aspect IR missile, greatly improved weapons delivery systems, and high thrust-to-weight engines have dramatically altered the character of the air battle, especially the close-in fight. The modern air battle is characterized by (1) time compression – shorter duration maneuvering required and (2) harder maneuvering - nose position at the expense of energy vs. nose position with energy conservation…

Air combat trends have expanded to ever increasing altitudes and speeds for beyond visual range (BVR) combat and conversely have tended to a lower and sometimes slower arena for close-in, within visual range (WVR) combat. … …This changing complexion of air combat, primarily due to the all-aspect IR missile, has altered the relative significance of the various performance characteristics with which we judge relative merit. Table 3 depicts the more common agility characteristics with some relative rankings.”  

Table 3 Reconstruction from “Advanced Fighter Agility Metrics”

In 1992, Cox and Downing featured Befecadu (BF) Tamrat’s 1988 metric of Combat Cycle Time in the proposed system of “functional agility metrics” they evaluated for use in measuring aircraft maneuverability: Combat Cycle Time, Dynamic Speed Turn Plots, and Aircraft Energy State. The impetus for searching for these new metrics?

During the Korean War and the Vietnam conflict, jet fighter aircraft emerged with greatly expanded altitude and Mach ranges. This era also saw the advent of the short range heat seeking missile. These missiles required maneuvering to achieve a rear-aspect firing position. The measures of merit, altered to match the increase in aircraft capability, were advanced point performances (thrust-to-weight ratio, maximum Mach number, sustained turn rate, etc.) and the energy-maneuverability performance method. In recent years, the level of fighter aircraft and weapon system technological sophistication has reached new heights; the most critical advance being the development of the all-aspect infrared missile. This missile negates the requirement of maneuvering to achieve a rear-aspect firing position and concurrently has caused the traditional point performance measures of merit to become deficient for determining the combat effectiveness of a fighter aircraft. To remedy this deficiency, new measures of merit are being investigated which examine aircraft maneuver and control capabilities not previously quantified.

We could dive deep into discussion on each metric proposed in this paper, but I would like to focus on Tamrat’s Combat Cycle Time, as it is what differs most from the pioneering but simpler Boyd-Era POV of E-M, and the authors ably describe how Tamrat builds on same:

Traditionally, the need to achieve a rear-aspect position for a gun or missile firing opportunity led fighters to engage in battles lasting several minutes. These engagements were characterized by sustained maneuvering. This type of combat made the turn rate verses Mach number diagram (doghouse plot) useful for determining one fighter's advantage over another. When maneuvering for a rear-aspect firing solution, the interior of the doghouse plot is important. This interior region is represented by the sustained turn rate line and is typically dictated by available thrust and the lift to drag ratio of the aircraft. The compressed time scales of today's air combat arena have made sustained maneuvering less critical. The desire for a first shot opportunity leads to fights dominated by transient load factor/lift limited maneuvers. The emphasis then is shifting toward more dynamic maneuvering or the exterior of the doghouse plot. Figure 1 shows these critical regions on a conceptual doghouse plot.



From "Evaluation Of Functional Agility Metrics For Fighter Class Aircraft"

The first region is the dynamic pressure limit line (A) along which pitch rate is used to load the aircraft to enter a turning situation. Next, flight path and nose pointing maneuvers occur along the limit load factor and lift limit boundaries (B). The time to unload the aircraft is shown as the region in between the lift limit line and the 1-g line (C). The last critical region shown is the 1-g acceleration (D) in which an aircraft regains lost energy to leave the engagement or enter a turn to pursue another target. The Combat Cycle Time metric, developed by B.F. Tamrat combines these four critical regions into a single parameter. The time for each maneuver segment is calculated and then summed to obtain a time for the entire maneuver cycle. The critical regions, segment times, and corresponding maneuvers are:  

A t, pitch up to load factor limit  

B t, turn along load factor and lift limit 

C t3, unload from elevated AOA/load factor  

D t4, regain original energy level  

The Combat Cycle Time metrics offers an advantage over traditional measure of merit for turning maneuvers. The doghouse plot shows the sustained and instantaneous turn rates for only one flight condition (i.e. specified power setting, mach, altitude, altitude, weight, etc.). The Combat Cycle Time, however, is characterized by a continually changing flight condition constrained within structural, lift, and power limits.

What it All Means

If there are recurring themes over the years in all the proposed metrics that move beyond Boyd/ Christie’s E-M diagram paradigm, it is 1) All-aspect missile attack changed the game and 2) the proposed metrics try to account for the missing values of the speed of ‘transition’: the time needed to point the aircraft in a desired direction from another, the ability to decelerate as well as accelerate in vertical and the horizontal, to change pitch, roll and yaw.

 The lingering deference to standard E-M charting in the operational world springs more from their relative ease of understanding by non-engineer aircrew and government bureaucrats than from their utility. The E-M diagrams benefit from the fact that what really counts, is harder to explain. So we lumber along with the deficient E-M charting and rely on the ability of the untrained/uninterested to recognize the important nuances.

One of the biggest impacts on aircraft E-M performance that isn’t in the vehicle’s dynamics vis a vis the external environment (but sometimes dealt with in the OODA loop) is the man-machine interface: how fast the pilot perceives a change/threat and reacts to or preempts the effect of the change/threat by changing the vehicle dynamics. How well can the crew execute the mission in light of all the factors that could diminish the pilot’s ability to manage change and threats? Factors such as: How much attention does he have to pay to not bending or breaking the airplane or keep from departing controlled flight while engaged in the fight?

 

Limitations of Boyd-Era E-M Proxies and the F-35

A good example of the limitations of the traditional metrics is found in the caterwauling over the recent change in the F-35’s sustained-g turn standard from 5.3 to 4.6gs at some pre-selected altitude and speed. So much hang-wringing and finger-pointing—coming from those who not only do not know how important or unimportant the change was to needed/desired overall aircraft performance, but for the most part also have no idea what the change meant in and of itself, in ‘performance’ terms.

That, friend Reader, is a good lead-in for my next post (or two). Examine the reconstructed ‘Table 3’ above and ponder how the F-35 (especially the F-35A) performance stands up in the post-Boyd air combat world.

We'll soon engage in some speculative analysis on the F-35, but the speculation will be based upon logic, facts, physics, and experience.

References:

AIRCRAFT CONCEPT DESIGN PERFORMANCE VISUALIZATION USING AN ENERGY-MANEUVERABILITY PRESENTATION; Timothy T. Takahashi; AIAA 2012-5704

ADVANCED FIGHTER AGILITY METRICS; Andrew M. Skow, William L. Hamilton, John H. Taylor; AIAA-A85-47027

EVALUATION OF FUNCTIONAL AGILITY METRICS FOR FIGHTER CLASS AIRCRAFT; Brian W. Cox, Dr. David R. Downing; AIAA-92-4487-CP

POGO’s Propaganda Circus: F-35’s “aft visibility will get the pilot gunned every time”

A Case Study in How the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) Demagogues Against National Defense Programs.

I’ve considered something similar to what you are about to read many times, but I never pulled the trigger because I hadn’t yet figured out how to cover it without either making most people’s eyes glaze over from too much psychological exposition on the one end of the spectrum, or oversimplifying to the point that the explanation does violence to the phenomenon on the other end. I was at a symposium this week that I believe provided me with a way to reach the middle ground I’ve been seeking. One of our Keynote Speakers (yes, there were several) spoke on the subject of how we humans ‘Innovate’ and how organizations and individuals can overcome barriers to innovation.

The speaker presented us with four fundamental characteristics of the human psyche that affect our ability to (among other things) be “insightful” and “innovate”. She also reviewed how those characteristics are inhibited or disrupted by outside influences. It occurred to me at the time, that what she was describing was, among other things, a pretty good explanation as to how propagandists are also able to manipulate public attitudes. Shortly afterward, I realized it would be helpful in achieving my goal of getting a substantial explanation as to how POGO/Winslow Wheeler and crew operate. By showing how POGO and fellow travelers manipulate the elements of Perception, Attention, Context, and Emotion (PACE) we are able to adequately grasp the manner in which they exploit human nature to further their agenda of subverting national defense acquisition programs.

P.A.C.E: A Tour Inside POGO’s Meme Machine

Winslow Wheeler and POGO have provided any number of examples of what I’m about to cover, but their latest machinations concerning the recent “F-35A Joint Strike Fighter Readiness for Training Operational Utility Evaluation” report is as perfect an example as any to use for this discussion.
The report in question was issued by DoD’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, J. Michael Gilmore, and is as close to being more of a political document than a technical one as any I’ve seen issued from that office (but that is another topic for another time). But the most interesting aspect to the report was in how it was apparently leaked to POGO/Winslow Wheeler ahead of the public release, and the ONE thing POGO/Winslow Wheeler chose to lift from that report to propagate was a statement by an evaluation pilot that the F-35’s “Aft visibility will get the pilot gunned every time”. That ‘money quote’ was then repeated throughout the mainstream media before anyone had the chance to really digest the contents of the report in their entirety.

POGO,Winslow Wheeler and “Perception”

In this example, POGO and Winslow Wheeler were continuing the long-standing practice of ‘poisoning the well’ against any positive perception that might arise from any public reporting on the F-35. In this case, the ‘report’ in its totality is remarkably unsurprising. What the OT&E evaluators found concerning the training program after a limited exposure to early configuration F-35s is pretty much what one would expect. But in highlighting a single comment in the report POGO made the report about the F-35 itself and not the status and readiness of the training program. The Director of OT&E was an enabler (codependent?) in this development due to the report’s excessive regurgitation of ‘old news’ that didn’t belong in this report, but POGO is the ‘perp’ that picked the forbidden fruit.
When each of us perceives something, it is estimated that only 20% of that perception is based upon what we actually sense as new, and 80% of the perception is due to what we’ve already experienced in life. As most people have little or no working knowledge of what it takes to field advanced technology and designs, that makes their ‘80% experience’ base highly vulnerable to any manipulation of the ‘20% new’ information. POGO selected and amplified a quote concerning how a pilot felt about rear visibility in a plane that does not yet have the key technology installed that makes such rear visibility concerns moot. That pilot brought his experience and training to a new aircraft and applied his old knowledge to a new situation. Without his experiencing what is the baseline F-35 EODAS and HMD capabilities that were yet to be delivered, his comments should have been noted in the backup data. But in an objective document this never would have been a feature in the report.
In cherry-picking the “get gunned every time” quote, POGO and Winslow Wheeler exploit the general ignorance of the public as to how the jets and training program are still in development, how the F-35 program is structured and how capabilities are scheduled to be brought on line by deliberately injecting into the public’s consciousness the misperception that the F-35s now being used for initial type training are representative of the capability that define the baseline F-35. This is only the latest in a long series of flagrant misrepresentations of F-35 truths, in effect LIES, committed by POGO, and the F-35 is only the latest in a long line of weapon systems to receive that special POGO/Winslow Wheeler ‘touch’. We can expect nothing but more of the same from POGO and Winslow Wheeler because they dare not let any positive or neutral development concerning the F-35 go without preemptory and presumptive criticism, as the façade of failure that they work so hard to build up from nothing requires constant maintenance to prevent it from crumbling around their ears.

POGO, Winslow Wheeler and “Attention”

Long-time observers of POGO, Winslow Wheeler and other so-called ‘reformers’ will note that the ‘get gunned every time’ sound bite will be dropped fairly quickly and something else concerning the F-35 will be targeted as a ‘failure’, ‘mistake’ or ‘criminally negligent’ decision/design feature/performance characteristic, perhaps from the same report, or from one to come later. This is because POGO et al are acutely aware that an extended exchange or dialog with anyone who disagrees with them will expose the misdirection they (POGO et al) endeavor to sustain. POGO and Wheeler go for the sound bite to plant negativity into the public’s consciousness knowing that the general public’s attention span is short. By the time anyone dives deep into a POGO/Wheeler claim and cries “Hey! Wait a minute!” the public has moved on to other circuses. Such ‘Hit and Run’ tactics, along with their careful cultivation of media enablers, allow POGO/Wheeler relief from ever having their methods, biases and motives undergo serious public scrutiny. This is classic guerrilla warfare of the information domain.
Once the initial ‘buzz’ is past, if the ‘get gunned every time’ line is ever again referenced by POGO/Wheeler, it will be as only one item in a litany of similar perversions of reality in support of some general condemnation of the F-35 or as an introduction to the next misdirection issued by POGO/Wheeler. It is a clear testimony to POGO’s and Wheeler’s confidence in the public’s inability to critically examine information POGO/Wheeler spoon feed the media, that POGO and Wheeler have felt comfortable posting the source documents which they pervert at their own websites.

POGO, Winslow Wheeler and “Context”

If there is a hallmark to POGO/Wheeler PR announcements, it is that whatever is being decried or derided will be framed in as little context as possible. What context that is provided, will be selectively added to support the official POGO/Wheeler meme du jour. In this instance, the “get gunned every time” comment is highlighted without any reference to the inconvenient (to POGO and Wheeler) fact that the F-35s EODAS and Helmet are still being developed, the software releases to exploit these systems were not sold off for the aircraft used for the training readiness evaluation, or that if later version aircraft that are now flying had been available, the ‘get gunned’ claim would probably never have been uttered.
As individuals, we perceive reality in terms of context. When we see two circles, one drawn within the other, depending upon where our heads are at the time, or depending upon what else is drawn beside the circles determines whether we view the circles as representing a bagel, a wheel, a ring, or any number of other similarly- shaped objects. Stripping the context from the ‘get gunned’ comment allows POGO/Wheeler to insert their own meaning and relevance: a constructed perversion for consumption by the uninformed and only marginally-interested public.

POGO, Winslow Wheeler and “Emotion”

Indignation and inflammatory statements about defense acquisition programs are the stock and trade of POGO and Winslow Wheeler. Consider how in the original ‘story’ at TIME Winslow Wheeler attempts to paint a ‘horror story’:

Perhaps the biggest horror story is the poor showing of the Lockheed plane’s complicated, expensive helmet-mounted display system that distorts and obscures – rather than enhancing — the pilot’s vision and awareness of the outside world.

Wheeler seeks to elicit the reader's emotion by making an assertion that the F-35’s HMD’s performance is deficient (oh woe is us!), by obliquely referring to much (at least two years) earlier technical development challenges as if they were still current and relevant. Yet Winslow Wheeler, if he was honest when asked about the HMD, would have to acknowledge that the F-35 program is fairly confident in the current state of HMD performance and sees no ‘show-stoppers’ in delivering the desired capability. Lockheed Martin was discussing positive HMD developments nearly a year ago. It is notable that the latest GAO report did not highlight any definitive problems with the HMD system, only the usual ‘concerns’. When the ‘alternative’ just-in-case helmet being developed in parallel is cancelled (possibly this year), don’t expect any surrender from POGO or Wheeler on this point: “DOOM!” will always be just around the corner.
Using our neurons takes considerable (relatively) energy and it is estimated that we can only have about 2 ½ % of our brain active at any one time. When we are irate, our limbic system/amygdala can compromise, to varying degrees, our reason and judgment. Thus, when POGO, Winslow Wheeler, or others appeal to our emotions (Waste! Corruption! Conspiracy! War Mongering Military-Industrial Complex!) they are really attempting to subvert our ability to see through the flawed logic that binds whatever nonsense they are peddling at the moment.

Know Your Reformer Bonus Content: About Winslow Wheeler’s Move to POGO

I still consider Winslow’s move under POGO a positive development. In May of last year I noted the move from the Center for Defense Information (CDI) to POGO and as I also noted, I like it when targets bunch up. The tendency of radical activism to date has been to splinter and re-label itself when caught in the daylight. This may be a consolidation for survival (one can only hope).
CDI had been slipping for years but was often extremely entertaining to watch – it was like a zoo for disillusioned and misunderstood ‘military geniuses’ founded by possibly the biggest crackpot ever to reach ‘flag’ rank.
At the time, I didn’t know that the ‘Strauss Military Reform Project’ moved with Wheeler to POGO, so the same ‘photographer’ cum ‘radical chic’ trust-fund baby must still be paying Wheeler’s salary. The ‘Strauss Military Reform Project’ is little more than a one-job program for Winslow Wheeler. Strauss, when he isn’t producing forgettable photography, or financing disgruntled, ex-Congressional staffers’ caterwauling and rabble rousing, is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of that iconic bastion of American culture (/sarc) “Mother Jones”. How cliché can you get?

Homework Completed

Finally finished the shower project. 6 weeks of evenings and weekends on top of long workdays. 2 weeks of waiting for parts sprinkled throughout. 8 weeks total.

Up next? How about observations on "POGO: The Tiresome Disinformatzia Machine"? Their overt machinations the past couple of weeks  have been rather transparent.
GAO report coming up? = POGO et.al. get busy shaping the mushheads!

Look for a post in the next day or two, followed by some analysis on the F-35A's 4.6 vs 5.3 Sustained G spec. That might be it for a while as I'm also preparing to give a presentation on seducing and subverting the current requirements system (for its own good) in the next few weeks.

And hey! 'Thanks for hanging in there with me!

What I've Been Doing Instead of Blogging

I had hoped to get to skip this post, but time is marching on faster than I'm progressing on an "emergency" home repair project that I'm working on, when not working long hours for a salary. As some folks have also enquired as to what I'm up to, I thought I at least owed regular visitors an explanation. It is a pretty boring story, but I'm getting to the end of the project.  I also had no idea how many people came here until the e-mail questions started coming in. Thanks!

Jan 30 2012: The "Guard Shack".

Nice big, boring, master bathroom shower.  But all is not well. Introducing: The Sink Hole:

Tile cracked and when you stood on the drain, you feel the plumbing flex underfoot. Not good.

Only one way to get to the bottom of this: Get to the Bottom of the shower:

Ah. the problem. Besides using "green board" where cement "backer board" should have been, not filling in the foundation hole for the plumbing with 'sand mix' [but using dirt (mud), rocks, and broken tile instead], not pre-sloping the pan, not using a waterproof membrane between the pre-slope and final bed (and skipped the final 'bed' step all together), it was a perfect tile job! The only thing keeping our feet from going through the floor was about 1 1/2" of 'sand mix' completely unsupported underneath. It took an entire bag of mix to fill the hole. I ended up taking out all the tile and treating for mold, put in cement backer board where it need to be, used the 'fixed' bed as the preslope to raise the floor with another drain about 2".


The 'Grotto' ready for grout:

Why do it myself? I've tiled a little in the past, and from talking to others who've recently paid to have their showers redone, I figure I am saving about $5-$6K doing it myself. And I know that while it won't look quite as nice as a 'pro', I at least know it was done RIGHT.

Whats left? Grout and putting back the glass (which was also improperly installed by the way).

DoD Buzz-Job

"Buzz-Job".
1. Noun: A colloquialism for what happens when commercial military-oriented websites  "disappear" their mistakes down a memory hole instead of acknowledging them.
2. Verb: The act of erasing an e-publishing mistake on the internet in leiu of admission of same.

Usage: "Hey! They just pulled another "Buzz-Job" by posting that lame article called "Phantom Bombers Weigh Down Military Budget" and then pulling it without comment."

The "Phantom Bombers Weigh Down Military Budget" that, apparently, "aren't".

I'd link to the 27 December DoD Buzz article by Michael Hoffman that has the title as in quotes above, except it isn't "there" anymore. (Update: See end of this post for a link to Hoffman's 'do-over').

I noticed the link to it was missing from the DoD Buzz main page on the 4th of January. Thinking I must have incorrectly remembered where it was , I went looking for it elswhere. Nope. It WAS on DoD Buzz as the screen capture below of the 'Google cached' version then showed:

At the time, Google showed over 1500 hits for "Phantom Bombers Weigh Down Military Budget":

Here's a screenshot of the article as it was when it was 'disappeared'.

Here's my comment made the day it was posted.... with +33 'thumbs up'? (on DoD Buzz? Surprising, I know):

As of 6 January, the Google 'cache' link leads us to:

No preview available, and no web bots allowed. Tsk.

So the article is REALLY disappeared now. Except of course for the screenshot above.

One of the few merits of having a printed 'press' is the inherent accountability from not being able to recall their mistakes once distributed. The inverse of the same is the great scourge of e-journalism. They can make mistakes, relay falsehoods and publish propaganda press releases as 'news', complete do-overs, or even just lie.

They can do these things because in the end they can always just pretend it never happened if they can 'pull' the offending piece... and nobody notices.

Hey! Just checked again and DoD Buzz's Hoffman now has a ''Do-over" article up. In it he acknowledges his earlier 'mistake' - something I wish more journalists would do. I still think a correction to the original would make a better audit trail.

Feel free to compare the two stories.

An Object Lesson in the Utility of High Capacity Magazine Weapons in Self-Defense

Hat Tip Instapundit.

The proof is in how TODAY a woman came to be disarmed after firing her revolver six times at an attacker, hitting him five times. She decided she had to flee before the attacker figured out she was out of ammunition.

The incident happened at a home on Henderson Ridge Lane in Loganville around 1 p.m. The woman was working in an upstairs office when she spotted a strange man outside a window, according to Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman. He said she took her 9-year-old twins to a crawlspace before the man broke in using a crowbar.

But the man eventually found the family.

"The perpetrator opens that door. Of course, at that time he's staring at her, her two children and a .38 revolver,"

Read how it all went down here.

What if she had stayed in the house?

It would have been a race against time if she had stayed: would he have realized the chambers were empty before he lost consciousness if she had stayed instead of running to a neighbor's house?
She shot the intruder with a .38 caliber revolver (example of common type) . Since 4 if the 5 hits had exit wounds, I'd guess they were shot at close range and/or were +P ammunition.

What if there had been two or more intruders?

She would have been out of luck, ammunition, and ideas.

This is also a lesser object lesson in  management of ammo consumption. Something extremely difficult to do unless you consciously train for it in the long term, and unless you are one cold-blooded sociopath, adrenaline will probably overwrite the training the first time you need it.

Bottom Line:

In a firefight, no one EVER wished they had fewer rounds of ammunition.

Happy 2013!

Hope Springs Eternal...

Another Mil-Spec AR-15 Build Project: This One Was a Gift

Obviously. I'm Glad I Did it WHEN I Did It.

JD Machine Stripped Lower from SOG Armory
CMMG Lower Parts Kit
M4 Spec Adjustable Stock
DPMS 5.56 16" A3 Upper w/ 9:1 twist, standard front sight/gas block and Flash Suppressor
MBUS Gen II folding rear sight.

Just Before  Gen II rear Sight Came in the Mail

As much cr*p as I've read over the years about DPMS fitment and quality, I've found their 'uppers' very much a 'good value', and they sit very well on JD Machine lowers.

BTW: I've updated mine a bit since IOC was achieved:

 Additions: Magpul 'MOE' stock, ambidextrous safety and charging handle, and LED light.

The LED light I can operate with my right thumb while aiming and illuminating varmint of the two or four legged variety at a pretty good distance without washing out the green laser.

Smacking Down Gun-Grabber's (Cough) 'Reasons' (Cough)

Hat-tip to Instapundit (who is bumping this story to keep it in view).

Larry Correia.  Source

The author Larry Correia got his start in writing by 'self-publishing' a young adult fantasy best-seller that got the attention of mainstream publishing. But before that, he was firmly established in firearms and law enforcement circles. He's got a GREAT summary of all the intellectually effete 'anti-gun' crowd's so-called 'arguments' once again being trotted out in the wake of the latest mass murder of innocent children and teachers at Sandy Hook elementary.


Correia's blog post can be read in its entirety here, but here's his conclusion: 

In conclusion, basically it doesn’t really matter what something you pick when some politician or pundit starts screaming we’ve got to do something, because in reality, most of them already know a lot of what I listed above. The ones who are walking around with their security details of well-armed men in their well-guarded government buildings really don’t care about actually stopping mass shooters or bad guys, they care about giving themselves more power and increasing their control.  

If a bad guy used a gun with a big magazine, ban magazines. If instead he used more guns, ban owning multiple guns. If he used a more powerful gun with less shots, ban powerful guns. If he used hollowpoints, ban hollowpoints. (which I didn’t get into, but once again, there’s a reason everybody who might have to shoot somebody uses them). If he ignored some Gun Free Zone, make more places Gun Free Zones. If he killed a bunch of innocents, make sure you disarm the innocents even harder for next time. Just in case, let’s ban other guns that weren’t even involved in any crimes, just because they’re too big, too small, too ugly, too cute, too long, too short, too fat, too thin, (and if you think I’m joking I can point out a law or proposed law for each of those) but most of all ban anything which makes some politician irrationally afraid, which luckily, is pretty much everything.  

They will never be happy. In countries where they have already banned guns, now they are banning knives and putting cameras on every street. They talk about compromise, but it is never a compromise. It is never, wow, you offer a quick, easy, inexpensive, viable solution to ending mass shootings in schools, let’s try that. It is always, what can we take from you this time, or what will enable us to grow some federal apparatus? 

Then regular criminals will go on still not caring, the next mass shooter will watch the last mass shooter be the most famous person in the world on TV, the media will keep on vilifying the people who actually do the most to defend the innocent, the ignorant will call people like me names and tell us we must like dead babies, and nothing actually changes to protect our kids.  

If you are serious about actually stopping school shootings, contact your state representative and tell them to look into allowing someone at your kid’s school to be armed. It is time to install some speed bumps.

As 'they' say, go to the link and read it all.

Gun Control

As chance would have it, yesterday was my Texas Concealed Handgun Law training course and qualification.  Two nights before, I was studying the latest Texas CHL manual online, and wincing as I went over the parts that delineated the 'gun free zone' areas, and thinking, in the wake of the Oregon mall shooting, in most cases it is pretty stupid to create what is actually a 'target rich environment' zone for the sick and twisted who would try and commit mass killing of innocent others.
While the rest of my family spent the day trying to avoid all the 'news' and constant revision thereof, concerning the elementary school killings that happened the day before, one of the first things we covered was WHY Texas was a CHL  'shall issue' state. Surprise! It was largely the result of  a mass killing, the Luby's Cafeteria Massacre on October 16, 1991, in Killeen, Texas, and the efforts of one of the survivors, Suzanna Gratia Hupp. Ms. Hupp's story and energy in making the laws more protective of the individual was a powerful weapon. Her testimony before Congress even managed to subdue the perennially pompous a** Chuck Schumer for a time:

Time will tell if Chuckie starts bloviating again as if the above never happened.

This was my Target and Scoring Used

Texas uses the B-27 target for qualification:

This is the Course of Fire:

Stage 1: Twenty shots (20) will be fired from 3 yards.
A. Five (5) shots fired in a “One Shot Exercise” 2 seconds allowed.
B. Ten shots (10) fired in a “Two Shot Exercise” 3 seconds allowed.
C. Five (5) shots fired in 10 seconds

Stage 2: Twenty shots (20) will be fired from 7 yards – fired 5 stages.
A. Five (5) shots will be fired in 10 seconds
B. Five (5) shots will be fired in 2 stages:
  1. Two (2) shots will be fired in 4 seconds
  2. Three (3) shots will be fired in 6 seconds
C. Five (5) shots fired in a “One Shot Exercise” 3 seconds allowed.
D. Five (5) shots fired in 15 seconds.

Stage 3: Ten shots (10) fired from 15 yards – fired in two 5-shot strings.
A. Five (5) shots fired in two stages:
   1. Two (2) shots fired in 6 seconds.
   2. Three (3) shots fired in 9 seconds.
B. Five (5) shots fired in 15 seconds.

This was my 'grouping':

IMHO, not bad, especially since the 50 rounds represent about a fifth of all the rounds I've put downrange with this weapon. I've decided it shoots a 'tidge to the right and will be adjusting the sight appropriately.

This was my 'score':

Texas only records Pass/Fail. The 249 out of 250 only serves to make this shooter cry in his beer. 'Dang! So close...'.  I took comfort in acing the written though.

The above is an example of  'Gun Control'

BTW, Have you heard? Evidently the Oregon Mall shooter only shot two people before he took his own life BECAUSE he was confronted by a person licensed to 'concealed carry'. 

 

The Mysterious LM 'CUDA' Missile"...

May not be that mysterious after all.

readers will remember a couple of days ago when I put up my first post speculating about features seen on representations of a, I assume, proposed Lockheed Martin initiative: the  'CUDA' missile. I showed a 'rough estimate' of it's proportions and component locations IF the missile were truly "SDB-size".

It didn't take much research to come up with what I think is a highly-probable explanation for those 'mysterious' spots.  I assume someone else has probably already figured out a likely explanation somewhere as well, and since I work long hours, they probably have already spilled the beans, but here comes  my analysis anyway, with some weight and performance analysis thrown in to boot :

Kudos to Scott Lowther Who Was, at the Very Least, MOSTLY Right...

In his original post at the Unwanted Blog, Scott Lowther had speculated:

"My guess would be that this might be a large number of small solid rocket divert motors designed to help pitch the missile hard over in order to nail incoming jinking missiles head-on".

While I wouldn't rule out the capability to pitch the missile hard over to get 'incoming', I'm convinced the 'divert motors' idea is 'spot on' for the missile concept as shown. I believe that if the details are ever revealed, in retrospect, this feature is easy to explain.

Ockham's Razor

The spots are almost certainly Attitude Control Motors (ACMs). The design and placement are most suggestive of Lockheed Martin's PAC 3 Missile design:

I couldn't find a technical description of the PAC 3's ACMs, but did find a paper (source) that discussed the ERINT-1 missile's (from which the PAC 3 evolved) ACM installation:

The ACS contains 180 solid propellant Attitude Control Motors (ACMs) that thrust perpendicular to the centerline of the missile to provide pitch and yaw control during the homing phase. The ACMs are spaced evenly around the centerline of the missile in rings containing 18 motors. There are 10 rings in the ACS in the longitudinal direction for a total of 180 motors. The ACMs are commanded by the Motor Fire Circuit (MFC).

I did manage to find a closeup of the PAC 3 ACM module being manufactured in a Lockheed Martin PAC-3 product brochure. It appears to be just as the one described in the ERINT-1 paper. :



I submit that the ACMs are what puts the 'Hit' in "Hit to Kill" for the CUDA design.

Estimating CUDA Component Weights and Performance

[And remember, we're basing all this 'estimating' on a convention display model, vague comments, and a computer graphic!]

The discovery of what the magic spots were all about greatly simplified some assumptions that needed to be made as to CUDA missile weights, which in turn can give us clues in estimating performance.

Rather than 'absolute' performance, I will be discussing the possible CUDA numbers in terms of relevance to AMRAAM performance. I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. First, there is an EXCELLENT discussion of air-launched missile performance in general and likely AMRAAM performance available as 'backgrounder' on a thread here.  Second, the AMRAAM makes an excellent 'baseline' for comparative analysis.

Sizing the CUDA
If the CUDA is as it appears to be, it is just under half the length of the AMRAAM.

AMRAAM Profile Layed Over CUDA Graphic to Estimated Scale. (AMRAAM is white space INSIDE border shown)

But the relative fractional composition of the CUDA and the AMRAAM are significantly different. The following shows the CUDA's estimated relative proportion to the AMRAAM.(Notes: 1. Length is in Inches, 2. Rocket Motor (RM) Length is without blast tubes that run through the rear control section. 3. RM% comparison indicates that percentage of length of the CUDA that is RM is 26% greater a proportion of overall length than the AMRAAMs % and 4. Estimated total volume is not including radome which is assumed to be mostly 'empty'.)

The CUDA estimate indicates a larger rocket Motor as a Percentage of total Length and Volume than the AMRAAM

From comparing the two missiles, I find that the CUDA could weigh as little as 153 Lbs. Knowing more about the 'mystery spots' makes me think the weight would be slightly higher. If I include the ACMs as part of the Warhead module weight, I think the breakdown of weight by Rocket Motor, Warhead and Guidance and Control in comparison to the AMRAAM should look very much like:

 

With most trade off variability in the CUDA WH and G&C weights. the fraction most important to get right is the RM propellant weight as a percentage (I used 85% as they did in the linked thread) of total RM weight.

If we refer to the 'Delta V' formula at the thread I linked to above, and assume the CUDA uses the same rocket propellant mix that the AMRAAM does, we will find that the CUDA can weigh as much as 181 lbs, providing ~71.15 of the CUDA's 83.7 lb RM is propellant, to have an EQUAL top speed potential of the AMRAAM. As the discussion thread also notes, the AMRAAM isn't advertised to go as fast as the RM could carry it, because a percentage of propellant is reserved for a reduced 'sustainer boost'. This could also be true for the CUDA.

Depending upon how fast the CUDA decelerates due to drag after the RM burns out will determine what the actual range of the CUDA would be compared to the AMRAAM. Again, from the thread linked to above, we find:

Drag force (Newtons) = 0.5 x P x V^2 x Cd x A

P = Density of Air (kg/m^3)
V = Velocity (m/s)
Cd = Co-efficient of Drag ; ~ 0.6 to 0.95 for rockets depending mostly on finnage,
nose and tail profile
A = Sectional Area (m^2)

We've reduced the variables for our comparison to Cd and A

Since,
1. we've already established the fineness ratio for the CUDA concept shown is closer to the optimum '14' than the AMRAAM is in my earlier post, and
2. it appears the finnage and tail profile may be slightly higher drag  features than the AMRAAM's (hard to tell, perhaps insignificantly so, or little better or worse either way), in all likelihood the Cd of the CUDA is approximately equal to the AMRAAM.
3. In any case, the 'A' of the CUDA is about 27% lower than the AMRAAM's which is definitely an advantage to the CUDA

We can reasonably conclude that the CUDA is a Medium Range Missile design, and approximate to the AMRAAM in range.

I like the idea of an F-35 carrying 8-12 of these suckers and I'd like to see this kind of  missile come to fruition.

I'm MOST certain that if I missed anything on this late night exercise, SOMEONE will let me know. Did I mention we're basing all this 'estimating' on a convention display model, vague comments, and a computer graphic?