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Subject: USAF Reveals 30-Year Plan: Replacement for F-22 to start development in 2020
Phaid    2/15/2010 4:53:17 PM
The US Air Force (USAF) has revealed a raft of fighter, strike, transport, special mission and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) development programmes in a 30-year plan released in February. The proposals were included within the US Department of Defense's (DoD's) Aircraft Investment Plan covering the period between FY11-FY40 that it submitted for the first time in February as part of the FY11 budget request. Under the plan, USAF expects to allocate funding to initiate the development of replacements for both the Lockheed Martin F-22 multirole fighter and C-5 Galaxy strategic transport aircraft by Fiscal Year (FY) 2020. http://www.janes.com/news/defence/jdw/jdw100215_1_n.shtml
 
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gf0012-aust       2/19/2010 4:01:32 AM
RCS improvement or even relaxing the requirement based on lessons learned. That's what I was talking about. IF. Personally I'd much rather see, assuming its the best option of course, something like you described.

IMO, the issue is  more about tactical relevancy than technical merit.
 







 
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DarthAmerica    @Phaid   2/19/2010 4:02:30 AM

War is a few guys in Humvees escorting a convoy of fuel trucks and hoping there are not IEDs, RPG teams or snipers along the way. If there are then they hope that the USAF or other have a UAV orbit that can give early warning of the coming danger in time to do something. They also hope that the have the latest up armor kit and body armor. But hope wont provide that. FUNDING DOES. Limited funding that if squandered on platforms that aren't essential due to romanticized institutional resistance change won't be available and they will die.


That's called Cherry Picking. Four things you need to understand about my argument. First, I respect your opinion and right to disagree, Second, THERE IS NO EXTRA MONEY.  Three, my argument is not FOR any one platform but rather spending on those things we need most. Four, my arguments are based on experience which has dramatically changed my view of where our priorities should be.
Strawman. I have never denied that there are other areas the DoD needs to address as well. Moreover, if there was any "EXTRA MONEY", it should be used to address this and not on unemployed F-22's and new production fighters from last century as you have advocated.

-DA 

 
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Phaid       2/19/2010 5:00:55 AM
That's called Cherry Picking. Four things you need to understand about my argument. First, I respect your opinion and right to disagree, Second, THERE IS NO EXTRA MONEY.
 
Right, no extra money, but we need to spend tens of billions on F-35 development and hundreds of billions more in additional operating costs compared to the alternatives.  Gotcha, makes perfect sense.
 
 Three, my argument is not FOR any one platform but rather spending on those things we need most. Four, my arguments are based on experience which has dramatically changed my view of where our priorities should be.
 
And based on your experience our priorities should be on having every one of our tactical fighters lug around stealth and internal bays?
 
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RedParadize       2/19/2010 5:34:11 AM
Very interesting topic here, thanks Phaid & other.
 
For the USAF, retrospectively, it might have been a better choice to go with VLO superiority fighter + conventional fighter/bomber combo. But its way too late to to cancel the F-35, so everyone will have to live with it.
 
I believe the F-35 is not easy to judge. I mean, it have to be polyvalent, stealthy, have CTOL, STOVL and CATOBAR variant, do the mission that half a dozen of platform where doing previously, AND fit the need of every partner involve in the program. Yeah, easy shot! When you have to pack all that on a single airframe, You cant expect it to be good as the F-22 in a/a combat, nor be as capable as a 4ft gen fighter/bomber in low intensity conflict.
 
I also have to admit that I still doubt it will be that less expensive than a F-22, is it really a less complex plane? From what I understood, VLO require allot of stuff to be hand made, a larger production is it really gonna change the fly away price tag that much?
 
About the restarting the production of of the F-22, I cant see any potential treat that could justify that. but a cheap and easy to maintain CAS could be useful I guess, VLO is a luxury when the enemy no more have air defense.
 
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gf0012-aust       2/19/2010 6:06:26 AM
From what I understood, VLO require allot of stuff to be hand made, 

the last mandrolic LO manned platform was the F117.  Its already retired.


a larger production is it really gonna change the fly away price tag that much?

its an economies of scale issue - of course it will.  break even is atypically 250-350 units - the F-22 hasn't even broken even and has multiple blocks.  the earliest block is cost negative to bring up to standard and will end up relegated to other duties.
sunk costs + no break even production  = badness - compare that to any asset built in excess of break even and the economics stand out immediately.  even on a worse case scenario the JSF will be well past the break even build rate by a factor minimum of 500%
 

 
 
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sinoflex       2/19/2010 6:39:17 AM
If one accepts the criticism from the anti-JSF proponents, what are the alternatives?  Killing the program and buying F16 Blk 60s, F-15Es and Super Hornets instead seems to be what many seem to be proposing.  But it doesn't appear to be as simple as that.  It doesn't address the perception that current legacy platforms are not survivable against S300/S400 IADS nor possible future 5th gen competitors that might appear over the service life of the replacement jets.  Then there is the networked, high SA, sensor fused, advanced MMI air combat paradigm that the US is working towards and hoping to implement with JSF.  Isn't a significant portion of the cost of JSF in all the software, systems integration and sensor technology?  Would those systems not have to be incorporated into any new legacy aircraft that are built?  This would require time and money and given the need to replace aging airframes would this be significantly less risky than continuing on with JSF? 
 
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Hamilcar       2/19/2010 7:47:25 AM
Meanwhile we have capabilities like the crop of UCAVs under development that need more funding. 
 
Agreed. I said I wanted more robots.
 
We have our entire maritime patrol fleet that needs replacement. 
 
This is in the works. Some of those should be robots (flying nodes).
 
We have run our JSTARS and AWACS fleets into the ground. 
 
New airliner designs.  The modernized 747 is a good choice.
 
Our tankers are in dire need of replacement. 
 
Critical 1 whatever else we may agree or disagree. The tanker fleet is highest priority as long as it is NOT Airbus.  
 
Our intratheater airlift is coming apart at the seams. 
 
We can scrape by maybe a decade.
 
We're wearing out our Navy fighters so fast that by 2015 we'll be struggling to scrape together eight air wings' worth of fighters. 
 
True, but we only have the Super Hornet in the pipeline now. We need both F-35s and the 47s as well as the Predator Cs to reconstitute the naval aviation. Its what we have, unless you want to start over. We need naval aviation.    
 
But we are willing to sacrifice all that on the altar of the JSF, because somehow we feel that having thousands of manned, stealthy tactical fighters is more important.
 
We need to fund it. The robots are not ready yet and just churning out Falcons is Sprey stupid against even the Flankers that flit around now. The Russian planes are not that bad. Its just their  missiles and radars/electronics that are not that good. Do you want to wait until the next generation Russian avionics and an Archer and Adder future combo that really works shows up to develop a counter development cycle like we did in the 1970s? 
 
H.
 
 
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Phaid       2/19/2010 10:01:51 AM
We're wearing out our Navy fighters so fast that by 2015 we'll be struggling to scrape together eight air wings' worth of fighters. 
True, but we only have the Super Hornet in the pipeline now. We need both F-35s and the 47s as well as the Predator Cs to reconstitute the naval aviation. Its what we have, unless you want to start over. We need naval aviation.    
 
We can skip the F-35 and continue with the Super Hornet until the X-47 is ready.  Predator-C will be ready in the short term.  Continuing the F-35 will not fix the 2015 fighter gap, and in fact is the cause of it.  The Navy clearly isn't cheerleading the F-35.  I bet they're wondering when a F-35C will start flight test, though.
 
But we are willing to sacrifice all that on the altar of the JSF, because somehow we feel that having thousands of manned, stealthy tactical fighters is more important.
We need to fund it. The robots are not ready yet and just churning out Falcons is Sprey stupid against even the Flankers that flit around now. The Russian planes are not that bad. Its just their  missiles and radars/electronics that are not that good. Do you want to wait until the next generation Russian avionics and an Archer and Adder future combo that really works shows up to develop a counter development cycle like we did in the 1970s? 
 
I don't want to just churn out Falcons, I want to continue F-22 production at a low rate as well.  The one thing I agree with the anti-F-22 folks in all of this is that the Su-35 and T-50 level threats won't just miracle themselves into mass production overnight.  If we keep building F-22s, we have overwhelming superiority now, larger numbers for the projected threat later, and the ability to upgrade in the future. And in that context, the 2020 kickoff for a F-22 replacement makes sense.
 
By dropping the F-35 we save money -- not just dev costs, but ongoing operational costs -- that will help fund the tankers, EW, ELINT, MPA, lift, and other critical infrastructure that we've already neglected too long.  And we're not talking small change, just in 2008, the DOD projected lifetime F-35 operating cost nearly doubled, by $300 billion.  The cost projections haven't fallen since then.
 
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DarthAmerica    @Phaid   2/19/2010 11:17:28 AM

By dropping the F-35 we save money -- not just dev costs, but ongoing operational costs -- that will help fund the tankers, EW, ELINT, MPA, lift, and other critical infrastructure that we've already neglected too long.  And we're not talking small change, just in 2008, the DOD projected lifetime F-35 operating cost nearly doubled, by $300 billion.  The cost projections haven't fallen since then.


That's just plain not true. It's amazing you can't see that. Even a cursory analysis will show that.

-DA 
 
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Phaid       2/19/2010 12:21:41 PM

By dropping the F-35 we save money -- not just dev costs, but ongoing operational costs -- that will help fund the tankers, EW, ELINT, MPA, lift, and other critical infrastructure that we've already neglected too long.  And we're not talking small change, just in 2008, the DOD projected lifetime F-35 operating cost nearly doubled, by $300 billion.  The cost projections haven't fallen since then.

That's just plain not true. It's amazing you can't see that. Even a cursory analysis will show that.

-DA 

From the GAO study I linked previously: "Further, informed by more knowledge as the program progresses, DOD doubled its projection of JSF life-cycle operating and support costs compared to last year?s estimate and its expected cost per flight hour now exceeds that of the F-16 legacy fighter it is intended to replace" and "Recently, DOD sharply increased its projection of JSF operating and support costs compared to previous estimates. The December 2006 SAR projected life-cycle operating and support costs for all three variants at $650.3 billion, almost double the $346.7 billion amount shown in the December 2005 SAR and similar earlier estimates."
 
Again, those are from a GAO report issued in 2008 and using 2007 data; things have gotten worse since then, not better.
 
Earlier this month, NAVAIR showed that the F-35 will be more expensive to operate and maintain than the current AV-8B and legacy Hornet fleet (both of which are already VASTLY more expensive in O&M than the F/A-18E/F):
 
http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k90/in_a_coma_dial_999/jsfcost20100218.jpg" />
 
Those are the support costs, of course, not acquisition costs. At its peak (which is to say, when the numbers are the most comparable) the total O&M for the F-35 is higher even though it involves fewer aircraft each flying fewer hours per year.
 
Not that those F-35s are getting any cheaper to buy, either.  Flyaway cost has risen from $69 million in 2001, to $82 million in 2003, to $95 million in 2005, to $104 million in 2007.
 
 
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