The F-35…and beyond
James Fallows, in an excellent article in the Atlantic Monthly (see Web page http://www. theatlantic.com.issues/2002/06/fallows.htm) described the political and commercial dogfights between lead companies Boeing and Lockheed Martin for contracts to build 6000-odd Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft, worth probably US$200 billion over 25 years. The Lockheed Martin team version (Lockheed Martin graphics below), was the F-35. It will be produced in three models: F-35A (Air Force), F-35B (STOVL, Marines and RN) and F-35C (Carrier version).
The last manned fighter?
It was a victory with profound implications, not only for both aircraft manufacturing companies but perhaps for the future of the fighter aircraft as we know it. Fallows warns that this decision might well sound the death knell for all future manned fighter aircraft designs, in the USA as well as everywhere else in the world.
Boeing and its merged subsidiary, McDonnell Douglas, have scrapped work on their JSF version, the X-32, shelving expensive plans such as building a big new modern factory for JSF production and redeploying hundreds of JSF employees. Their attention is turning towards an even more revolutionary new family of unmanned aircraft designs, including the X-45 fighter aircraft. The Phantom Works within the Boeing group claims to lead the world in unmanned vehicles capable of performing as fighters, but then again the Skunk Works run by Lockheed Martin is not backward in this area.
Back in 1995, US$30 million was awarded to each of four American companies to design an “affordable” tactical strike fighter that would satisfy the requirements of the USAF, USN and USMC yet have 80 per cent commonality between the three variants. The same family of aircraft would be expected to be attractive to overseas buyers, including the RAF, RN and a number of other smaller potential purchasers, such as the RAAF. Inevitable high research and development costs, the bureaucrats reasoned, might be better absorbed by larger production runs.
The $30 million limit was imposed to stop big cashed-up firms such as Boeing pouring unlimited funds into the project. Less wealthy firms could not afford this profligacy and in the past those extra funds had been recouped through inflated prices for the final aircraft or other military equipment produced by the same company.
Joint concept problems
However, the “joint” concept has problems. As Fallows asserts:
The modern history of joint aircraft for the U.S. military is dominated by one outright disaster — the notorious TFX project (F-111) of the early 1960s, which led to an expensive fighter that neither the Navy nor the Air Force wanted to use — and one unsatisfying success. This was the F-4 Phantom — conceived and built as a Navy airplane, which civilian officials then obliged the Air Force to buy as well.
It might also be noted that the Australian Government and the RAAF embraced the F-111 as a bomber replacement. Nowadays it is the only service in the world still flying that type.
F-111 from RAAF Number 2 Squadron (left) and an RAAF F-18C (RAAF photos).
Massive joint projects attract massive political influence. The USN’s F-18 Hornet was another “joint” project. It is probably something other than coincidence that nearly every State in the USA contributes some component or other to the aircraft’s final assembly. The F-18 replaced the long-serving A-6 Intruder as a bomber, even though its bomb-carrying capacity and range were inferior to the Intruder. The F-18 was also touted as an F-14 Tomcat replacement, even though it lacked that fighter’s performance on any measure that counts in the air.
The RAAF’s first FA-18F Super Hornet makes its first flight 10 July 2009. Some 400 of this model have been delivered to the USN. Delivery of 24 of this model to RAAF Amberley, as a replacement for the F-111, is expected to start in 2010.
The projected JSF performs no better than the USAF’s F-22 Raptor, or even many Russian and European designs now flying. Lockheed Martin claims that the X-35 is better than the USAF’s F-16 Fighting Falcon, but that’s not much of a claim. Even the Raptor’s future is finite. The American Congress in late July 2009 voted to shut down the F-22 production line after 187 models had been built. Efforts to extend production and build an alternative engine by voting more money were opposed by President Obama and Defence Secretary Gates.
Boeing-McDonnell Douglas F-22 Raptor. (Boeing photo)
It might also be noted that “joint” sounds nice and warm and fuzzy, especially for the bureaucrats who see more prestige heading one large project rather than three individual smaller ones, but the final outcome might not be the best for the people who have to wield the weapons. CAPT Terry Pierce, USN, says in a recent article, “Jointness is killing naval innovation,” (Pierce 2001). He shows how lots of new funding depends on a project’s ability to support documents such as “Joint Vision 2010” and “Joint Vision 2020”. He claims innovative USN and USMC leaders who generate brilliant but potentially “joint-disruptive” plans tend to be sidelined. He also describes a number of joint military failures and brilliant single-service strategies that support his argument.
Overseas input
Another political strategy and JSF-related initiative aims to have overseas countries commit to the aircraft by contributing money and resources to the design and manufacturing phases. Britain and Australia, together with Canada, Holland, Denmark, Italy, Turkey and Norway were all seen as likely contributors. Of course, this encourages sales of the aircraft to those countries and reduces the likelihood of them designing and building competing designs.
Target costs for a run of 6000 units in 1994 ranged from US$28 million per aircraft for the USAF version to US$38 million for the Marines’ Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) type. Each USAF F-22 Raptor, by contrast, might well cost US$100 million once its reduced production run, from a first-contracted 750 to 300, is taken into account.
Australian investment
The then Australian Minister for Defence, Senator Robert Hill, announced 27 June 2001 that Australia would invest $300 million over a ten year period to “become part of the (F-35) project”. He forecast that the F-35 would replace both the RAAF’s F-18 and F-111, but that a final decision to fund the full replacement project might not be made until 2006 for delivery of possibly 100 Australian X-35 – type aircraft from 2012 onwards. This decision has been overtaken by events in that another ministerial announcement disclosed the ordering of 24 F/A-18F Block II Super Hornets to be based at Amberley as F-111 replacements. The original price tag for these aircraft, $2.36 billion, expanded rapidly to $6.6 billion once ancillaries and support equipment were included. Similar price blow outs and even longer delays may be confidently expected with the Australian F-35A project.
In the same 2001 press conference Air Marshall Houston, Chief of the Air Force, said that interoperability “has to be a very, very important factor for us” If this is true, then this could be important for the RAN. “Interoperability” opens up possibilities for beefing up the RAN’s Fleet Defence and Strike roles, by RAN or RAAF F-35Bs operating from a USMC-like landing ship platform, or even a new RAN aircraft carrier. Then again, the RAAF might not be keen to explore this kind of “interoperability”.
RAAF website
The RAAF’s website suggests that “The JSF is the most likely aircraft to satisfy Australia’s needs under Defence’s $12 billion-plus Air 6000 Project to replace its current fleets of F/A-18 Hornet and F-111 aircraft from 2012.”
The USAF and RAAF would like a nimble and sleek fast fighter-bomber with all the modern anti-aircraft defensive and offensive weapons to maintain air superiority. The USN wants a similar aircraft, but built more ruggedly with corrosion-resistant properties and beefed up for catapult and deck-landing operations. The USN looks back fondly at the now-defunct old “Grumman Ironworks” that produced so many of these machines, like the world-beating A-6 Intruder and F-14 Tomcat.
The USMC wants the same kind of offensive load-carrying capability and performance in the air, but with a STOVL ability to allow the aircraft to operate from small remote landing pads and to follow the Marines into battle.
This F-35B STOVL version is slated for the USMC and RN (Lockheed Martin photo).
Back in 1995, when there were four companies competing for the JSF prize, McDonnell Douglas looked at installing a separate lift engine to handle STOVL. This idea was never successful and by the late 1990s one of the chief considerations was whether the Lockheed Martin lift-fan configuration could compete with Boeing’s vectored thrust.
The Boeing USMC variant used a vectored thrust layout, in much the same way the AV-8 Harrier handles take-offs and landings. However, Lockheed Martin rationalised that a 30,000 pound machine required more than 30,000 pounds of thrust to accomplish this and any downwards-facing jet exhaust of this calibre so close to the ground would burn grass, lift asphalt and blowtorch carrier decks.
Revolutionary lift fan
Lockheed Martin opted for a revolutionary mechanically-driven lift fan. Unfortunately, the first few months of tests with this design were characterised by exploding gearboxes, broken drive shafts and massive oil leaks. However, they persevered and after a management change produced a surprisingly efficient unit.
One important civilian overseeing all this competition was Darleen Druyun, a Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force. At the time she was in her mid-fifties and she set up computer networks from her Pentagon office to track and cost proposed design changes (Fallows 2002). By 1999 the competition had been narrowed to two companies, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and each received more than a billion US dollars to build two flying demonstration models.
“No more funds”
Both companies, not unexpectedly, asked for funding for cost overruns, in the order of US$150 to US$200 million. “We sat down with them and said we have no more money to bring to the table, ‘kay? It’s yours to fix,” Druyun is reported to have responded.
Despite well-predicted attempts by the services to add one or more newly-invented gadgets, only one signifcant change was accepted beyond the “If-you-want-this-you-must-give-up-something-of-equal-cost” deal. That was a software upgrade that would add maybe 10 per cent to the aircraft’s cost.
The final selection process involved more than 200 civilian and military people evaluating more than 500 aspects of each company’s program.
Is “joint” the best way?
In another article, LCol Arthur Tomassetti, a USMC officer and test pilot, is enthusiastic about his flights in all three versions of the Lockheed Martin X-35. He acknowledges that compared with the carrier version, the USMC STOVL will have a range of only 450 versus 600 nautical miles. It will also carry less ordnance and will have to burn off more fuel or jettison more ordnance to land vertically. However, “Carrier aircraft are limited to carriers, but STOVL aircraft can operate from these ships as well as from amphibious ships,” he asserts (Tomassetti 2002). This greater flexibility, together with the ability to operate from forward landing strips in support of marines ashore is more than worth the ordnance-carrying and landing weight penalties, he says.
Boeing is exploring the 1000 kg bomb-capable unmanned X-45A (above) and a carrier version (Boeing graphics), the X-46 (below).
The way of the future?
The parameters limiting the way ahead become a little clearer. It is unlikely that the X-35 and its production derivative, the F-35 Lightning II, will match the modern F-22 Raptor, the old F-14 Tomcat or half a dozen other machines now flying, but it should be better than the present widely-touted American-built “international fighter”, the F-16 Fighting Falcon, and even some new European consortium-led designs.
Particularly attractive, from an RAN point of view, is the fact that there is one F-35 version with a STOVL capability. Whether the RAAF would ever support the purchase of such an aeroplane for the RAN or Army is another argument.
Then again, perhaps another option is to look well ahead, such as to the cheaper unmanned aircraft family advocated by Boeing. This, together with the way modern conflict is shaping and strong civilian preferences for “jointness”, has the potential to sound the death knell for Air Forces, including the RAAF, as a separate independent service.
References:
Fallows, J. Uncle Sam buys an airplane. The Atlantic Monthly, 289/6, 2002.
Pierce, T.C. Jointness is killing naval innovation. USNI Proceedings, 127/10, 2001, pp. 68-71.
Tomassetti, A. The Leatherneck JSF is just right. USNI Proceedings, 128/9, 2002, pp. 32-33.