20 years-ago the stealth strike aircraft for the U.S. Navy known as the A-12 Avenger was cancelled by then U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney due to insurmountable problems with the program.
"The A-12 I did terminate. It was not an easy decision to make because it's an important requirement that we're trying to fulfill. But no one could tell me how much the program was going to cost, even just through the full scale development phase, or when it would be available. And data that had been presented at one point a few months ago turned out to be invalid and inaccurate."
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, 1991.
After the cancellation, the U.S. Navy dusted off the plans for the advanced Hornet--something it previously rejected--and the Super Hornet was born.
Forget lawyers looking over the shoulder of a drone pilot ready to pull the trigger on a dirt insurgent. Big-dollar military industrial complex contracting is were the iron crosses grow for real lawfare.
The legal battle of who should pay what between the contractor and the government for the cancellation of the A-12 still rages on today.
"The Supreme Court unanimously overturned a lower court ruling that would have required Boeing and General Dynamics to repay billions in federal payment, instead sending the 20-year old case over the failed A-12 stealth fighter jet back for further litigation."
The U.S. Government and Lockheed Martin figure that the alleged life of the F-35 program could go out to 2065. If it is cancelled in the coming years--alternatives and all that--this may be true; for the legal fallout anyway. And what historical lessons do you think industry lawyers looked at when they wrote up F-35 contracts for the government to sign? In the war to make bullet-proof contracts, traditionally, who has better lawyers; industry or government?
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If you read _The Five Billion Dollar Misunderstanding_ I believe it is (good luck for under 60 bucks) you will discover that the USN -knew-, from independent NAVAIR projections, that MACDAC and GD were waaaaay under the real weight range and thus cost projections on the A-12 and failed to call them on that.
Northrop/Grumman said they would only work under an 'exploratory' cost+fee, no-loss, condition because they didn't think it could be done and their mini B-2 reflected this, being much bigger. When Navair refused to back off the fixed cost part of the program, they threw up their hands and said "G'luck!" as they walked out the door.
Ignoring the obvious issues with a single source contract, these shenanigans induced an antideficiency condition from the outset because they knew the contract would fail. They then played the hardguy, hoping to get MACDAC/GD to give a little on their own profit margins.
Government program directors are not allowed to do this. You have fiduciary responsibility above and beyond all others a contract officers and they got the lady who was signing her name on the line with a felony sentence for what amounts to perjury of NavAir documents. Shielded the rest of the bunch who (before her) actually set this bus in downhill motion toward the orphanage.
They also lied (perhaps unintentionally but certainly over optimistically) about the amount of cross-service support that could be expected in the development of LO for the jet. The USAF is -notorious- for sharing absolutely nothing with the Navy or anyone else.
Hence MACDAC/GD ended up humping both stones up the pyramid and they simply ran out of money.
Now, I'm not saying that they didn't waste a LOT of dough on fancy vacations for execs, an assembly building that was more like a navair museum and conference hall than a real factory, and of course the famous wingspars, bolts and mockup.
But the fact is, that when you call up someone at Lockmart and they say: "No, no, no! This is all wrong, the majority of the thermal spike comes -after- shutdown!" in terms of designing an exhaust duct for essentially the same engine as the F-117, and MACDAC/GD have to start All. Over. Again.
You are essentially running a redevelopment of Gen-1 LO technologies in a Gen-2 LO airframe (in fact, the A-12 would have been coated from front to back in LO tiles, it would not have been a 'shaped' airframe hardly at all).
That's not cheap.
And it's not the Contractor's fault that they got told to expect help they never got. And worked under a weight spec, they never should have been let in the door with.
Was it a mistake to drop the A-12? Ainh. I look at flying dorito chips with a length half their span and double slotted flaps decorating the entire TE, making a play for the three wire and I see CG, glideslope control ( sinkrate vs. pitch) and (yaw) directional control issues all over the place.
But the irony is that I don't think it would have mattered in a landbased role and here the USAF did to the USN what the USN did to the USAF: dumping their half of the production requirement and spiking the ball on the whole program.
Power would have been a big issue but given you progressed to F414 or Scaled-101 cores, it would have been a better F-111/F-15E replacement than it was an A-6 one. And it would have come closer to achieving what the JSF-C is going to do in augmenting the Super Horror (which means NGAD would be in the bullpen instead of the F-35 dominating everything... A-12 was really the point where the trainwreck of tacair became inevitable...)
Point Being: no one was guiltless in the ATA program and there were so many vendettas and budgetary knives flying around here that it's hard to say which side to turn your back to.
At it's worst, it certainly was not a bigger waste of tacair money than the F-35 is shaping up to be.
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