Mark, the GAO, DOT&E, NAVAIR, those nasty, bad people that put out SAR reports as naysayers too.
I like the following. There is more here than what the writer may have intended:
When I grew up in the 1950s, America was in a period of greatness, dreaming great dreams and driving towards impossible goals. If we had the internet at that time we would have heard about the constant problems with Air Force, Navy and Army programs and the fundamental failures of the Space programs. Tests constantly failed, pilots died and companies failed in the quest for greatness. In the internet naysayer world, I am not sure this would have been possible.
The difference is today, a Kelly Johnson or Ed Heinemann would have been pushed out of the F-35 program for being:
Naysayers.
17 comments:
Seriously, if the F-35-type Program (flawed business model from inception) had been proposed back in the competitive 50s era, whomever did would have been reassigned to a radar station up in Greenland - if he were lucky.
Yes they dreamed big, but a program had a limited budget and success had to be based on performance and meeting budgets. Dozens of Earth-moving aviation programs were killed before production or were discontinued early, because they would simply not be cost-effective or perform to spec.
With all respect, this guy should read up on a little Aviation history.
Mr. Laird's observations are fine from his perspective. It is amusing that he agrees that operational work arounds for all the predicted A380 problems needed to be addressed. Most of them, including the runway strength issue, are valid. Some Airbus competitors might look at the situation and remark that the airport world was forced to spend resources to adapt to the A380 quirks. Maybe some advantage for another type could have been gained with a different infrastructure change or operational tempo mod. Nothing Mr. Laird says is wrong. However, his words do not allow for any exit scenario. In his description, all the projects will eventually work as advertised. Yankee ingenuity will prevail. Giving up is a worse sin than failing to deliver. I am developing a thought experiment. Hmmm...If the A380 died on the vine because another Airbus product was deemed higher priority for resources, would he be prepared to be a naysyer against that project? If the competing project is already five years late to schedule than the A380 with some three more to go, would he be a naysayer then? How about if advertised performance and costs of the alternate project are nowhere near the ten year old promotional copy? Things are different if you are giving or taking resources, aren't they?
I hear there is a new book coming out. It's called:
"F-35: When accountants get involved."
What we really need is the next version of the "Fighter Mafia", a new John Boyd, to continue the fight for affordable but highly effective tac-air as he did with the leadership for the F-15/16 programs.
I forgot, add the A-10 to that group of planes from the Boyd Fighter Mafia.
Hey, at least Air France's A380 don't have RR engines that frag themselves inflight - might have the wing cracks though...
SLD's rosy report on the Airbus A380 and the USCG's new HC-144A's (also an Airbus aircraft) might have something to do with their "Sponsors" or "Partners," or whatever they call them. Hey, LM is one, and look at the coverage they get for the F-35.
Would somebody please call Dr FeelGood at the Lockmartington institute, and tell him that we've found his missing Mini-Me.
Thanks.
Eric, nailed it with: "too funny".
This is Mr Laird's bio from HIS website SLD : "Dr. Robbin F. Laird is a a long-time analyst of global defense issues. He has worked in the U.S. government and several think tanks, including the Center for Naval Analysis and the Institute for Defense Analysis. He is a Columbia University alumnus, where he taught and worked for several years at the Research Institute of International Change, a think tank founded by Dr. Brzezinski. He is a frequent op-ed contributor to the defense press, and has written several books on international security issues".
Nice bio but where does it say that he worked for LMT, BA or Airbus, maybe EADS? perhaps NG? How many years was he behind a drafting table or CAD to know so much about engineering? He worked most of his life in think tanks. How much does he know about design, testing or even actually using these weapon systems he advocates? Was he a pilot? Did he serve his country? Doesn't say that he did....
Basically, I completely disagree with his point of view. I think we need more naysayers, more whistle blowers, more people willing to challenge authority and rock the boat. History is full of people that went to there death because "authority", "experts" and "know it alls" told them not to worry, we have it under control, we know what we are doing, we have information that you don't have....
Titanic? Bernie Madoff? Financial meltdown? Fukushima? Etc...Didn't we hear or heard "authority" say "don't worry, we know better"? "trust us and not that one guy that says we are wrong" Too bad there weren't some naysayers when Titanic left port, wonder if those people knew that there wasn't enough lifeboats for everyone? Think they would have wanted to know that little pice of info?
What about some of the recent airplane crashes? Seems more and more we keep hearing the experienced captain telling the low time copilot to shut up, not say anything and what happens? They crash and everybody dies. Happens in the military too, remember that B52 display pilot that kept breaking every USAF rule and ended up killing himself and the veteran crew, NOBODY SPOKE UP!
I think the one problem is organizations like LMT,BA or Airbus don't have enough experienced engineers to take the data from the computers/ simulations and add some "fudge" factor that is more realistic. Seems to me they blindly believe what the computer spits out and that's it, the computer said it will take 4 years, than it must be true. I actually witnessed this mentality in the 80s working for the US aerospace industry where mistakes were made and the young engineers never checked there own numbers! Well, the software said that's the number and that's the number they used, couple of hundred thousand dollars in parts later, we found on the line the mistake was a simple TRIG error, talk about embarrassing for the so called "expert engineers".
The other problem is really simple human nature, no one wants to give the bad news to his or her superiors and those superiors that don't want to hear bad news. Gulf War II,George W Bush and his team of experts like Cheney and Rumsfield come to mind when it comes to NOT wanting to hear the OTHER point of view, possible BAD outcomes or worse case scenarios.
Finally, maybe I am a naysayer but does that mean that I am against progress, examples like A380,787 or JSF. NO! It just means I don't take at face value what these organizations say. It broke my heart, it really did when for the first time I started to critic JSF and LMT. I grew up idolizing Lockheed, for crying out loud, I still have a giant poster of the SR71 in my bathroom of my house!!! It pisses me off to see what it is written about LMT,BA,USAF,et al...
I served my country and it hurts to see what is going on and you believe that we are heading in the wrong direction and people just say: "don't worry! you don't know what you are talking about! we know better"!
Wow, I wrote so much, that's not even all of it but I just found out that there is a maximum word limit on ELP!
@Canuck Fighter
If you're interested in Boyd and the 'Fighter Mafia', this paper titled "The Revolt of the Iron Majors" gives a good account of the culture change in the USAF after Viet Nam. And a rather different perspective of the legendary John Boyd and fellow LWF Mafiosos.
http://etd.auburn.edu/etd/bitstream/handle/10415/595/MICHEL_III_55.pdf?sequence=1
Agree or with the author,or not, it's a very interesting read.
JRL
@JRL
Thanks, looks like an interesting read.
OK, I'm a BAD BAD JSF HATER!
Really we should just change his name to Mr. Lard, as in fat blocking the reality signals from getting to his brain.
Truly Mr. "Lard" has a bright future over at the Lexington Institute and the Dr. Feelgood mini me analogy is SPOT ON!
The F35 helmet.
http://gizmodo.com/260482/f+35-helmet-display-system-to-scare-the-bejeezus-out-of-enemies?tag=gadgetscombathelmet
Maybe we can get scare our enemies to death.
Would a modern day John Boyd make it past Captain in today's USAF?
"Would a modern day John Boyd make it past Captain..."
Hard to say. I'm sure there are Boyd's in the service out there. The challenge for tac air is that two COIN wars have not had any significant air losses. In Vietnam there were serious air losses to aircraft initially, then mostly to SAMs. The COIN wars have lead to innovations mostly for ground forces. So there are probably Iron Majors in the Army.
Change seems to happen when the pain threshold reaches a point where continuing to do the same thing is worse. Right now our Def depts are pushing for massive stealth aircraft numbers, but without ever experiencing real losses (only that we will have those losses). The question has been, are there other more affordable tactics such as anti radiation missiles, UAVs, cruise missiles, some stealth or a combination of all of the above. I doubt we need 2,500 stealth aircraft given the cost structure.
I see that Bill Sweetman has now waded into the fray...
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=
Later this evening, I'll drop by JSFanboy Central aka F-16.net, just to watch the congregation of the faithful rise up in their righteous, sputtering fury at Blasphemer Bill's heinous heresy.
It'll be fun ;o)
JRL
JRL
Unfortunately the link you supplied to Bill Sweetman's article doesnt work. What is the name of it so we can find it?
@goldeel1
The link was to his thread "JSF Proponents Say the Darndest Things Pt II" in the AviationWeek Ares blog, and he also has a longer article -'JSF Testing Finds Additional Problems' - in the 'international Defense Technology' section of the AW homepage.
JRL
Post a Comment