The A-12 was a gigantic failure for the U.S. Navy. Billed as a stealthy striker from the carrier to replace the A-6, it also had joint potential with the USAF.
There were so many design problems; the USAF ducked out of the program and the project was consuming an insane amount of cash. Then U.S. Defense Secretary Cheney, cancelled the project in early 1991 at the start of Desert Storm.
"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
What is interesting is that just a few months before, in the September/October 1990 (Vol. 72, No. 6) issue of Naval Aviation News (Then billed as the Navy's oldest periodical) the "editor" and boss Vice-Admiral Richard M. Dunleavy, Assistant Chief of Navl Operations (Air Warfare) penned a lead article, "A-12: Confronting the Flak".
According to Admiral Dunleavy, A-12 problems were workable and America needed it. No matter that first flight wasn't until 1992, if not later. Or that the development was 30% over designed aircraft weight yet somehow had passed "critical design review". You may have seen similar words about troubled weapons systems before.
What makes the interesting article suddenly fascinating is when you compare it to today's situation. I have put the article below as it was a poorly imaged PDF file.
Upon reading the article, my thought was, "wow!". Today's top Naval leaders are saying the same thing about the troubled F-35C.
-click on each separate paragraph image as needed to view at a larger size-
H/T-a reader
5 comments:
The lawyer who led the multi-firm team that successfully sued the US Government over the A-12 wrote an excellent article in Proceedings magazine outlining the real problems with the A-12 program. In particular he emphasized the cancerous effects of false claims about technical maturity, cost and schedule. "It seems not to matter," he said, "that such contracting is illegal and unconstitutional, or that, because of it, we face the very real prospect of another round of A-12 adventures."
Pre precision stand-off weapons. Still, I think it would have been good to get the A-12 online back then, despite cost overruns and all ...
The failure to produce a successor for the A-6 put the Navy out of the heavy attack business.
The failure to get the F-35C onto carrier deks will - what? At least drastically change the face of U.S. naval aviation, probably heavily towards unmanned. No answer if that would be bad or not ...
The USN needs an overpriced under-preforming stealth strike fighter (F-35C/A-12)in the present fiscal/funding environment like a hole in the head.
The A-12 and the F-35C have a single critical element in common, both were/are hyped products not ready for prime time and supported by marketing trash and vaporware technology.
Wouldn't be refreshing to see a modern aerospace multinational corporation market an aircraft that they can actually successfully build?
http://www.saabgroup.com/en/Air/Gripen-Fighter-System/
Exactly
Sukhoi...
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