Not a cure

Taxpayer funded “analysis” just isn’t working so well in this country when it comes to air power topics.

Take this latest from some that should know better:

Why the US Air Force needs the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

So according to ASPI, the USAF is in bad shape.

Yeah we know that.

Why someone would suggest a failed program to solve USAF problems makes me wonder.

Only just a little bit.

Am I being too harsh? Not when we are talking about spending tens-of-billions on a faulty product...and tens-of-billions more to fix the mistakes.

But, OK, if I am too harsh, consider another reason for ASPI failings re: air power topics.

They aren't stupid. They just have bad luck when thinking.

Senate report mentions the obvious-Defence procurement broken-destined to repeat mistakes

The Senate might be becoming more aware of procurement incompetence of the entrenched defence bureaucracy.

"In effect, Defence has a flawed management structure that stymies the work of dedicated, professional and in many cases highly skilled personnel," it said.

"Senior officers in Defence may well argue that the failures noted in this report are drawn from history: but if the organisation cannot or will not apply lessons from previous projects to current and future ones then it is destined to repeat them."

To some of us, this is hardly news. Maybe our elected officials can do something about it?

Well, they have had information like this for years and done little.

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-Defence White Paper Fantasy
-Analysing "The ADF Air Combat Capability- On the Record"
-Find out who is responsible for the Air Warfare Destroyer mess
-Analysis of Defence Materiel Organisation Major Projects Management and What Needs to be Fixed
-New DMO Boss warns the staff that business as usual is over
-Project of Concern list
-How dangerous is the Defence Material Organisation to our Defence Industry?
-Australia's Failing Defence Structure and Management Methodology
-More on the dud-jamming gear Defence wants to buy

Amos happy to make it up as he goes along

Amos, the CEO of the United States Marketing Corps F-35 cheerleaders, says no to the ECM support mission for the F-35B.

This was hyped forever by various F-35 faith-based communities. Even if the aircraft's faulty design has paper-thin to no usable weight margins.

Pipe-dream.

Amos fibs:

Amos said the AN/APG-81 Active Electronically Scanned Array radar installed on the F-35 already sets the fifth generation fighter apart as an electronic warfare platform.

“The airplane itself … with the AESA radar and sensors and information sharing capability is a pretty significant EW platform right now,” said Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos at a roundtable meeting with reporters in the Pentagon Aug. 23.

Good luck with that. Besides the fact that his F-35 as a "fifth-generation" meme still will not die, a forward arc-only, limited to in-band (X-band), limited power vs. thermal issues and limited over-all sustained power output AESA radar, Amos is out of his depth on this one.

For example, the Block II Super Hornets delivered to Australia show this as one thing hyped on the sales room floor that was only hope: that an on-board AESA fighter-radar could do realistic jamming (let alone the fantasy of being labeled credible electronic defense gear). AND, at least the Super Block II has a balanced and fused defensive suite; defensive jammer, towed decoy, etc. The F-35? When naked, it has some expendable decoys and (if the software works) enough situational awareness to see what will kill it.

Amos adds another fib at the end of this description of obsolete capability:

The Growler carries up to five ALQ-99 jamming pods as well as AIM-120 AMRAAM or AGM-88 HARM missiles to attack air defenses.

Of course, these ALQ-99s are three decades old and the Navy continues to build its Next Generation Jammer that will fool enemy radars with false returns. Amos said he didn’t see any reason the F-35 couldn’t carry these pods too.

Again, current Growler gear is obsolete against emerging threats, so it is interesting that one would bother putting on such gear to, again, the F-35 which has paper-thin to no usable weight margins in the design.

Also, the dumb idea of the F-35 being an EWO platform; limited aircrew. When they went from the EA-6 to Super-G, they went from 4 to 2 aircrew. This was mentioned as a problem in various reports. This causes workload problems. Maybe Amos can explain how one crew-person can manage all that workload, assuming the lash-up even works.

As time marches on, Amos, with his weak air power theory and his deceptive statements to elected officials, does more harm to the reputation of Marine Air than good.

He finishes though with the cost issue in a rare display of common sense. Like a lot of fantasy "notional" Block 4,5 and 6 efforts for the F-35, what is needed now is to stick to the knitting of making a warfighter-capable F-35 Block 3 exist.

This is far from guaranteed.

Unwarranted risk?

Will there be an F-35 mishap in the future? Very possible. This happens in testing. But how much risk should new trainee pilots wear? They are not test pilots.

What matters is if the mishap has a high degree of being preventable. Below, I have converted a portion of an Inside Defense story about a Osprey mishap.

Let us see if it has legs with the current F-35 program management attitude. With a limited flight envelop almost 6 years after first-flight, what defines unwarranted risk?

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F-35 Crash Report Cites Pilot Error, Wind And Flight Manual

(CNN) A fatal F-35 Joint Strike Fighter crash in Florida this past fall was due largely to mistakes made by the pilot, but wind was also a key factor, according to a Marine Corps investigation report. The report also recommends the aircraft's flight manual had inadequate guidance for the circumstances involved.

60 more Super Hornets for Australia?

Mr. Thomson of ASPI isn't stupid. He is just a bit misinformed on various things that have to do with tribal knowledge of military issues.

With that, he does have his sources. Even if he comes up with some really odd conclusions. There are things that he has to be informed on; or that someone "in the know" told him.

Take for example his opinion piece the other day, and this:

"Second, some of the remaining big-ticket items from the 2009 White Paper need to be discarded in favour of more modest alternatives. Think along the lines of an air force built around 60 F/A 18 Super Hornets rather than 100 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters..."

One does not need a tin-foil-hat to consider that it is possible that the number of 60 was not pulled out of thin air or part of Thomson's imagination.

I believe it is possible that you are looking at a fall-back plan by Defence when faced with limited future budgets, an unworkable F-35 program and the really bad idea of pushing old classic Hornets through the refurb mill (again) to make them last out to the 2020's. Whatever happens, Australia's most expensive flying club, must go on.

Status-quo is something hard to deal with. How would 60 fall into the current legacy Hornet RAAF squadron structure when 71-72 are needed?

It is still workable with some adjustment.

The F-35 may show up someday. However, it is unaffordable and ineffective for any non-anti-access scenario done better by the Super Hornet. Both are unsurvivable for emerging Pacific threats.

Ponder the finer details of squadron conversion amongst yourselves.

USMC not to be slowed down by "bureaucratic obstacles"

The USMC is going to start real pilot training with the F-35B at Eglin soon. Allegedly.

Marine Corps leaders, increasingly concerned about replacing their current fleet of aging fighters, decided to skip the formal evaluation of the plane's operational utility that the Air Force is completing before proceeding with its own pilot training flights at the base.

"The Marines are determined to get this plane into the field as soon as it can be safely accomplished. They don't want to be slowed down by bureaucratic obstacles," said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute think tank.

I wonder which "bureaucratic obstacles" Thompson means? This set of "bureaucratic obstacles", or this set of "bureaucratic obstacles"?

Gilmore, the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation, declined to comment on Wednesday on the Marine Corps' decision to skip the operational utility evaluation, according to his spokeswoman.

After all, according to Thompson and one of his pay-masters, Lockheed Martin, most of the F-35 troubles are the government's fault. So good to go ahead and get this done sooner. If a few $200M-plus mistake-jets are dumped in the process, well, the USMC survived the Osprey debacle. At least an F-35 mishap doesn't kill people by the bushel.

Growler's roosting chickens have been home awhile

In Australia, when reporting defence issues, occasionally the local news people figure out the plot.

Today's Canberra Times points out what some of us have known for years. That is, that the idea from Defence senior leadership to field a jammer-capable Super Hornet is bad.

The "Growler" upgrade for 12 of Australia's 24 Super Hornets is a bad idea because the gear to be put on it is obsolete.

The U.S. Navy, has known this.

For at least 10 years.

$1.7B (if not more) will be thrown away on dud jamming gear.

Par for the course with Defence senior leadership's faulty air power thinking.

(Slides from U.S. Navy briefing via www.dtic.mil dated 2002-3)

General Molan forgets a few things about failed Australian Defence Leadership thinking

Just going through some of Jim Molan's thoughts.

White papers do not defend us in the real world. The reduction in defence spending was taken selfishly with full knowledge that the strategic risk to 22 million Australians had been significantly increased. There are some things that should be above political survival, but of course they are not.

The definition of "selfish" also applies to an entrenched defence bureaucracy (EDB) that eats up billions but returns nothing in real combat capability.

-Air combat roadmap: a wreck
-Basic ship sustainment: a wreck
-Submarines: a wreck
-Project management skills: a wreck

And so on...

The need for a defence budget is based primarily on an estimate of the need, adjusted by the investment available. The need is often referred to as the strategic environment, and sometimes as the threat.

If you believe that there is absolutely no need for any money to be spent on defence and that security can be achieved without armed forces, then I respect your view, but we do not share a common starting point for discussion.

If you believe that the world is not yet perfect, that there is even a small chance that one day Australia may have to use force in pursuit of its interests if not its survival, and that the future is always unpredictable, then you will think that we need armed forces, and we have a basis for considering how much is enough.

Pretty hard to do when the EDB is white-anting Defence while becoming a de facto fifth-column destroying military capability just as well as any enemy.

Assessing how much is enough was prosecuted by competent people in Defence in preparation for the 2009 Defence White Paper. They derived a force structure tested in a number of scenarios and derived from the best knowledge of the demands the strategic environment could place on Australia in the future.

The White Paper for 2009 was a clown-car event. Anyone thinking different is mentally affected.

They came up with "Force 2030", known for having 12 submarines, up to 100 joint strike fighters, three air warfare destroyers, two amphibious ships, new armoured vehicles, etcetera. The Government accepted that and wrote it into the white paper.

Force 2030 was not thought up by the uninitiated, but by the best civilian/military tactical and strategic brains available. Of course, some commentators objected, especially those with a barrow to push, such as a submarine-only force.

Defective thinking at its very best.. and, a magical 2030 force allows for fanciful dreaming while doing nothing of worth. For example, naming the faulty and under-developed F-35 as if it was a reliable solution when there was no evidence to indicate such a thing.

Submarines? Try maintaining the 6 we have as proof-of-concept before going on a rent-seeking mission for the ages.

While you are at it sir, consider how long-range strike ability was thrown away on a lie, and the helicopter capability allowed to fester into an unworkable joke.

For the EDB, we can consider some additional points of defect here and here.

Without addressing the core faults in Australian senior defence leadership, General Molan ignores issues that are the ultimate relation to his cart-before-the-horse thinking.

The current not-so-bright political leadership may be faulty, however they are not the true source of today's Defence problems. Jim Molan's attempt at revisionist history and blame-shifting away from his peer-group (such as Angus Houston) don't make his arguments very solid.

Kopp paper is a warning to U.S. leadership

"If the United States wishes to retain its primacy in modern nation-state conflicts, technological strategy must be restored to the prominence it enjoyed during the Cold War period."


A recent paper by Dr. Carlo Kopp in July's Joint Force Quarterly, "Technological Strategy in the Age of Exponential Growth" walks you through technology growth patterns over the years. Read the whole paper from the beginning. I promise it won't hurt your head understanding it.

For anyone interested in the well-being of U.S and allied military superiority, this paper is a warning that time is up. We better get strong logic fused into our senior leadership or the consequences could be loss of deterrence. With loss of deterrence comes war.

The inevitable consequence of failing to practice good technological strategy is that opponents will produce breakthroughs. A smart opponent will produce repeated “capability surprise” events to an advantage, as the United States did to the Soviet Union, contributing crucially to the eventual bankruptcy of the Soviet bloc.

Technological Strategy vs. Exponential Growth

The presence of exponential growth in key current technologies is a double-edged sword because these technologies have been commodified and are globally accessible in the commercial marketplace. A Russian or Chinese weapons developer will have access to much of the same basic technology as his peers in the United States. This represents a leveling of the technological playing field unseen since World War II. For instance, the well-developed Russian technological strategy intended to defeat U.S. airpower is disciplined and well-considered, leverages exponential growth in key technologies, and displays a deep understanding of critical ideas and how to leverage globalized exponentially growing technologies.

On a level playing field, with exponential growth in critical technologies, the player who can best exploit talent to an advantage—all else being equal—will inevitably win. For the United States and its technologically competent allies, this period should be one of critical reflection. Many recent high-profile programmatic failures display numerous symptoms of poor practice and implementation of technological strategy during program definition and later development, beginning in the decade following the end of the Cold War. Moreover, poor understanding of exponential growth and concomitant early component obsolescence has contributed to severe life-cycle cost problems across a wide range of programs.

A good case can be made that these failures directly reflect the diminished role of technological strategists in the post–Cold War environment, where imperatives other than defeating peer competitor nation-states became ascendant and dominant, while the last generation of Cold War–era technological strategists progressively retired from government service or retired altogether, with few if any replacements trained or appointed.

Bold emphasis mine.

Australian DCP updated-still a lot questions about the high-risk F-35

Public Defence Capability Plans (DCP) like the one updated recently (PDF) are specific and vague at the same time.

Take the AIR6000 F-35 New Air Combat Capability for Australia.

In the DCP the first 3 squadrons show an acquisition of around $10B for 72 aircraft.

Life of type for this platform is expected to be 30 years. Initial operating capability is expected to be 2019-2020--8-10 years late depending on which story you believe from 2002.

Through-life support will be provided by Lockheed Martin's Autonomic Logistics Global Sustainment (ALGS) system using a performance-based logistics approach. This system was mentioned as high-risk in a 2011 U.S. DOD audit.

The plan is to embed Australian industry in the JSF global supply and support chain for the life of the program under the LM's ‘best value’ industry model. ‘Best value’ is determined by the prime contractors through international competition.

Defence F-35 advocates have always wanted a 4th squadron bringing the total number of aircraft up to 100. Initial operating capability for this squadron is expected to be 2023-24.

To give you one illustration of the impact of repeat F-35 program delays over the years, in 2007 (PDF), it was expected that Australia would acquire 3 F-35 squadrons up to 2015 (delivery is usually 2 years after order) and all 100 would have been ordered by 2018.

The DCP expects that the 4th squadron, including more facilities and infrastructure improvement along with block upgrades, could cost $5-10B.

Another phase of the program expects to pay $500M-$1B on weapons.

This means that the new air combat capability for the F-35 (according to the DCP) could cost between $15.5B to $21B.

Yet, there is more.

This project though has another interesting over-spend attached to the Australian tax payer. That is $6.6B for the 24 Super Hornets, along with an additional projection of another $500M-$1B for Super Hornet and F-35 weapons.

Then there is the small handful of billions to upgrade the legacy Hornet fleet--again, because of delays to the F-35 program.

See where this is going? North of $30B.

The cost estimates coming out of Defence have always been fuzzy.

The bigger picture is the loss of Australian regional air supremacy.

May Day

The next budget is coming out.

The bloated defence budget--going on toward $27B per year--does need a haircut.

Not because of the moronic spend-thrift nature of the labor government since they took power but because of the moronic spend-thrift nature of the entrenched defence bureaucracy (EDB).

The EDB except maybe for the Army, has gotten just about everything wrong.

-Giving away air-refueling tankers before an operational replacement exists. That is not only dumb but dangerous behaviour.

-Wishing that Australia can have new and high-risk Collins-class sub replacements at tens-of-billions of dollars, even though the idea is barking-mad.

-Giving away long-range strike of the F-111 on a lie.

-Buying the Super-Hornet on a lie.

-Spending money to upgrade half of the Super Hornets with obsolete jamming gear.

-The endless propaganda about needing the defective and overly expensive F-35.

-Not being able to do basic corrosion control on existing ships.

-Doing impulse buys of military hardware near the end of a budget year because that money can't be spent on existing faulty and delayed programs on the project-of-concern list.

-Having a gold-plated, and ineffective helicopter force-structure roadmap.

-Wanting to buy Air Warfare Destroyers and large amphibious flat-tops that are expensive, hard to find crew for and can't be protected because of a faulty air power and submarine roadmap.

-Fat on flag-ranks, senior executives, and civilian personnel. That is a lot of office furniture (executive style and otherwise).

-Being hostile to home industry.

-Black-listing contractors. This costs the nation in loss of valuable strategic and technical consultation.

-And a few other things.

Yes...poor Defence.

And Mr. Babbage implies that now the 2009 White Paper has "failed". But it was "failed" as soon as it was released.