The F-117. Great story, was finished in budget and ahead of time. But then it was a black program without any political oversight. Basically a couple of brilliant engineers closed into a room with the sole task to built a stealth plane.
EDIT: They used components from the F-16 and F-15 programs. Being a black program, this was hidden in spare parts needs for these other planes. I have congress report lying around somewhere which complains about excess spare needs for the F-16 from that period. So, maybe some of the F-117 costs are driving costs of other programs.
The F-117 had very limited requirements compared to the F-35. What's killing the F-35 is the extreme complexity of the program.
The requirements for the F-117 were basically that it had to be stealthy, and had to be able to carry a minimal payload a reasonable range. There was no radar, no vertical takeoff, no carrier landings, no air-to-air, no sensor fusion, no datalinks, no cooperative engagement, etc etc etc.
It's poorly understood how the combination of high performance requirements, complexity, and flexibility mix. Optimizing a system for performance generally requires cutting across domains. Subsystems need to be designed jointly to wring out performance. This means there are many dependencies between the subsystems, so if one thing changes on one subsystem, it may affect a number of other subsystems. If you then add flexibility to the mix -- you want a modular system like the F-35, all of this optimization work has to be done on every combination of parts. Now combine this with a complex set of mission requirements -- every change has to be optimized for multiple missions and multiple aircraft variants. Due to the optimized and complex nature of the aircraft, each change will also affect many subsystems.
Because the system is so complex, no person or even a small group of people can have the entire system in their head, so it's hard to know exactly what will be affected with a subsystem change. Subsystems affected by a change will furthermore not even be built by the same company. This all means that each change has to go through very slow formal processes to make sure it keeps working.
All of this is to say that layering on all of these categories of requirements has an exponential effect. If the F-35 didn't have to be high performance, or if it didn't have three variants, or if it didn't have to perform multiple missions, the project would have been much easier.
Yes, it should have been multiple aircraft, or the scope should have been reduced. It's hard enough to make an aircraft that's good on an aircraft carrier and on land. Adding the vertical landing (B model) version compromised the whole program.
VTOL is a very specialized capability, and there's never been another airplane that has VTOL as an optional feature. You have to design the plane and its engine around this capability, and you compromise on many other things to get it. The A and C models then have to live with many of these design compromises. Even the basic shape of the aircraft, with such a wide front fuselage reduces the performance of the F-35, even though on the A and C models there's no need to be so wide since there's no lift fan.
Meanwhile, it's not even clear that the Marines need a VTOL airplane. The B model has the ability to operate off Navy helicopter carriers, which gives them significantly more punch, but there's basically no real scenario where a helicopter carrier would need it. In a real war, there will always be full deck carriers anywhere a helicopter carrier is. In theory the helicopter carriers would offer additional capacity, but carrier air wings have been scaled back, and full deck carriers only go to sea with 60-65 aircraft even though they have the capacity for 90. If the Marines wanted more of their own air assets they could have just bought C models and operated them off the big carriers like they already do with the F-18.
The B model is also significantly lower performance. It has to takeoff at lower weights, and it has the huge extra weight of the lift fan. This means it has a much shorter range and carries less weapons. If they had simply bought C models and put them on the big carriers, the overall capability would be greater.
Maybe someone more knowledgable about the history can chime in, but the first thought that entered my mind when you were discussing full deck carriers is that the F-35 was designed from the very beginning for international sales. Only a few nations have full deck carriers, while many more have helicopter carriers. It's not surprising then that there are 2 allies with F-35Bs, 3 allies with plans for the F-35B, and none for the F-35C: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
Yes, that's true, but look at the F-35 orders. There are 563 orders for the B model out of 3200 total. The foreign customers are the UK with 138, to operate on their Queen Elizabeth carriers, 30 for Italy to operate on their small carriers, and 42 to Japan for the same.
In 2010, the UK decided to make the QE carriers ski-jump and operate the B model for cost reasons, however they considered making them CATOBAR and operate the C model. If the B model had not existed, they would have simply spent another couple of billion dollars to make them CATOBAR.
It's probably not practical from a budget and political standpoint for Japan and Italy to make CATOBAR carriers, but does it really make sense to compromise a 3200 aircraft program that's the backbone of the USAF and USN's fleet so that Italy and Japan can buy 72 aircraft? Italy and Japan could just buy tanker aircraft for long range power projection.
Your comments make up the most competent and comprehensive analysis I've seen on the F35 program; way more thorough than those presented in Congress or by the various involved aerospace companies. Are you involved in the project in any way?
I'm just an interested observer, but my observations are hardly unique. The same points have been made in many forums including congressional hearings.
Much of what I've seen in congressional hearings is so watered down and blame-shifted it is difficult to assemble into a coherent story. You did a great job of the spark notes version
And congress went along with it (or encouraged it) because theoretically it would be cheaper...
(And the Marines liked it because no one was going to spend the money to build a stealthy V/STOL strike fighter for them unless it was part of someone else's development budget)
(And the Navy IIRC just wanted their fucking A-12 [0] already)
The old "sports car/dump truck" problem: you can make a good sports car, you can make a good dump truck, but what you can't make is a good sports car that is also a good dump truck.
Things are more and more complicated (interacting, and also wide, dense, fast-moving...), and therefore unpredictability grows.
This is true for nearly everythoing, and war reflects it, as up to the Industrial Revolution things (strategy, tactics, weaponry...) evolved gradually. Nowadays nobody knows anymore how all this really works, therefore there is less and less way to predict (how/what/why/when/...) sufficiently accurately in order to prepare/act adequately (for example to equip soldiers).
Hence the need for "something which can cope with any situation".
Fun fact: this 'something' has to be complicated, adding up complication to the complicated global state of affairs, nurturing the very cause of the underlying challenge.
You can almost though. Make it out of titanium, give it gas turbine engines with an electric drive, put the thing on hydraulics so it can get lower to the ground, add electronic stability control to get artificial sports car feel, and some rocket thrusters on the top to keep it from tipping over in tight turns. Maybe you could make the tires out of some metamaterial so it can have slick tires for racing and deep treads for the construction site.
All of that is to say it can be done, but you're going to pay, and it might not be delivered on time.
>The F-117 had very limited requirements compared to the F-35. What's killing the F-35 is the extreme complexity of the program.
This. The only thing the F35 doesn't do it blow the pilot and hand him a beer. Since nobody is willing to settle for a plane that can do everything and sucks at it (and rightfully so) it's turned into this massive project where there's a billion dollars in man hours spent arguing over each little nut and bolt in order to find the compromises needed to create something that satisfies all the stake holders well enough to get sign off.
I think a lot of this is driven by the fact that we have no real enemy at present. It's much easier to say "no we need a system that can do X and Y and we need it now, Z can wait" when you're worried about the USSR having the jump on you. There is no such pressure for competency at present.
That's pretty much my take too. The F-35 had to be able to do absolutely everything, and that generally means it's not going to any of those particularly well.
For a small airforce, a jack-of-all-trades fighter makes a lot of sense (hence the popularity of the F-16 among small airforces), but for the US, it makes no sense to abandon all specialised fighters in favour of a single compromise.
> Basically a couple of brilliant engineers closed into a room with the sole task to built a stealth plane.
I think being able to focus was a big part of it. The F-35 (and F-32) is a 'kitchen sink' of a plane: multi-purpose sounds great in theory, but rarely works out in practice. Especially if you try shoehorning VTOL into the picture.
If they had tried focusing on the F-35A and C variants, perhaps things should be less complicated.
>I think being able to focus was a big part of it. The F-35 (and F-32) is a 'kitchen sink' of a plane: multi-purpose sounds great in theory, but rarely works out in practice. Especially if you try shoehorning VTOL into the picture.
if you look into the history - F-35 started as VTOL, ie. Yak-141, as Lockheed didn't have any VTOL and needed a response to Boeing/Harrier - onto which the "kitchen sink" of everything else was shoehorned/bolted-on. The Yak-141 was never intended and never imagined to be a good fighter plane or a good attack plane, etc., its primary and the only raison d'etre was VTOL as USSR/Russia just hasn't been capable of having real aircraft carriers.
That's the one, sold through Amazon. But I guess you should be able to get it as a pdf somewhere as well:
F-16 Integrated Logistics Support: Still Time to Consider Economical Alternatives: LCD-80-89
My dad was convinced this was how they paid for UFOs. I really hope that's true, but I find it nearly impossible to believe our government would be competent enough to maintain secrecy.
Well at very least these USAF/USN Stealth jet programs are at least competent at secrecy. From an Occam's Razor perspective, it's almost certainly that UFOs are either strange optical aberrations in peoples camera lenses or experimental military aircraft, so in part I think I agree with your dad. Camera weirdness being more common than billion dollar black programs, and those being more common than apparent life in the universe.
My father worked in connection to some of these programs many years ago (long since retired), and his favorite quip was to suggest that a closer inspection of "real" UFOs would reveal a USAF roundel painted on the side. So, naturally, I'm inclined to believe that if any such thing were ever spotted, it would be the result of one of these programs.
Basically the navy pretended to update the Hornet (F-18A, F-18B, F-18C) but actually built a completely new plane. Clearly it isn't the same, because the airframe is dramatically larger. There is a tiny bit of stealth (nothing fancy) but otherwise it looks like the Hornet... except way larger.
It was designed very quickly and cheaply. That was the requirement, and it was met. The whole project was sort of an open secret, pretending to be a revision of the Hornet while actually being an entirely new aircraft. This seems to have evaded lots of bureaucracy.
This reminds me of how my city managed to secure money for a world class concert hall by claiming it was just a multipurpose hall that _could_ possibly be used for concerts.
France's Rafale program is usually considered to have been very competently managed. Of course it's quite a bit older than the F-35, as the program started in the early 80s. But it has been mostly on time [1], on budget and on spec. This is despite sharing some of the complexity of the F-35 in that it replaced most previous aircraft types in use in the French air force (a true multi-role aircraft), and even has a carrier capable version (CATOBAR, not VTOL). It's basically equivalent to making the F-35A and F-35C, without the F-35B.
Of course, having only one nation in the program helped a lot keeping the specifications consistent over time. I strongly doubt the NGF currently being developed with Germany and Spain is going to be that smooth...
[1] delays were incurred by the end of the Cold war: the so-called peace dividends, resulting in military budget restrictions.
It definitely is a competently managed program, as were the mirage programs.
However if you look at the a400m or eurofighter programs, you see delays and budget overruns. The issue lies in the spec creep by the funding parties of these programs. For example the french took deliveries of the first a400m because they needed the plane, but it could not drop parachutists in the first version !
Also note that the makers of these three products are completely different. The Rafale was helmed by Dassault, the A400M by former CASA (Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA in Spain, now part of Airbus) and the Typhoon by what I believe is a former part of British Aerospace (now also part of Airbus).
Airbus really is a collection of companies, so it can be hard to figure out exactly which part does what. I hope Dassault remains the project manager on the NGF, although in the end spec creep really is the biggest program killer...
I believe no such thing exists in the western world. Russian fighter jet program costs appear to be orders of magnitude smaller though, at least on paper.
The Su-57 has a supposed ~$35-$45 million unit cost (versus closer to $78m for eg the recent F35A planes [1]). If you adjust that to the US economic output per capita figures, you're looking at up to a quarter of a billion dollars per plane equivalent for the Su-57. A crushing sum, in other words, for the Russians and their economic capabilities.
However, the Russians sold Su-35s to China at a cost of $83 million a few years ago. So the quoted Su-57 numbers certainly appear fraudulent. The real unit cost is probably twice the claims. There is minimal transparency in such things as it pertains to Russia.
So far it appears they can't afford or deliver their supposedly cost effecient plane:
It's very hard to compare sales figures with fly-away costs as they measure completely different things. Sales figures usually include many extras like weapons, simulators, training, support, spare parts, spare engines, integration with other (usually local) weapons, and other custom developments that can massively raise the bill. Conversely fly-away costs tend to exclude everything to look as small as possible: things like radars, helmet mounted displays, sometimes even engines are left aside.
