Issue 105: April 1995

Nasp

The X-30 National Aerospace Plane has already had $3bn spent on it yet is going nowhere. Whilst some long term R&D solutions to sub orbital supersonic flight may come out of this programme it is doubtful if it will ever really achieve any practical real world dividends before this writer is on the pension. It is almost as much a fiscal disaster as the European Space Agency’s never to fly Hermes mini shuttle and Russia’s aborted Buran/Energia programme. The money that these nationalistic ego driven flights of fancy have wasted could have built a hundred hospitals, cured entire diseases and cleaned up their nation’s cities and rivers.

Jpats

This programme, to originally achieve something as simple as acquire a replacement primary training system for the USAF and replace their aged T-37s in the process, has become a textbook example of how not to run a project. Saddam Hussein master minded his defence of Iraq better than the US DoD handled this long running fiasco. The initial requirement for a T-37 replacement (the type entered service in 1955!) surfaced in the late seventies when the New Generation Trainer (NGT) programme was launched. This itself was fraught with controversy far beyond its technical worth though in the end the Fairchild T-46 was selected 13 years ago as the winner. This visually unimpressive aircraft (dubbed the Thunder piglet) however proved to be both underpowered and overweight and the contract was consequently cancelled in 1987, forcing Fairchild out of the military airframe business in the process. Thus in 1991 the Joint Primary Aircraft Training System programme (which the USN had joined) was launched amid much ballyhoo and for the first time ever included invitations for foreign firms to participate with US partners. We updated this project in our September ’94 edition and a final decision as to the winner is due later this year. However, in recent years there have been so many changes of requirement, slippage of deadlines and threats of cancellation that whoever wins will probably end up losing in the long term. Meanwhile 19 year old trainee aviators continue to learn in aircraft twice their age.

Gd/Mdc A-12 Avenger

What a humdinger this little baby was. A stealth carrier borne bomber which was also being foistered upon the USAF with all the enthusiasm of a dead fish in a swimming pool. So muddled was the original US Navy specs on this multi billion dollar fiasco that its operational requirement was to actually carry 24 500lb iron bombs into combat – just like a B-29 half a century earlier! Can you believe that in this age of low cost precision strike standoff weaponry that they could come up with an idiotic and almost impossible to fulfil requirement like this. To achieve this goal of course really destroyed the aerodynamics of the aircraft and finally scuttled the project. It has now been reinvented as the JA programme which will also wear Air Force livery — shades of the F-111 all over again only at ten times the cost.

Star Wars

Remember that one, Brilliant Pebbles and all sorts of amazing things with rail garrisoned MX missiles racing around a newly concreted US Midwest. Thank God that the Russians opted out of it all when they did. Star Wars later became the Strategic Defence Initiative and most recently the Ballistic Missile Defence Organisation. Old hands always have cause to fear constant programme relabelling (like when airliners are renamed/rebadged at regular intervals to try and hide their inherent failings). Billions were wasted on this technically impossible Ronald Reagan dream which rapidly became the single most popular US Defence Technology Gravy Train of this century. So much money was wasted on this extravaganza that could have gone instead to real programmes and enhancing operational readiness of existing combat units. However, this pursuit of wasting scarce defence dollars on ridiculous programmes is not all America’s preserve, the Japanese and Europeans also can’t restrain themselves from paying a dollar when perhaps fifty cents would more than suffice.

Eurofighter Ef2000

I don’t think there has ever been a fighter that has been singularly responsible for employing as many people in as many nations as the Eurofighter. It has become the defence black hole of the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy. Even if it does live up to its creators wildest expectations this fighter really does nothing more than the present F-15E Strike Eagle and probably less than the forthcoming F/A-18E and the potential F-16XL variants which will one day inevitably emerge as follow ons from the existing Fighting requirement was for 765, this is now down (after years of development delays and political infighting) to around 350. Presently a Eurofighter costs around four to five times what a new F/A-18C does, in real world practical terms achieves little more and yet won’t be operational till around 2001 at the earliest, by which time some $20 billion would have disappeared into development alone. Aren’t you glad you’re not paying for it? In fact the Italians needed a leased stopgap fighter to augment their ageing Starfighters and were offered Tornado ADVs from the RAF and F-15s from USAF. One suggestion is that the former was accepted as it was felt that if the Italians had operated the F-15 then they would not have wanted to swap their Eagles for the Eurofighter when they finally became available around 2002!

Rafale

This aircraft was built by the French after they elected to leave the original European Fighter Programme and go it alone. Now both camps have successfully developed aircraft that essentially do the same job at a cost that neither can afford. The Rafale commenced life with a requirement for 336 aircraft, this is now down to 312 at a project cost of a mind numbing $134m each. Sounds a lot and it is. That for instance would put two brand new F-15Es on your flightline with some spares and smart ordnance. The fact that the latter aircraft is so superior (in every way) to the former is the other side of the world, Japan is generally looked upon as being pretty smart in developing and buying things. Something that soon becomes a myth when looked at closer. For instance, they have spent a zillion on reinventing the F-16. They call it the FS-X and already it is more than two tonnes heavier than the US original in addition to being four to five times as expensive. The mission for the FS-X was principally ground support and maritime strike (given that Japan is an island that depends entirely for its survival on its sea lanes), a superb role for the long legged high capability F-15E. Now Japan not only operates a sizeable fleet of F-15Js but also builds them under licence, so why go for a far less capable solution to the problem at twice the price? Who knows, but what we do know is that the Japanese Government is already talking about being able to afford only 70 aircraft instead of the original 130. Sounds familiar? Japan also built a Main Battle Tank that is singularly unremarkable and yet costs more than twice what a state-of-the-art M1A1 Abrams does. Today Japan continues to build new UH-1 Hueys (when there are hundreds on the surplus market going for a pittance) for about the same cost as a Black Hawk and is now embarking on developing a two seat scout helo that will end up costing as much as a Longbow Apache with the performance of an updated Cobra. Australia however is not exempt from this fiscal madness. Remember the A-10 Wamira (refer Dec ’94 AA). That project wasted more than 60m then year dollars while each Nomad probably cost the taxpayer more than it ever earned GAF as most were given away as aid or at prices totally unrelated to the actual cost of producing the aircraft. The point of all this is that taxpayer dollars destined for defence these days are getting fewer and fewer. Nobody can afford to feed the insanity of fiscally uncompetitive and technically unrealistic make work programmes such as those detailed above. If we do, then a generation of our fighting men and women may well learn the hard way that having just a dozen of the world’s most expensive combat aircraft or whatever is no substitute for the intelligent acquisition of affordable systems and their associated precision guided munitions.