Forum: F-35 Lightning II

“The evolutionary approach is best…it’s hard to manage a revolution,”

"McCrary advises customers to focus instead on tactics, techniques and procedures, and the effects that they wanted to create. The F-35 program was “going down the same path” as the B-2 and F-22 programs, McCrary claimed. He also pointed out that although both Russia and China are developing stealth fighters, the Su-30/35 series represented the real threat because they were being progressively upgraded and could be fielded in large numbers. In any case, Russia’s PAK-50 “is more like an Su-35 than an F-22,” according to his assessment."

“We have a long-term, cost-effective plan.”

http://www.ainonline.com/?q=aviation-ne ... d-fighters

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Their long term plan will make their customers irrelevant by 2017.

Lockheed's long term plan is to make non Lockheed aircraft irrelevant by 2020?

sprstdlyscottsmn wrote:

Lockheed's long term plan is to make non Lockheed aircraft irrelevant by 2020?

No, Boeing selling their Super Hornets will make customers irrelevant I believe he is saying (somewhat pessimistically I guess).

McCrary is Boeing's International marketing director...

Obviously, he's attempting to scare potential customers away from the F-35. He's undermining faith in the program. The B-2 was never going to be cost effective at the tiny numbers - 100 total - that they were going to build them. The F-22 might have been more cost effective at larger buy/year numbers. Boeing is looking ahead and they've realized that if the F-35 succeeds they're out of the tactical aviation business for the next 20-30 years.

As long as customers don't get cold feet and start fleeing the program, and Lockheed keeps sliding down the cost curve as they've been doing, everything will be fine.

@ stereospace, just exactly where would F-35 customers flee too? All the other aircraft available by the F-35 are outmoded.

(from dictionary.com)

out·mod·ed

1. gone out of style; no longer fashionable: outmoded styles.

2. not acceptable by present standards; no longer usable; obsolete: outmoded dwellings; outmoded teaching methods.

Last edited by popcorn on Nov 14, 2011 - 04:18 AM; edited 1 time in total

Sure. One can focus on tactics, techniques and procedures to achieve greater effectiveness of legacy platforms.. nothing wrong with that.. but now consider how much more capable and effective you will be if you do the same premised on superior Gen5 technology. You can rewrite the rulebook and tilt the playing field to your advantage.

Personally, I can understand Boeing's message. They don't have a program from the US government to bankroll a 5th gen stealth fighter, so obviously they're going to be biased against fully stealth aircraft. Second, given the development difficulties of the F-22 and the F-35, Boeing can make a logical argument that going for a 5th gen fighter involves too much risk, especially for countries without the ability to spend time and money like the US.

Imagine if Boeing won the JSF contract, and then its subsequent development followed the track of Lockheed's F-35, Lockheed would probably be making the same argument about needing incremental progress with upgraded F-16 models. This sort of commentary is a logical consequence of the sheer cost of stealth combined with the reality of 'nominally' competing US fighter companies.

Steorospace, you're right, if Lockheed performs as it has promised then it'll be fine. The problem is that Lockheed hasn't performed as promised, the JSF is behind schedule and costs are higher than anticipated (final costs remain to be seen). It is because the F-35 has had difficulties that Boeing can make this statement.

Popcorn, Boeing's comment is that for the next 8 - 10 years, no one will have a substantial 5th gen force, so its not really worth it it wait that long to build new and advanced fighters. (To support my comment, see the 2018(!), 7 more years of production!, IOC for the USAF).

Finally, one should understand Boeing's predicament. Because the USAF has made the rather crazy idea to outsource all 5th gen production to one company, Boeing is stuck out in the cold. It knows that in 10 years it'll be all but redundant, unless the gov't can come up with 50bn to start another fighter program. And no private company has successfully designed and sold their own fighter since the Northrup F-5...

arkadyrenko wrote:

Popcorn, Boeing's comment is that for the next 8 - 10 years, no one will have a substantial 5th gen force, so its not really worth it it wait that long to build new and advanced fighters. (To support my comment, see the 2018(!), 7 more years of production!, IOC for the USAF).

So what do you do after 8-10 years? Competing Gen 5 fighters will be making their appearance in squadron service by then. The money you could have invested in building up a F-35 fleet that will serve you up to 2040 has been invested in a F-18SH which will be marginal at best vs. the new designs/new threats. Investing in the past will become an increasingly losing proposition with each passing year as sustainment costs will be greater and effectiveness will decline.

popcorn wrote:

Investing in the past will become an increasingly losing proposition with each passing year as sustainment costs will be greater and effectiveness will decline.

It's the effectiveness that will kill your aircraft and pilots. Once 4th Gen aircraft start being shot out of the sky by F-35's, and those same F-35's start bombing adversaries "well protected" infrastructure, no one will be buying 4th Gen aircraft anymore. It'll be like buying P-51's in the age of F-4's.

A maker of a new military plane these days can't even plan on making money from it. "Skunk Works", by Ben Rich, mentions a major aircraft development project through which his company actually lost money by working for the government. And it wasn't even something which the government cancelled or backed out of, which are also always risks; it was something that "succeeded" and went in to production and has been put to use, but had become a money-loser by then anyway because of the same forces that have caused delays and cost increases in F-22 and F-35. (I'm not sure which plane he was talking about anymore and can't find the paragraph it was in.) If one such project can lose money, then that means even some others which do make some will only make a tiny amount that isn't worth the bother (which I do believe could end up being the case with F-22, although probably not F-35).

Another interesting thing to learn from that book is that the history of cost increases and delays in various military aircraft development projects comes from government interference, rather than incompetence of the company's staff or organization, as some here (and elsewhere) seem to think. He spends pages listing examples of how radically the amount of "oversight" has gone up and how much all these government vultures hanging around poking into everything get in the way of real work. He also gives examples using planes that aren't even from his company, like B-2, so he's not just trying to defend or make excuses for his own particular company. (And this book came out too soon to specificly discuss F-22 or F-35!)

Also, to get away from the perspective of the manufacturer and just look at it as a buyer, the case they're making here still has merit. Money matters, and wars can be won or lost not only by the best equipment but also by the best ability to withstand its costs, which sometimes can mean you're better off either getting cheaper equipment but more of it, or just plain getting less to spend less. Even the rich USA has always known this and lived by it, just on a different level from a lot of other countries; if not, then every fighter in our Air Force for the last 30 years would have been an Eagle, not a mix with more Falcons than Eagles. (And we might as well have had twenty thousand instead of just two thousand.) And with higher and higher costs causing more and more concentration of this market into fewer types of planes, customers are more likely to find that their own particular interests weren't given especially high priority in the design of the few types of plane that everyone gets funneled into.

For example, we know Australia would be interested in more speed and range, and Israel's biggest threat now is from Iran, which is hard for a fighter to get to and thus also calls for speed and range. And South Korea knows that a war with North Korea would call for strikes on NK's artillery (which is already pointed into SK and just waiting to be fired the instant a war starts) as fast as possible all at once with as little warning as possible, so SK could benefit from not only speed but also more air-to-ground weapons on internal hardpoints in a stealthy plane. Each of these countries thus has different reasons to consider F-15SE, which is faster, has a longer range, and can internally carry more air-to-ground weapons at once (on four hardpoints instead of two), than F-35. That's not to say F-35 doesn't also have other advantages over F-15SE, but at least this way there's another option to consider, and there wouldn't be, if there weren't somebody taking the approach of coming out with a new derivative of an older scheme instead of creating something new from the start.

Also, even if Boeing were just pulling a marketing gimmick by talking about evolution instead of revolution, it wouldn't be just a case of a loser saying the game was stupid only after trying to play and failing. What they're describing is actually a winning strategy, not only because most of their divisions make other kinds of aircraft rather than fighters, but also because they know that in both of the last two fighter competitions, the more conventionally designed fighter still won; they only look revolutionary now that they're out of context, with the YF-23 and X-32 out of the picture.

steoreospace & popcorn - if the countries buy a small 4gen stop gap now, they can later buy the F-35 in 15 years when the assembly line is in full swing and the teething problems have been ironed out. Sure they'll have a mixed force, but that eliminates the fighter gap for the next 10 years. Boeing's strategy is, in some sense, already being done in the US. The USAF is effectively buying 4th gen fighters right now (with the pretty expensive service life extensions), because of the gap between current fleet obsolescence and airframe fatigue limits and induction of the JSF.

The choice that Australia, Japan, and South Korea face is: buy the 5th gen fighter now, but not get it for 10 years, or buy a 4th gen now, get it in 2, then have to wait a bit and not be able to buy as many 5th gens as they originally planned to. There are trade offs and for the countries that need planes now, they'll probably lean towards getting a 4+gen fighter. (Note, Australia already seems to be acting along those lines)

Also, there is no sign that China, Russia, et. al., are going all out for a 5th gen force, thus a high-low mix is still viable, especially for countries which do not have the money to buy sufficient numbers of 5th gen. fighters. That is further reinforced by the fact that China and Australia don't have the mission need of cracking open a double digit SAM network. They're more defensively orientated, which lessens the need for stealthy strike. Notably, South Korea, which does need to do stealthy strike, is working for an indigenous light stealth fighter with presumably strike capacity. Different needs shift fighter requirements.

I for one think that right now the Eurofighter is a better fit for Japan than the JSF. Note Boeing isn't pushing the Silent Eagle hard in the Japanese market, as stealthy strike for Japan isnt' a big priority. Japan needs more air superiority and defense right now, later on it'll have to bulk up its anti-shipping strike and sufficient ground attack to re-take Okinawa.

@delvo: I think your info is a little out of date (I will be referencing the latest F-15SE data as per the Boeing's South Korean F-15SE PDF. There are two major problems with an F-15SE-based penetration raid.

1. The F-15SE can only fit either two AAMs or one AAM and a 500lb JDAM per pod. No 1k/2k bombs, no SDBs, no cruise missiles, no glide bombs, etc (so you can forget about using it against any deep/hardened targets). Check the two pics from the SK PDF; the first shows it's LO loadout (2xAAM or 1xAAM & 1x500lb bomb), the second shows the hardpoints (notice that the bomb depicted takes up all the space and is of the 500lb variety).

2. Any LO benefit that the F-15SE could have would not help in a penetration mission (without a lot of support) due to it's side/rear RCS is sill in the barn-door category.

@arkadyrenko: Your premise of F-35 vs 4th gen timelines is off. It takes 3 years from order to first delivery, regardless of the plane (F-35 or 4th gen). If you look at the FY2012 budget docs you will see that both the LRIP F-35s and the F-18s take three years from order to delivery (long lead items included). Take Japan for instance, Boeing has said that it can deliver in 2015 (order in 2012) and LM has said 2016 (due to Blk3 SDD). No country has to wait 10 years for an F-35 as there are plenty of production slots available (thanks to the Congress and the weak economy - see the pic from 2010 below).

Australia's choice of the F-18 as an interim fighter was due to the F-111's retirement and it's affect, not F-35 delays.

More from a paper presented by Boeing director of international market development Richard McCrary to Defence IQ Fighter Conference in London. In an ARES post by this forum's favorite reporter, Bill Sweetman opines:

"First, I am beginning to see outlines of a strategy that reflects the possibility that the US Navy will forgo the F-35C (and possibly the B) in favor of an improved Super Hornet. The next step would be to pursue the next manned aircraft -- quite possibly with something that, initially, shares electronics and propulsion with the F/A-18. That was basically how the Super Hornet itself started."

More at: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/de ... 4f78c47fe1

Illustration of Super Hornet notional upgrade path from the same article: http://sitelife.aviationweek.com/ver1.0 ... 5.Full.jpg

Say what you will about the planes themselves, the JSF competition clearly showed that Boeing can produce planes faster and cheaper. I still agree that X-35 was the rightful winner, but X-32 was made much faster and weighed a lot less (less lbs, less $$).

Forum: F-35 Lightning II

Boeing: The evolutionary approach is best