Forum: General F-35 Forum

I saw a rather intelligent story on the news yesterday (that in itself should be news - rare as it is). Anyway it was about post election deficit reduction. It is a stone cold fact, that failure to cut the growing deficit will result in further credit rating downgrades, which will in turn will increase the interest we pay on our debt. So, unless we want to just pi$$ more and more money away in interest, we have to cut the deficit by 2.5 to 3 trillion over the next 8 years. The story asserted that if Romney is elected, there will be modest tax increases on the upper class and rather extensive slashes in health care and other entitlements. Conversely, if Obama is reelected, the tax increases will be larger, and most of the spending cuts will come from defense.

So if Obama indeed wins (a 50% probability IMO), where should the defense cut axe fall? This is a F-35 centric group, so I don't expect many votes to go there, but SOMETHING WILL get cut, and in a big way. Just to give you an idea of where the money is going now, the President's current (pre-cut) FY13 defense budget looks like this:

ARMY Procurement:
Aviation: $6.3B
Missiles: $1.4B
Tac Veh and Weapons: $1.5B
Ammunition: $2.1B
Other $10.2B (C2, survivability, EW, NBC, CSS)

NAVY/MARINES Procurement:
Aircraft: $17.3B
Weapons: $3.1B
Ammunition: $1.1B
Shipbuilding and Conversion $13.6B
Other: $6.3B (ASW Support, Aviation Support, Ordnance Support)
Marine Ground Systems: $2.6B

AIR FORCE Procurement:
Aircraft: $11.3B
Missiles: $5.5B
Ammunition: $715 Million
Other: $19.5B (Space systems, EW, UAVs, C2,)

FORCE WIDE Procurement and Expenditures:
Special OPs, NBC, UAVs: $4.4B
NBC & WMD: $1.3B
Joint Misc: $289 Million
R&D: $69.4B
Reserves: $19.0B
National Guard: $28.0B
Active and Vet Health Care: $49.0B
Military Family Support Programs: $8.5B
Base Construction: $11.2B
Contingency OPs: $88.5B ($86B is in Afghanistan)

In summary, the FY13 defense budget it looks like this:

$ in Billions

Military Personnel 135
Ops and Maintenance 209
Procurement 99
R&D 69
Military Construction 9.5
Family Housing 1.7
Revolving Funds 2.1
Total 525

So, should Obama get reelected, where will / should $150 to $175 billion in defense cuts (annually) come from?

Note: Saying "no cuts" in not an option. You can bury your head in the sand if you want to, but if Obama is reelected, there will be significant defense cuts.

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Why is this queston on the F-35 Forum?

1. Because it is by far the most expensive weapons system program. 2. Because this is the most active forum.

As I said, I don't expect many folks on here to say we should cut the F-35. I would like to see what feel SHOULD be cut (and why), when the cuts come.

There isn't a right or wrong answer. I'd just like to know what people think.

The DoD needs to be smarter about procuring relatively high value items. I have great respect Sec. Gate and what he did for the F-35 and the DoD in general. Having said that, When they did the whole 'concurrency' to speed up F-35 and subsequent slow down, this caused problems. What might have been a smarter idea is keeping the supply chain for components running at a higher rate, then storing the components until they are ready to build the jet with whatever fixes are required. This allows the economics of a Multi-Year Purchase, without the technical risks of a jet still in LRIP.

Another area for improvement is cross compatibility. Avoid components that are basically unique to a weapons system. One reason the F-22 is so damn expensive to purchase/upgrade is that a large number of components are specific to that aircraft with no cross-compatibility to other platforms. With modern avionics architecture, they should be able to swap hardware and software components between systems with minimal rework.

It's just as bad with other major projects; Ship-based weapons systems; Large battle tanks (M1 Abrams?) etc.

Could Boeing have made a Navy UCAV with a single F414 engine and other recycled F/A-18EF or F-35 components? probably.
Would it have been cheaper in development and logistics on a carrier... probably.

Edit: The Boeing Phantom Ray uses a F404 engine, I'm not sure of any other commonality with the F/A-18 series.

I agree neuro, there is a lot of pork in the procurement and R&D process and it's a cultural problem that is certainly not limited to the F-22/F-35.

We also don't do a very good job of assessing future threats and tailoring the force to meet them. Too many procurement decisions are made by flag officers and politicians who focus on fighting the last war rather than the next one. Though the F-35 procurement process has been horribly bungled, I will say that from a capability stand point, it does a pretty good job of projecting capability forward technologically.

We also have to let go of service "stovepipes" in training and force structure IMO. For example, rotary wing pilots from each service could receive their training at one central location before moving to their specific branch final phase. That central flight training (presumably at Ft. Rucker) would include instructors from each branch. Fixed wing fighter/attack training could be centralized as well all the way through basic flight, survival training, attack, and A2A etc. Only very specialized tasks such as carrier landing and air re-fuleing would require a service specific school after qualification. As an Army officer, I'd love to see all infantry basic and AIT training conducted by the Marines and to their standard. But these ideas and others like them fly in the face of tradition. Nobody wants change. Centralizing training as described above would save a lot of money due to the the fact that larger, more efficient central facilities could be used and several others closed. That is where the rub comes in congress....nobody wants to see ANY base closed in their district/state, even though it may mean a much more cost effective force. I assert, we could reduce the number of CONUS bases by 35-50%, save billions, and actually increase readiness. Politics stands in the way though.

Cuts? The bloated, redundant, and expensive acquisition, logistics, and engineering bureaucracies.

That, as well as Army procurement, COIN, and the Perry-class frigates. Also consider slashing tactical airlift units.

A targeted and well educated attack on fraud, waste and abuse needs to happen before chopping ANYTHING! We can start with all the perks flag officers and senior military leadership get. They can drive themselves around and pour their own damn coffee. I think the Army has too many commissioned officers to begin with, so we can chop their numbers as well. Ending automatic promotion to ANY rank will save money as well.

There are various DOD organizations and commands that cover a variety of weapons platforms that are nothing but a jobs program for retirees. No unit should have a civilian DOD tech rep. All of that should be done by the troops. When I was in the Army working on Apaches we had 3 DOD guys that were assigned to us from 3 different commands (CECOM, TACOM, and AMCOM) and ALL OF THEM were useless. Only the Boeing and Lockheed Martin guys pulled their weight and were actually helpful. We have too many DOD civilians and too many of them are worthless bureaucrats.

Another thing that really gets my goat is the fact that every service now has different utility uniforms. This started when the USMC came up with their version of the Canadian Army's camouflage. I don't care about dress uniforms, but in the field ALL branches should use the same type of tactical gear and wear the same freakin uniforms.

All fat motherf@ckers in the military need to be discharged if they cannot drastically drop their weight in six to eight months. In general (not always) fat troops are a liability in more ways than one.

Lotsa rich stuff from disco but I'll bite on this one -- "We have too many DOD civilians and too many of them are worthless bureaucrats."

Amen brah... Many DoD bureaucracies are non-performing, overly expensive, self-interested protectionist syndicates wholly disconnected from the best interests of both the warrior and the US taxpayer. We're buying/developing/testing less stuff but these bureaucracies keep getting bigger and more expensive. They make NO effort to cost less, be more efficient, or deliver a better product because they have no incentive to do so. Ultimately they answer to no one but themselves and pass any risk (the price of progress) or blame elsewhere.

Some of this is a consequence of the last round of downsizing. in some cases, in order to ante-up numbers but protect functional structure, what had been uniform spaces were converted to DoD civilian. In effect, that reduced nothing, it simply transfered the funding responsibility from one entity to another.

I would suggest the following. The cuts need to be in the Army first. The US should not have a large standing army and frankly we would get into far less trouble without it around. I think you are also way overestimating cuts at that number. Obama is not stupid on foreign policy. The Army is going to be chopped down but I think the other services largely get spared. Chop the Army down and get out of Afghanistan and you can save plenty.

Right now the Army is 10 divisions and 5 independent brigades (2 are Cav Regiments which are basically brigades). Total this is about 40-41 brigades for argument sake. Just by bringing home the European and Korean based troops you could cut down 6 brigades which is 15% of the force. Spread that across the budget and figure you can cut 10% from the budget rolling forward since you won't get 100% efficiency from that.

That is about $24 billion dollars a year or so.

Figure that absent Iraq and Afghanistan you could cut another 100,000 men from the Army. That lets you cut out 3 more divisions so lets toss the 3rd, 4th and 10th Infantry divisions out. That would cut another 12 brigades assuming we send some to 2nd infantry which has 2 in Korea which is 29% of the force. Now we have cut 44% of the standing Army.

It would leave the US with the following.

1st Armored
1st Cavalry
1st Infantry
2nd Infantry
25th Infantry
82nd Airborne
101st Airborne
3rd Armored Cav
11th Armored Cav

You can reshuffle equipment so that the 1st Armored and 1st Cav are equipped identically as heavy armored divisions. 1st Infantry and 2nd Infantry are heavy infantry divisions. 25th Infantry is your Stryker based force. 82nd and 101st are air mobile.

This is using only 56% of the current active force. Still this is sufficient force to make anyone think twice about really provoking the US. Your average US Armored division is worth several Soviet pattern divisions or more. In the event of a major war deploying just the first 4 divisions would likely mean we had on the ground the most dominant armored force on earth.

Let's say that by all these cuts you only manage to trim 30% from the Army budget, we are leaving special forces and missile defense totally untouched. That still gets me around $730 billion dollars over 10 years in savings, which comes really close to hitting this guys target of $1 trillion. One could probably do a bit better than that simply because you could simplify the army mission to being one of fighting major wars period. You could do away with the rapid deployment and counter-terror stuff that has driven a lot of R&D for lighter weapons systems and accept that the army, at least the first 5 divisions I listed, is only moving in a major crisis.

You have the Marines, the 82nd, the 101st and the 25th to deal with minor conflicts and all should be more than sufficient to that end. You could deploy the Cav Regiments to supplement any of the lighter divisions as well fairly simply.

What has all this bollocks have to do with the F-35. Budget Worries? Get over it. Youse will always have budget worries. Nothing changes.

spazsinbad wrote:

What has all this bollocks have to do with the F-35. Budget Worries? Get over it. Youse will always have budget worries. Nothing changes.

More than that I think the solution is fairly obvious. The main concern is going to be the Pacific. That means the Navy and Air Force get a big priority over the Army. That is where the money will come from.

How budget cutting in the real world works:

"Don't cut you! Don't cut me! Cut the guy behind the tree!"

Just like the guy behind the tree, plans to cut anything are purely imaginary. This is true regardless of who gets elected.

I'll go ahead and include F-35s... not to eliminate them, but I wouldn't object to a reduction in numbers. Most other countries getting them aren't even getting a hundred, and we're planning on multiple hundreds apiece for the Navy, hundreds again for the Marines, and 24 hundred for the Air Force. I can accept the case for an American military system that's bigger than others, but by a factor of more than 24?

I'm not into second-guessing the pros in general with my level of knowledge, so rather than pick programs, I'd favor just reducing almost everything by some percentage, without changing the proportions. One exception is things in research/development or early-phase production which would essentially die if funding went below a minimum threshold. Another exception is that I'd entirely kill the littoral combat ship.

southernphantom wrote:

the Perry-class frigates.

Why?

southernphantom wrote:

Also consider slashing tactical airlift units.

Not enough stuff to move, or not enough need for it to be done by "tactical" assets?

For those who are actually interested in this issue, rather than the armchair quarterbacking, Brookings held a really interesting discussion about Sequestration. I'd urge anybody interested in the field to listen. Click on the audio tab and listen to the panels, particularly the second one.

http://www.brookings.edu/events/2012/06 ... e_military

Forum: General F-35 Forum

Budget Woes - What should get cut?