In a long and very detailed article, Lewis Page argues that "Britain’s next-generation fighter jet is a disaster in the making". He goes into detail on the background to the present project, and the aircraft that have preceded it in Royal Air Force service. It's far too long an article to reproduce here, so I've selected as an example just one cost comparison between the current front-line aircraft of the US and UK air forces.
The Eurofighter Typhoon, as flown by the RAF, is the most expensive tactical aircraft ever built by the human race. When the last Tranche 1 planes are gone next year (disposed of with half their lifetime hours unused) the RAF will possess 107 aircraft.
Recent statements reveal that the size of an RAF front-line squadron has fallen from 12 to “up to 10” jets. Officials have recently congratulated themselves that they typically have “65 to 70” Typhoons “available” nowadays for the seven RAF front-line Typhoon squadrons that exist on paper.
Some more Typhoons are in the training and test units but it’s clear that others, probably more than 20, are in a long-term un-flyable condition: in deep maintenance, with parts robbed from them to get others flying, or both.
Each of the 107 Typhoons, according to the National Audit Office, cost well over £215m to obtain in 2011 money, or around $355m (£264m) if we use contemporary exchange rates.
By comparison, the undisputed, most powerful fighter jet in the world is the US Air Force’s F-22 Raptor. Only 183 Raptors were made in the end, as opposed to the 600-plus Eurofighters so far.
But despite this much shorter production run and the fact that it is an entire generation more advanced than a Typhoon, the acquisition cost of one Raptor to the US taxpayer was somewhat lower than the cost of one Typhoon to the UK taxpayer. The Raptor throws into stark relief the almost unbelievably bad value for money offered by the Typhoon.
In short, the Typhoon was a procurement disaster.
There's much more at the link. Highly recommended reading for aviation and military enthusiasts.
The article helps us understand why military hardware has become so expensive. The deadweight of bureaucratic and political control interfered so much with the Typhoon's development, and the lack of vision among military leaders in making it a single-purpose rather than a multi-role aircraft, effectively doomed it to operational irrelevance for much of its service life. Furthermore, the astronomical costs of not just each aircraft, but spare parts to keep it flying, wasted so much of the Royal Air Force budget that funds were not available for different types of aircraft, or urgently needed upgrades. (For example, for the past two decades almost every major frontline strike fighter has had AESA radar, offering vastly improved performance over older types: but the RAF's Typhoons are only now beginning to get one - and, at that, only enough to fit to less than half the fleet. Without it, if they had had to fight against other modern fighters, they would have been at a huge disadvantage.)
I suppose we could draw parallels between Britain's fighters and the US Navy's ships. The USN has had so many problems developing new designs that it's had to scrap almost all of them as being too complex and/or too expensive, after its "experts" had spent years gold-plating them and adding every feature they could think of. It's now been forced to bodge together a "frigate" that is basically a slightly more heavily armed Coast Guard cutter, because the much more sophisticated Constellation class frigates have had to be abandoned due to their design becoming bogged down in excessive complexity. Will something similar happen to Britain's proposed new fighter aircraft? I think there's a very good chance that it will.
China is producing new aircraft and ship designs in multiples every year, and building them by the dozens. One hopes that both Britain and the USA will wake up to reality and start moving faster . . . but if the politicians insist on sticking their oar in, that's not very likely. Can Secretary of War Hegseth cut through the entrenched bureaucracy and layers of control that have bedeviled US military design? That remains to be seen.
Peter
7 comments:
Military procurement is nothing but a get rich quick scheme for the corrupt...of which there is no shortage. And this is true pretty much everywhere including Russia and other commie countries. This has been reality for most of history.
We've known since 1930 that central planning doesn't work as well as the planners advertise it will. But, most voters want to live in a fantasy world where their thoughts directly alter reality through the technology of magic. If voters believe then it will become true, just like clapping in the theater prevents Tinkerbell from dying.
Government is religion, and people have faith in it, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. But faith is good, right? The mere act of faith itself, no matter what is being believed in? Roadside signs urge you to 'obey the government of your choice'.
People not familiar with the process simply do not understand the nature of design trade-offs. For example, the A-10 is special. They pretty much took the gun and told the team, build an airplane around it so it can fly right down on the deck and kill tanks with this gun. Building a fighter to do all things is simply the buyer refusing to accept that it is up to him to limit the team's trade-offs by refusing to tell them what the damned thing is supposed to do best, do well or do at all.
Shipbuilding is a different kettle of fish. It is pure congressional pork at this point and no sane officer would even dream of contracting to build a warship anywhere but Bath but even that is simply the best of a very very bad lot. There is zero competition in warship procurement and at this point that is simply how it is and how it is going to be. A shipyard that cannot profitably make commercial ships cannot really make good warships either and it certainly cannot spool up production.
Drones. That is the wild card.
Having been 'inside' that loop, at least on the US side, it is a combination of political power, greed, and changing priorities that overcome the actual design planning to the point that nothing works as advertised. The F-35 is the classic example of a bridge too far, combining multiple roles to the point that it actually does NOTHING well. It is merely adequate, but has all kinds of bells and whistles...
+1 Old NFO
Designed by a committee but not a committee of end users. Creeping elegance means multiple change orders, rebids on construction material and delays.
Add in the Big 7 DOD contractors do not have to follow standard accounting practices that the rest of the providers must follow.
What's a billion among friends? O-7 retirees and above end up with nice jobs with the same companies they were suppose to keep honest
As for PRC tech, I have my doubts,
Me, I'm just an aging civilian so do not have any insider knowledge. Reading the post the A10 immediately came to mind. For how many years has the USAF brass been trying to kill the ground troops best friend? It isn't sexy enough for their birds and stars.
The B52 on the other hand soldiers on quietly and competently doing its job. Like the much younger A10 should be allowed to do.
Anyone have an email for SECDEF?
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