Everyone is jumping up and down proudly proclaiming that cancellation of the F-35 is just not in the cards no matter how I think it would be in the best interests of the Marine Corps.
The truth is much starker...gloomier...and will essentially put us in a no win situation because leadership did not get in front of the wave and instead chose to ride this horse into the ground.
Exhibit number one via The Financial Times. An interview with Chuck Hagel (12/19/2012).
The defence department has gotten everything it’s wanted the last 10 years and more. We’ve taken priorities, we’ve taken dollars, we’ve taken programmes, we’ve taken policies out of the State Department, out of a number of other departments and put them over in defence.And this...
Now, I understand the nation is at war, two wars. That’s going to be the result. But, you have, and I think most Americans who read, who pay attention to anything, know about the inspector general’s reports. The latest one talking about $35bn in waste, fraud and abuse, coming directly out of corruption. $35 bn, and that’s just one report in one country.
The abuse and the waste and the fraud is astounding. It always is in war, by the way. I was in Vietnam in 1968. Even as a private, eventually being a sergeant, out on combat every day, even I saw a tremendous amount of that, so I think the Pentagon needs to be pared down. I think we need the Pentagon to look at their own priorities.
Well, no American wants to in any way hurt our capabilities to national defence, but that doesn’t mean an unlimited amount of money, and a blank cheque for anything they want at any time, for any purpose. Not at all. Not at all, and so the realities are that the mess we’re in this country, with our debt and our deficits, and our infrastructure and jobless and all the rest, is going to require everybody to take a look, even the defence department, and make a pretty hard re-evaluation and review.And finally this...
There is a natural self correction under way right now in the world. We do that in democracies, we do that with ourselves as individuals, and we can’t control that, and that’s a terribly difficult proposition for Americans to face, because almost every American alive today has lived over the last 65 years in a world where America has dominated, unrivalled in any way.That my friends is your Secretary of Defense talking.
We call the shots, no matter who, no matter what. It isn’t that way any more and it isn’t going to be that way. Now, that doesn’t mean we have to be a weaker power, or we’re not the senior power of the world. Not at all, but there’s a new reality of accommodation now, that’s going to have to be factored in.
China, India, Brazil, Turkey, South Korea, Europe’s issues, and it’s very difficult for America to come to grips with this. 9/11 knocked us off balance. We’re still not back to where we were.
Winston Churchill used the term once, the jarring gong of reality. This was America’s jarring gong of reality, like few we’ve ever had. We will get back. We will restructure, we will reorient. We will find a new centre of gravity in every way. Our people are too good, our system is too good. It’s too strong. Our fabric is too strong and we have the system, and we have the resources. We have the ability to do this. It’s painful. It’s probably going to be more painful as we go along. It’s going to be unfair, but we will reorient, restructure and we’ll have a better, stronger country.
Does he sound like a man that is going to fight tooth and nail to make sure that the US DoD is the most powerful in the world? Does he sound like the type of guy that is going to fund a defense system that has been historically overcost and late?
He doesn't to me. Quite honestly he sounds like the type of guy thats ready to take a meat cleaver to the Pentagon and won't stop till he hits bone.
I said before and I'll say again. Sequester is only giving the Obama Administration and the Secretary of Defense room to do what they wanted to do all along. Most of the cuts are in the DoD and thats just fine. Public pronouncements of how the cuts are going to be painful will of course be made but I'm betting its just for show. This is all part of the plan. Don't believe me?
Exhibit number two. Defense News (9/23/2012).
The Simpson-Bowles plan proposed slashing Pentagon spending by just more than $100 billion.The Commandant and SOCOM both rushed to safeguard funding for the V-22. The original Simpson-Bowles planned at stopping production of the V-22 at 280 aircraft. They've skirted that by sacrificing the Marine Personnel Carrier on the aviation altar. You can probably add the Amphibious Combat Vehicle to the fire.
As for specifics, it advocated a military pay freeze and sizable annual cuts to military acquisition coffers by making major changes or killing programs such as the
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft. The commission’s report also proposed reducing the U.S. military footprint in Europe and Asia.
“It remains on the table ... as simply a framework for being able to accomplish the kind of debt reduction that we need to maintain fiscal security,” said Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., a member of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC). “I don’t think both parties have paid close enough attention to it.”
Members of both political parties agree — but only that the other party did too little to enact its recommendations after Simpson and Bowles delivered their report to the president in late 2010. Democrats accuse Republicans of rejecting its revenue suggestions; Republicans often accuse President Barack Obama of, as several have described it, putting the report on a shelf to collect dust.
Exhibit number three. Washington Post Wonk Blog (12/04/2012).
Congress has already passed 70 percent of the discretionary cuts. Under the Budget Control Act, discretionary spending will be $1.5 trillion lower from 2013 to 2022 than was projected in the Congressional Budget Office’s 2010 baseliner. That means that 70 percent of S-B’s cuts to discretionary spending are done.The cuts that we're seeing now are all in addition to cuts that the Pentagon has already done. This is actually above and beyond what is necessary to meet even the tougher requirements of the Simpson-Bowles plan. These were cuts that Panetta pushed to ease future pain. The JCS went along and now they're about to get bum rushed.
Simpson-Bowles cuts security spending by $1.4 trillion, not including drawing down the wars. That’s far deeper than what’s in the law now, far deeper than anything the White House or the Republicans have proposed, and deeper, I believe, than the sequester cuts that so many think would devastate the military.
The actual document is below but in it calls for reducing Air Force, Navy buys of the F-35 and replace it with F-16s and F/A-18s (in doubt). Kills the EFV (done). Cuts procurement of the V-22 (still in play by way of trickery). Reduce procurement by 15% (in process). Cancel the JLTV, the Ground Combat Vehicle and the Joint Tactical Radio (in process). Reduce military personnel stationed overseas (in process). Freeze military pay (in process). Modernize Tricare/DoD healthcare (in process). Kill the Marine Corps version of the F-35 (in doubt).
My point should be clear but if it isn't I'll say it plainly.
The "shocking" state of the DoD if sequester continues news conference by the JCS and SECDEF was nothing but politics. Sequester or better said, Simpson-Bowles is already in play and its being carried out. The only issues that remain to be accomplished are the F-35, officially killing the GCV and JLTV, making retirees swallow hard and accept Tricare fees (but they've been going up for a couple of years now anyway) and the military pay freeze.
Its damn near a fait accompli....
If the DoD is this rotten inside, then I dread to think what the rest of the government and state departments are like DX
ReplyDeletei am really beginning to believe that the transformation that the Obama administration had in mind for the DoD has been a carefully laid plan. the only part that gives me pause is the role that the Republicans are playing in all this.
Deletethe Tea Party is about balanced reductions in govt spending but the Republican part of the Congress got maneuvered into a terrible deal that will have the DoD absorbing the majority of the cuts with no reduction in social spending. i don't know whether thats a good or bad thing but i do know that the JCS made a bad deal with Gates, got rolled by Panetta and are about to get raped by Hagel.
all promises of voluntary cuts have been reneged on and the ax is about to fall on the rest of the house.
I quite agree with all of your sentiments on the F35. From this side of the pond and with a British perspective there does not seem to be anything that can stop this juggernaught. The arguments have been made, and this whole programme is sucking up pounds and pence like you would not believe. We have so many jobs connected to this sham that the politicians just will not do the brave thing and come out of it. Depressing really, it would seem that the men in their ivory towers in Westminster see this flawed aircraft as the only game in town......
ReplyDeletewell thats the next shoe to fall with this program.
Deletethis integrated maintenance model is untested. i don't know if anyone has done simulations on how it would perform in wartime but its in essence tying every Department/Ministry of Defense into a global chain that will be held hostage by the prime contractor when it comes to prices etc.
additionally the Chinese have stolen the planes secrets. the program manager has said that he isn't confident that the contractors have properly shored up their defenses against hacking. in the US we've already seen modern vehicles being hacked by wayward teenagers looking for a bit of fun. will the Chinese be able to exploit a vulnerability in our "joint" airplane?
all confidence is lost in the F-35 and military leadership thats pushing it.
the F-35 defenders will deny it, but F-35 could be seen as the canary in the coal mine of fiscal and democratic integrity. Every Congressional district has a subcontractor for the program. Can Congress cancel a program that kills jobs?
DeleteIt performs below expectations, is twice as expensive and the Chinese have the plans for it. Are we strong enough to scrap it and go back to the drawing board?
And shouldn't one of the future requirements for any program be that the plans remain out of the hands of potential enemies? what is so hard about developing a company-only intranet that does not/cannot connect to the internet? If the Chinese cyber-espionage and stuxnet stories serve any lesson, the companies have to be complete severed from the internet or outside flashdrives, devices, etc.
The issue is do we even manufacture silicon chips in the US? Can we even build computers without Indian, Chinese, Taiwanese, South Korean chips?
I've been thinking, which I admit is dangerous, but hear me out:
ReplyDeleteThe F-35 supporters and even the F-22 supporters are obsessed with BVR combat. Our future fighter aircraft are really nothing more than fast, unseen AMRAAM platforms. They are unconcerned with dog-fighting hence their dismissal of the slower, heavier, less maneuverable specs of the F35 dogfighting ability post-merge. Why be concerned with F-22 performance vs. SU35MKI or Eurofighter Typhoons since they will all be dead before the merge? Those are the things I keep reading... the future is BVR so the F22 doesn't need to be good at dogfighting OR situational awareness of the F-35 will be so superior, it doesn't need to be maneuverable.
Once the skies are cleared, these all-seeing, never seen 5th gen. stealth fighters then transition to bombing targets with seeming impunity.
Do we even need fighters in that 'reality'? if the F-35s situation awareness is so important, why does it need a cockpit? Why not have the same awareness back in Nevada rather than over the Pacific?
Why not just start developing stealthy, LR drones to act as BVR missile platforms? If the USAF doesn't think dog fighting is important, they could just dispense with piloted fighter aircraft and design them around 12 AMRAAMs wrapped in a stealth package? If they survive, they can be brought back and loaded with 12 SDB.
I'm not saying I agree with the USAF view of the future, but if that is the unofficial, private view of the USAF, why half-ass it with an expensive piloted aircraft that aren't good at dogfighting? Scrap the F-35 and start developing a stealthier missile sled piloted by drone pilots instead of zoomies. Why bother with planes at all?
When the Simpson-Bowles plan was made the UK had switched over to the F-35C, which was why they had wanted to preserve the C-model over the B-model. When the UK left the F-35B it temporarily was only being bought by the US and potentially Italy, which made it easier to kill since it would have the least amount of effect on our foreign allies.
ReplyDeleteNow that the UK has switched back to procuring the F-35B it will likely now be protected and the F-35C will be the one targeted for cancellation. The F-35C is now only being bought by US services and will have the least amount of consequence to our allies upon its death. I don't know what that means for the Marine Corps F-35B procurement. It could be slashed in half and replaced with Super Hornets like the plan had originally proposed for the Navy.
Also, I looked again at that article about Boeing's Super Hornet flying with CFTs. It said that Boeing was listening to Navy inputs about the redesign of the CFTs that flew on the Super Hornet. The Navy is not necessarily paying for any of the development of the Advanced Super Hornet, but what it is doing is going to Boeing and saying, "We can't buy these right now, but if we were to buy them we would want them designed this way" and Boeing is hanging on every word making the modifications as proficiently as possible. They are also extremely quiet about it, meaning that they don't feel the need to market their new improvements. That doesn't sound like a service "not looking for any exit ramps from the F-35."
I must say that this whole thing is fun to watch.
In fact it looks like the F-35C is in the crosshairs already. Last month when there was that whole issue of delaying the F-35 and the LRIP 6 and LRIP 7 contracts hadn't been completed there was a big discussion over whether or not to delay the F-35 production or simply the production of one variant. The variant that was reviewed for delay was the F-35C:
ReplyDeletehttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323873904578573502455715108.html
"Earlier, officials participating in the review had weighed a two-to-three year delay limited to the Navy variant of the fighter plane, but that option was rejected by the task force."
I think if any version of the F-35 is the most vulnerable now, then it is definitely the C-version.