Real Change

[npts2020]

MrSkeptic: What happens when everyone is allowed to go to any school but the school tells you, there isn't room at our school for your little Johnny since the facilities are already maxed out or he doesn't seem to fit in with our academic objective for whatever reason?

 

Cap'nRefsmmat: While I would agree that learning is its own reward, it seems to be a depressingly uncommon sentiment as many people seem to actively avoid trying to learn new things unless forced to.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Cap'nRefsmmat: While I would agree that learning is its own reward, it seems to be a depressingly uncommon sentiment as many people seem to actively avoid trying to learn new things unless forced to.

 

I'm guessing that's partly due to the fact that we've made learning painful.

[Pangloss]

Phi, you realize that command of armed forces is already centralized, don't you? Procurement is also centralized. For that matter, so is the stating of needs and requirements. What you're talking about ultimately is the mind-set of separate services, and my point there I think is significant, that those needs are based in reality -- what a ship captain needs is physically different from what an Air Force Base commander needs. So long as that's the case you're going to have different opinions on what equipment should be purchased.

 

Just to give an example of that, the Joint Strike Fighter and the F-22 Raptor aircraft (envisioned as our main attack and air superiority weapons of the next generation, respectively) are being pursued in a completely different manner from the previous generations of weapons. Currently we have large deployments of aging F-15s and F-16s in the Air Force, and F/A-18 Hornets in the Navy and Marines. These aircraft are all operating well past their life expectancies and will not last much longer (except for the Super Hornets, which are good for a little while yet).

 

(The Navy did a stellar job of main-lining its air superiority requirements under the aegis of the Hornet -- so great that it can now only attack ground targets within 900 miles of the carrier, instead of the 3000+ that it was capable of before. But we did get some advantages -- safer decks, faster launch-and-recovery, better cost efficiency, etc. These trade-offs are important to recognize.)

 

Anyway, the F-35, or Joint Strike Fighter, is an interesting example to follow in terms of centralization. The Air Force had one set of requirements, the Navy had another, and the Marines a third. This would seem on the surface to be an example of what you're talking about -- inter-service rivalry. But that's not what it is. The Navy needs beefier landing gear to support carrier landings -- that cuts into the payload and range that the Air Force needs because it doesn't have carrier decks to get it close to the action. And don't even get me started on the Marines and their VTOL ideas. And these are just a couple of examples out of hundreds of major differences in requirements.

 

The result has been endless delays and re-engineering going back twenty years now. And every time the requirements change the costs fly upwards. Any money we could possibly have saved by unifying the JSF has long since been lost in the quagmire of meeting disparate requirements. And even worse, because costs have gone so high, Congress has cut back on the number of F-22s and F-35s that will be purchased. But the 15s, 16s and 18s aren't getting any younger. So soon we will have a quarter of the planes covering the same needs at greater cost. Wow, what a success!

 

My ultimate point here is that these things are more complicated than they seem.

Edited November 8, 2008 by Pangloss

[Skye]

I'm not sure the JSF program costs have escalated that much. There's a lack of information, a bit of misinformation and some accounting issues that need to be taken into account. There are about half a dozen different ways of costing the JSF, depending on what you include. For example, the development costs can be included, but doing so means you need to set a given number of aircraft being built, which is an estimate at this stage. The year that these costs are given in must also be taken into account. Between these two variables the given cost could easily double without actually changing in real terms.

 

That being said, the way that the JSF program was put together was problematic in that there were no serious competing aircraft should the program fail and that several different projects were rolled into one. But I think it has worked out ok so far. You've got to expect some issues with a project of its size.

 

I personally would be far more concerned with the major sea and land based projects. The sea projects I'm talking about are a future destroyer, cruiser and frigate replacement, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). seven destroyer were planned to be built. They would have a new hull forms and a range of new technology, possibly including a rail gun at some stage. They'd also act as a technology demonstrator for the new cruiser. However costs spiralled and unless their Congressional backers can save them then only 2 will be built, which given the development costs will come in at around 5 billion a piece. The cruisers will probably continue but they early in their development and plenty can go wrong if whatever went wrong with the destroyers isn't taken into account.

 

The LCS is currently two different designs based on high speed ferries modified to be able to carry modules, such as air defence, mine or anti-sub warfare equipment. Using commercial designs was supposed to make them cheaper than a conventional frigate, but costs have blown out a bit now. Probably worth persisting with I guess but no one seems really happy with it.

 

When it comes to the US Army, it's sort of like they got a post-modernist social deconstructionist designing tanks. Oh wait, not tanks, a family of vehicles that leverage evolving technogies developed in tandem. Or something. This is simply called Future Combat System. There's about 14 different systems here, including aerial and land based robots. It's about six years behind schedule. The Army says it will stay within its $160bn budget but it's more likely to blow out to $200+bn. And that doesn't include any of the communications gear, perhaps requiring new satellites, that'll cost around $80bn.

 

So by contrast JSF looks great!

[Mr Skeptic]

MrSkeptic: What happens when everyone is allowed to go to any school but the school tells you, there isn't room at our school for your little Johnny since the facilities are already maxed out or he doesn't seem to fit in with our academic objective for whatever reason?

 

So he can go to to a school that will accept him, or to a public school. What happens when everyone is allowed to go to any college but the college tells you, there isn't any room at our college for your little Johnny since the facilities are already maxed out or he doesn't seem to fit in with our academic objective for whatever reason? You go to a different one.

[Pangloss]

Good post, Skye. I pretty much agree with all of your points there, and I think that illustrates the complexity of the problems. In general the newest programs are vastly more successful at efficiency and generalized design goals than their predecessors. But costs have gone up and while it does look like we might get enough F-35s, it doesn't look like we will have enough F-22s.

 

I'm a big believer in low cost and emphasis on functionality over gee-whizbang. But the discussions I participate in over these issues, which involve engineers, defense analysts and defense media specialists, focus very intensely on specific details, and those discussions can be absolutely fascinating. They look at such details, for example, as whether a VTOL attack craft is as "efficient" as a non-VTOL attack craft, and what that means in terms of specific capabilities.

 

What I suspect is that in the end we will have to make capability sacrifices in order to save costs. Specific features of our military will be lost, but we're going to have to learn how to be okay with that and not trump it up into some sort of conservative, anti-Obama straw man about 'weakening our military', because that (a) won't be fair, and (b) the reasons we need to do these things are not Obama's fault. We also need to remain extremely broad-minded about capabilities -- losing some of them may be okay because of coverage in other areas. The recent improvements in aerial drones being a prime example -- hovering around areas for many hours unnoticed, dropping bombs as needed, etc.

[npts2020]

So he can go to to a school that will accept him, or to a public school. What happens when everyone is allowed to go to any college but the college tells you, there isn't any room at our college for your little Johnny since the facilities are already maxed out or he doesn't seem to fit in with our academic objective for whatever reason? You go to a different one.

 

Or more likely just skip college altogether. Do we want that number of people skipping education altogether?