If I'm reading this correctly, the decision process that resulted in the horribly-ineffective UCP pattern amounts to: "We want one pattern. So let's pick one color from the best camo patterns in every environment [the only one that has good NIR performance], and the result will somehow work well!" Which is... yowzers.
(For what it's worth, the Multicam pattern, which is slightly modified to the OCP pattern now in use by the US Army/Air Force, manages to do a better job than the UCP pattern at actually being universal camo, and it's not even the best of the tests.)
The NIR requirements means you can almost see how the decision might be justifiable... but that no one actually tested the resulting pattern as a check? I mean, one of the most salient facts about human color processing is that we evaluate colors based on their surrounding context, so even if individual colors work well, you would need to check their performance in their context to make sure they still work well.
There is an argument out there that the UCP camo patterns were more to make US troops distinct from enemy forces and reduce friendly fire than to provide any advantage for camouflage purposes. That it made American troops extremely identifiable by the distinct look of UCP.
I don't know if I believe it, but it makes a little sense. What would have made more sense is if they had allowed tinting it to different colors based on the region. There is an example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WckhOUMfHk
I'm in the Air force, and while not relevant to actual camouflage ability, I can personally say that OCPs look much nicer than the uniforms before. A lot of the old camo patterns looked painfully ugly. And the ability to camouflage isn't too relevant for me anyways, unless I'm trying to blend into chairs/desks.
C'mon, the Army and Marines already give the Air Force enough crap... I can just imagine it now... "Hey Airman Ikea, we need a good desk lamp over here, is that something you can help us with?"
> the decision process that resulted in the horribly-ineffective UCP
> pattern amounts to: "We want one pattern
Just wait until you read how the F-35 was procured. "We want one airplane for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines. Oh, and it had to include parts from almost all NATO allies, even those who we won't sell it to."
If you had stopped with the first sentence, we could have written it off as sarcasm.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program appears to be in a state of suspended development, with little progress made in 2021 toward improving its lackluster performance. The latest report by the Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) reveals stagnation and even backsliding in some fleet reliability measures.
And that’s just the public DOT&E report.
In an unprecedented move, DOT&E is concealing many of the key details of the F-35’s poor performance. For the first time ever, the testing office created a non-public “controlled unclassified information” version of its report, and although there is much overlap between the two versions, the meaningful details about the ever-troubled program are only included in the non-public one.
Could you comment on the price aspect I thought up? As I understand it is cheap and only the cost per hour is an issue. Obviously the actual program is expensive, but I wanna ignore that for now and focus on the actual performance.
Because I'm at work and can't look through the full 372 page non-public report linked, can you provide some page numbers I could look at? I'm curious what the actual issues are in actual use.
Btw I'm not of the same mindset of the other guy, I'm not gonna call you a "Luddite Reformer" because I saw a YouTube video.
From when I know many of the issues are FUD, but obviously there is real issues and I'd like to better educate myself. But I am just a layman with limited research time.
You and me both! Given the wild swings in points-voting seen ITT, it seems perhaps MIC reptiles and other lovers of arcane jargon have more time on their hands than we mere subjects have. I linked the POGO report first as it seems most authoritative with respect to overall program cost and military effectiveness. With respect to the specific question of cost/plane (although I don't think we can just forget cost/hour), this Forbes article has the best explanation I've seen. [0] The beginning of the following selection acknowledges one accounting method that might support the idea that the unit cost is low. However, when more accurate methods are used, that idea makes less sense.
At $78 million the fifth-generation F-35A’s unit cost compares favorably to the latest non-stealth 4.5-generation Western fighter. The Rafale, Typhoon, Gripen-E and F-15EX are more expensive at $85 to $100 million apiece. The older F-16 and Super Hornet are modestly cheaper at $65 to $75 million each. But while these aircraft do have certain performance advantages over the F-35, all are vastly more vulnerable to long-range anti-aircraft missiles proliferating in militaries across the globe.
However, the F-35 unit price metric has the shortcoming of failing to reflect additional costs in spare parts, logistics facilities and so forth that come with F-35 purchases. When those are spread out across F-35A orders in 2021 they lead to a ‘Gross Weapon Unit Cost’ in budget documents of $110 million for 2021, higher than in preceding years due in part to decreased volume of orders.
Overall, though, a moderate increase in unit price arguably isn’t the main issue, because procurement costs account for less than a quarter of the $1.7 trillion projected lifetime cost of the F-35 program.
Instead, a report published by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on July 7 warns that its sustainment—currently expected to total $1.27 trillion in real dollars—which threatens to break the Pentagon budget.
> Given the wild swings in points-voting seen ITT, it seems perhaps MIC reptiles and other lovers of arcane jargon have more time on their hands than we mere subjects have.
I'd point out that probably the majority of "MIC reptiles" would be opposed to the F35. After all, there are more defense contractors who build competitors to the F35 than there are defense contractors who build the F35. For instance, I distinctly remember watching a "report" on the F35 produces by a Canadian network--I think CBC but I'm not sure--which was a fairly obvious PR hit by Boeing, given that half of the report was basically a sales pitch by Boeing "experts" talking about how great the Super Hornet is.
It's so interesting how luddite Reformers hold such a sway over the usually techno-optimist HN. Turns out that new technology has teething problems, what a shocker.
Wow, my first comment on the thread, consisting entirely of a quote from expert analysts, and already I'm a "luddite Reformer". (Idiosyncratic capitalization also doesn't help you seem balanced and rational.)
This turkey was designed in the 1990s. The contract was awarded in 2001. The first f35 flew in 2006. When will this "technology" no longer be "new"? Presumably it will be some time, since the entire fleet was grounded again last week due to safety concerns.
I think the reason why you're getting some pushback is because we've heard all these before with another aircraft that had similar teething and development problems: the F-15.
The F-15 project was supposed to be a small and light fighter but feature creep" blew the project up into a massively expensive boondoggle. Some of this was due to the fear of the MIG-25; an aircraft we later learned wasn't so scary.
Yet today, the overpriced, chronic cost-overruning F-15 sits at an impressive 109:0 kill to loss ratio, making it the best performing aircraft in the United State's history.
But you would be correct in saying the F-35 is no F-15. It has a stealth coating that is expensive to maintain (this is true for all stealth aircraft). It also flies with a ton of electronics to function as a "sensor network in the sky".
But in many ways, this is similar to the complaints about the F-15 and its (For the time) dizzying array of modern technologies: An advanced lookdown/shootdown radar, support for BVR missiles, IFF, EW and ECM systems all linked to a central computer. Technically other aircraft had these technologies in the 1970s, but none until the F-15 had them all in the same aircraft. Fast-forward a few decades and that "feature creep" doesn't even quality as "bare bones" for any air superiority fighter.
Anyway, if you want a multi-role aircraft without the stealth or sensor network gizmos of the F-35 there's the Gripen E series. Its purchase price is greater than the F-35 but its operating costs are much less. If you don't envision your country's airforce performing too many SEAD missions this tradeoff might make sense... but there's no free lunch!
I believe the list is long of airframes where you could initially find this complaint. I think the F18 had similar concerns after it originally lost its experimental competition to the F16. But the F18 found itself as a capable workhorse for the Navy for decades. Same with the Space Shuttle, etc.
The F-16, incidentally, got loaded to the gills with expensive gizmos after the fact because the Airforce (and other F-16 customers) quickly realized it made the aircraft a far more effective platform.
Generalization (not specialization) was it’s strong point as well as it’s weakness. The reason why it was a design boondoggle was because it had to meet the requirements of many masters. People forget it has a number of DoD missions in addition to the more publicly known NASA missions.
There were plenty of joint NASA/DoD missions that were performed using the Shuttle. Why do you think NASA, an agency built upon freely sharing scientific information, occasionally had classified payloads aboard the Shuttle?
"Between 1982 and 1992, NASA launched 11 shuttle flights with classified payloads, honoring a deal that dated to 1969, when the National Reconnaissance Office—an organization so secret its name could not be published at the time—requested certain changes to the design of NASA’s new space transportation system."[1]
NASA has a long history of working with the military. The first astronauts were all military test pilots (Armstrong gave up his military commission so NASA wouldn’t appear overtly militarized).
They did some classified launches, but none that drew on the extreme specs they had demanded in exchange for helping to fund it.
It was an embarrassment.
Literally no STS launches did. And they were so expensive, it would have been cheaper to build more Hubbles and launch them the regular way than to have done the repair missions.
The Space Shuttle was a disaster for US space presence. US ended up depending on Soyuz!
Now, the X-37 is proving another embarrassment. They can't find enough work for it, so leave it parked in orbit most of the time, pretending to be "on a mission".
Do you mean no STS launches were DoD payloads or do you mean no STS launches required DoD specs? I'm not saying the "cost effectiveness" promise of the Shuttle was met, but there appears to be evidence that neither of the above claims are accurate. For example, STS-38 was a classified DoD payload [1] and there are book chapters dedicated to fact that DoD specs drove the shuttle design [2]. The gist from [3] is
"the support and budget for space decreased, increasing the need for NASA to work closely with the DOD. Their partnership prompted many compromises that were made on the vehicle’s uses and design, which resulted in a broad set of requirements"
Those compromises were largely to accommodate the DoD payload and range requirements. Whether or not they were ultimately necessary we can't know because much of that is classified and unverifiable. But they still drove the design and eroded the cost benefits that NASA wanted.
I'll be more direct: Can you substantiate your claim that the DoD missions did not need those specs? You haven't provided anything other than an opinion at this point.
Because to a laymen, that's an unverifiable claim since those details appear to be classified. Meaning that opinion doesn't amount to much. It's plausible, but I'd need a little more than your opinion to believe it.
I have, of course, no opinion: this is purely a matter of fact. I merely echo complaints by NASA insiders.
I may speculate that their requirements were such as to be able to loft the NSA equivalent of Hubble into a polar orbit, but that by the time STS was flying, they had retired that design and were using rather smaller birds.
In other words, you can't substantiate it. It is therefore not "purely a matter of fact" any more than someone else saying "I heard a guy who heard a NASA guy say those requirements were necessary." At least the latter instance can point to requirements that at least show an intent to do so, your claim is on shakier ground.
It is a matter of fact in that either there were zero missions of such a nature, or there were one or more. I.e., you can refute it by identifying even just one such mission. Posting a list of random DoD missions is not a substitute for that.
People employed at NASA for decades, in a position to know and report even facts not published, that they have had no reason to lie about, say it is true. No one has come forward to say not.
That’s my point. Note I said it was unverifiable. Only one of us is pretending it’s a verifiable fact. I also know manny people who work at NASA, going back from the 1970s to present day. Some were astronauts. Many worked on the shuttle program directly. We seem to have very different ideas about what constitutes a “fact”.
But again, none of that matters unless you can verify your claim. We can just leave it as a known unknown and stop pretending it’s anything different.
The issue I'm pointing to is the veracity of your claim that they did not. You stated it with certitude that, by the very nature of it being classified, you likely do not have. So either you're out over your skis regarding your certainty or the person you talked to willfully disclosed classified information.
It's no different than if somebody on here said with certainty that there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll. Because, you know, they have a source at the CIA who said so. But we can't verify it because they classified the information. But trust them. They know a guy.
Of course in both cases there is truth that supersedes opinion. Whether or not anyone should believe one claim over another is a different story. Just because you say something with conviction doesn't make it true and just because you "know a guy" doesn't make it credible.
> Yet today, the overpriced, chronic cost-overruning F-15 sits at an impressive 109:0 kill to loss ratio, making it the best performing aircraft in the United State's history.
As far as I know you're not a Reformer, which is a proper noun and therefore capitalized, but the "expert analyst" you quoted is. Honestly that tells me enough about your familiarity with this subject
Please link to any source that indicates "Luddite" shouldn't be capitalized or "reformer" should, especially with Capt. Grazier cited as some sort of exemplar of the concept. You've had lots to say ITT but haven't cited a single authority to indicate you're not just making it all up.
The Reformers were/are a group arguing for a particular class of weapons and vehicles in procurement, mostly focusing on relatively low-tech solutions. They’re most famous for their influence in the Fighter Mafia and in the Bradley (see: Pentagon Wars). They’re… controversial.
That one gets capitalized because it’s a proper noun (is that a confusion name? sure).
Luddite strictly should be capitalized as well, but there isn’t any confusion around that one and it isn’t the focus, so I can understand why it wasn’t capitalized. I wouldn’t’ve.
The Reformers aren't even the only group of people involved here. There's a lot of bad press for the F-35 that can be linked back to competing firms such as Boeing. Also, Russian media in particular likes to push stories that make the US look bad. Obviously there are crossovers (e.g. Pierre Sprey, one of the most notorious Reformers, made numerous appearances on RT).
This thing is in service, so conventional wisdom about how long it takes to do stuff before that is irrelevant. From the introduction of my original link:
Despite more than 20 years and approximately $62.5 billion spent so far on research and development alone, program officials still haven’t been able to deliver an aircraft that can fly as often as needed or to demonstrate its ability to perform in combat, which places military personnel in jeopardy.
I would have said the "R&D decade" was the 1990s since JAST began in 1993 and developmental contracts were awarded in 1996, but POGO are conservative in their judgments.
Your first comment was about suspended development, implying you think the system should be part of a continuous R&D cycle. Yet this comment implies you think the system should be outside of development. It's hard to tell what you're criticizing when your points are inconsistent.
I question some of the critiques in your link. For example, they claim the JSFs 61% availability rates are far below the standard of 75-80%. But if you look at published numbers, none of the legacy aircraft F15/F16/F18 variants (which have had decades to work out reliability issues) are above a 60% availability.[1]
What, specifically, are you critical of in terms of the JSF capability? Is that criticism due to what you perceived as mismanaged development or mismanaged priorities (e.g., the tradeoffs of a single platform)? And what is the base rate for comparison?
I don't agree that any of my statements have had any of those implications. USA citizens have the right to complain about any expensive government program. F35 is a $1.7T program, which qualifies as expensive. It's perfectly ordinary to see administrators of non-military programs called before Congress and raked over the coals for spending that seems excessive to some legislator playing to the basest instincts of voters. We recently decided, somehow, that a few billion dollars was too much of a tax credit to justify keeping millions of American children out of poverty. [0] We never see any elected politician complaining about military spending, however.
It's a commonplace that we spend more on the military than the next ten nations put together, most of whom are our allies. That obscures the more amazing fact that over a third of the military spending in the world is spent by USA. Obviously the Pentagon budget should be halved if not quartered, as we were promised before the Saudis dropped the WTC. In such a context, there would be no room for a plane that offers the prospect of more expense instead of more capability. Northrop lobbyists and their employees at think tanks and in the media might be able to dry-lab some "rates" and "figures" to distract from the obvious state of the F35 program. The scale of the disaster cannot be hidden from unbiased investigators. Even if it never makes the evening war media news, those who care to know can consult experts like POGO.
However, if you insist on a criticism in the proper jargon, F35 will never, ever, regardless of how much is spent, be as capable at close air support as the vastly less expensive A10 "Warthog". You can ask any American serviceman who has served on the ground in the last two decades. This isn't the only important role for a military aircraft, but it is an important role.
> We never see any elected politician complaining about military spending, however.
You see it happen all the time. That's part of the broken incentive structure that led to the F35 in the first place. Politicians cancelled or curtailed the B-1, B-2, F-22, A-12, and V-22 just to name a handful off the top of my head. The B-1 and V-22 got uncancelled, and the B-2 and F-22 programs produced significantly fewer aircraft than they originally intended to (thus making these programs more expensive on a per-unit basis since the R&D couldn't be amortized effectively).
Therefore the F35 was intended to fit the requirements of three separate services (protecting it from interservice rivalry and more broadly amortizing the R&D expense) as well as exported to several allies (in order to further amortize R&D and make it safer politically). If there was the political capital necessary for a Harrier successor to be funded on its own, it wouldn't have been rolled into the F35.
> However, if you insist on a criticism in the proper jargon, F35 will never, ever, regardless of how much is spent, be as capable at close air support as the vastly less expensive A10 "Warthog".
This is not actually true. The A-10 is a death trap that is notorious for creating friendly fire casualties. The machine gun isn't effective against armored vehicles, and if you fly the plane low enough to use the machine gun, you're basically committing suicide against modern anti-aircraft weapons. Other than that, it's basically a missile truck, which lots of other planes can do with better accuracy and survivability. Even Ukraine doesn't want it.
I agree with much of what you say. The citizenry have every right to criticize and lobby for their tax dollars to be spent differently. But it appears you've already come to the conclusion that the JSF isn't worthwhile. Put differently, what would the JSF need to show capability-wise in order to change your mind?
I would like to see us spend less in the military if it goes to better use instead. Particularly when commanders are advocating getting rid of programs and Congress keeps them anyway. The US is effectively subsidizing NATOs military capability and mitigating the blowback requires more thoughtful analysis than just slashing the budget. I'm not convinced yet that POGO are the experts worth listening to because they seem a bit out of touch (see my last comment about what they claim the availability should be vs. the parity that matters).
As one of those service members who was supported by the A10 overseas, you're right. Grunts on the ground love the sound of that cannon overhead when close air support is needed. But you are comparing the one very specialized thing the A10 was designed to do. I don’t think it’s a slight to a decathlete to point out there’s faster, specialized sprinters at the Olympics. Stray in any direction away from that and it loses the comparison miserably. Compare avionics, speed, maneuverability and munitions capability etc. (really, anything outside of the cannon) and the JSF is just far superior. In other words, if I was only allowed to have one plane in theater, it wouldn't be the A10.
...what would the JSF need to show capability-wise in order to change your mind?
My objections are not limited to the plane's capabilities. No capabilities would justify especially egregious costs. A sure-to-be-revised-upward $1.7T is probably egregious enough. Similar criticism applies to the military overall.
...if I was only allowed to have one plane in theater...
This seems an unrealistic limitation. Very few aircraft (or ground craft) can protect themselves from all threats. Perhaps the B2 can, because at night it's apparently invisible? Certainly the Warthog is vulnerable to many fighter jets. (Although in several recent wars, fighter jets have not been a threat?) I assume that even the best 4G fighters are vulnerable to the latest AA weapons. However, I think you have helped me answer your first question. At this time it's clear that no command staff would contemplate operating in a particular "theater" with only F35s as combat aircraft. We would have to consider F35s as capable in some sense, if any forward airbase or carrier group would host them without also hosting F15s, F16s, F18s, F22s, etc. That will never happen, but if it does many people will have to eat crow.
...spend less in the military if it goes to better use instead.
Here is our real disagreement. We should spend less, full stop. Nothing justifies a nation with 5% of the world's population spending 36% of the world's military expenditures. The fact that most of us believe there are such justifications indicates deeper problems. We are constantly gaslit by commercial news media, politicians, academics, movies, etc. that the world is very dangerous for us, that we should fear people who live far way, and that we should probably have special operators and deathdrones terrorizing them on a regular basis just to be safe. Most Americans haven't admitted to themselves that not only do we never enter a war for the reasons cited at the time, not only do we kill and impoverish far more innocent people than ever appear on the news, but having entered those wars we never win, and never accomplish any beneficial military objectives. That isn't to even mention the many wars we fight without admitting them, which of course have had worse results. That isn't to even mention the terrible boomerang effects that all our horrible stupid wars have had on our own society.
Everyone else in the world, who aren't constantly subject to the mixture of news and entertainment that never considers whether we should spend less money killing innocent humans, knows this secret that very few Americans can publicly admit. What drives this flood of misinformation? Adults only get one guess... money! USA cable news industry has almost $6B/year in revenue. USA military spending is over 100 times as much. Few are foolish enough to invoke "Hanlon's Razor" here. We all know that greater spending on political campaign "donations" is firmly in the interest of interested industries. Obviously hiring and editorial decisions in media, as well, can be influenced by advertising and access when resources are so far out of balance. On top of that, the three-week ratings bonanza whenever a new TV war starts are enough to make a network profitable for the whole year.
Start by remembering the unanimous push in the war media to get Saddam's WMDs. Then remember that ObL left Afghanistan entirely less than a month after we invaded. Recall that Qaddafi had outlawed both polygamy and slave markets, which have returned to Libya since his violent overthrow. If our military had fewer resources, it would menace the world less, and regular Americans would be safer.
It’s odd that you would find the same type of constraints, such as limiting the evaluation to the single dimension of close air support, to support your view while saying the same constraints are unreasonable in your next response.
I would like you to consider that we likely don’t disagree. I never said that money should be spent on the military or even by the government for that matter. The fact that was how you interpreted that comment before going on that long and apparently pre-chambered rant might be a good reason to give one some pause about your worldview.
I only offered CAS as a sop to the arcane MIC theology seen in this thread. All this prattle about per-unit basis, "Reformers", airframes, base rates, when the Pentagon can't even be audited. I don't particularly care about CAS; we shouldn't be there in the first place.
Either you agree, or you don't. If I can't figure it out, I can't care about it.
You brought up the A10 and the POGO's report to support your point. All my replies have literally been responses to the evidence you've provided for your position, so it's odd that you now think those points are irrelevant.
We probably have the same qualms with the MIC. I just don't think the evidence you use to support your claim is particularly valid, and tends to point towards ignorance on the subject. Combined with the circular logic presented and an inability to state what it would take to change your mind, it makes your position more dogmatic than rational. It’s not just a binary “we agree or don’t”, but the thought process that led it because that’s what will ultimately make me rethink my position. My issue isn't the conclusion, it's the way you came to it.
Wanting one pattern to work everywhere isn't necessarily a bad goal. The OCP pattern, for example, works decently in most environments, and is basically superior to the UCP pattern in virtually all environments (it's marginally weaker in NIR, though). So the real problem seems to be that the criteria for deciding the best pattern was chosen incompetently.
One thing I was surprised to learn about NIR requirements is that it apparently doesn't just mean "dark". I have some coyote brown NIR compliant gear (water carriers etc) and under NIR it has the same shade as grass (which is quite bright, relatively speaking).
(For what it's worth, the Multicam pattern, which is slightly modified to the OCP pattern now in use by the US Army/Air Force, manages to do a better job than the UCP pattern at actually being universal camo, and it's not even the best of the tests.)
The NIR requirements means you can almost see how the decision might be justifiable... but that no one actually tested the resulting pattern as a check? I mean, one of the most salient facts about human color processing is that we evaluate colors based on their surrounding context, so even if individual colors work well, you would need to check their performance in their context to make sure they still work well.