“I can guarantee that no Air Force maintainer will ever name their daughter ‘Alice.’ ” That was from an article about the F-35 logistics system, which maintainers have stopped using. It had all sorts of problems, like forcing maintainers to enter data twice.
The U.S. Army plans to seek funding in the fiscal year 2020 to keep ageing Humvee fleet. That’s probably a good idea given there may still some questions about the JLTV replacement.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans go up in smoke as Pentagon investigation of pot smoking nears end. Sounds at the link.
Comptroller releases cost per flight hour for military airplanes. F-15E $17,071 — F-16D $8,274 — F-22A $36,455 — F-35A $17,701 — F-35B $23,891 — F-35C $22,978 — FA18E $11,828. And for bombers, B1B $49,144 — B-2A $59,452 — B-52H $32,176. Pointer from Business Insider.
Trump administration to propose $750 billion military budget next week.
Somewhat related. Sanders proposes deep cuts to military funding at campaign launch.
“Lockheed Martin aims to hire an additional 1,000 people for engineering and other high-tech jobs during the next year at both its F-35 stealth fighter production plant in Fort Worth as well as its missile and fire control facility in Grand Prairie, company officials said. At a time when many critics say the Dallas-Fort Worth region doesn’t have enough of a skilled work force to lure the best paying jobs — and that shortage may be a key reason why Amazon didn’t select North Texas as a spot for one of its new headquarters.” Form the Star Telegram.
F-35 Will Cost Less To Operate Than Older Fighters. Here’s Why Some Policymakers Don’t Get. Here are his points: costs ignore capabilities; they ignore wartime attrition; fail to account for aircraft age; and they fail to capture hidden costs of old planes; and then a repeat of the first point. These were poorly conceived arguments mostly. You’ll note the disclosure in fine print: the author is in part funded by Lockheed Martin.
Epic Fail: The U.S. Army Spent $30 Billion on These 5 Weapons (For Nothing). Here is how Armen Alchian would respond:
“We, therefore, must recommend the development of a menu of several alternative weapons—guaranteeing that ignorant or malevolent critics will be able to show that a large majority of them were “useless” and “wasted” millions of dollars—but assuring ourselves flexibility in order to have safety and economy with optimal weapons in actual use.
Unfortunately, the military doesn’t pursue projects incrementally with options to learn and adapt. Instead, these programs were mostly waste because money was poured into them without hedged bets.
Related. The Big U.S. Military Projects That Never Made It.
Research & Development in a startup.
DOD scandal of the week: Company to pay $9 million after allegedly selling defective combat earplugs to US military.
Related: Pentagon requests voluntary refund of millions of dollars from contractor TransDigm.
Poland wants to buy fifth-gen fighters under $49B modernization program. Poland’s budget grew 9 percent over the last year. They’re in a dangerous neighborhood that Poland.
Here’s how the US Army used a ‘Shark Tank’ approach to shift $31 billion in the budget. It appears that the Army is not reprogramming authorized budgets but shifting the next request. Unfortunately, past years’ budgets will continue to be executed over the next several years, which means many program plans are beyond recall. The military services need more re-programming authority for past budgets. They also need more “to be scheduled” places in the R&D budget so that they can take advantage of management by real options.
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