In 2018, Mike Griffin, the first Under Secretary for Research and Engineering, disclosed an innovation time comparison that it takes the US on average sixteen years to deliver an idea to operational capability, versus fewer than seven for China, and offering an example: “the Chinese have tested several dozen hypersonic attack vehicles over the last ten years, and most have been successful.” This sobering analysis implies that China accomplishes two and a quarter development and fielding cycles to every US turn. At this relative rate, any technological advantage that the US has would eventually be overcome; it is only a question of when.
This difference in development and investment strategies is hardly isolated to hypersonics. Figure 11 is compiled from opensource data on the state of the Chinese J-20 development as contrasted with the F-35. The US favored a model of trying long-term predictive requirements, and a lengthy waterfall development and testing model, whereas our competitors favored iterative models. China delivered nine visually distinct upgrades in five years to the J-20 following the type’s first flight. before arriving at the “2101” model for production in late 2015. Six months later, they had rolled out three more copies of this production model, only after they had worked through the design issues associated with any new aircraft type. By March 2017, the first operational J-20 was deployed to a front-line unit, ahead of schedule, even as mission systems were being updated. Some analysts may point out that the F-35 is superior to the J-20 in many performance metrics and mission systems. However, the intent here is not to draw a symmetric comparison—it is unlikely that these aircraft will soon face off in one-versus-one combat—but to contrast the differing development models used between China and the US.
That’s just one small slice of an excellent paper by Dan Patt and Bill Greenwalt, Competing in Time: Ensuring capability advantage and mission success through adaptable resource allocation. Read the whole thing. The development models used in China and the US in turn depend on their resource allocation process, the authors argue. Back in the 1940s and 50s, military developments in the US iterated much more like China does today, so it doesn’t have anything to do with nationality but instead resourcing model. The way the PLA is funded today resembles in many ways the bureau budgeting scheme dominant in the US until the 1960s.
The fact US development started slowing down after the PPBS was installed provides some indication of causality.
Some might say that the F-35 has been through a number of design iterations since it went into LRIP as well. I suppose the difference is that in China, the iterations were planned for and are adding capabilities, whereas in the US iterations are unplanned and generally correct errors in the planning phase.
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