Mike Benitez joined me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to talk about the current state and future of the Air Force fighter inventory. He discusses the rationale behind the recent announcement from Chief of Staff CQ Brown that the USAF will neck down it’s inventory from seven systems to “four plus one.” Mike explains how the NGAD will replace the F-22, the logic behind buying both the F-35 and F-15EX, and the options for replacing the F-16. We also play a round of “retire it or not” for the A-10, RQ-4 Global Hawk, and the KC-135 tanker.
During the episode, Mike argues that laying in several major advances in the same clean-sheet development leads to poor outcomes — not only for the systems themselves but the industrial base. Shifting to a government reference architecture can help open up competition and even change business models. Rather than companies making their profits in sustainment, which represents 70% of lifecycle costs, the Air Force could change the paradigm by making development pay and potentially even breaking the link between development and production.
The F-117 was a great example of tackling one hard problem (low observability) while leveraging existing components everywhere else. While making a slightly different case, Mike points to Boeing’s T-7A which used digital engineering and parts commonality. “The T-7 was engineered from the ground up for commonality within its parts,” Mike said. “So the the left horizontal stabilizer is the same exact part as the right is just put in upside down… they’ve built an aircraft that has such a skinny supply chain that you’re able to actually operate… but the point is that most of the fighters right now are not developed like that.”
Mike discusses a more agile approach to fighter development, opportunities for test and evaluation techniques, the challenges presented by the budget process, the need to increase emphasis on logistics and communications, and much more.
State of fighter aircraft
Here’s Mike on the F-22:
… it’s not sustainable in the 2030s and it’s not upgradable to be competitive either. And there’s multiple reasons that all contribute to that. Number one, it’s too small of a fleet, which is a whole different discussion. The second problem is it has too many first-generation technologies. So think fighter size, AESA radar, thrust, vectoring, super maneuverability, and fighter LO, just for starters…
Those attributes that mattered in our platform 30 years ago, some of those matter less today, and the things that mattered less back then are a lot more important now. So I think of a magazine depth range sensor payload that SWaP-C — size, weight and power — are all more important today than close in, super maneuverability, and low signatures that are narrow-aspect of narrowband in nature.
That’s interesting insight, and perhaps also telling about why the F-15EX looks favorable to the Air Force today. And here is Mike on the F-35:
Block 4 F 35 is interesting, but it’s not compelling… And so every Block 4 today has to be retrofitted in about 10 years to be this Block 5, or the follow on to Block 4, whatever we call it. And that’s really a double whammy when you talk about monitorization or readiness.
On the NGAD:
It’s inverting the paradigm at a couple of pain points that the Air Force has had with aircraft development and sustainment. And so flipping some of those models and going to a government reference architecture type system… and then continually redevelop platforms and buying them in small bite sized chunks.
Here’s what we can expect from the F-16 successor:
That could be a future F 35 that’s considerably more affordable to procure, operate and sustain. Maybe it is a an F 16 variant. So block 70, something like that. Maybe it’s a T-7 that becomes an F-7 variant from our trainer. Or maybe it’s the the clean sheet design that General Brown had talked about, which is being called MR-X for multi-role fighter X.
Budgetary Concerns
Mike describes how he works in Air Force test & evaluation, but they use Operations & Maintenance funding rather than RDT&E funding.
That money is the same pot that competes with combat coded units for resources. It shouldn’t have to be that way, but that’s just the way it is.
Mike’s test duties are supported by over 50 different program elements and cannot “move a penny” between the accounts. He provides an example of how his wing tests roughly 20 different aircraft and they are all in different program elements. He gives an example:
The RQ four has, we’ll call it $200,000 for tactics development… and then we also have the F-22 and the way that the budget worked out, we received $0 for tactics development. We go to the end user, “Hey if I had $200,000 to put in the tactics development, would I rather put it into the RQ-4 or put it into the F-22?” Everyone would say put it in the F 22. That’s great, but I can’t.
Extrapolate that experience across the whole of DoD and you start to get a sense at the rigidity built into the system that makes it hard to adapt to change.
Thanks Mike!
I’d like to thank Mike Benitez for joining me on the Acquisition Talk podcast. You can find more from him by signing up for his weekly newsletter The Merge at themerge.co. He has also published a number of articles for War on the Rocks which are excellent. Watch his discussion with Mitchel Aerospace, Actualizing “Accelerate Change”. He has a short podcast on fighter readiness here, and you can follow him on Twitter @MergeNewsletter.
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