Re: Other JSF options
- From: "Kevin Brooks" <brooksvmi@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 2 Jul 2006 02:30:20 -0400
"Guy Alcala" <g_alcala@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:44A6FF9D.DC26ED06@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Still trying to catch up with old posts (got to stop replying to new
threads unless I can avoid getting
bogged down in them). Kevin, it seems that we're largely repeating the
same arguments and we've reached
the point of firm positions of disagreement, so my comments below will be
my last post on the points
covered. You get the last word, should you wish to reply. I'm a couple
of weeks late writing Dave
Welsh a reply over on SMN, and that one's going to take a lot of time,
references and citations. So I
have to avoid getting involved with another marathon exchange with you in
the mean time;-)
Kevin Brooks wrote:
"Guy Alcala" <g_alcala@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:449A4712.5FF33383@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<snip stuff there is no use arguing further>
More often, what I've seen them do is offer up options that the
services
were
unwilling to consider themselves for parochial reasons. Would we have
won
DS
with M60A3s instead of M1s? Sure we would.
The USMC was unsure enough about that at the time that they rushed
ex-Army
M1A1's into service to replace part of their M60 fleet.
Sure, because the M1A1 undoubtedly provided better protection, had a more
powerful gun and was likely
more reliable given the respective ages of the tanks.
Let me take these one at a time:
OTOH the M60A3 used a hell of a lot less fuel
Well, yeah...but it was also a hell of a lot slower, and did not provide as
good a firing platform for shooting on the move (which we'll return to
later...).
and
was easier to transport,
Not really. Tanks are all behemoths when it comes to loading them on HET's
and sending them forward; the ten or twelve ton difference in weight between
the two was not really significant in this regard.
so we probably could have gotten ourselves there quicker
Extremely doubtful analysis to say the *least*. You need to look at the
equipment densities in a heavy division (MBT's make up only a small portion
of it), and then tell me that having M1A1's versus M60A3's really affected
the TPFDL schedule. Hint--it did not. This is the sort of half-assed
"analysis" I would exxpect to see in a GAO report, not from you... :-)
and supported
ourselves without quite such a huge logistic buildup as we did. Life's a
tradeoff.
So you figure that the M1A1's required a significantly greater logistics
footprint that affected the overall scheme of operations? Again, look at the
densities, Guy. MBT's make uop a tiny fraction of the total load of both
tracked and wheeled vehicles in a heavy division (and a *much* smaller share
than that if you talk about the operational corps that was maneuvering
during ODS, as was the case with VII Corps). No way, no how.
Would we have still
won? Yeah--but the victory might have been significantly different (73
Easting may not have turned out the way it did, not to mention the
different
timeline for the advance, more crews would have likely become casualties,
etc.). I served in an armored brigade with M60A3's, and it ain't in the
same
league as the M1A1, or even the M1 vanilla version.
And I never claimed that it was, or that the M1A1 wasn't a better tank,
although the M60A3's sight was
apparently better than the M1s and maybe the M1A1's (Pete Stickney has
commented about this in the
past),
Unless Pete hasd a lot of experience with both M60A3 and M1A1 units, I am
not really buying that either. My own expereince was somewhat apocryphal,
but serving in a FORSCOM seperate armored brigade (the armor school's
then-resident deployable brigade, at that) during repeated NTC and ramp-up
exercises, including the construction and maintenance of a CALFEX range
where the thermals were critical, I saw M60A3's roll through the nightime
defensive exercise, company after company, and let me tell you, the shooting
those guys did was *lousy*. When you can go down range after the range goes
cold and have your target replacement team return in hasty fashion with the
explanation that not a *single* hit made upon the sillouettes (which had
heated pads on them to provide a decent thermal sig), I am not going to be
overly impressed with the quality of the M60A3's thermals (you can count a
few tanks failures to possibly lousy gunnery procedures, but entire
*companies*?). It was the first gen TTS we fielded, for gosh sakes.
so I don't know that 73 easting would have been at higher rather than
lower cost to us.
Higher, because...
IIRR,
the accounts I've read of 73 easting indicate that few if any of our tanks
got hit; we hit theirs before
they could see or target us. The 120mm would maybe get a few kills where
the 105mm would bounce, but
that would be about it.
Uhmmm...a lot of those kill shots were made while moving at high speed
across the desert during that battle, IIRC. The M1A1 was a MUCH better
stabilized platform for that kind of shooting than the M60A3 was. The M1A1's
did have better thermals than the M60A3TTS, which also contributed. The
120mm was of course more lethal, as well (its smooth bore makes it a much
better APDS shooter, in addition to the advantages gained by the larger
penetrator of the 120mm round).
Nor, AFAIR, did the GAO claim that the M60A3 was "inherently" a better tank
than the M1; they stated that the M1 had problems (it did), that these
problems would take time and
money to solve (they did), and that the M1 would impose an additional and
expensive logistics burden on
US forces (it did and does).
The GAO made it sound like a gilded lilly from what I recall of the
matter--which it was not. It proved itself well in terms of survivability,
maintainability, and lethality (it beat the M60A3 in all categories, and
yes, I said maintainability. As to the "additional and expensive logistics
burden"--rubbish. See my points earlier about density and its real impact on
effects. And I never saw a M1A1 sit out an entire BDE-level multi-week
training exercise due to lack of parts...while I did see an M60A3 do exactly
that at Bliss (it became a running joke to drive by the location "where the
tank is" and see if the crew was still laying around waiting for the
wrnench-turners and loggies to get it runniing again).
Does that mean that would have been
the best way to go? That's another matter. As another example where
I've
found
the GAO's case more persuasive than the military's,
get back to those past piccadillos where they proved to be utterly wrong.
IIRC, the M1 was supposedly just too danged high tech to do the job
reliably
(ODS proved that one wrong),
After how many years in service, and how many upgrades?
Nt much of either, really. For example, the 3rd ACR was fielding its M1A1's
under a NET program (having been M60A3 users up to that time) back in '87
when we deployed to Bliss to perform our NTC ramp-up. Three years later they
were charging through the Iraqi desert. The M60A3TTS was actually the fourth
variant of a tank that really started out as the fourth variant of the even
earlier M48 (it followed the M48A3 and preceeded the M48A5, the latter being
the only other tank I have any real experiance with). The M1A1 was only the
second major variant of the M1 series, preceeded by only the vanilla M1 that
was only ever intended to be a temporary platform until the A1's became
available with their definitive suite of systems. So in summation, you have
a M1 series that after only a few short years of service and one major
upgrade (that was planned from the outset) outperform the heck out of the
older M60A3 that was the culmination of *many* years of development and
*many* years of service experience, and your point would be...?
Offhand, I can't recall any time where the GAO
or any other credible analysis group has said that a system can never,
ever be made reliable, not even
Star Wars. What I have seen them say is that such and such a system isn't
reliable currently, and given
the current state of the art it is unlikely that it can be made reliable
in such and such a timeframe,
or that the spares policy is inadequately funded to guarantee the MC rate
claimed, and so on.
They hammered the heck out of the M1 and M2 both from what I recall; if
anything being more nasty with the latter (which also proved to be an
outstanding system that overwhelmingly outperformed its predeccessor M113
"battle taxi").
the M2 Bradley was just way too underprotected
(compared to what, the M113??!), etc.
Applique armor kits are pretty much SOP these days on Bradleys in combat
(and every other APC/IFV), so
I'd say they called that one right.
They were not so standard during ODS IIRC.
After all, if RPGs are ubiquitous on the battlefield, then you'd
better have armor to protect against them. And if your opponent's IFVs
are armed with 73mm and 30mm
guns, then protection against them is certainly advised.
There is not doubt that it is wonderful to make your IFV as susrvivable as
you can, but the critique of the Brad for its *supposed* weak protection and
its high sillouette were proven by events to be utterly wrong.
A 1994 GAO study indicated we no
longer needed a continental air defense force (where was the GAO when
9-11
recriminations started flying about?).
CONAD protected us not at all on 9/11, and wouldn't have because it was
oriented to deal with external
threats. Since CONAD was designed to protect us from nuclear-armed
bombers flying over the poles from
the Soviet Union, and they were gone, of course we no longer needed it for
that purpose.
Guy, ISTR that those interceptors were frequently scrampled to check out all
sorts of unknowns, not just those that might be TU-95's inbound from over
the Atlantic. Come on, man. We did not have the alert aircraft capacity on
duty and ready to handle the situation. I am not tossing barbs at the USAF
here, just noting that your vaunted GAO had forseen *no* potential threat
that justified a decent AD status just seven years before 9-11 proved that
idea wrong.
If you wish to
postulate that the GAO or anyone else should foresee every possible threat
that might develop up to
1,000 years into the future, then of course they will be wrong.
Yep, but you have to be willing to admit they *were* wrong in this case.
In 1981 the GAO strongly questioned
the USAF's desire to turn the F-16 into a more capable multi-role
platform
and have them optimized for air-to-ground work (thank goodness the USAF
view
prevailed).
Actually, I agree with the GAO (as of 1981). The F-15 should have been
the designated multi-role
platform, not the F-16. Not that the F-16 didn't need A/G capability, but
that shouldn't have been its
USAF DoC, at least prior to the end of the Cold War and the widespread
availability of PGMs usable by
single-place a/c.
We'll have to disagree on that one, then. I think the USAF got it right and
the GAO was rather myopic in that case. The GAO was taking the Boyd/LWF
Mafia view hook/line/sinker, and not too many folks I am aware of today
thingk that would have been a good idea in hindsight, so again, the GAO came
up short.
For every "good" GAO story you tell, I can tell you two "not so
good ones".
Of course, and the same is true for any other organization, which
certainly includes DoD and the
services.
The topic we were discussing was really the GAO though, was it not?
What do these cases say about your view that the GAO is just a
wonderful and accurate organization?
Kevin, please don't put words in my mouth. I've never claimed that it
was, indeed I specifically stated
upthread that the quality of their work varies, that I evaluate each
report from them just as I do from
any other source, and then make up my mind which I consider more objective
and accurate. I have agreed
and disagreed with their conclusions just as I have with those of the
services, DoD, or any other arm of
the government. I have no knee-jerk response that says "it's from GAO, so
it must be the real skinny,
and everyone else's view must be 100% wrong". I consider that they often
provide a valuable, outside the
Pentagon/service view of things, which (after all) is their designated
function.
Too much bias included, IMO. You expect a certain level of bias from the
proponent, but not from a supposedly unbiased external evaluator.
<snip F-35 numbers etc.)
Uhmm... the USN has also been known to make noises about final
production
numbers, and the Brits threatened to pull out altogether. 1700 is
not
assured as of yet, though I think it likely that we will acheive
that
number.
Last I checked 1,700 included revised USN/USMC numbers.
But according to your own GAO, it very possibly never even enter into
production at all.
that's a bitgarbled so I'mnot sure what you're referring to, the a/c or
the
engine(s)?
Both, obviously (if the aircraft goes, the engines will be sort of
useless
unless they find new homes).
The a/c obviously isn't going to go, unless they invariably catch fire
every time the engine is
started. Re new homes for the engines, even if the F135 proves to be the
best choice for the F-35,
we'vestill got a fair number of new platforms (LRS, UCAVs etc.) which may
find one or the other engine
(or developments based on them) better suited to them, which is yet
another reason why I think keeping
both engines going, at least for a while, is the smart thing to do.
What programs do you want to cut in order to make that happen? You know that
is the end result, right? The resource pie is not infinite?
GAO has come down hard on the idea of going to
production until the final definitive version has been tested...they
never
heard of spirals or what?
Actually, they are the ones who've always advocated spiral development
(although they didn't call it
that) when the military was pushing concurrent development and production.
Gee, then they seem to have forgotten that in the present day...
Or have you forgotten the
Cook-Craigie plan in the '50s, which resulted in us buying large numbers
of unusable F-100s, F-102s
etc., which sat on the tarmac while fixes were devised and implemented,
and the programs ran far behind
schedule.
Weren't those the products of that wonderful competitive flyoff idea that
you think so highly of?
Or the navy's 3T (Tartar/Terrier/Talos) program, which was so unreliable
that McNamara called
a halt to performance improvements, putting all the money into the
"Get-Well" program so that there was
a reasonable chance the systems would actually work as advertised. Or the
F100 engine, or any number of
other projects. It's been the military that has continually tried to push
technically immature programs
into production, the F-22 and F-35 merely being the latest in a long
lineleading to development delays
and/or very expensive retrofit programs later.
Like the M1, right? Sure....
They don't mind if we slip the program another few
years *right now*? You probably like their "fly before buy" argument, I
know... I on the other hand don't like the idea of futher slipping the
intro
dates *now* because we *might* run into problems later in the program
that
*might* necessitate a slip....
And of course the reason, most of the reason for the current slip was the
lack of competition and the
too early selection of a technically immature, non-representative winner,
Balderdash. That is your claim, but it is not exactly accepted as fact.
which is exactly what the GAO
was saying would happen back about 8-10 years ago when they stated that
the development timelime was too
concurrent with production plans. They said major slippage was virtually
guaranteed given the setup,
and whaddya know.
Ten years ago they were critiquying the JSF program like that?
But paradoxically, they argue that we shoudl dump money
that we want to spend elsewhere into the development of a second
engine
for
a program that they say should not receive a production
decision...odd,
that.
They say it's not ready to receive a production decision yet, and
clearly
it
isn't. We've done far too much concurrent development and production
over
the
years, often because the military wants so badly to have a program
(which
they've become institutionally invested in) that they try and put the
a/c
into
production before it's ready so that the momentum will be too great to
stop it,
and they can then go back to Congress later for the money to fix the
problems
which they already knew about but were afraid to mention.
How long you want to fly those F-16's and A-10's? How much more money do
you
want to dump into buying more of them because you are unwilling to take
an
acceptable risk in regards to F-35 spiral development?
The problem isn't spiral development, it's concurrent development and
production. As stated above, GAO
is a fan of spiral development - get the bugs out of the basic a/c first
and give it some less than
all-up but still very useful capability out of the gate.
That is not the read I get rgearding their critique of the F-35 right now.
As to buying more F-16s to tide us over
(unfortunately not an option for A-10s), that's a perfectly acceptable
alternative at the moment,
Gee, you DO think we have an infinite resource pie, huh? Come on now...
because they are still completely viable in the current environment,
they're relatively cheap, and we
know we can find buyers for them down the road.
Buyers at pennies on the dollar, dollars that have to come out of
*something's* hide. Guy, I hate to say this but you are beginning to sound a
bit like Andrew over in SMN when it comes to procurement funding, when in
fact if you pay Paul, you have to rob Peter. So what are you gonna cut to
buy these new F-16's?
And if ever there were an example of the success of
spiral development, the F-16 would be it. I'm less enthused about buying
more F-18E/Fs if the F-35C is
further delayed, but that's certainly an option. way backwhen, the GAO
recommended that we take the
development money being spent on the F-18E/F (somewhere between $4.8 and
$6.7 billion IIRR) and spend
most of it procuring several hundred new F-18Cs, instead putting more
money earlier into what became
JSF. I still believe that would have been the better approach.
Now I can agree somewhat with the latter, to some extent, though buying more
C model F/A-18's would have been hard to swallow (the used market for them
is even leaner than that for the F-16).
<snip Bush telling Blair he didn't want to cause his govenrment to fall>
Wonderful. But I still fail to see what that has to do with the
management
and budgeting of the F-35 program...nor do I think it a proper view to
hold
(I don't always agree with the current Admin).
Whether you agree with it or not, it's clear that the current US
government 'favors' the Blair
government and cares deeply about whether Blair is around or not. As I
said, almost anything we can do
that will help him politically is worth the price, if it helps keep the
British in Iraq (we've currently
got 14 combat brigades in Iraq, the Brits 2) and Afghanistan (IIRR
they've got 3,300 troops in the
latter currently, who've been busy along with the Canadians in fighting
the Taliban so that we can
transfer a brigade to Iraq). So far, we've spent or allocated $420
billion for the war in Iraq, and
another $89 billion for Afghanistan. I don't know how much the Brits have
spent in the two countries in
the last three years, but I'm sure it's a hell of a lot more (in monetary
terms, and ignoring the lives
of their soldiers) than the potential benefit they stand to gain from the
F-35, after subtracting the $2
billion or so they've kicked in for R&D. So, how much are you willing to
spend to pick up their slack,
if Blair goes and the successor PM and/or government doesn't have his
commitment and decides that they
are no longer willing to support us? Where does the US get the troops
toreplace them?>
I don't share your view of the UK as being such a mercenary entity. Probably
we have already argued this enough.
I consider anything we can do which might
help keep the current UK leadership in power worthwhile, but keeping
the
F136
development going at least until the F135 demonstrates maturity and
that
it can
meet its specs is a no-brainer to me.
Lessee, that means you are saying we should continue to pour more
money
into
a less mature second project that does not meet specs instead of maybe
using
the same money to ensure the first more mature project can indeed meet
specs, all while trying to stay within a fixed budget...not the best
of
solutions IMO.
Competition, competition, competition. What's P&W's incentive to get
things
fixed quickly and keep costs down if they know they're the only game in
town?
We've been down that road before with them.
Yeah, and your own GAO once published a very favorable report concerning
their sole-sourcing of engines for the F-15 and F-16 (they actually
*did*).
I haven't seen that one. the one I did read from May or june of this
year, specifically mentioned the
competition between the F100 and F110 as an example of good practice
inholding costs down and getting a
better product sooner.
Go to their website and use the search function and you can indeed find
lauditory comments from them regarding the F100 program while it was still a
single-source. They apparently had been asked to check into the possibility
that P&W was fleecing the government and not providing proper value for the
dollar.
"Competition" does not mean squat if the program becomes so slow
Are you saying that GE's continuing to develop the F136 will slow down
P&W's F135 development program,
or the F-35 program itself?!
Again, rob from Peter to pay Paul. I had this same discussion with Andrew
not long ago over shipbuilding budgets; you can't dump money into anything
without it either coming out of somewhere else or being a complete mark-up
to the spending bill. When you do the latter, take a gander at all of the
"unfunded priorities" that the services have on the table on a permanent
basis and tell me how many of the top ranked ones are being sacrificed in
the name of the F136. Hell Guy, I was a trainig officer during a period
where we lacked the funding to send new troops through AIT for gosh sakes
(and that was in the nineties!). Rob from Peter...
or too
expensive such that it never reaches fruition.
Since much if not most of the "too expensive" is due to program delays and
cost overruns stemming from
sole-source monopolies, i.e. "this is it and we're stuck with it", all
things considered I'll take
competition.
Nor will "competition" mean a
lot to the guy who in 2018 or 2020 is tasked to take his F-16 MLU-cubed
into
a nasty IADS environment because the F-35 was stillborne due to cost
overruns incurred early in the program by doing things like demanding a
second engine be developed *right now*...
In this case, the F136 wasn't required to be developed *right now*, it was
designed to trail the F135 by
a couple of years; I think they should have been continued at the same
pace. That it may well be
available about the same time as the F-35 is, is due to the slippage in
the a/c's schedule.
$400 million next year for the F136, right? You need to be aware that DoD
does NOT have a big printing press in the basement that churns out new
C-notes as required...
<snip>
Again, the idea that a less amture project that already is not meeting
specs
is better than a maore mature project that also needs to meet thos
same
specs?
Neither is currently meeting specs, although both companies claim the
problems
are minor and easily fixable (they would), and the airframe is also
behind
schedule and over-budget. We've already denied ourselves an option with
the
latter, with theprogram running about 2 years behind schedule, so why
would we
wish to repeat that with the engines?
Because some folks realize that despite all the well-wishes for
pie-in-the-sky competition in the future, they have to try and restrain
*current* costs in an increasingly constrained budget environment?
Which is why McCain and other members of congress are voting to withhold
F-35 development funds until
the a/c demonstrates a greater level of maturity. As IMO they should.
LOL! Again with the approach that goes, "OK, we are gonna cut your
development funding, and we are further going to make you spend part of what
you *do* get on something that you do not find on your CPM diagram for a
successful program." Not real logical IMO.
<snip some back and forth>
Kevin, we're currently spending $8 billion a month on our military
in
Iraq.
Whoopie, that has little to do with the JSF program, nor should it.
But it has a whole lot to do with how much it would cost us to replace
the
Brits
in southern Iraq, seeing as how we've currently got 2 or 3 division
equivalents
in the country. Let's low-ball it and call it $1 billion/month.
Bad math, IMO. Firstly, there is no way the Brits are gonna pull out that
ricky-ticky; even if they do decide to pull the chocks, it takes some
time
to disengage unless they want to look *really* foolish.
So they take six months or so, assuming they're given that much time by
their electorate, and assuming
that the new government thinks _they_ will look foolish. After all, it
won't be _their_ policy they're
repudiating ("it was all Blair's doing; we wanted to leave but he wouldn't
let us"), and they will have
the support of the overwhelming majority of the british public to get out
sooner rather than later.
We are back to portraying the UK as a mercenary nation...sorry, but that
will have to remain your view, not mine.
We are already
looking at drawing down our own forces (indeed we already are, evidenced
by
the fact that equipment is being returned from Iraq that had previously
been
used as a deployment pool due to future reductions in committed forces).
You
are dealing in really big "what ifs" here, Guy, and even then your "what
ifs" have too many supporting "what ifs" of their own to draw any real
conclusions.
My what ifs don't include assuming that "everything will work out just as
we hope it will, the new Iraqi
government will take firm hold and be able to start achieving major
increases in security so that we
will be able to make major reductions in our own forces soon." They may
do so and I'll be happily
surprised, but I'm sure not counting on it. Casey says he hopes to,
Rumsfeld says we may go up and
down, but both know that (barring a purely political temporary draw-down
for the election) our military
ability to do so will be determined by what happens there, not by what we
want. My what-ifs do include
the possiblity that any withdrawal by the Brits will only encourage the
insurgency, as they can chalk
that up as a huge political success, just as getting the Spanish and
Italians to leave were lesser
successes.
See above about mercenary nature...
We
also have troops in Afghanistan, and the UK, Canadians and a few
others
are
taking over some of their work, allowing us to decrease our presence
there
by
3,000 or so. The UK has a two-brigade division in southern Iraq, and
has
had it
there for three years. How much do you think it will cost us to pick
up
the
British mission in southern Iraq and Afghanistan if they decide to
pull
out?
<snip>
You have just come full circle back to the mercenary view. IMO, if
they
folks of those nations feel the missions are necessary and worth the
costs,
they should (and have, and do) contribute to the effort. Not becuase
the
US
is going to assure them a nice, fat paycheck for doing so. We have to
resort
to the latter measure in some cases with other nations, but that does
not
mean we should have to do it with our closeest allies. If I were a
UKan
or a
Canuckian reading your views on the subject, I'd be rather peeved that
anyone should even suggest we were supporting the efforts for "filthy
lucre". If they pulled out over the lack of the F136, or even over
their
failure to continue with the JSF program at large, then I would say we
would
have lost damned little--luckily, I don't believe those nations to be
as
shallow in thier outlooks as you seem to think.
You might want to check how the folk of the UK and most of the ruling
party feel
about the mission's necessity and whether it's worth the costs -- see
the
vote
total above, for their attitude _prior_ to the war, never mind their
current
feelings. The Brit's are still there because Blair is still in
charge --
Brown
hasn't invested his personal and political capital in the war, and it's
unclear
to me whether he believes it's necessary; Blair has and does.
You are further confirming yourself into the mercenary view of the
British
mentality; and I just don't think that is fair to the Brits, nor is it
accurate.
As I have stated, it's not a question of being mercenaries (freelance guns
for hire), it's a question of
cost/benefit.
That is mercenary, IMO. If the Brits are only there because of the F136, we
don't need them. I don't think that is the case.
The British public does not and has not felt that Iraq was worth it. That
they have not
been able to force their government to act accordingly is due almost
entirely to one man, the PM.
<snip Clinton administration's reluctance toget involved in Balkans>
The fact is that Blair was ready to do something effective, including
ground troops, before we were.
Heard that saw before, and unfortunately it does not stand up to
actual
reason or fact. This is one of those few cases where I can say, "I was
there." We were conducting a V Corps Warfighter exercise at
Grafoenwehr
in
Germany at the time, and the 1st ID(M) was pulled from the exercise
before
it even got actually going to prepare for a "real world" committment,
with V
Corps itself being ready to dump the exercise and paying a lot more
attention to real world events than what was going on in the sim
centers
and
CP's. It was rather easy for Blair to beat the drum in that case,
knowing
that there was going to be no ground force committment (period) unless
the
US was part of it and facilitated it.
Actually, he seems to have been almost willing to go it alone. He was
prepared
to put over 50,000 ground troops (i.e. over half the British Army) into
the
ground campaign, and he (along with Albright) was pushing the Pentagon
and
Clinton to rescind their comments about not using ground troops, just
as
he had
already. It's instructive that the Neocons (and GWB) were the ones
saying
much
the same thing at the time, albeit from outside. Blair managed to get
Clinton
onboard, and together they worked out compromise language to keep NATO
from
publicly splintering over the issue.
Please show where the Brits were ready to go it alone, or even had the
capability to do so. They were not; heck, neither were we.
See the book "American Ally" for details as to how Blair's attitude
evolved, and just what he was
willing to do. Expecting a two-fingered typist to type the entirety of the
relevant chapters is a bit
much to expect;-)
I don't believe the Brits had the capacity to make it happen, even if they
had the will.
The funny thing is that is is still not our place to set policy to
favor
any
individual leader of the UK government, now is it?
Oh, come, let's not pretend we live in an utopian fantasy world.
We've
set
policy to favor/disfavor any number of governments/candidates, up to
and
including organizing their overthrow when it suits us. For a
democratic
ally
like the UK our favoritism should be less obvious and less intrusive
because we
still have to be on reasonablygood terms with the opposition if
'our'
candidate
loses, but to pretend that favoritism doesn't exist is naive.
I believe you greatly exaggerate the situation. We have no business
sticking
our noses under their political tent, just as they have no business
doing
so
under ours. And largely the two governments have refrained from doing
so.
See conversation between Bush and Blair above. If that doesn't
constitute
favoritism in your book, then we have very different definitions of the
word.
What plums did we send them? None; nothing more than platitudes were
offered. No US scheming to keep Blair in office, no attempts to influence
the British electorate with contracts (as you seem to think would be
required), etc.
Here's a couple of examples: on the geo-political scale there was the Bush
administration's getting
re-engaged in the Palestine/Israeli situation after having adopted a
hands-off policy, done at Blair's
specific request because it was important to both him and his electorate,
even though much of the
administration had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do so.
Show me the money?
We still wouldn't talk to Arafat, but
we did at least start paying attention again and talk to others, as well
as have Bush make several
speeches on the subject where he'd been notably silent.
Again, show me the money?
On a smaller, more direct scale, there doesn't seem to have been any
executive-branch pressure at all to
alter the choice of the US101 as the next Marine One, which was certainly
a contract that helped both
the British and Italians while hurting a US company. For all I know there
was pressure applied to
influence the selection _for_ the US101, but even if the US101 won purely
on the merits, the fact that
the executive didn't bow to the usual protectionist clamor and overrule
the US101 choice in favor of
Sikorsky, or even AFAIR mention it as an issuer, spoke volumes.
OFCS, that last bit is a complete and utter stretch. I guess next you will
decide we just selected EADS for the LUH program because we really want to
support AI's subsidization policy? The US101 was not selected as a sop to
the Brits over Iraq, for gosh sakes.
<snip>
and furhter thinks that
tossing money needed elsewhere at a less mature project that does not
meet
specs is better than tossing it at a more mature one that by all
c=accounts
will meet those specs well before the former does.
Assuming all goes well, as the military and contractor assures us it
will,
and
they've never been hopelessly optimistic/wrong before.
Do you really think the P&W engine is going to fail?
Depnds how you define 'fail'. Do I think it will reasonably close to on
time, on budget, and works as
advertised? Not if GE isn't around to pressure them.
Why did the M1, M2, Apache, F-16. F-15, etc, not fail or nearly do so for
the same reason? Was Patriot a failure because there was no competing
missile breathing down its neck? How about DDG-51--how has that program
failed because no other destroyer design was competing?
Do you really think
that contributing less money to the program now will result in getting to
IOC in the same timeframe as what is now planned?
Yes, if the money is spent on R&D instead of jumping ahead with an
immature product, which has been the
all-to-oft-repeated practice.
So if we follow the F-22 model, we would be better off?
Do you really think that
forcing the DoD to spend $400 million of the R&D funding where it does
not
want to, while threatening to pull $1.2 billion from the funding at the
same
time, is a really *good* strategy to follow to acheive that IOC?
Yes.
Then we are at an impass.
Brooks
When DoD shows that it can run an a/c acquisition program with major
development requirements and
have it come in within, oh, let's be generous and say 25% of the original
budget, schedule and
performance they predicted, I may be inclined to give them the benefit of
the doubt. As it is, given
programs that suffer repeated Nunn-McCurdy breaches and development delays
because the services are far
too willing to believe (or at least use) fairy-tale numbers, I'm not going
to trust their judgement
alone.
Guy
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Other JSF options
- From: John Keeney
- Re: Other JSF options
- From: Guy Alcala
- Re: Other JSF options
- References:
- Re: Other JSF options
- From: Guy Alcala
- Re: Other JSF options
- Prev by Date: Re: "Boeing sees Airbus aid ploy to build rival jet"
- Next by Date: Re: Air Force Aerial Refueling Methods: Flying Boom versus Hose-and-Drogue
- Previous by thread: Re: Other JSF options
- Next by thread: Re: Other JSF options
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
