fighter modernization has been in the deep freeze for ... · flight deck at sea. the navy chose to...

By John A. Tirpak, Senior Editor

Fighter modernization has been in the deep freeze for years.Now, three fighters are bidding for money at the same time.

HAVING gone two decades with-out fielding a new fighter de-

sign, the Pentagon is poised to spendabout $180 billion over the next 25years on three new types to replacethe bulk of its fighter fleet.

Those who want to find big sav-ings in the Pentagon’s budget havesuggested killing one or more of theprograms, but the services insist thatall three fighters fulfill unique mis-sions, are not interchangeable, andmust be bought in planned numbersif the US military is to remain cred-ible in the 21st century.

The three fighters, in order of theirplanned entry into service, are: theF/A-18E/F Super Hornet for theNavy, in 2001; the F-22 Raptor forthe Air Force, in 2005; and the JointStrike Fighter, for the Air Force, theNavy, and the Marine Corps, begin-ning in 2008.

The trio of programs is expectedto take center stage in a major air-craft review to be completed some-time this year, following the comple-tion of the Bush Administration’snational strategy review but beforethe F-22 and JSF reach major con-tract go-ahead milestones this fall.President Bush himself has suggestedthat the defense budget might notaccommodate all three fighters, sinceDOD now must also finance an ex-pensive new missile defense program.

The services insist the new fight-ers are needed to solve two kinds ofproblems. First, current aircraft arebecoming obsolete and would be

overmatched against a new crop ofair and ground threats. Second, thesefighters also are physically wearingout, causing maintenance and oper-ating expenses to soar. Buying a newgeneration of aircraft, the servicesassert, will restore this nation’s tra-ditional edge in fighter technologyand, at the same time, save money bysharply reducing support costs.

The three fighters could scarcelybe more different. Each is designedto solve a unique military problemand each in some way assumes thepresence of the others, as they all fittogether in the Pentagon’s grandscheme of operations.

The F-22 and the Joint Strikefighter are both stealthy and bothwill use the most advanced avionicsand weapons, but there the similar-ity ends. The F-22 has the highestunit cost of the three because it meetsthe most stringent requirements ofall—stealth, extreme agility, flightat high altitude, and persistent highspeed. It will have to take on and winagainst large numbers of the verytoughest enemy fighters and air de-fenses. It must be able to range thebattlefield at will, clearing the airfor less-capable, less-stealthy air-planes needed later to fully pros-ecute a war. The F-22 will have aground attack capability as well, todeliver bombs against critical pointtargets deep inside enemy territory.

No one doubts the F-22 will per-form as advertised. Even the makersof its toughest overseas competitor,

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the Eurofighter Typhoon, advertisetheir airplane as being 80 percent ascapable as the F-22.

The JSF was designed as an af-fordable way to replace thousandsof worn-out aircraft, while takingprudent, selective advantage of newtechnologies. It is the cheapest ofthe three fighters. It will perform theday and night, constant-pressurewartime missions against dispersedground targets once the F-22 hasalready swept the skies of enemyfighters and knocked down the sur-face-to-air missile threat.

The JSF will be very maneuver-able—the Air Force version will beas agile as the F-16—but it was neverintended to do the F-22 mission andwas not equipped for it. It will carrymissiles and can shoot down enemyairplanes, but in small numbers. It isgeared mainly toward precision at-tack of ground targets.

The JSF was made stealthy becausethe science of low observability hasmatured to the point where it is only amodest part of the cost of an airplane,if it is designed-in from the beginning.That stealth is necessary to protect theJSF against pop-up ground threats,such as mobile missiles.

The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet isquite simply a stopgap airplane, pro-viding the Navy with an imminentlyneeded, carrier-based jack-of-all-trades platform for defense and at-tack. It is an upgrade of a 1970sdesign and must carry around theextra weight necessary to endure re-

F/A-18E/FSuper Hornet

Without the single-seat F/A-18Eand the two-seat F/A-18F SuperHornet, the Navy would have littlejustification for the aircraft carrierin the next decade. Unless the seaservice can equip its flattops with anaircraft more capable against mod-ern defenses, the striking power ofthe aircraft carrier will be limited,and the risk of losses in action againstany modern adversary will be high.

Today’s carrier aircraft are mostlydesigns of 1960s and 1970s vintage,updated in the 1980s. The swing-wing F-14 Tomcats, featured in themovie “Top Gun,” are wearing outand becoming prohibitively expen-sive to maintain. Around 2007, theywill have been retired altogether.Though designed as interceptors, theF-14s have been pressed into serviceas attack airplanes—dubbed “Bomb-cats”—to fill in behind the A-6EIntruder medium bomber, the lastoperational version of which left thefleet in 1998. The A-6’s intendedreplacement, the stealthy A-12, wasterminated in 1991 when the Navybotched its development.

To save on logistics costs, the Navyabout a decade ago decided to movetoward fewer types of aircraft on theflight deck at sea. The Navy chose tofocus its carrier striking power inthe F/A-18C Hornet because it wasthe newest fighter in the inventoryand promised to be a flexible design.Thus, the plain Hornet became thecarrier workhorse of the 1990s.

The F/A-18C, however, has runout of room for improvement. TheHornet has no more unused fuselagespace in which the Navy could in-stall new avionics equipment. More-over, the plain Hornet cannot landsafely on a carrier deck while stillcarrying a bomb load. As a result,pilots have gotten in the habit ofdumping good ordnance into the seabefore bringing the fighter down.This, said Navy officials, has be-come too costly to bear.

“It’s reached its maximum growthcapability,” Rear Adm. Evan M.Chanik Jr., chief of naval aviationplans and requirements, said of theF/A-18C. “We’ve run out of electri-cal power, we’ve run out of coolingpower, so we really can’t do anymore modifications or improvements.

The F-22, shown being chased by an F-16, is two generations beyond the F-15and represents an impressive technological leap over competing fighters.Buying the F-22 would also be cheaper than rebuilding the aged F-15 fleet.

peated carrier takeoffs and landings;it lacks the stealth and agility of theF-22 and JSF.

While its unit cost is between thatof the JSF and the F-22, the programcost is about the same as that of theF-22, because so many more SuperHornets than F-22s are planned.

The Navy sees the Super Hornetas mainly a “bomb truck,” which,because it has been given only mini-mal stealth treatments, will dependon standoff weapons and heavy elec-tronic jamming to survive. The Navyitself acknowledges the Super Hor-net will have to avoid dogfights,because of its lumbering turningability vs. contemporary adversar-ies.

The F/A-18E/F was not the Navy’sfirst choice for the air war of the 21stcentury; it originally envisioned anall-stealth force consisting of a na-valized F-22 and the A-12 attackairplane. When those projects werecanceled, the F/A-18 seemed an eco-nomical way to refresh the flightdeck with an adequate platform whilefollow-on aircraft like the JSF tookshape.

Pentagon officials seriously con-templated dropping the Hornet up-grade in favor of waiting for the JSF,since the E/F is considered by manyonly a marginal improvement overthe earlier version, the C/D. How-ever, the Clinton Administrationdetermined the Super Hornet wouldserve as competition to hold the JSFon track.

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We’ve run out of weight, so we can’tadd any weight in terms of growingit.”

The plain Hornet has also beeninfamous for its short range, limitedmaneuvering capability against con-temporary fighters, and relativelysmall offensive payload.

Despite these shortcomings, theF/A-18 became the centerpiece ofnaval aviation in 1991 because, atthat point, the Navy had been hit, inclose succession, with cancellationsof an F-14 upgrade, an A-6 upgrade,and the entire A-12 program. TheNavy chose to “grow” the F/A-18design to allow it to replace the F-14in the interceptor role and to becomea respectable bomb truck to carrythe kind of heavy load in which theA-6 Intruder specialized.

Heavy LiftingThat enlarged design is what the

Navy now calls the F/A-18E/F Su-per Hornet. “We see it as filling that‘heavy lifting’ mission,” Chanik ex-plained.

The E/F version will also take onthe role of carrier-based tanker, sub-stituting for the S-3 Viking. In addi-tion, the Navy is considering the F/A-18E/F as the basis for a replacementof the EA-6B Prowler electronic war-fare platform; Boeing is developingan EF-18 “Growler” variant.

When compared to the originalHornet, the two versions of the SuperHornet present a somewhat reducedradar cross section in the front as-pect, which will improve their sur-vivability against air-to-air and sur-face-to-air threats. The improvementsincluded coatings on the canopy, aredesigned engine inlet, radar blockersfor the larger engines, and radar ab-sorbent material on leading-edge sur-faces.

“We didn’t go [for] all-around re-duced visibility, i.e., JSF style orF-22 style,” Chanik noted. “That wasa cost–benefit tradeoff. ... We lookedat the aircraft in various configura-tions and designed accordingly toprovide us with what we think aresome LO [Low Observable] ben-efits.”

Chanik acknowledged that hang-ing external stores on the E/F willincrease its observability to radar,but he suggested that the weaponsthemselves could be treated to makethem less detectable.

Other survivability improvements

Boeing is under contract to pro-vide 222 Super Hornets under amultiyear contract approved by Con-gress. That contract winds up in2004, but officials expect anotherto come immediately after the first.The Navy’s requirement is for 548Super Hornets, with deliveries com-pleting around 2012.

The QDR CutThe Navy initially envisioned

buying more than 700 Super Hor-nets, but the 1997 Quadrennial De-fense Review determined that theJoint Strike Fighter, which will bestealthier and is an all-new design,should be procured by the Navy assoon as it becomes available. Penta-gon officials opted not to cancel theSuper Hornet in 1997. Even thoughthey considered it only a modest im-provement on the C/D, it answeredthe Navy’s urgent need for fresh air-planes and could serve as competi-tion or a fallback if the JSF programfailed to deliver.

In Fiscal 2001 dollars, the flya-way cost of a single Super Hornet is“just over $50 million ... $52, $53million,” Chanik said. That cost isfor a fighter equipped with the APG-73 radar, but in order to make theaircraft “fully capable,” the Navywill be adding a new Advanced Elec-tronically Scanned Array radar start-ing in 2006. The AESA will add acouple of million dollars to the costof each Super Hornet once it’s avail-able, but the technology will be

The Super Hornet, dependent on standoff weapons and jamming to survive, isnot the stealthy jet the Navy originally had in mind for its 21st century carriers,but the service sees it as vital to replacing worn-out aircraft in the near term.

include onboard electronic counter-measures and fiber-optic towed de-coys.

The Navy feels that the SuperHornet must have jamming supportif it is to survive in future aerialcombat. Chanik said that, in addi-tion, the Super Hornet will succeedby relying on long-range weapons,such as the Joint Standoff Weaponglide bomb and the Standoff LandAttack Missile–Extended Range.Such munitions will reduce the needfor the E/F to have to get close to itstarget, as they can be launched doz-ens of miles from the intended pointof impact.

Compared with the C/D model,the Super Hornet has one additionalweapon hardpoint, or carrying sta-tion, on each wing. It carries moreinternal and external fuel and has alarger combat radius—about 650 to700 miles (compared to about 500miles for the plain Hornet)—depend-ing on the mission. The aircraft over-all is about 20 percent larger than theF/A-18C/D model.

The Navy is already well into pro-duction of the Super Hornet. It hastaken delivery of nearly 50 aircraftand plans to embark its first squad-ron aboard a carrier later this year.The F/A-18E and F will replace notthe C/D model, but the F-14. TheF-14 fleet needs to retire before theF/A-18Cs do.

“We’re necking down to an F/A-18–only fleet, for all practical pur-poses,” Chanik said.

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shared with the JSF program. Anadvanced forward-looking infraredsystem is also in the works for theSuper Hornet fleet, and its cost isalso considered separate from thatof the E/F.

Not counting development andacquisition of the new radar, the F/A-18E/F program is expected to costa total of $47 billion by the timeproduction ends 11 years from now.Discounting the sunk developmentcosts, the “cost to go” on the F/A-18is about $30 billion.

Navy plans call for moving, by 2020,to a new 50-aircraft air wing compris-ing 12 F/A-18Es, 14 F/A-18Fs, and 24Joint Strike Fighters. The Navy willbuy more two-seater than single-seaterSuper Hornets; it sees a need for twocrewmembers in missions with a highworkload, such as forward air control,and it needs the two-seat aircraft tofill the Stateside training role.

F-22 RaptorThe Air Force’s top priority pro-

gram is the F-22. It needs the F-22because the service does not believeits 30-year-old air superiority champ,the F-15, can soldier on much longer.Designed in the late 1960s to goagainst the Soviet–built MiG-21 andMiG-23, the F-15 is now matched orsurpassed by later generations offoreign aircraft such as Russia’s Su-35 and S-37, the Eurofighter Ty-phoon, and France’s Rafale.

degree possible, but it takes moreand more manpower to do so. Theairplanes stay out of service longer,cannibalization rates are going up,readiness rates are going down, andmore age-related problems crop upall the time.

The expectation was that the F-15would be replaced by the mid-1990s,so no one is quite sure just how longthe hardware can be kept going. Thecost of keeping the F-15 flying con-tinues to rise, and the aircraft justdon’t stay fixed for long until some-thing else breaks.

More lethal than enemy fighters,however, is the threat posed byground defenses, which have beenimproving continuously over thedecades. The F-15, having no stealthi-ness, will routinely have to operatenear the “no escape zone” of enemysurface-to-air missiles. Its effective-ness in keeping the skies clear forallied airplanes is eroding rapidly.

The Bush Administration hastalked about skipping a generationof weapons programs to remain atleast a generation ahead in militarytechnology. However, Jumper said,“We’ve already skipped a genera-tion of technology, and probably ...two, if you think about the fact thatthe F-15 first flew in 1972.” The F-22Raptor, Jumper insists, fulfills theconcept of a “leap ahead” systemwhose technology will surpass thatof the competition for decades tocome.

The F-22 features three technolo-gies that give it a wide edge over anycompetitor. These are stealth, theability to “supercruise,” and fusionof its sensor input.

The Raptor is the first fighter tocombine great agility with all-as-pect stealth. Being stealthy will al-low the F-22 pilot to see and fire onhis enemy before being seen him-self—in combat, an enormous ad-vantage. Should rules of engagementor the situation make it necessary tofight at close range, the F-22’s un-paralleled agility should allow it toprevail there as well, the key enablerbeing another US fighter first: thrust-vectoring nozzles.

SupercruiseThe F-22 is the also the first fighter

to have the capability to cruise atsupersonic speed for long periods ofthe mission. Previous fighters couldonly achieve supersonic speed in a

An electronic warfare version of the F/A-18F—nicknamed “Growler”—is beingtouted by Boeing to replace the aging EA-6B Prowler, which retires nextdecade. Commonality with the Super Hornet is the main selling point.

Gen. John P. Jumper, head of AirCombat Command, said, “We’ve hada chance to look at this latest genera-tion of airplanes,” and when US pi-lots flying real or simulated threatairplanes go against US pilots incurrent US fighters, “our guys fly-ing their airplanes beat our guys fly-ing our airplanes. ... And that air-plane we’re flying is the F-15.”

USAF requires an airplane that isgreatly superior to the oppositionbecause of US military strategy offighting at the enemy’s doorstep.Upon arrival in a crisis, a few squad-rons of American airplanes could befacing an enemy’s entire air force,and some “traditional adversary”nations have fleets of hundreds ofairplanes, many of them late-modeltypes. Simply to survive, US fight-ers must be able to shoot down manyenemy aircraft for each of their ownlost in combat.

The F-15 was also designed be-fore the advent of digital avionics,digital engine controls, stealth, andnew engine technology, while com-petitor aircraft designed in the 1980sand 1990s have, to some degree, in-corporated all these advances.

Curse of Old AgeMoreover, USAF’s F-15 fleet is

afflicted by all of the problems ofold age as they pertain to aircraft:crumbling seals, stress cracks, air-frame fatigue, frayed wiring, partsshortages, and obsolescent compo-nents. The problems are fixed to the

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“dash”—that is, for very brief peri-ods on afterburner, which quicklyeats up fuel. The Raptor, though,will be able to leap across swaths ofreal estate at over 1,000 miles anhour, do it persistently, and withoutresort to afterburner. Top speed ofthe F-22 is classified, but it doeshave an afterburner for high dashspeeds as well.

The pilot of the Raptor will havemore awareness of the air combatsituation than any pilot, ever. Thecomputer processors and communi-cations gear onboard will capturedata from a host of sources—satel-lites, E-3 AWACS airplanes, groundradars, other fighters—and presentit in a single display which will tellhim exactly what’s airborne in hisarea, who’s friendly, who’s an en-emy, and where all of them are andwhere they’re headed.

Making possible this unprecedentedcapability is a new technique calledsensor fusion. Unlike the F-15 pilot,the F-22 pilot will not need to inter-pret the displays given by rasterscreens in the cockpit. Data will bepresented in an integrated view, on asingle multifunction display. Fuelconsumption, weapon effectiveness,optimum release points—all thesethings will be calculated for him. Thepilot will be free to fly and employthe airplane and not have to focus onmaking sense of many visual and au-dio cues about what’s happening.

Jumper recently unveiled a con-cept of operations called Global

and maintenance pipeline purposes.To buy fewer than 339 would meansome contingencies might not getcovered. It would also prematurelywear out both the machines and theirpilots. Regional commanders in chiefwould demand the F-22 and its abil-ity to guarantee control of the skiesin any foreseeable conflict, and thesystem would never stop deploying.Its pilots would quit in frustration,as has been seen on other systemsconsidered low-density, high-de-mand weapons.

Actual RequirementThe Air Force would like to have

572 F-22s, which would put twosquadrons—48 total fighters—ineach AEF, with enough left over fora schoolhouse, tactics development,test, and other functions.

To date, the Air Force’s expendi-ture on the F-22 comes to about $21billion. That money has paid for afly-off competition between the YF-22 and YF-23, eight additional yearsof design and development work,the initial 400 hours of flight tests,and creation of factories, certifica-tion of vendors, and readiness forproduction.

From this point on, the F-22 pro-gram would cost an estimated $36.4billion, money that would be used tocomplete all flight tests, establish alogistics train, and procure all 339aircraft. The Air Force pegs the fly-away unit cost of the F-22 at $83.6million, in Fiscal 2000 dollars.

Jumper warns that canceling theF-22 now is a loser for the Air Force—financially and operationally.

Without the F-22, the Air Forcewould have to restart the F-15 pro-duction line, he said, and add “asmuch of the F-22 capability as pos-sible” onto the Eagle. This mightinclude some minimal stealth treat-ments, new engines, thrust-vector-ing nozzles, and electronic upgrades.

“To do that would cost us $10billion more ... than it will to buy outthe F-22,” Jumper said.

What the F-22 represents, headded, is an effort to put Air Forcepilots into the air with an airplanethat represents “the true technologi-cal capability of this nation” and togive the US “as much of an advan-tage over the current generation ofaircraft that are out there as we didwhen we fielded the F-15, and itenjoyed such a big advantage over

The F-22 plays the crucial role in USAF plans to gain entry to future theatersof war. Stealthy and superfast, the F-22 kicks down the door by knocking outmissile sites, weapons of mass destruction, and enemy fighters.

Strike Task Force, a plan which high-lights capabilities of the F-22 fordefeating anti-access threats, suchas theater ballistic missiles, weap-ons of mass destruction, anti-air andanti-ship missiles, and other systemswhich could hold the US and itsforces at bay in a foreign theater.

“Only the F-22,” with its combi-nation of stealth, supercruise, and asignificant ground-attack capability,can “kick down the door” into a hos-tile theater and clear the way for therest of the force to enter and operate,Jumper said.

The United States fights “as partof alliances and coalitions,” Jumpersaid. “Our coalition and alliance part-ners don’t have the strategic assetsto stand back a long way and pros-ecute wars.” The F-22, he said, willhelp the allies “get in close enoughthat they can participate with us.”

Morever, said Jumper, the F-22Raptor can “bring stealth into thedaytime; it can protect itself,” whichthe stealthy B-2 bomber and stealthyF-117 attack airplane cannot do, ex-cept passively, by using their stealth.“You can now use stealth 24 hours aday, and it can also protect our otherstealth assets.”

The Air Force was dealt a setbackin the 1997 QDR, when its plan toprocure 438 F-22s was reduced to339 aircraft. The service insists itneeds at least one squadron of 24airplanes for each of its 10 Aero-space Expeditionary Forces, plusabout 100 more for training, testing,

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airplanes like the MiG-23 and MiG-21.”

Joint StrikeFighter

The Joint Strike Fighter is the larg-est fighter airplane program for theforeseeable future, with nearly 3,000planned for the US military and amarket for 3,000 more anticipatedoverseas. If it goes forward, the pro-gram is likely to be in productionwell into the 2020s and maybe be-yond.

The JSF program seeks to derive—from one basic fighter design—threehighly similar, stealthy variants, oneeach for the Air Force, Navy, andMarine Corps.

Plans call for the Air Force modelto replace the F-16 as the low end ofthe service’s high/low mix, comple-menting the F-22. The service wants1,763 JSFs to replace F-16s, whichwere bought in large blocks in the1980s and will begin retiring by 2005.The Air Force expects to pay about$35 million apiece for the JSF, in2001 dollars. The Air Force insiststhat the airplane be stealthy and meetits cost goal; otherwise, the servicewill not be able to buy it in sufficientquantities.

If the JSF doesn’t appear in timeto replace the F-16 within this de-cade, lengthy and expensive servicelife updates will be necessary. Be-

provide close air support within afew short minutes of a request. USMCdoesn’t want to depend on existingrunways to meet this need.

Approximately $14 billion hasbeen spent on JSF over the last sevenyears, in a 50–50 cost-sharing ar-rangement between government andindustry. To fully develop the air-plane and create a manufacturingcapability will cost another $25 bil-lion—vs. twice that if three separateprograms were pursued—and pro-duction will cost about $90 billion.Foreign orders are expected, withsix more nations interested in get-ting in on development and contrib-uting funds toward it.

Two concepts are competing to bethe JSF, which is expected to becalled the F-24 in operational ser-vice. Boeing is offering an airplanebased on its X-32 demonstrator, whileLockheed Martin’s entry is based onits X-35.

Boeing’s design is characterizedby a large air intake under the nose,a feature which opens even wider onthe Marine model when taking off ordescending vertically. Though theX-32 is a tailless design, Boeing’sproposed JSF has a more conven-tional layout. While the engine fanblades seem to be visible on theBoeing concept—a no-no in stealthdesign—Boeing program managerFrank Statkus said the blades arehidden by a blocker, which is a newapproach to stealth. The X-32 meetsall the Pentagon’s requirements forstealth, Statkus said.

Lockheed Martin’s X-35 bears avague family resemblance to Lock-heed’s F-22. The conventional lay-out features inlets on the sides of theairplane; the fan blades are hiddenfrom view, inside the fuselage.

Both aircraft are required to carrytwo 1,000-pound Joint Direct At-tack Munitions internally and havethe ability to carry external stores toincrease payload when stealth is notrequired. Both types must have acombat radius in excess of 600 miles.

Marine Corps Maj. Gen. MichaelHough, the JSF program manager,says the program is right on trackand performing beyond anyone’sexpectations.

The Dart Throw“In 1994, they threw a dart in the

wall and decided that there would bea [winner chosen] in April 2001. We

Testing of the F-22 is progressing well, and Congress seems satisfied that itwill live up to its billing. The planned buy of 339 airplanes, however, will notallow a one-for-one replacement of the F-15; F-22s will be in constant demand.

cause the F-16 is not stealthy, theAir Force’s ability to operate in ar-eas with many mobile surface-to-airmissiles roaming the battlefield willbe severely hampered.

For the First DayThe Navy wants 480 JSFs to

complement the F/A-18E/F. It wouldserve as a first-day-of-the-war, di-rect-attack platform, Chanik ex-plained. Stealthier and carrying abigger payload than the USAF ver-sion, the Navy expects to keep thecost of its JSF down to about $45million.

Low operating cost and carrier suit-ability are the Navy’s top require-ments for the JSF, Chanik said.

The Marine Corps wants 609 JSFsto replace its AV-8B Harrier ShortTakeoff and Vertical Landing jetsfor close air support. The JSF wouldalso supplant the F/A-18s in Marineservice. Considered the most techni-cally challenging of the three vari-ants, the STOVL model will also beused by the UK, which has invested$2 billion in the program in exchangefor technology sharing and the rightto help set requirements for the air-plane. The Marine model is supposedto cost about $38 million.

The Marines need the JSF to be aSTOVL airplane for two reasons:There are no catapults on the Marineamphibious assault vessels, whichhave short flight decks. The Marinesalso want to position JSFs forward,near the battle lines, to be able to

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will do it in October. Over a seven-year program, we’re five months off.”

Hough said the JSF will in everyway match or exceed the performanceof the aircraft it is designed to re-place. However, “cost of ownershipis the legacy of this airplane. Notperformance. Relative to cost ofownership, performance is easy.”

He said when the services got seri-ous about setting their true top priori-ties for the JSF, they found that theywere willing to trade away some as-pects of performance to get an aircraftthat was cheap to own and operate.

“It’s cost of ownership of legacyairplanes that’s ... eating us alive,”Hough noted. He also said that whenthe contractors “saw we were seri-ous” about an almost religious zealfor savings, they too sharpened theirpencils and went to work, discardinglong-standing traditional ideas abouthow fighter airplanes are made. Forits part, the government did notspecify what it wanted. It set theperformance and cost requirementsand let the contractors offer theirown solutions, using their own tech-niques, technology, and businesspractices.

In the end, Hough said, the ser-vices will get both high performanceand an affordable aircraft.

The JSF will save large amountsof money because of high common-ality between the three variants. Thetarget parts commonality is 80 per-cent, and both competitors reportthey are comfortably above that level.

Competition on the engine is ex-pected to save billions and producecontinually better value in perfor-mance and reliability, Hough said.Achieving the ability to use the en-gines interchangeably was the hard-est challenge of the program, headded. Though there have been en-gine competitions in the past—par-ticularly on the F-16—the engineswere not interchangeable and re-quired unique equipment on the air-plane, as well as unique software.

The No-Break FighterThe assault on cost has been fierce

from the beginning, Hough ex-plained. He wanted an airplane asreliable as a TV set, car radio, orrefrigerator.

“They don’t break,” he said. “Whycan’t you have an airplane like that?”

He gave as an example of costavoidance the reliability of the JSFengines.

On current fighters, “every 250 to300 hours, we jerk a motor out of anairplane,” he said. If an airplane isgoing to an overseas deployment with100 hours on the engine and will bedeployed for more than six months,“you have to take another motor withyou [and] that increases footprint.”

The JSF engines will requirechangeout for service only every 800to 1,000 hours, or every three or fouryears, instead of at least once a year.They will need fewer maintainersand fewer spares on deployments.

He summed up the cost-saving

The X-32 and X-35 have racked up the smoothest-ever flight test program of X-planes, thanks to exhaustive simulation beforehand. Lockheed Martin’s X-35,shown here, closely matches the company’s proposed JSF design.

Moreover, the three versions willuse nearly identical software, andmore savings will derive from com-mon training systems, common de-pot equipment, and a single, stream-lined parts catalog.

The JSF will be able to carry ei-ther the Pratt & Whitney F119 orGeneral Electric F120 engine. Bothengine companies have to fit the samehole in the airplane, and the soft-ware to run the two engines must beidentical. To the pilot, it will notmatter whether he is flying with oneor the other type engine; performancewill be the same.

Boeing’s tailless X-32 design has been superceded by the company’s final JSFproposal, which has a more conventional layout. The JSF X-planes demonstratedesign, flight, and manufacturing concepts and aren’t meant to be prototypes.

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approach by pointing out that man-power accounts for 65 percent of thecost of ownership.

“We took the man out of the loop”wherever possible, he said. “I’m re-ducing manpower requirements, ...decrease the footprint.”

Similarly, the radar in the JSF hasa theoretical mean time between fail-ure that is longer than the life ex-pectancy of the aircraft itself, so thattechnicians will rarely, if ever, haveto open it for maintenance.

The payoff is enormous, Houghsaid. A 10,000-man Marine Avia-tion Logistics Squadron can be re-duced to 2,000 troops, simply bycutting down the time it takes to fixavionics.

“I can take 8,000 guys out of thereand give them back to the MarineCorps and make them into trigger-pullers,” he said.

Even the stealth treatments on theJSF will require less than 30 minutesbetween sorties for touch up, Houghnoted. “That’s two guys for 15 min-utes each,” Hough reported.

Overall, he said, the JSF will takeadvantage of everything learned onthe F-22 and F/A-18E/F, in terms ofdesign and manufacturing technol-ogy.

When President Bush talked about“skipping a generation” of technol-ogy, “I thought he was talking aboutus,” Hough grinned.

However, the Joint Strike Fighterassumes the F-22, he said. The JSFdoes not have supercruise ability, he

The two JSFs—Boeing’s on the left and Lockheed Martin’s on the right—arecompeting to fill a need for 3,000 fighters for the US and as many overseas.Choosing one will be hard; the program manager rates them both a “10.”

pointed out, nor is it designed to bean air superiority airplane.

“It’s a bomb truck ... and a veryefficient one,” Hough said.

Statkus said the single biggestthing that made the JSF possible wasthe ability to accurately model air-craft performance on a computer.

Just Like the Simulator“It is an extreme excitement for

people like myself and other engi-neers when a pilot who has spentthousands of hours in the simulatorflies the airplane ... and comes backand says, ‘You know, I couldn’t tellthe difference between the airplaneand the simulator,’ ” he said.

Boeing’s tailless X-32 does notlook much like its proposed JSF, butHough said he’s confident thatBoeing will deliver what it proposes“because of the fidelity of the simu-lations” between the demonstratorand the models which predicted itsperformance.

The requirements for the JSF wereadjusted frequently during the seven-year concept definition phase, andStatkus said the ability to fine-tunethe design at each step in the processled to adjusting the company’s JSFproposal from its initial tailless of-fering.

Lockheed Martin JSF managerTom Burbage said his company be-gan with a “good, all-around design... easily tunable to the requirementsas they were changing.” WhereasBoeing seemed to be designing to a

price point, he said, Lockheed’s air-plane was geared toward “offeringbest value.” Statkus agreed aboutdesigning to a price point but alsoinsisted his airplane, too, would be“best value.”

Hough said he believed severalyears ago that the requirements forJSF would be set too high. He fearedthat, on a scale of one to 10, thecontest would see a six beat a four.

“I wanted two nines. I don’t havethat. I have two 10s,” he asserted.“Competition and money drove thoseguys” to offer airplanes that meet orexceed all requirements, he said.

When the program was sketchedout in 1994, it was assumed the con-cept airplanes would fly like those inthe past, plagued with the technicalproblems of flying virtually one-of-a-kind machines. But the computer-aided design and manufacturing ofthe demonstrators was so smooth thatthey have been almost as reliable asthe objective aircraft.

Instead of flying two to five timesa week, “we’re flying them three tofive times a day,” Hough reported.So accurately have they been hittingtest points that, instead of the planned200-hour flight test program, “we’reknocking these things out in 110 to120 hours.”

Hough said that the contractorshave made the concept demonstra-tion flying program “look ridicu-lously easy.” He’s not taking suc-cess for granted. “That was donewith a hell of a lot of forethought,planning, superb engineering, and aheavy, heavy dose of leadership,”said Hough.

Jumper said the Air Force is rely-ing on the JSF to deliver an airplanethat will fill out its fleet. The F-22 isvital to gaining access to a futuretheater of war. However, notedJumper, gaining access by itself “doesnot win the war.”

The JSF will be vital to keepingup the pressure on the enemy, asthe “persistence stealth over thebattlefield” that continues to sup-press and destroy enemy air de-fenses, find mobile targets, and hittime-critical targets as they emerge,Jumper said.

The F-22 “gets the low end of themix in” to the fight, he said. And it isthat lower end of the mix that is “thewar-winning force, that has to comein behind the kick-down-the-doorforce,” he said. ■

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