Save the Industrial Base?

As we discuss the costs of various programs, such as the JSF, LCS, or Zumwalt, one of the common points that keeps recurring is that we can’t afford to cancel the programs because of the impact on the manufacturing base.  We’re down to one or two manufacturers in many of our key areas.  If we were to cancel a program, the manufacturer would fold or downsize to the point that we would lose vital expertise.  Thus, we’re forced to procure weapons and systems that may only be marginally useful in order to support the manufacturer.  The military is, in effect, operating a jobs program simply to maintain an industrial base.

In principle, this is an easy issue.  The military is under no obligation and, indeed, has no tasking or responsibility to ensure the solvency of commercial companies.  If a company can’t survive, it should fail.  That’s the Darwinian law of the free market.

Of course, the reality is that much of the manufacturing and technical expertise that the military depends on is narrowly focused (can’t be transferred into the general market place) and highly concentrated in a very few manufacturers.  If one does fold, it will have an enormous impact on our ability to design and produce new weapons and systems. 

We see, then, that a policy of propping up companies does, in fact, have some validity and strategic worth.  Unfortunately, this leads to two very bad consequences:  high costs due to lack of competition and the procurement of systems of questionable utility.  There is a third, perhaps worse, consequence and that is the concentration of expertise in commercial companies rather than within the military.  Currently, the Navy does not have the engineering expertise to design or even evaluate a ship design.  The Navy does not have the expertise to design new radars, missiles, launch systems, aircraft, or even more mundane and lower tech items such as turbines, motors, valves, etc.  The military has become totally dependent on commercial companies for expertise.  Too often, tech reps keep the Navy running instead of our own sailors.

What has lead us to this situation?  How did we go from having many shipyards, manufacturers, and widespread commercial expertise plus extensive in-house expertise in the 1940’s to the current situation?  There’s many factors, of course, but two main developments have dictated the trend. 

First, the abolishment of BuShips (see here) meant that the Navy gave up its internal ship design expertise.  As we said, not only can the Navy not design new ships, it can’t even evaluate industry designs (no cathodic corrosion protection on the LCS???  no bridge wings on the LCS? vibration so severe on the LCS that the 57mm gun can’t hit a target?).  The Navy forfeited its technical competence to industry. 

Second, the Navy embarked on a pursuit of high end, multi-function, extremely high tech ships and planes which resulted in a spiral of fewer numbers and ever increasing costs.  As the costs increase, the numbers decrease.  That’s a death spiral.  It also means that fewer and fewer ships and aircraft are built which means that fewer and fewer manufacturers can be supported.  Again, a death spiral.

OK, so now we clearly see the problem and recognize the dilemma but no one seems to have a solution.  Is there nothing we can do but wring our hands and ride the death spiral down to the inevitable end?  That’s what the Navy is doing!

Well, having recognized the cause of the problem, what if we reversed it?  What if the Navy stopped the pursuit of technology (or at least tempered it!) and regained its in-house expertise?  Would that have any positive impact?  What if we built more ships and planes?  That would support a larger industrial base, wouldn’t it?  Well, sure, but where would the money come from to build more ships and planes?  We haven’t got enough money to even build sufficient numbers to maintain the fleet size let alone increase it!  So, yeah, I guess those actions would improve the situation but they’re not really practical or even possible … … …     Are they?

To build more ships without increasing the shipbuilding budget just requires a philosophical adjustment.  Let’s give up a few of the top end ships in exchange for greater numbers of solid, highly useful ships that don’t have to be technological wonders.  For example, the three Zumwalts are going to add a very marginal improvement in capability to the fleet.  At a construction cost of $12B or so (not to mention the R&D costs!), we could have bought twelve modern, highly useful $1B frigates or twenty four basic but still quite useful $500M frigates.  If we gave up a single $14B Ford class carrier we could afford a lot of AFSBs, MLPs, four air wings worth of brand new Super Hornets, an entire new class of MCM vessels, and so on.  If we gave up the LCS we could afford to build dozens of dedicated MCM vessels and low end dedicated ASW vessels.  I could go on with example after example but you get the idea.  Note that I’m not advocating giving up technology or high end ships – just saying that not every ship and plane needs to be ultra high end.  A judicious restraint on our technology pursuit fetish can still give us the high end we need, provide lots of extra ships and planes to support our industrial base, and significantly expand the fleet size while still providing useful platforms.  Throw in more upgrades rather than early retirements and the industrial base is further supported.

Reconstituting BuShips would provide the Navy with the in-house expertise it needs to better monitor the products and services it gets from industry.  If we had had in-house naval engineering expertise, how much money would we have saved on the LCS corrosion debacle?  Yeah, I know, a drop in the bucket compared to overall budgets and costs.  However, over time, enough drops eventually equal a bucket.  With in-house expertise, perhaps we wouldn’t have had to accept a clearly sub-standard LCS design, or EMALS that has no electromagnetic shielding and glows like an electromagnetic beacon, or an F-35C that doesn’t have enough rear end to get its tailhook to engage, or an LPD-17 design that has a boat launch that is inherently dangerous, or a Burke Flt III AMDR that is too small for the required task, or ….  All of those things cost extra money to fix – some drops of money and some quite a lot.  The more money we save, the more money we have available for additional ships and planes thereby strengthening the industrial base.

Greater in-house expertise also offers another, radical possibility.  If we can’t fully support the industrial base we need, what about absorbing it?  Why can’t the Navy actually design and build their own ships?.  Sure, we’d have to essentially create a shipbuilding company within the Navy but we would no longer have to pay the profit portion of the costs.  I don’t know what the profit margin on a ship is, for instance, but it’s got to be at least 20% or industry wouldn’t do it.  My guess is that it’s a lot higher than that.  Regardless, do the math.  A profit of 20% on a $12B carrier is $2.4B.  That could buy a lot of additional planes and ships or fund a great deal of maintenance and upgrades so that our existing fleet could last longer!  Instead of having to try to separate industry sales spin from reality maybe the Navy would have the expertise to know the straight story - not that the Navy is exactly renowned for straight talking or wise decisions but, you know, theoretically…

It comes down to this:  we can all say that the current system is too fragile to change – while riding the death spiral to complete failure – or we can peek outside the box and consider some more radical changes.  Would they be easy to implement?  Probably not but faced with a death spiral, isn’t it worth trying something different?  The Navy has 285 or so ships now and can’t meet the mission demand.  What’s going to happen when the fleet shrinks to 230?  Yeah, those are the numbers that even CNO is throwing around although he seems not to understand the reason why it’s happening.

The choice is simple:  die or change.  I’d like to try changing.

Shoup Returns

The Burke class destroyer USS Shoup, DDG-86, is wrapping up an extended deployment just shy of 10-1/2 months, having left on 9-Jan-2013 and scheduled to return on 18-Nov-2013.  Wanna bet there will be a few extra divorces and ultimatums waiting pierside?  The answer to dwindling ship numbers is not longer deployments.

JSF - Any Alternatives At This Point?

In a previous post, The Good That JSF Is Doing, an anonymous commenter, while acknowledging the problems with the JSF program, posed the question, is there really a better option than to see this through?  He then posed the follow up question, if we did cancel JSF, what’s Plan B?

For many people, the program really has boiled down to the sentiment expressed above.  The program is a poster child for how not to run an acquisition program and we can describe a litany of problems but, at this point, it’s too late to change, many feel.  There’s no realistic alternative.  Is that really the case?  Has it reached that sad point?  Let’s look a bit closer.

From a technical and tactical perspective over the next 20+ years the JSF is either inadequate for the high end scenarios (ASB, A2/AD) due to limited range, limited payload, and only moderate stealth or it’s a vast overkill for the low end scenarios where any number of much cheaper aircraft would work just as well. 

With that framework in mind, does it make sense to commit to building 2000 or so aircraft at $150M each for a total cost of $300 BILLION ?!!

To those of you who have already started to pound out your replies telling me how the JSF is going to have 360 degree magic vision, total situational awareness for 10,000 miles in all directions, act as a command and control node for the entire Western war machine, and whatever other promises have been made about it, do yourself a favor and stop reading this post.  You’re the type that believes in Santa Claus and believes that one LCS and one JSF will win any war single-handed (honestly, either one could do it alone, right?).  For the rest of us, the reality is that the JSF will offer modest improvements on the F-16’s dogfighting (maybe), a bit better range and stealth than the Hornet, and will be fortunate to realize half the claims made for it.  The JSF will eventually be a bit better than what we have now but at a crippling cost.

The question in this post, though, isn’t about the JSF’s technical abilities but whether there’s any real option or alternative at this point.  Let’s consider some alternatives.  I’m going to discuss this mostly from the Navy’s perspective while acknowledging that the impact on the Air Force and our allies is equally important.

The argument for continuing the program basically boils down to the fact that the current Hornets are reaching the end of their life and if we stop the program we’ll have a gap over the next 15 years where Hornets are retiring and we have nothing to replace them with.  Similarly, many of our allies are also in the position of needing an aircraft now. 

Is there an alternative?  Can we avoid the gap created by canceling the program?  Do we even need to worry about the gap?

Alternative 1 – Cancel the program and use the $300B that will be saved to start over using the lessons learned and any technology that can be salvaged.  With a better managed program, $300B can buy a lot of airplane!  The thinking under this scenario is that we accept the risk of a 15 year gap.  What better time?  The world is relatively quiet.  There is no high end threat that is considered a likely problem for the next 15 years so an aircraft gap is a reasonable risk.  The lower end conflicts can be adequately handled by existing aircraft.  We can continue to purchase Hornets to simply fill aircraft numbers.

Alternative 2 – The JSF offers only a modest improvement in performance and is not optimized for the ASB, A2/AD scenarios.  Cancel the program and put the $300B towards improved Hornets (conformal fuel tanks, improved sensors, etc.) which the manufacturer has already developed to a large degree.  We can purchase 1.5 improved Hornets for each JSF cancelled.  This will buy us the time to start a new aircraft program at a relaxed and reasonable pace while still improving the aircraft fleet via the improved Hornet.

Alternative 3 – Drop the F-35C carrier version but continue the F-35B buy for the Marines.  Again, the carrier version offers only modest improvements and the Hornet can continue to serve with supplemental new Hornet purchases.  This mitigates the budget damage to some degree while still obtaining an improved STOVL aircraft.

Related Observation:  The Navy is in the throes of a severe and worsening budget shortfall.  It is quite likely that either the number of carriers will be reduced by two or three or some carriers will be placed in long term caretaker mode and their air wings deactivated.  Thus, the aircraft gap that would result from canceling the JSF may well turn out to be nowhere near as severe as predicted.  We may, in fact, have a few air wings worth of surplus Hornets for the next decade or more.  The fact is that the Navy has already sidelined a few carriers and their air wings so this scenario is already playing out. 

None of these alternatives are particularly palatable but we’ve backed ourselves into a corner which has no good solutions.  However, the only thing worse than one of these alternatives is to spend ungodly sums of additional money that will cripple and kill future programs across the military while delivering a platform that is only a modest improvement and may be overmatched before it even reaches squadron service.

Tarawa, LHA-1 - Additional Service?

We saw in the last post that the Tarawa (LHA-1) class amphibious ships were retired early at just 30 years of service and with no real justification.  All right, let’s set that aspect aside.  Given that the class was retired, the next logical question is could any further worthwhile use have been gotten from the class even in another role?  Well, here’s a few possibilities.

LCS Mothership.  The LCS is going to be operated in squadrons (maybe – the Navy still isn’t sure what it’s going to do with the LCS!) which, given the concept of off-board maintenance for the LCS, just cries out for a mothership as the anchor for a group of ships.  The Tarawa mothership can provide the centralized, off-board maintenance support the LCS’s need, as well as providing refueling, rearming, reprovisioning, centralized command and control, and additional aviation support that would enhance the effectiveness of the LCS’s.  With no embarked Marines to support, the Tarawa should be able to operate with greatly reduced crews.

ASW/MCM Mothership.  The main platform in both ASW and MCM appears to be helos, at least until the magic remote unmanned vehicles pan out, and what better vessel to host helos than a former amphibious ship.

Littoral Combat Ship.  What are the attributes that the Navy claims make for an effective littoral combat ship?  They include extensive helo support and large flight decks, the ability to launch and recover remote unmanned vehicles, and sufficient weaponry to fight small boat swarms.  The Navy also claims that stealth and speed are necessary but the speed requirement has already been pretty well debunked and stealth is a debatable characteristic, at least for the ASW and MCM missions.  The Tarawas have the requisite characteristics in spades, other than stealth.  A single Tarawa operating a couple of dozen helos and with the capacity to launch and control dozens of remote, unmanned vehicles would be many times more effective than even a squadron of LCS’s.  Additional guns could be added to deal with small craft in the ASuW role.

Afloat Forward Staging Base.  This has already been done, just not with a Tarawa.  If AFSBs are a useful asset, the Tarawas are ready made and already paid for.  They simply need a relatively minor conversion.  Again, the crew requirements ought to be greatly reduced.

I can go on but you get the idea.  I leave it to you to come up with other uses.  You’ll note that these conversions would generally require only modest upgrades or conversions and would result in reduced crew sizes.

Normally, I would end the post at this point but I’m going to go a step further.  The post discussions have been disappointing of late.  People are fixating on trivial, ancillary details rather than the larger themes presented in the posts.  I’m going to attempt to improve the quality of discussion by explicitly pointing out what the larger themes are and challenge you to think and dig a bit deeper.

I have no problem with someone offering an amplifying thought about one of the uses I’ve proposed but that’s not really the point of the post.  The main theme is the Navy’s tendency to retire usable ships early without giving any consideration to alternate uses even if the ship is no longer suitable for its original purpose.  Combine this with the budget challenges facing the Navy and the dwindling size of the fleet and the overarching question is why can’t the Navy extract additional useful service out of older ships, ESPECIALLY CONSIDERING THAT THEY’RE ALREADY PAID FOR?  How do we justify the policy of early retirement of ship classes that can still provide useful service?  How does the Navy reconcile their stated desire for a larger fleet with their demonstrated policy of early retirements coupled with, generally, numerically smaller replacement classes?

Tarawa, LHA-1 - What Was Wrong With It?

The Tarawa, LHA-1, class amphibious ships are being replaced by the America, LHA-6, class.  The five member Tarawa class was built in the mid-1970’s and ‘80’s and are now retired after individual service lives of 33, 30, 27, 32, and 34 years.  That’s not very old by major ship standards.

What’s wrong with the Tarawa class that they have to be replaced after barely 30 years of service?  The America class design is largely a repeat of the Tarawa class with some minor changes to better accommodate the MV-22 Osprey and the anticipated JSF so the basic design must be suitable.  America will use hybrid electric propulsion and incorporate gas turbines which will offer fuel savings but that’s hardly a reason to scrap an entire class.  I’ve never read any document outlining the flaws in the Tarawa class that justify such an early retirement.  Similarly, I’ve not read any document that describes sufficient advances and benefits in the America as to justify early retirement of the Tarawa class.

Consider that the official Marine need for amphibious lift was 36-38 major amphibious ships, depending on what document or statement one wishes to reference.  Recognizing fiscal realities, the Marines grudgingly accepted a requirement for 33 ships.  The reality is that we only have around 30 ships and appear headed for around 25-28 ships given the current budget challenges.  Given a current and worsening shortfall in amphibious lift capacity, then, does it seem reasonable or wise to retire five fully capable amphibious ships in the prime of their lives? 



Tarawa - What Was the Problem?



Let’s speculate …  One possible reason for the actions is that the Marines have stated publicly that frontal amphibious assaults are a thing of the past (so why are they trying to get a new EFV/AAV/ACV?) and that inland airborne assaults are the wave of the future.  If that’s the case then the Tarawas with their well decks and LCACs might well be considered obsolete and an accelerated movement to the all-aviation America class might be justified.  The only problem with that theory is that the America class is only going to consist of two all-aviation ships, LHA-6 and -7.  Starting with LHA-8, the class is returning to the standard well deck arrangement, apparently for all future ships of the class.  So, it’s obvious that a movement towards all-aviation assaults is not the reason for dumping the Tarawas (along with the previously stated contradiction by the Marines in continuing to pursue amphibious EFV/AAV type vehicles).  In fact, the abrupt reversal back to a well deck in the America class could be interpreted as recognition that the all-aviation concept is already a failure before the first of class is even commissioned!  On the other hand, this may have been the Navy’s way of sneaking a couple of small JSF carriers into the force structure without having to go through the usual oversight and reviews – and if that’s the case, it might not be a bad thing but that’s a topic for another post.

Returning to the Tarawas, we have a perfectly capable ship that served as the design basis for its successor and had many more years of service life left at a time of declining amphibious lift capacity and yet the entire class was retired early.  People, I don’t get it.  This one is a head scratcher.  The Navy is consumed by the drive to fund new construction above all else and I just don’t understand it.  The Navy routinely makes poor decisions but this one is bad even by their standards.

Poland Upgrades Perry

Oh, the poor nation of Poland.  Those fools are about to invest $34M into upgrades on the Perry class frigate, the ex-USS Clark.  Don’t they know that the Perrys are completely obsolete and quite likely to spontaneously sink at any moment?  Don’t they know that they’re totally incapable of being upgraded?  We know that because the Navy told us that as part of the justification for the LCS.  I bet Poland wishes they had an LCS instead of an FFG with nothing more than up to 40 Standard missiles for AAW defense backed by Phalanx, Harpoon anti-surface missiles, 76 mm gun, anti-submarine torpedoes, Kaman Super SeaSprite ASW helos, and a hangar for two helos, among other capabilities.  Pity poor Poland, unable to afford a mighty war machine like the LCS.  

As reported by Defense News website, Poland has contracted with the US for a $34M upgrade to extend the operational capability of the Perry FFG until 2025.  The vessel’s combat, radio, reconnaissance, sensor, computer, and propulsion systems will be updated.

(1) Defense News, Jaroslaw Adamowski, 4-Nov-2013,  http://www.defensenews.com/article/20131104/DEFREG01/311040013/Poland-US-Sign-34M-Frigate-Modernization-Deal

Marine CAS

The Marines are counting on the F-35B as their new close air support (CAS) aircraft.  Heck, let’s be honest, they’ve bet all-in and by all indications this is the hill they’re willing to die on to get it.  OK, that’s fair.  The Marines need CAS they can count on, in their view, as opposed to CAS that’s only available when the Navy or Air Force has the time or feels like it.  I get that.  But, is the F-35B really a great CAS platform?  It’s a single engine, unarmored airframe that has a very limited weapons load (2-1000 lab JDAM) in stealth mode (internal weapons only) and a modest weapons load (15,000 lb according to the LM website spec list)  with external hardpoints.  As best I can determine, the aircraft has only 4 external hardpoints plus 2 internal for a total of 6 hardpoints.  While the weapons weight capacity is adequate the number of hardpoints is quite limited and restricts the aircraft’s flexibility and number of combat drops per sortie.  Note that the external weapons load is a theoretical maximum and would be difficult to achieve in practice if the aircraft were used in its short take off and vertical landing modes.  Also, a full weapons load would severely reduce the combat radius.

The Marines want to purchase 350 F-35Bs to replace their current Hornets and Harriers.

Wiki reports that the Air Force looked at the F-35B to replace the A-10 but opted not to due to the F-35’s inability to generate enough sorties.  Wiki further reports that the Marines plan to operate the F-35B from “unimproved surfaces at austere bases”.  However, they go on to note that this will require “special, high-temperature concrete designed to handle the [exhaust] heat”.  It’s not really an unimproved surface then, is it?  The exhaust heat issue is severe and has even required the America class to have special, more heat-resistant decks installed.  F-35B shipboard testing has cause heat damage to the test ship’s deck.  I guess this invalidates the popular notion of operating the F-35B from remote roads, fields, or “unimproved” airstrips – they’ll all melt or catch fire.



Marine CAS?



As noted, as a CAS platform, the F-35B has limited weapons flexibility and capacity.  Further, the plane has only one engine and no armor – not good characteristics for an aircraft intended to fly low and slow over the battlefield and if it’s not going to fly low and slow then it’s not really suited for CAS.  Add in the presumed lack of loiter time and this is not an ideal CAS platform. 

Now, here’s the interesting part.  The Air Force wants to get rid of their A-10s.  The Marines ought to give serious thought to acquiring the A-10s.  To be fair, I’m not the first person to come up with this thought.  Regardless, the A-10 is the finest CAS platform we have.  It has a weapons load of 16,000 lb on 11 hardpoints plus the Avenger cannon.  The aircraft has a 250 mile combat radius with a nearly 2 hour loiter time.  Decades of actual combat have proven the worth of the A-10 as a CAS platform and it’s the one that the men on the ground call for by name.  It’s rugged beyond belief.  If the Marines are serious about CAS for their ground force, they’ll drop the F-35B and jump on the A-10s.  I don’t know what the current inventory of A-10s is but over 700 have been built.  This option makes overwhelming sense.  If they want some F-35s for some other purpose that I don’t really understand, then fine, buy a handful.  For now, though, the A-10 is the undisputed master of CAS and it’s apparently free for the taking.  That’s a tactical and budgetary win for the Corps.