Unmanned Systems Integrated Battle Problem 21

The Navy has recently conducted the Unmanned Systems Integrated Battle Problem 21 (USIBP21).  Supposedly, this is part of the return of the famous Fleet Problem exercises conducted in the 1920’s and 1930’s, prior to WWII and which proved so prescient and vital to the conduct of the war in the Pacific.  The Navy has loudly and proudly trumpeted the return of the fleet battle problems.  Let’s take a look at USIBP21.

 

The entire focus of USIBP21 was integrating manned and unmanned assets and it appears to have been a phenomenal success, accomplishing a never before achieved linkage between an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a remote ship in order to direct the ship’s firing.

 

Using a blend of information from unmanned and manned ships and aircraft, a guided-missile destroyer launched an anti-surface missile from over-the-horizon to hit a target more than 250 miles away without using active sensors as part of the Unmanned Integrated Battle Problem 21, Navy officials said on Monday. (2)

 

The unmanned MQ-9B Sea Guardian operated in conjunction with a guided-missile cruiser, executing long-range, over-the-horizon targeting. Using sonobuoys and other assets, the Sea Guardian identified contacts and reported locations remotely to the commander on board the cruiser. (1)

 

Outstanding!  An unmanned vehicle provided targeting data to a remote ship?!  Wow!

 

“This was an important step in moving the ball down the field to getting unmanned plugged into that targeting solution,” U.S. Pacific Fleet Maritime Headquarters director Rear Adm. Robert Gaucher told reporters. (2)

 

You moved the ball big time, Admiral.  Getting an unmanned vehicle to provide targeting information is the stuff of dreams.  It’s science fiction brought to life!  This should be front page news around the world and rightly so.

 

How amazing and transformative is this new technology?

 

"The integration between unmanned and manned capabilities shown today provides an operations approach to strengthening our manned-unmanned teaming," said Rear Adm. James A. Aiken, UxS IBP 21 tactical commander. "Putting our newest technology into our Sailors' hands directly enhances our fleet." (1)

 

An enhanced fleet!  Outstanding!  But wait, it’s even more impressive than that!

 

The test also shows how the lethal radius of a surface-launched missile could expand well beyond a ship’s radar range, which is limited by the curvature of the Earth. (2)

 

Shooting a missile beyond the horizon?!  Wow!  Who comes up with these breakthroughs?!

 

Was it hard to do?

 

“It was really complex… We teamed manned and unmanned vessels together. We also used the fusing capability that we’re doing some experimentation on. It was totally passive where we didn’t have active sensors on target,” Aiken said.

“We also look for space as well to actually identify the target and then once we found the target, we were able to track it because of the [electromagnetic signal] that was coming off the target, develop lines of bearing, then launched the missile.” (2)

 

You developed the target’s location using lines of bearing?!  A pure passive location technique?  No radar?  That’s so advanced it borders on magic!

 

Do we know any details about the conditions of the exercise?

 

The target was equipped with a small radar reflector and a repeater that put out an electromagnetic signal. The signal from the repeater was detectable by sensors on the uncrewed aircraft and manned and unmanned surface vessels, said Carrier Strike Group 3 commander Rear Adm. James Aiken during a Monday call with reporters. (2)

 

The amphibious ship USS Anchorage disgorged a barge simulating an enemy warship. The barge apparently carried emitters duplicating radios, radars and other electronics. The destroyer USS John Finn stood off over the horizon—exactly how far away is a secret—and initiated a hunt for the pretend enemy ship. (3)

 

UAVs and robot boats crisscrossed the ocean. To avoid detection, they kept their active sensors off. Instead, they used their passive electronic receivers to “listen” for the enemy’s own electronic emissions. (3)

 

The drones pinpointed the barge and passed the data to a satellite, which relayed it to John Finn. The destroyer fired an SM-6 missile. The $5-million missile—which can hit targets on the sea or in the air—struck the barge “well beyond the line of sight,” according to the Navy. (3)

 

So, the Navy floated a barge, as a simulator for a Chinese destroyer, and loaded it with emitters of various types to ensure plenty of radiated electromagnetic noise … and we were able to find it passively?

 

I’m running out of adjectives to describe just how amazing this feat was!

 

I’m going to pause to catch my breath for a moment and let the excitement die down.  While I’m doing that, I’m going to jot down a few thoughts that the Navy’s exercise prompted in me.

 

 

Thought:  Didn’t we have remote unmanned (UAV) targeting decades ago?  I think we did!  From the mid-1980’s until the mid-2000’s, the battleships used RQ-2 Pioneer UAVs to spot for their guns in Desert Storm and elsewhere.  In fact, many Iraqi soldiers surrendered to a battleship UAV in a famous incident.  See, “Battleship UAVs”.

 

Thought:  Didn’t we develop beyond the horizon missiles decades ago in the form of Harpoon and Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missile, among many others?

 

Thought:  Haven’t submarines, surface ships, and aircraft routinely used passive target locating for many, many decades?  In fact, it used to be called triangulation.

 

 

So, now that my initial euphoria has worn off, I’m left to wonder  … what’s the new part of this exercise?  You know, the part that hasn’t actually been done many decades ago?

 

In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if this near miraculous exercise might not have been all that miraculous?

Miracle UAV in USIBP21 … Oops!  My Mistake.  This is

the RQ-2 Pioneer UAV that provided passive targeting 

for battleships several decades ago.

  

Further, now that I’m more calmly thinking about it, there is one glaring omission from all the descriptions of the miraculous achievements … an enemy force.  One of the defining characteristics of the old Fleet Problems was the existence of an active, free-acting enemy force equal to the friendly force.  So, where was the enemy force in this exercise?  Where were the enemy SAMs and aircraft shooting down the Sea Guardian?  Where were the enemy ships, aircraft, subs, and missiles attacking our ships while they leisurely worked to develop the enemy’s location using purely passive means?  Where was the enemy back-tracking the Sea Guardian to its source and destroying the facilities and communication and control capabilities?  Where was the enemy satellite surveillance that finds and attacks us since we seemed able to use satellites?

 

Without a free-acting, unconstrained, well equipped enemy force the exercise is just a live presentation of a sales brochure.  Without an enemy, this exercise didn’t validate anything.  It was just an animated PowerPoint presentation.

 

Why not make this a real battle problem?  Instead of using a barge with noisemakers to simulate a Chinese destroyer, why not use a Burke?  Let the Burke use its passive sensors to try to detect our sensor platforms and let the Burke ‘shoot’ them down if they can find them.  Let the Burke use its helo and Fire Scout to conduct its own hunt for our cruiser and unmanned vehicles and destroy them, if they can.  Let the Burke call on long range, long endurance UAVs, as China would, to search for our ships.  Give the Burke a submarine to assist it.  …  …  …  Now you’ve got a real battle problem!  Well, not really.  The old battle problems involved huge portions of the entire fleet.  This barely qualifies as a cruise around the harbor.

 

This was an insult to every real Fleet Problem from the pre-WWII era and an embarrassment to the Navy.

 

So, aside from over-the-top exultation, what was the Navy’s reaction?

 

“We need to move things into the hands of sailors and then let sailors use their ingenuity,” Aiken said last week. (2)

 

Hey, Admiral, here’s a wild thought … why don’t you have a half-assed idea of what to do with ‘things’ before you give them to the sailors and tell them what to do with them rather than wait and hope they can tell you what to do?  If you’d like, Admiral, I’ll be happy to tell you what you can do with your things.

 

 

 

_______________________________________

 

(1)Commander, “Unmanned aerial vehicle Sea Guardian operates with naval assets”, US Pacific Fleet website, posted 21-Apr-2021

https://www.cpf.navy.mil/news.aspx/140164

 

(2)USNI News website, “Unmanned Systems, Passive Sensors Help USS John Finn Bullseye Target With SM-6”, Sam LaGrone, 26-Apr-2021,

https://news.usni.org/2021/04/26/unmanned-systems-passive-sensors-help-uss-john-finn-bullseye-target-with-sm-6

 

(3)Forbes website, “Robots Hunted A Mock Chinese Ship—Then a U.S. Navy Destroyer Lobbed A $5 Million Missile At It”, David Axe, 28-Apr-2021,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/04/28/robots-hunted-a-mock-chinese-ship-then-a-us-navy-destroyer-lobbed-a-5-million-missile-at-it/?sh=4b63f1f45c1a

Hurry Up and Wait

You may have heard the USS Boise (SSN-764, Los Angeles class), which has been sitting idle since 2015 and has long since lost its dive certification, is finally, maybe, scheduled to begin maintenance later this year … maybe … history suggests more delays will occur.(2)

USS Boise - Abandoned and Forgotten

Several other subs have been waiting multiple years and have lost their dive certifications.

 

In fact, the idle time accumulated by submarines waiting for maintenance is stunning.  Here’s what a GAO study found:

 

Last year, the Government Accountability Office found that in total, between 2008 and 2018, attack boats waiting to go into maintenance had sat idle for 10,363 days. (1)

 

A quick calculation shows us that 10,363 days is 28.4 years of idle wait time for maintenance.  That’s a lot of submarine idleness … and the Navy wants more ships and a bigger fleet?  That is mismanagement on a nearly criminal scale and should at least be grounds for recalling several retired CNOs to active duty for the purpose of instituting courts martial for gross negligence.

 

So, not only is there a shortage of numbers of submarines but the Russian US Navy can’t keep the ones they do have operational.   We quite literally have submarines sitting pier side, rotting.

 

Congress should cut all new construction ship funding until the Navy demonstrates that it can properly maintain the ships it has. 

 

 

 

 

_____________________________________

 

(1)Defense News website, “With the Navy’s submarine maintenance woes, there may yet be hope”, David B. Larter, 7-May-2019,

https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/navy-league/2019/05/08/among-the-navys-submarine-maintenance-woes-there-may-yet-be-hope/

 

(2)Navy Times website, “The Navy’s saddest fast-attack sub will finally get the tender loving maintenance it needs”, Geoff Ziezulewicz, 29-Apr-2021,

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2021/04/29/the-navys-saddest-fast-attack-sub-will-finally-get-the-tender-loving-maintenance-it-needs/

Requirements Drift

In theory, an acquisition program, be it aircraft, ship, software, or whatever, lays out a set of requirements, locks them in, designs the product to those requirements, and then produces the product.  In reality, the Navy constantly alters the requirements all the way through the design and construction phases which leads, inexorably, to massive cost overruns and schedule delays.  However, for the sake of this discussion, we’ll ignore that reality and consider the ideal acquisition process.

 

Having produced a product that meets the requirements, that product then enters service and, if the requirements were well designed, the product winds up being reasonably useful and productive because it meets requirements that are relevant to the fleet’s needs – a win all the way around.

 

Let’s consider requirements.  Even in the best case, where the requirements were reasonably and logically established and meet actual needs, the needs – and hence, requirements – begin changing the day after they’re established.  Why?  This isn’t a trick question.  The answer is obvious.  Threats change, circumstances change, technology changes, geopolitical strategies change, and, therefore, the needs of the fleet change on a daily basis.  The longer the time span from the locking in of the requirements to the time of entering service, the greater the deviation will be between the design requirements and the current requirements.  Thus, the longer the time span from the locking in of the requirements to the time of entering service, the more pronounced the loss of applicability and usefulness of the product will be relative to the current requirements. 

 

The blindingly obvious conclusion from the preceding is that we must do everything possible to minimize the time between locking in of acquisition requirements and entry into service.  The shorter the time span, the greater the usefulness of the product.

 

To illustrate what happens when we fail to minimize that time span, consider the example of the F-35.  Conceptual design and, hence, the process of establishing requirements, began as far back as 1993 with the establishment of the Joint Advanced Strike Technology program and prototype construction contracts were awarded in 1996.  Thus, requirements were being locked in as early as the early to mid 1990’s.  It is now thirty years later and the F-35 is just now entering service and has yet to achieve full combat status as provided by Block 4 software and a functional ALIS support program.  Without a doubt, requirements have changed drastically over the intervening thirty years.  What might have been an applicable, useful, and capable aircraft if it had been fielded twenty years ago has become a marginally applicable, barely useful aircraft that is ill-suited for the Pacific/Chinese challenge we face today.  The time span between establishment of requirements and entry into service was too long for the aircraft to retain applicability and usefulness.

 

Now consider the example of the WWII F6F Hellcat.  The contract for the prototype XF6F-1 Hellcat was issued in 1941 and the Hellcat entered fleet service two years later in 1943.  The Hellcat was relevant and useful because the time frame between requirements and service was short.

 

Well, sure, the Hellcat could be quickly fielded because the technology was so primitive.  Okay, how about a more modern example? 

 

The Grumman F-14 Tomcat contract was issued to Grumman in 1969.  First flight occurred in 1970 and Initial Operating Capability was declared in 1973.  First deployment occurred in 1974.  The Tomcat went from design (requirements locked) to deployment in 5 years.  The Tomcat was relevant and useful because the requirements were still applicable thanks to the short time frame.  The Tomcat was every bit as advanced for its time as the F-35.  We’ve just forgotten how to produce aircraft (or anything else!) in short, relevant time frames.  Can we still produce aircraft quickly?  Of course we can!  See, “How To Build A Better Aircraft”.

 

Lest anyone think that the lag between requirements and service is only an aircraft issue, the same concerns apply to ships. 

 

The LCS, for example, was conceptualized in the 1990’s and requirements were locked in in the 2003-4 time frame.  Now, 12-17 years or so later, as the vessels are entering service and the Navy looks to actually employ the ship, the requirements have changed so much that the LCS is nearly useless - of course, a total absence of useful modules doesn’t help!  The 12-17 year lag between requirements and entry into service proved too long and the ship had no role by the time it was completed.  The littoral combat role it was intended for had vanished to be replaced by a Pacific/China focus that the LCS was entirely unsuited for.

 

Another example is the Zumwalt whose conceptual origins date back to the SC-21 program in 1994 and, subsequently, the DD-21 program whose requirements were being locked in via a 1997 Operational Requirements Document and an Advanced Development Memorandum.   Many of these requirements eventually carried over to what became the Zumwalt program.  Final requirements were set by 2005 when the detailed design phase began.  Now, 16 years later, the Zumwalt, the lead ship of the class, has just completed the final combat systems installation and is undergoing final testing.  There’s no rush, of course, because the ship no longer has a purpose and the Navy is relegating the ship to experimental unmanned squadron testing – of course, the utter failure of the Advanced Gun System didn’t help!  The 16-27 year lag between requirements and entry into service proved too long and the ship had no role by the time it was completed.  The littoral combat/bombardment role that the Zumwalt was intended for had vanished to be replaced by an open ocean, naval warfare need directed towards China and for which the Zumwalt was unsuited.

 

 

Summary

 

What we learn from this is that the time between requirements and entry into service is, arguably, the most important factor in determining whether a ship or aircraft will prove useful.  An asset, no matter how well conceptualized and designed, will lose relevance with every day that passes after the requirements are set.  It is imperative that the lag between establishment of requirements and entry into service be minimized.  We need to recall the example of the F-14 development time frame and relearn how to quickly produce new ships and planes.

 

Contemplating the various programs that have come and gone over the last few decades, a very good argument can be made that any lag period that exceeds 5 years from requirements to service will result in an asset that is highly likely to have lost the majority of its usefulness.  Recognition of this constraint mandates that we abandon our fascination with attempting to build in non-existent, fantasy level technology and, instead, stick to existing technologies – a theme ComNavOps has repeatedly preached. 

The Decline of Firepower

We’ve touched on this in posts and comments but it’s time to bring it together and hammer it home.  The Navy is headed down a path of smaller, weaker unmanned vessels as replacements for the retiring Ticonderogas and soon to be retiring Burkes.  The result is a loss of missiles, guns, and sensors – what we collectively call firepower and what is responsible for the actual destruction of the enemy.  Data and networks don’t destroy the enemy … firepower does.  Data and networks enable firepower;  they don’t replace it.  Unwisely, the Navy is actually replacing firepower with data and networks.  Let’s take a look at the magnitude of the problem.

 

Let’s start by looking at what we currently have in the way of surface ship firepower.  Note that the following analysis is somewhat affected by what one chooses to classify as existing versus replacement.  For example, is a Burke that is currently being built considered as existing or replacement?  I’ve made my best attempt to present a reasonable interpretation of what’s coming and what’s going but one can easily and validly debate the classification of a few ships.  However, the classification of a few ships won’t change the overall conclusion so view the analysis in that light:  an overall assessment rather than a rigid tally since we have no way of actually knowing what will happen beyond the next few years in terms of retirements or new builds.  We may find that the Navy early retires even more ships than anticipated (the Navy routinely does that!) or we may find that the Navy builds a few more Burkes than anticipated (the Navy loves them!).

 

With that in mind, here’s a table showing the current surface force ships and their firepower as measured by missiles and guns.

 

 

 

Class	Ships	VLS / Ship	Total VLS	Guns / Ship	Total Guns
Ticonderoga	22	122	2684	2	44
Burke	77a	96	7392	1	77
Total			10,076		121

 

^a current, building, or on order

 

 

 

I have not included the LCS or Zumwalts because they have no useful, effective combat capability.

 

Now, let’s look at the replacements that are coming.  To be fair, we don’t have a lot of details on the unmanned vessel configurations, yet, so we’ll have to use our best guesstimates based on the little information we have and based on comparisons to similar size vessels.  Recall that the Navy has identified two classes of unmanned replacement surface vessels:  a small unmanned surface vessel (SUSV) which will be an unarmed sensor platform and a large unmanned surface vessel (LUSV) which will be a mini-VLS barge with few, if any sensors.  Note that the Navy nomenclature of “large” unmanned surface vessel is a joke since the LUSV is described as being 200-300 ft long and 1000-2000 tons which would make it significantly smaller than the 380 ft long, 3500 ton LCS.  So, here’s the anticipated replacements.

 

 

Class	Ships	VLS / Ship	Total VLS	Guns / Ship	Total Guns
Constellation	20	32	640	1	20
LUSV	30a	32b	960	0	0
Total			1600		20

 

 

^a  guesstimate based on announced plans for the moderate future

^b  estimate based on size of LUSV compared to frigate

 

 

There has been talk of a future new cruiser but given the trend towards unmanned vessels and the extreme uncertainty of budgets combined with the absolute certainty of ever-increasing ship construction costs, the likelihood of the proposed new cruiser making it to production is far from certain and, realistically, is probably unlikely.

 

 

 

Now, let’s combine the data and compare the current firepower to the replacement firepower.

 

 

	Ships	Avg VLS / Ship	Total VLS	Total Guns
Current	99	102	10,076	121
Replacement	50	32	1600	20

 

 

 

The problem, the decline in firepower, absolutely jumps off the page.  The total VLS cells are being hugely reduced.  We’re going to lose mammoth amounts of firepower.

 

In addition to the immense loss of VLS cells, we’re also going to lose almost all of our already meager naval gun firepower.  In fact, there are no plans to replace the 5” gun, at all.  The replacement Constellation class calls for the Mk110 57mm (2.2”) which is barely more than a machine gun and there has been no mention of a gun of any kind on the LUSV.

 

Now, we have to be fair and assume that additional ships will be built in the future to continue replacing the steady stream of retiring Burkes but all indications are that the Navy will switch to mostly or completely small (although they call them large!) unmanned vessels with fractional weapon capacities so the declining firepower trend identified here will continue or accelerate.  In fact, the Navy has stated publicly that some portion of the Burkes will be replaced by unmanned vessels.  As stated above, the possible appearance of a few more replacement Burkes doesn’t change the overall assessment.

 

It’s worse than just the loss of firepower and naval guns.  Other sources of firepower are declining, also.

 

Submarines.  The long known and anticipated shortfall in submarines has begun and will result in a decline from the current 68 subs to around 39.  Even the SSBN replacements will be reduced from the original 18 (later 14 + 4 SSGN) subs with 24 missile tubes to 12 subs with 16 tubes which is a 43% decrease in total missile tubes even compared to the current 14 SSBNs.

 

Helicopters.  To the extent that helos represent firepower, the 99 Ticonderoga and Burkes represent a helo force of 2x per ship for a total of 198 helicopters.  Compare this to the replacement helo capacity of 20 Constellation frigates with a single helo each for a total of 20 helos.  The LUSV, of course, has no helo capability.

 

 

	Helos
Current	198
Replacement	20

 

 

 

Sensors.  Sensors enable firepower.  The contribution of sensors to the firepower assessment is difficult to quantify but hundreds of Aegis systems will be replaced by the handful of Constellation small SPY-6 Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR) and unknown Small Unmanned Surface Vessel sensors.

 

Carrier Air.  We’ve already seen a steady decline in air wing size from the 80-90 of the Cold War era to the current 65 or so.  As F-35C squadrons are activated, the Navy has stated that squadron size will be decreased from 12 aircraft to 10.  We’ve also seen that the number of combat aircraft has been effectively decreased by 6-12 aircraft due to their use as tankers although the Navy hopes that the MQ-25 Stingray unmanned tanker will free up those aircraft for their intended use as combat aircraft.

 

 

 

Summary

 

To be fair, it’s much easier to see what’s going to be retiring from the fleet in the near to moderate future than to see what will be joining the fleet.  It is quite possible, likely even, that more ships will join the fleet than are noted in this post but the addition of a handful of extra ships does not significantly change the conclusion.

 

We seem to have forgotten that, ultimately, even after you’ve collected every bit of data there is about your enemy, you eventually have to destroy their assets to achieve victory.  That requires firepower and lots of it.  We’ve lost sight of that elementary fact.  We’re so focused on data and networks and AI-assisted command and control that we’ve forgotten about the firepower side of things.

 

Firepower?  Yeah, it’s declining and in a big way.

Navy COVID-19 Update

It’s time for an update on COVID-19 and the Navy.  ComNavOps previously examined the issue and stated that COVID was not a threat to the Navy and extreme isolation measures were not needed (see, “COVID-19 and the Navy”).(1)  This position was met with skepticism by readers, to put it mildly. 

 

The best way to deal with COVID is to read and understand actual data rather than the fear-mongering press reports and government and CDC recommendations that are not based on science and data.  In that vein, let’s get an update on COVID and the Navy/military.

 

As of 21-Apr-2021, the military, overall, has reported 185,259 cases of infection with 1,634 hospitalized (0.9% hospitalization rate) and 24 deaths.(2)  That’s out of approximately 1.4M active duty personnel.  The Navy accounts for 37,511 COVID cases of the 185,259 cases in the military.(2) 

 

The 24 deaths out of 185,259 cases makes the overall military death rate from COVID around 0.01% among those infected.  That’s as close to zero as you can get.

 

More sailors die from traffic accidents.

 

For comparison, the following table shows the number of deaths (all services combined) for a couple of selected non-COVID causes for the single year 2010.(4)

 

 

Cause of Death	Deaths
Traffic accidents	424
Illness	238

 

 

Contrast those numbers for a one year period with the total of 24 deaths in the entire military over the year and a half that we’ve been dealing with COVID.

 

A sailor has a much higher chance of dying from some other disease than from COVID and yet we don’t take insane precautions for any of those illnesses.

 

On a related note, the Navy now has 145,939 people fully vaccinated and 69,711 partially vaccinated.

 

Do vaccinations work?  The CDC reports 5800 verified cases of a vaccinated person being infected out of 77,000,000 people vaccinated.(3)  That makes the vaccinated infection rate to be 0.0075% which is, for all practical purposes, zero.

 

At this point, some of you may be saying, okay ComNavOps, you were right way back at the start that COVID was not, and is not, a dire threat to service personnel but even one death is a tragedy and the military has an obligation to prevent all deaths.  Well … that’s completely wrong. 

 

Yes, every death is a tragedy for those it impacts but, no, the military does not have an obligation to prevent all deaths.  If they did, they’d confine everyone to quarters, in total isolation, wrapped in bubble wrap, never venturing outside, never driving, and they’d administer full physicals every day.  Of course, that’s ludicrous.  Service and, indeed, life, involves a degree of risk.  We take reasonable precautions where and when we can but we accept that risk and death are part of life. 

 

Even routine civilian life involves risks of death that we routinely accept.  For example, for the seven year period 2008-2015, there were 1,610 deaths due to animals, an average of 230/yr .  Compare that number to the 24 military deaths in a year and a half.  Interestingly, the majority of animal deaths, 57%, were from non-venomous animals.(4)  So, should we kill all animals to prevent human deaths?

 

We see then, that the Navy is engaged in extraordinary measures to control a disease that among service personnel has a hospitalization rate of 0.9% and a death rate of 0.01%.  The Navy loses far more personnel to other causes of death and yet takes only passing and reasonable precautions (I’m being generous – they take almost no precautions) against those.  It is only ignorance, politics, fear-mongering, and political correctness that has caused the Navy to react in such an extreme manner to COVID.  The science never supported such actions in the military’s service population.

 

My advice to the Navy – based on science and data – is drop the masks and get back to business as normal.

_________________________

I'm going to moderate the comments for this post due the expected deluge of non-scientific, non-data based comments.  We'll resume normal commenting on the next post.

 

_________________________

 

Masks, by the way, do nothing.  Report after report has demonstrated the ineffectiveness of masks.  Empirical proof also demonstrates the uselessness of masks.  If masks worked, COVID would have been gone long ago.

 

The only mask that offers any protection is the N95 and that offers only partial protection and then only if properly fitted, which almost never happens, and used by trained personnel, which is rare even in hospital settings.  Surgical masks offer no protection and homemade masks are pointless.

 

_________________________

 

 

 

(1)https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2020/04/covid-19-and-navy.html#comment-form

 

(2)https://www.defense.gov/Explore/Spotlight/Coronavirus/

 

(3)https://news.yahoo.com/really-good-scenario-only-5-211500908.html

 

(4)https://dcas.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/pages/report_by_year_manner.xhtml

F-22 Cost Analysis

We now lament the termination of the F-22 program because the supposed low cost alternative, the F-35, has turned out not to be low cost and is many, many years behind schedule and is projected to cost trillions of dollars in sustainment.  Suddenly, that F-22 that was too expensive is looking a whole lot better especially in light of its vastly superior capabilities compared to the rather mundane combat capabilities of the F-35.

 

The F-22 program was prematurely terminated, in large part, because of its high costs.  Let’s review the F-22 program costs and see if we can get a better grasp of the cost issue.

 

To summarize the program, the F-22 was produced from 1996-2011with a total of 195 aircraft built (8 test plus 187 operational).  According to Wiki, the planned buy was 740 aircraft.(2)  The first production lot contract was awarded in Sep 2000. 

 

From Wikipedia, we see the original funding vision,

 

The USAF originally envisioned ordering 750 [F-22s] at a total program cost of $44.3 billion and procurement cost of $26.2 billion in fiscal year (FY) 1985 dollars. (2)

 

If realized, the procurement cost estimate of $26.2B for 750 aircraft would have put the procurement cost at $35M (FY85) per aircraft or $85M (FY2021) – the exact cost of the cheapest variant of the F-35, today!

 

Note, also, the envisioned relative proportion of development costs to production costs:

 

Development = $18.1B (41%)

Procurement = $26.2B  (59%)

 

One of the problems with modern aircraft (and ship!) procurement programs is that the development costs have a tendency (absolute certainty!) to balloon which takes an otherwise possibly acceptable program from reasonable to unreasonable.  We’ll circle back to this, momentarily.

 

Of course, the original funding vision failed to materialize.  Subsequent cost increases occurred and production quantities were reduced,

 

The 1990 Major Aircraft Review led by Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney reduced this to 648 aircraft beginning in 1996. By 1997, funding instability had further cut the total to 339, which was again reduced to 277 by 2003.  In 2004, the Department of Defense (DoD) further reduced this to 183 operational aircraft, despite the USAF's preference for 381.  A multi-year procurement plan was implemented in 2006 to save $15 billion, with total program cost projected to be $62 billion for 183 F-22s distributed to seven combat squadrons.  In 2008, Congress passed a defense spending bill that raised the total orders for production aircraft to 187. (2)

 

And,

 

As production wound down in 2011, the total program cost is estimated to be about $67.3 billion, with $32.4 billion spent on Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) and $34.9 billion on procurement and military construction (MILCON) in then year dollars. The incremental cost for an additional F-22 was estimated at about $138 million in 2009.(2) [emphasis added]

 

Note the change in the relative costs of development to procurement from the original vision to the end of the program:

 

Development = $32.4B (48%)

Procurement = $34.9B (52%)

 

The development portion of the costs went from an anticipated 41% of the total program cost to nearly half.  Over the entire program, the production cost was $179M (FY2011) per aircraft ($209M per aircraft FY2021). 

 

More relevantly, the incremental cost in 2009 was $138M per aircraft.  This is more relevant because it captures the economy of scale that had been achieved near the end of the production run.  Compare this to the early F-35 production costs, at the same number of aircraft produced, which were running $150M - $200M+, depending on variant and whose report you choose to believe.  This tells us that at equivalent points in their production (around 150 aircraft produced), the F-22 and F-35 were in the same rough ballpark of production cost.  More importantly, this demonstrates that the F-22 would have continued to decrease in cost just as the F-35 has.  In other words, there was no reason to have terminated the F-22 program just based on production costs!

 

F-22 Production

F-35 production started at $170M+  per aircraft and has now dropped to $85M per aircraft, depending on variant.  Apply that same percentage drop to the F-22 price and you get a drop from $140M to $66M per aircraft.

 

Costs are interesting but, ultimately, unimportant, in a sense.  What matters is combat effectiveness.  In that regard, the F-22 is several times more combat-effective than the F-35 and, therefore, represents a much better value for the dollar.  It is this factor, combat value for the dollar that the decision makers failed to consider when they reduced and then terminated the F-22 program.  Even if the F-22 wound up costing twice the F-35, it delivers several times the combat capability and that makes it a bargain, in comparison.

 

Also, individual aircraft procurement cost, when amortized over the life of the aircraft, is insignificant.  For example, an F-22 costing $140M and having, say, a 30 year service life, is only $4.7M/yr. 

 

Let’s also bear in mind that the real cost of the F-35 is not the supposed $80M in the most recent production lot.  The real cost is the initial production cost plus the cost to retrofit capabilities that are missing from the aircraft and fixes for the various problems that the concurrency production scheme imposed.  So, that early aircraft that cost $150M, or even the latest $80M aircraft, will have additional costs imposed in order to bring them up to actual combat standards.  In fact, hundreds of F-35s have already been deemed either incapable of being brought up to standard or uneconomical to bring them up to standard.  The cost of the hundreds of concurrency orphans has to be added to the overall program cost to produce a lesser number of actual combat capable aircraft (actual usable number of aircraft = total aircraft produced – concurrency orphans).

 

 

Conclusion

 

The F-22 was expensive, without a doubt.  However, as we’ve seen, by looking only at the cost early in the production run, the costs were exaggerated and inappropriately skewed the termination decision.  In contrast, the same kind of excessive costs early in the F-35 program were accepted and the economy of scale price drops eventually resulted in a production cost half or less of the initial cost.  Had we let the F-22 production run continue, there is every reason to believe that we would have seen the same percentage decrease in cost.

 

The other overwhelming conclusion is that we terminated a program that was delivering superb combat value for the dollar and that’s always an unwise decision.  This is not to say that costs can be totally ignored but it clearly says that there is more to production decisions than just cost.  A better route for the F-22 program might have been to impose a production hiatus for a year or so and focus on the cost issues with the goal of resuming production with lower costs.

 

It is also worth bearing in mind that the F-22 was the first of its kind.  No, it wasn’t the first stealth aircraft but it was the first mass produced, front line stealth fighter and, as such, incorporated many new technologies and production techniques - advances that the F-35 design and production benefited from.  Again, had we taken a hiatus and worked out those firsts we could have resumed production with the production cost savings that the F-35 ultimately benefited from.

 

This points out the problem of running a military by business cases.  Business cases tend to focus on the short term cost and exclude consideration of long term costs and non-fiscal factors such as combat effectiveness.

 

Finally, had F-22 production continued, the proposed naval variant might have come to fruition and naval aviation would be immensely more capable today. 

 

 

 

____________________________________

 

(1)https://seekingalpha.com/article/43114-pentagon-awards-lockheed-martin-5b-fminus-22-contract

 

(2)Wikipedia, “Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor”, retrieved 2-Apr-2021,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor