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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (35999)	7/17/2009 1:34:25 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Re: (problems relating to cost, reliability, and suitability to the missions we will require them for).... The Pentagon officially disagrees on all three points. Mostly only the home-state politicians who's states' benefit from the federal spending seem to want to over-ride the Pentagon's choice and force further production of a very expensive item that the Pentagon says it doesn't need or want any more of....

To: TimF who wrote (35999)	7/17/2009 2:19:46 PM
From: Jim S	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The F-22 vs F-35 debate is really complicated. Lockheed is the prime contractor for the F-22. They are partnered with Boeing for the aircraft. Boeing is the prime contractor for the F-35, and they are partnered with Lockheed. Lockheed absorbed much of the development cost for the F-22 before the flyoff (vs Northrup) and came up with some whiz-bang production techniques. The how-to was largely shared with Boeing. The point being, many of the startup costs for the F-35 are "sunk" costs that won't need to be repeated. During the initial design of the F-22, supportability (e.g., maintenance) was one of the main objectives, co-equal with performance and cost. I'm certain the F-35 will have the same emphasis. The problem isn't so much that a new aircraft requires a lot of maintenance down time as it is that under operational pressures, there are trade-offs between flying and maintaining, and where the money goes. You can talk to any AF maintainer and ask what their main problem is, and get the same answer anywhere in the world: "PARTS." At the base level, money goes to operations as a first priority, and maintenance somewhere down the line. The ops people will point out that they spend a small fraction of the dollars that the maintainers spend, but neglect to mention that they get almost every dollar they ask for, while the support budget is "fat" if they get 80%. The same problem exists all the way up the logistics stream, where the first dollars to get cut are in the spare parts and training packages. As a sidenote, back in the 1970s the F-111 was renowned as a maintenance "pig," with availability (MC) rates in the 40-50% range. As an experiment, an F-111 squadron was deployed to a bare base location (basically nothing but a runway and empty hanger), but was given top priority for all spare parts in the supply chain. With a reduced manpower package for the deployment, MC rates went to 95%+ and they flew every single scheduled mission. Deployed aircraft always have priority for spares, while the folks back at the main base suck hind, um, well you know what. With all that said, I think SecDef Gates is right. Fighter pilots and Lockheed won't like it much, but the F-35 is more needed today than the air supremacy F-22, based on current priorities and mission demands.