More idiocy from Gates on the F-22

[Guardsman Bass]

I've done two of these types of posts before, so why not a third? Here goes-

Wired.com "Gates speech"

Indeed, the kinds of equipment, programs, and capabilities needed to protect our troops and defeat the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan were not the highest priority of much of the Defense Department, even after several years of war.

Probably because those weapons tend to be highly specialized, expensive, and not particularly useful in other areas. Take the MRAPs that Gates prides himself on getting in large numbers - they're only useful in Iraq. Take them to Afghanistan and the damn things are almost always at risk of over-turning and harming their crews.

Instead, they are developing asymmetric means that take advantage of new technologies – and our vulnerabilities – to disrupt our lines of communication and our freedom of movement, to deny us access, and to narrow our military options and strategic choices.

This is only half-true. At the same time as they are doing the above, countries are also developing next-generation equivalents of things like air-superiority fighters - the current Sukhoi fighters can already go toe-to-toe with F-16s and F-15s, and the next generation of them will be even better.

To get there we must break the old habit of adding layer upon layer of cost, complexity, and delay to systems that are so expensive and so elaborate that only a small number can be built, and that are then usable only in a narrow range of low-probability scenarios.

This is putting the cart before the horse. The real reason why the F-22 is so expensive is because they kept cutting the order quantity, down from 750 in the early 1990s to only 187 today. Everytime they did that, the whole production line had to be re-tooled, which costs money; the remaining fighters' unit price went up, which costs money; and the development costs had to be spread out among the remaining fighters.

Even then, it's still only $110-120 million a fighter when you ignore the "sunk costs".

We must also get control of what is called “requirements creep” – where more features and capabilities are added to a given piece of equipment, often to the point of absurdity.

That's pretty rich of Gates, considering that he supports mass production of the F-35, which exemplifies "requirements creep" (it basically had to become a fighter for everything).

In an initiative little noticed, the President’s program includes money to begin a new generation of ballistic missile submarines and nearly $700 million in additional funds to secure and assure America’s nuclear deterrent.

More money down the rat-hole that is ballistic missiles. What happened to the Reliable Replacement Warhead you claimed to support, Gates?

For example, we now have unmanned aerial vehicles that can simultaneously perform intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance missions as well as deliver precision-guided bombs and missiles. The president’s budget request would buy 48 of the most advanced UAVs – aircraft that have a greater range than some of our manned fighters, in addition to the ability to loiter for hours over a target.

Until somebody jams the communication frequencies, at which point the UAV becomes little more than a highly expensive cruise missile. We are a long way away from autonomous UAVs, and one thing that UAV supporters seem to overlook is the immense amount of bandwidth necessary to operate these craft. That's fine when you're bombing a bunch of *******s in the FATA whose greatest weapons are IEDs and AK-47s, but a better enemy will probably bother to jam the frequencies, particularly if they know you're using remote-controlled UAVs.

Hell, this is one of the things Gates just warned us about! (countries using asymmetric warfare to do things like jamming our communication networks).

The F-35 is 10 to 15 years newer than the F-22, carries a much larger suite of weapons, and is superior in a number of areas – most importantly, air-to-ground missions such as destroying sophisticated enemy air defenses. It is a versatile aircraft, less than half the total cost of the F-22, and can be produced in quantity with all the advantages produced by economies of scale – some 500 will be bought over the next five years, more than 2,400 over the life of the program.

Except that it is an inferior air-superiority fighter, and the "cost advantage" is almost certainly going to disappear, since the F-35 is still in development hell. The F-22, by contrast, is out of development hell, and ready to be mass-produced.

You've got to love his point about how it has the advantage of "economies of scale", as if the F-22 didn't have that before the Congresscritters started repeatedly slashing the required amount of them.

China, by contrast, is projected to have no fifth generation aircraft by 2020. And by 2025, the gap only widens.

You mean aside from the J-10s, which are a 4.0/4.5 generation fighter that they are cranking out like mad, and expected to have thousand of by 2020? Not to mention that the Chinese will have the advantage of shorter lines of communication and supply.

This is all assuming, of course, that nobody sells them a fifth-generation fighter developed by 2020 (*cough*Russia and Israel*cough*).

In fact, where the threat is real or growing – from rogue states or from short-to-medium range missiles that can hit our deployed troops – this budget sustains or increases funding. Most of the cuts in this area come from two programs that are designed to shoot down enemy missiles immediately after launch. This was a great idea, but the aspiration was overwhelmed by the escalating costs, operational problems, and technological challenges.

This is complete horse**** from Gates. He killed the programs with the best application for stopping missiles - GBI and MKV.

Consider the example of one of those programs – the Airborne Laser. This was supposed to put high-powered lasers on a fleet of 747s. After more than a decade of research and development, we have yet to achieve a laser with enough power to knock down a missile in boost phase more than 50 miles from the launch pad – thus requiring these huge planes to loiter deep in enemy air space to have a feasible chance at a direct hit.

I suppose Gates expects all programs to operate at 500% efficiency in the development phase. Funny how he doesn't apply this to his projects, like the F-35.

The war in Iraq is winding down, and one day so too will the conflict in Afghanistan – whether in this administration, the next, or the next.

Then why the hell is he also advocating for an expansion of the Army and Marines? It's like he expects the US government to be too stupid to keep itself out of another Iraq-style fiasco.

One criticism of me when I was at CIA was that I overestimated threats to the security of the United States.

Apparently he's just as bad at predictions and planning now as he was back them in terms of estimating strategic threats.