At Defense One Marcus Weisgerber makes the argument that the U. S. may need to nationalize military aircraft production:
The United States might need to nationalize parts of the military aviation sector if the Pentagon does not come up with new ways to buy planes that stimulate more competition in private industry, a top Air Force official warned.
Will Roper, the head of Air Force acquisition, spoke Tuesday morning as the service finalizes ambitious plans to buy a new series of combat fighter jets called the Digital Century Series.
“We have multiple vendors who can still build a high-end, tactical platform,†Roper told reporters. “I think it’s really important that we find a new model where there are no big winners and no big losers, but continual competition.â€
Lockheed Martin and Boeing are the only U.S. companies that make tactical fighter jets. Boeing’s F-15 Eagle and F/A-18 Super Hornet are considered a generation behind Lockheed’s F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II. Boeing and Sweden’s Saab are building the new T-7 pilot training jet.
Northrop Grumman is the only U.S. manufacturer of a heavy bomber. Boeing’s KC-46 is the only aerial tanker in serial production and Lockheed’s C-130 Super Hercules tactical transport is the only military cargo plane in production. There are no strategic, long-range military transports in production.
The very same argument can be applied to a lot of military hardware including heavy armor, artillery, and aircraft carriers.
IMO the issue is due less to loss of capability than to consolidation and reduced demand. Unless you believe that we will be buying a lot more military hardware in the coming years, we probably should be doing a major reassessment of what our military should be prepared to do and how it will do it.
We keep poking the Chinese turd, and we are likely to need a lot of hardware sooner than later.
Chinese military construction capacity is very much larger than ours, an order of magnitude larger in some categories, like ships and chips. We are in the same position v.v. China today that Japan was v.v. us in 1940.
This coming in the context of the Richard Bonhomme burned to a wreck at port.
Contrast this to the almost mystical damage control and repairs of the Yorktown and Enterprise during WWII.
The problem was really driven by government procurement practices and the military’s desire to emphasize technology and quality since the end of the Cold War. Also, all the services have sought to reduce the number of platforms to reduce the logistics and save training time and money. Hence the move from dedicated mission aircraft to fewer multirole aircraft. That means the military is only going to buy one or two fighter-sized airframes and the technology for those airframes is not “off the shelf” and so requires significant R&D time and resources.
If a company misses out and loses the contract, they are out of the market for a generation. That’s why there was so much consolidation. Previously if a company lost a fighter competition they could compete for the ground-attack aircraft, or the long-range fighter, etc. But that’s all, largely, in one airframe now.
The other side of that coin is the winning contracts become too big to fail. So the JSF has met none of it’s cost or operational readiness estimates and is now so expensive that the Air Force is now buying new F-15’s too keep the squadrons filled. And this was predicted by some of us when the F-22 was cancelled – the JSF now costs more that the F-22 for the same number of aircraft and has a higher cost per flight hour. But it’s too big to fail.
It doesn’t help that it takes the military ~5 years just for the initial requirements process which does not include all the changes during R&D. Think about that – it takes our military longer than the length of our participation in WWII just to determine the requirements for a new major weapons system.
And, as always, politicians, Republican and Democrat, don’t give a flying eff about reforming this broken system – it’s much easier to argue over the topline spending amount and whose bread gets buttered.
In a way, the discussion sounds a lot like the discussions about the nuclear power industry.
Lets not forget the jobs in every state aspect here. The producers make sure tha the work is spread out to as many states as possible so whatever overpriced weapon we are buying has political support from as many states as possible. Also, please note that you are just talking about new stuff. What do you think happens if some unit orders a bunch of stuff they end up not needing? Sometimes its hard to give it to another unit because then that unit will face a reduction in their budget the following year since they didn’t buy it out of their own budget. Tons of stuff just goes to waste.
Steve
‘Lets not forget the jobs in every state aspect here. The producers make sure that the work is spread out to as many states as possible so whatever overpriced weapon we are buying has political support from as many states as possible.’
Eisenhower was prescient. Not surprising since he had an insider’s view of the procurement situation, which was considerably less complicated when he issued his warning about the MIC.
‘Sometimes its hard to give it to another unit because then that unit will face a reduction in their budget the following year since they didn’t buy it out of their own budget. Tons of stuff just goes to waste.’
A perennial problem among government agencies. End-of-budget-year buying binges are commonplace.