Boyd

by Robert Coram

  The Air Force countered the first Navy attack by saying the Mach 2.5 “burst speed” of the F-X and the addition of Sparrow missiles meant the F-X could handle the MiG-25. But the Navy had powerful friends. Some of those friends in Congress had serious questions about the F-X. The Navy’s offer to sell the F-14 to the Air Force quickly gained acceptance.

  An Air Force general was summoned to testify about the F-X to an ad hoc tactical aviation subcommittee that was part of the House Armed Services Committee. Boyd was the expert on the F-X, so he accompanied the general. Representative Mendel Rivers of South Carolina, a state about to sink into the Atlantic from the weight of the Navy bases located there, chaired the House Armed Services Committee. His presence dominated the Tactical Aviation Subcommittee. Boyd and the general were testifying before a group that openly believed the F-14 was superior to the F-X. And Rivers was always willing to help out the Navy.

  As the general answered question after question, Boyd realized where the queries were leading. The survival of the F-X would be based on a single issue: whether or not it was a swing-wing design. The subcommittee and the committee and Representative Rivers were not going to approve a swing-wing design for the F-X when the Navy was building a swing-wing aircraft that was farther along in production.

  A member of the subcommittee scratched his head and in a noncommittal tone, almost as an aside, asked the general if the Air Force had made a decision about the wing design.

  The general paused. Boyd knew that the future of the nonnuclear Air Force hung in the balance; all the work he had done on the F-X was crystallized in that one frozen moment. He leaped into the breach. “Yes, Sir, we have. The Air Force does not believe a variable-geometry wing is the answer. In fact, we believe the fixed-wing aircraft is a superior design. The F-X will be a fixed-wing aircraft.”

  It is difficult to know who was the most surprised—the general or the members of the subcommittee. The general stared at Boyd in disbelief. No decision had been made on the wing design. And now a lieutenant colonel on his own initiative had made a decision that was the prerogative of a four-star general.

  “General, is that correct?” asked a member of the committee.

  Boyd whispered to the general what was happening. The general thought for a moment, looked at the congressman, swallowed, and said, “That is correct. The Air Force has decided our aircraft will be a fixed-wing design.”

  Upon his return to the Pentagon, Boyd immediately called the colonel who worked for the chief of staff and told him why he had made the decision. “I don’t have the final numbers,” he said. “WrightPat is sitting on data I need. But I believe the weight penalties of the variable-geometry wing more than offset the aerodynamic benefits. I believe the fixed wing is better. If we had said anything else, the committee would have forced the F-14 on us.” The chief agreed.

  Which is how the F-X came to be a fixed-wing aircraft.

  Which is how John Boyd saved the Air Force from having to eat another saltwater airplane.

  No transcripts from either the Senate Armed Services Committee or the House Armed Services Committee indicate when the F-X became a fixed-wing aircraft. It is clear from the transcripts of both committees that the Air Force wanted the variable-geometry wing until late 1968. (The ad hoc committee kept no transcripts.) But both Tom Christie and Pierre Sprey talked with Boyd immediately after the hearing and are convinced events took place as Boyd described them. Also, from the day of the hearing onward, there were no more Air Force references to the F-X being a swing-wing aircraft.

  History has proven Boyd correct in picking the fixed-wing design. The variable-sweep wing was one of the major aviation engineering blunders of the century. Hollywood and the movie Top Gun notwithstanding, the F-14 Tomcat is a lumbering, poor performing, aerial truck. It weighs about fifty-four thousand pounds. Add on external fuel tanks and missiles and the weight is about seventy thousand pounds. It is what fighter pilots call a “grape”: squeeze it in a couple of hard turns and all the energy oozes out. That energy cannot be quickly regained, and the aircraft becomes an easy target.

  Navy admirals strongly discourage simulated battles between the F-14 and the latest Air Force fighters. But those engagements occasionally take place. And when they do, given pilots of equal ability, the F-14 always loses.

  After the Air Force was locked into the fixed-wing design for the F-X, the “X” designation was dropped in favor of a numerical designation, and since the Navy had the F-14, the F-X became the F-15.

  Boyd was disgusted. He could tell that his dream for the pure fighter aircraft had vanished. Yes, he had cut some weight, and yes, he had killed the variable-sweep wing. But it had taken just about everything out of him to fight and fight and fight for so much that was so obvious. He knew that in its inexorable way the Air Force would add more gold-plating, more missions, to the F-15 until one day it would be barely recognizable. On October 24, 1968, he submitted papers saying he would retire the next year.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ride of the Valkyries

  THE year 1969 was a curious and bewildering one for America. It was the year Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, the year of Woodstock, and the year Sesame Street made its debut on public television. It was the year of war rallies and the year the My Lai story broke—the year a humiliated Lyndon Johnson left Washington to be replaced by an exultant Richard Nixon, who announced the beginning of troop withdrawal from Vietnam.

  The year 1969 was also the year that Pierre Sprey demonstrated just what sort of men were these Acolytes, these men beginning to gather around Boyd and devote their lives to his goals and ideals. Sprey was even more bitter than Boyd over what happened to the F-15. He had come to the Pentagon from the defense industry solely because he wanted to have an impact on the bloated defense budget and be part of acquiring better weapons for soldiers and airmen. His first effort, born in high idealism and great hope, had been gold-plated by Blue Suiters and transmogrified into something far less than it could have been. The F-15 was a learning experience that prepared him for an even more difficult task. He was about to loose his considerable talents on developing another airplane, an airplane the Air Force did not want.

  To fully appreciate what Sprey did, one must remember that close air support—bombing missions that support ground troops—has never been a priority mission for the Air Force. Nevertheless, the Air Force officially owned the CAS mission, and no branch of the service wants to lose a mission, because losing a mission means losing money. The Air Force paid lip service to the CAS mission, making just enough effort to prevent the Army from taking it over. The best way to show how the Air Force looked upon CAS is that it never—not in World War II, not in Korea, and not in 1969—had an airplane dedicated to CAS. Air Force practice was to take one of the worst aircraft in its inventory and designate it a close air support airplane. The F-84 in Korea is an example. In Vietnam, the Air Force used a cast-off Navy airplane: the propeller-driven A-1, which was forced on the Air Force by Secretary of Defense McNamara. The Air Force was embarrassed by the A-1, never mind that it turned out to be one of the best CAS aircraft used in combat up to that time. But in 1969 the Air Force learned that the Army wanted to develop a new helicopter called the “Cheyenne.” The most startling thing about the Cheyenne was that it was so technologically complex that it cost more than an F-4. This frightened the Air Force. This meant the Army was going to make a run at taking over the CAS mission and the CAS money.

  In order not to be stigmatized as the chief of staff who lost the CAS mission, the Air Force chief had to develop a CAS airplane and it had to be cheaper than the Cheyenne. The idea of a dedicated CAS aircraft was anathema to all senior Air Force officers below the chief of staff. Blue Suiters would fight the chief tooth and claw, but the fight would not be out in the open. The chief knew that his subordinates would pledge their support but then, in the bureaucratic warrens that are the refuge of the careerist, would wage a sub-rosa war to sabotage the project.


  Thus, whoever directed the CAS program must be strong enough to stand against the generals. He would have to be smart and supremely focused, with the self-confidence of a buccaneer and the armor of a dinosaur. The chief thought he knew such a man. He sent an emissary to Pierre Sprey with the question, “Were you serious about what you wrote in your interdiction study about the need for close air support?”

  The question rankled Sprey. He would not have worked seven days a week for a year on something he was not serious about. “Of course.”

  “Then you have another job if you want it.”

  The big problem was that Sprey’s involvement could not be made public. He was still Public Enemy Number One to the Air Force. People who cared about their careers were not seen entering his office. Few people spoke to him in the halls. If his role in the CAS project became public, the long knives would come out. No, Pierre Sprey would have to stay in the background.

  So Sprey’s new job was a night job. He worked in Systems Analysis for the secretary of defense during the day and then about 5:00 P.M.

  began his unofficial job for the Air Force on an airplane now designated the A-X. He led the technical design team working for Colonel Avery Kay, an Air Force hero who had been lead bombardier on the Schweinfurt raid in World War II. Sprey wrote the specifications for the A-X; it was his responsibility, his airplane.

  The A-X was one of the more bizarre acquisition projects in the history of the Air Force in that it was developed solely for bureaucratic reasons. The Air Force usually takes a deep proprietary interest in its new airplanes. They are touted as the best of the species and another example of how the U.S. Air Force is the best air force in the world. But the A-X was the most unpopular airplane the Air Force ever built. Because it was unpopular, TAC and Wright-Pat and the Systems Command and all the people who gold-plated the F-15 did not want their fingerprints on it. The A-X was a leprous project led by a pariah.

  Usually there are no cost constraints on an aircraft-design program. Politically there are often many reasons to maximize costs. In all the history of the Air Force, the A-X was the single exception. It had to be cheap. It had to cost less than the Cheyenne.

  Few men are as methodical as Sprey. He began by wanting to know what functions were needed in a CAS airplane. To find out he sought out A-1 pilots who flew CAS missions in Vietnam. These young officers were energized by the chance to have their recent combat experience considered in designing the first designated CAS airplane the Air Force ever had. None of this “one pass, haul ass” stuff for these guys—to protect troops on the ground they needed loiter time over a target. They needed an airplane, they said, with long legs. Much of the time hard-to-see targets and the smoke and haze of the battlefield means a CAS pilot must work low and tight and slow, so they wanted maneuverability at slow speeds. When friendly forces are in dire straits, they need an airplane that can wreak hell, death, and destruction, an airplane the very sight of which will turn an enemy soldier’s bowels to water, so they wanted lethal weapons, preferably cannon. Working low and tight as a good CAS pilot must do means the “gomers” will shoot at them with everything from rifles to AAA to missiles, so they wanted an airplane that could take hits and still bring its pilot home. They wanted survivability.

  Survivability was an issue that particularly resonated with Sprey. In doing research for his interdiction study, he read how more than 85 percent of all aircraft losses in World War II and Korea were from fire or loss of control. Several bullets in the right place and crucial aircraft systems were burned or destroyed. It was almost impossible to get out of the airplanes once they were damaged or on fire. Thousands of good men had died because of bad design, and Sprey was determined not to let that happen on the A-X.

  Sprey was fascinated by Hans Rudel, the legendary tank-killing German pilot of World War II who still is considered the greatest CAS pilot of all time. Sprey insisted that everyone on the A-X project read Stuka Pilot, Rudel’s wartime biography that told how he flew 2,530 missions and destroyed 511 tanks.

  Because maneuverability is so important in CAS, Sprey used Boyd’s E-M Theory and ideas about trade-offs. Time after time, Sprey was now the one who took the charts and diagrams to Boyd and said, “Hey, John, check out what I’m doing.” Boyd had the vision to understand the importance of CAS, although, like most fighter pilots, he had little personal interest in the mission. He glanced at the paperwork, slapped Sprey on the back, and said, “Good work, Tiger. Keep it up.”

  The colonel who was Boyd’s boss detested everything about the A-X and openly criticized the project. As the man in charge of fighter requirements, his was a respected voice. Then one day the colonel from the chief of staff’s office dropped by Boyd’s office and invited him for a cup of coffee. The two men sat in a corner of the cafeteria and the colonel said in effect, “Your boss’s comments about the A-X N and his obstruction of the project have reached the chief. Tell your boss this criticism has to end. The A-X project is about saving a mission for the Air Force.”

  Boyd went to his boss, shut the door, and said, “There are high-ranking officers in the Building who want you to lay off the A-X. The senior leadership is behind it.” He emphasized the “high ranking” and the “senior leadership.” The colonel ignored the message and continued his bitter denunciation of the airplane. A few weeks later he was summarily fired and given twenty-four hours to clean out his desk.

  Sprey exercised on the A-X perhaps the tightest design discipline that has ever existed on an Air Force project. He worked in a strange confluence of serendipitous forces. Sprey had an iron will and passionate belief about what would make a great CAS airplane, and all those Air Force decision makers who could have gold-plated the airplane had a fervent desire to keep their distance. Tactical Air Command and Wright-Pat didn’t even attend A-X meetings. Sprey pushed through an austere design in which he got everything he wanted—almost.

  He lost two significant battles. He wanted a single-engine airplane, while the Air Force insisted on two engines. And he wanted a small maneuverable aircraft, while the Air Force wanted a much bigger airplane. In the end the airplane was bigger than necessary and its maneuvering performance was degraded by the insistence on carrying too many bombs.

  Once the A-X concept formulation package was finished, the secretary of the Air Force and the secretary of defense approved the design. Congress appropriated the initial R&D money, and a request for proposal (RFP) was sent out. In the RFP, Sprey told the contractors they could not respond with the usual two-foot-tall stack of documents. The response had to be limited to thirty pages and confined to pure design—no smoke and mirrors. Even more unprecedented, airplanes from two contractors would be picked and the Air Force would supervise a combat-type fly-off between two flying prototypes. Specifications demanded that the fuel and the engine be in separate parts of the aircraft. Fuel tanks had to be explosion-proof. To make sure this was done, sections of the wing and fuselage would be fired at with Soviet weapons. And, oh yes, this must be done under simulated flight conditions with wind blowing over the prototypes being fired upon. Wright-Pat said no facility existed for such tests and that the resulting explosions would be too dangerous. Sprey told them to take the propeller engine off a World War II B-50, attach it firmly to a solid stand, run up the engine, and let the prop wash go over the fuselage and wings. They did and several years later proudly took credit for what they termed the world’s first ballistic wind tunnel.

  Rather than having flammable and vulnerable hydraulic controls, the A-X would have mechanical cables and push rods—redundant dual cables—to control the flight surfaces. Sprey insisted that the AX must be able to maintain flight even with half the control surfaces shot away. As for armament, the A-X was built around a radical new cannon that fired banana-sized depleted uranium bullets. To protect the pilot, the cockpit was surrounded by a titanium bathtub.

  The Air Force loathed everything about the A-X, which soon would be known as the A-10. Jokes were made that it was
so slow that it suffered bird strikes—from the rear—and that instead of carrying a clock, the cockpit had a calendar. The aircraft was so ugly it was called the “Warthog.” Many in the Air Force said no airplane could perform or survive in combat as this airplane was supposed to perform. It would be almost twenty years before the A-10 had the chance to demonstrate just how wrong its detractors were.

  It was in 1969 that Boyd laid the cornerstone for one of his greatest bureaucratic victories.

  Two players crucial to the victory, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and Deputy Defense Secretary David Packard, moved onstage early in the year. But the drama was not yet ready to be played out. One character was missing.

  He was a full colonel, a volatile, hand-waving test pilot and fighter pilot named Everest Riccioni. Riccioni took over the Development Planning Office, part of the department where Boyd worked in early 1969. Boyd and Sprey briefed Riccioni on their early work with the F-X and found a receptive audience. Riccioni had long favored the idea of a lightweight, high thrust-to-weight fighter similar in some respects to what Boyd and Sprey wanted.

  Riccioni is a curious fellow. He is a professional Italian in whom both tears and laughter are always near the surface. He is so sensitive N that his feelings can be hurt with a harsh look, and he has an unending need for recognition. Riccioni flew P-38s and P-51s in World War II and then got an undergraduate degree in aeronautical engineering and a masters degree in applied mathematics before going to MIT to work on a doctorate in astronautical engineering (he did the course work but dropped out without writing a thesis). He was an instructor at the Air Force Academy, where he taught Astronautics 551—a course dealing with the mathematical physics of space motion, perhaps the most advanced course at the Academy. Both Riccioni’s brilliance and naïveté were manifested at the Academy when he wrote a book called Tigers Airborne, a book on aerial tactics. In the book Riccioni said Air Force tactics not only were stupid, but could get pilots killed in combat. He said it in such a harsh and unequivocal fashion that the Air Force had to respond: he was not allowed to publish the manuscript, and, unbeknownst to him, his superiors sent the manuscript to Boyd for comments. Boyd then was stationed at Eglin and did not know Riccioni, but he sensed that the Air Force was looking for a reason to end the man’s career. And he knew that if he—as author of the “Aerial Attack Study” and the man whom the Air Force acknowledged as its supreme aerial tactician—criticized the manuscript, Riccioni’s career would be over. He read the manuscript and said he disagreed with Riccioni’s conclusions but that only by being exposed to a wide variety of thought on aerial tactics could American fighter pilots remain the best-trained pilots in the world. His refusal to pan the manuscript and his strong recommendation not to fire the author saved Riccioni’s career.