by Jeff Pollard
“I just need him here,” K replies. “Would you try calling him?”
“I'll try, but he doesn't have a cell phone,” Hannah replies.
“How does anyone not have a cell phone?”
“Cause he's ninety,” Hannah replies.
“Okay, well you call him or...send a carrier pigeon, I'm gonna go into the conference room,” K says. He leaves Hannah behind in the Capitol Rotunda and enters the conference room, discovering a ninety year old man with an eye-patch already sitting at the witness stand.
“Harold,” K says.
“Yes sir,” the old man replies, immediately standing up at attention.
“Sit sit sit, I'm not your superior officer,” K insists.
“Used to be a thing called manners,” Harold says as he pulls the chair out for Hannah to sit. “Don't know what happened to manners in this country. Just died off like the dinosaurs I guess.”
“Well thank you good sir.” Hannah says as he pushes her chair in.
“Was that sarcasm?” Harold asks as the three of them return to their seats.
“He never gets the chair for me,” Hannah says, shrugging toward Kingsley.
“Cause of the. . . feminism,” K mumbles.
“See in my day,” Harold begins an old man-rant, but stops and smiles. A little joke of his own. They are the only three people in the conference room aside from a pair of aides that are laying out pens and papers at the committee members seats at the head of the room.
An hour later, the committee hearing would finally begin. After many dull inanities, Kingsley was finally sworn in and the hearing could begin. Senator Lorne Walken, chairman of the committee, might very well be the only Senator in the room that's not in the pocket of a major defense contractor. It's no coincidence that he's the one leading this hearing that's looking into corrupt practices.
“Before we launch into the SLS, the old shuttle contracts, COTS, and all that space jazz, I'd like to say a few things about the F-35 program,” Kingsley says.
“You'd like that?” Senator Steve Winger, Republican from Maryland, says sarcastically. “I thought this was a hearing about you and your practices Mr. Pretorius.”
“I believe these hearings are about getting to the bottom of the pit of despair that is the state of the military-industrial-congressional complex,” Kingsley replies. “And as such, I'd like to talk about the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.”
“Are you to tell us that in addition to being a self-taught rocket scientist you're also a self-proclaimed expert in military aviation?” Richard Wallace asks derisively.
“While yes, I would say those things, I know the power of a good witness, which is why I'm joined here by Harold. Harold, would you like to speak?”
“Can we get the witness to stay on topic please,” Senator Winger says. “Who is this, you're grandfather?”
“No Senator, he's not my grandfather, he is in fact, your worst nightmare,” Kingsley replies.
“Please state your name for the record.”
“My name is Harold Wright the third,” the old eye-patched man begins, standing up. He is sworn in quickly.
“Chairman, can we move this along, we have a lot of questions for Mr. Pretorius, and he's clearly trying to distract us with some crazy old man,” Winger says.
“Mr. Wright, what is the nature of your expertise?” Chairman Walken asks.
“I am aerospace engineer, your honor,” Harold replies, sitting back down.
“I'm not a judge, but thank you,” Walken says. “What is it you have to offer to these hearings?” Harold looks confused, turning to Kingsley.
“Mr. Wright was an employee of Lockheed for twenty-five years. He helped design over two dozen aircraft including the SR-71 Blackbird, and as an expert in the field of aerospace and military aviation and a former employee of Lockheed, I believe he has quite a lot to say about the F-35 program,” Kingsley says.
“I move that we have this witness excused so we can stay on topic,” Senator Steve Winger says.
“Would that be because you're the senior Senator from Maryland which is where Lockheed Martin's corporate headquarters is located, or is it just that you hate the elderly?” Kingsley asks.
“Mr. Pretorius, we will ask the loaded questions,” Chairman Walken replies.
“Just trying to fit in,” K replies.
“Please proceed Mr. Wright,” Chairman Walken says.
“Well, umm,” Harold stammers. “I worked on the F-104 Starfighter. We designed her for one purpose: to intercept Soviet bombers coming over the pole. She had to fly fast and high and cover a lot of territory. She was the first military plane capable of sustaining Mach 2. She was a fast bird, very fast. Back then we had a singular focus. We didn't try to build something that could do everything. We designed it for one specific task and to do that one task better than any other airplane ever had. See, designing airplanes is all about tradeoffs and compromises. If you want good high-speed characteristics, then you sacrifice low-speed handling. Make no mistake, when we designed the Starfighter, it was made only for going fast and chasing down bombers. This was before ICBMs. We didn't think rockets were the way to deliver nukes, we knew the next step was going to be huge supersonic bombers to fly over at Mach 2 and drop bombs. We even started making one, the XB-70 Valkyrie. But we canceled it because when you have accurate ICBMs you don't need supersonic bombers with people in them.”
“Could we move this along please,” Senator Winger says impatiently. “How is this relevant?”
“It's relevant to your present discussions,” Harold begins, “because in the late '50s there was a competition called the 'deal of the century' at the time. See, NATO needed an Air Force to counter the Soviets, and they wanted to use a common plane to simplify interoperability between air forces, much like we're doing today with the F-35 being made in an Air Force version, Navy version, and Marine version. So there was a huge contract, for thousands and thousands of planes in a number of NATO countries. They wanted a multi-role fighter, something that can dogfight, ground attack, a flexible plane for a lot of missions.
So we knew, we meaning my team, that we would be submitting a plane to this competition. At that time, the F-104 had already fallen out of favor with the US Air Force. It was only ever intended as an interim solution. They needed a high speed interceptor right away to counter the Soviet bomber threat, and that's what we designed. But by '58 they were already starting to move to the F-106 Delta Dart. In those days, they'd outline their needs, we'd design a plane in a year, we'd start delivering in another year and four years later they needed a replacement to keep up with the Soviet's newest capability. The USAF only ever bought 296 F-104s, which sounds like a lot today, but back then that was a small procurement.
So while the USAF was moving away from the F-104 already, and would have them out of the US inventory by 1969, there we were in '58, knowing the USAF is moving away from the F-104, when this 'deal of the century' comes up. Myself and several of my colleagues are expecting us to design a new airplane. We had a successor to the F-104 on the drawing board, eventually it'd be called the X-27 when they built one prototype of it. It was like the F-104, but bigger, held more fuel, sturdier, much better low-speed characteristics, needed only half as long a runway, could carry a lot more munitions, and would have been one hell of a dog-fighter to boot. So we figured we'd be working hard on the CL-1200, that's what we called it internally.
Then I hear one day that the Lockheed brass had decided to enter the F-104 into the competition. My first reaction is, well, we lost. I mean, there's no way that anybody's going to pick it in their right minds. We were all sure this was just some silly exercise, oh yeah, like this thing is going to become a multi-role fighter. We figured they were just submitting something so that they could tell shareholders that they submitted something, but it stood no chance at all.
Then it was picked. It won the competition. We were dumbfounded, us engine
ers. I remember thinking, well that's why Germany lost the war, if they're so dumb they think the F-104 is a multi-purpose all weather fighter-bomber, they can't know much.
In order to use it as a fighter-bomber, that meant flying it at low altitudes, slower speeds, cause you can't go bomb enemy tanks while flying at Mach 2. So you've got this single-engine, stubby winged thing designed to be small and light and to fly Mach 2 being weighed down heavily with bombs and armor, then flying low and slow. Those wings weren't meant for either heavy loads or slow speeds. They were designed to produce lift at high speeds, and only enough for this small airframe. The tail wasn't designed for control at low speeds. It was built for speed. It would be like strapping a cannon to the top of a Ford Mustang and calling it a tank. So you have an airframe that's being overstressed, wings that are way too small for the task, and a single-engine. If that engine has a problem, that F-104 did not glide well, a lack of airspeed is about the last problem on your mind when you're designing it. So if you lose an engine, that thing drops like a brick. So with all the extra armaments, if you turn too hard, you overstress the airframe, and that's if you don't just lose control trying to turn hard at slower speeds because that tail isn't giving you enough stability. The decision to turn the F-104 into a multi-role fighter was a decision that killed hundreds of pilots.
I'm not exaggerating. Hundreds. The US Air Force only wanted a couple hundred of them for high speed interceptors and they did that job for a little while. Then somehow we won this competition for the deal of the century and sold over 3,000 F-104s to West Germany and Japan and Canada and all these other countries. So these Air Forces get their new multi-role fighter. They weigh it down and then they ask these kids to go fly it at low speeds and low altitudes. That decision sent hundreds of good young men to their graves. Half of all the F-104s we exported were destroyed in crashes. And the whole world acted like it was some big god damn mystery. I just think of those pilots, these twenty year old kids who get in a plane that they think is state of the art and they are sent to their graves because of greedy management types who don't know a damn thing about aircraft design. I felt like the blood was on my hands.
So, then it came out in the '70s that we didn't really win that competition. It all made sense. No, those Germans and Canadians and Japanese, they weren't stupid. They were greedy. And Lockheed was worse. I quit right after that. I walked away. Lockheed lied, they bribed people, and ultimately they are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of young pilots that they saddled with a sub-par aircraft that was given a mission it wasn't designed for. That's greed for you. And you know, it's one thing to do that, to go bribe some West German into picking your plane, that's one thing. It's greedy, it's malarkey, to win a competition by bribery. But when I look at Lockheed today, I see them doing the same thing to the US Air Force. I don't know if they're paying anyone off, but I would not be surprised. How else do you explain that the government decided it was the best idea to have just one company become the sole supplier of fighters? That there would be one plane, made by one company, that would do the jobs that it took five or six different planes to do? Who thought this was a great idea? Whoever it was is either mentally incompetent to not see how stupid this is, or, and I think more likely, they were doing this on purpose, to funnel a trillion dollars to Lockheed. And if you're taking a trillion dollars meant for defending America and using it to make your friends rich while making America less safe, that's treason in my book.”
“Treason? Come on, let's get this old-timer out of here, he's clearly a disgruntled ex-employee out to slander Lockheed,” Senator Winger says.
“Sir, please just let me say this for the record,” Harold says. “Designing a plane is about priorities and compromises. If you want to make a plane dedicated to a single mission, that's easy. But making one that's good at five things is hard. If you want a ground attack plane, you want something with good low-speed characteristics, two engines in case one gets hit, heavy armor to protect you since you’re flying low and exposed, and the ability to carry a lot of heavy weapons. If you want an air-superiority fighter, you want something that's fast and light, can accelerate quickly, out-climb, out-turn your opponent. But if you're weighed down with heavy armor, you're not going to out-climb or out-turn anyone. So which is it? If you want a plane that can take off and land vertically, then you need a light plane. For ground attack it's too lightly armored, can't carry enough weapons, and can't go slow enough to loiter. This thing can be shot down by an AK-47, but it's supposed to replace the A-10?! Then if it gets into a dogfight with a Soviet air superiority fighter, it's toast, it's too slow, can't turn hard enough, can't out-climb anyone, it's underpowered, and it's going to get eaten up.
The whole idea of using one plane to do all these jobs is that it'll be cheaper. The program was originally called CALF. Common Affordable Lightweight Fighter. Common meaning you make all three services take the same plane. A common plane means you save money in design because it's cheaper to design one plane than it is to design three planes. Affordable because when you have a bigger production run you spread out all those development costs and infrastructure costs over a larger number, and that brings down individual unit cost. Then you have a huge fleet that all uses the same parts and that makes maintenance cheaper. That's the idea.
It's not impossible to pull this off. We've had the Air Force and Navy share planes before. They both used the F-4 Phantom, the A-7/F-8, hell the workhorse of the Navy right now, the F-18, that was originally designed for an Air Force program.
So that was the idea, instead of three separate programs of R&D, you have just one. Instead of making three production lines with lower rates of production, you make one big production line. When they set out, they were quoting prices for a JSF plane in the 30s. Something like 35 million a piece. Of course that was the '90s, there's been some inflation, but with inflation that only gets them up to 60 million. Yet here we are, twenty years into the program, they've been building them for eight years now, and average unit cost is something like 150 million a piece.
It turns out that what they did wasn't to design one plane. They designed three separate planes that were related. For a designer, it's a god damn nightmare. Any change you make in one version affects the other. If the VTOL version is still too heavy, then you make it lighter, but now that forces a change in the other versions too. That's why it's taken so long to design. So every time they try to improve on one variant or fix a problem, that forces the other two variants to either implement that change in their version, or allow the variants to diverge a little bit more.
They originally set out with the goal of 80% part commonality. That is, 80% of all parts would be the same in all three planes, and that just 20% would be unique in the Navy or Marine versions.
Part commonality right now is at 41%. They've been finding ways to tweak the numbers. They no longer call a part either unique or common, now they have 'cousin' parts, that are somewhat in common. According to the JSF program office, they say a cousin part should be counted as 80% in common. The DoD's independent analysis board says it should only count as 25%. If you just average the two, then that brings it up to only 55% part commonality. According to the accountability office, this is below the threshold for making it worthwhile. That is, this whole adventure is only worthwhile if you have part commonality of at least 70%. Above that, you do get savings long term in maintenance and production, and the higher the number the better. But below that number you are talking about variants that might as well be completely different planes.
The idea that unit cost would come down if you made lots of these, well that goes out the window when you look at how these things are made...they have contractors in 48 states. And that's not counting the fact that 15% of the parts are made in the U.K., and some parts are even made in Australia. I can't even imagine what those logistical plans look like.”
Kingsley jumps in, “the RAND corporation did a study and came to the conclusion that it would
have been cheaper and faster to do three separate programs instead of the way this was handled. And of course, if you're designing three separate planes that aren't interrelated, you don't need to make design compromises or worry about coordination, so you can make better aircraft.”
“I've had enough of this,” Senator Winger of Maryland announces. “I have in my hand, a memo from the pentagon saying that the F-35 is the key to our future security, and that the plane's effectiveness is based on its technological superiority, specifically stealth and situational awareness. With the suite of sensors on this bird, it will be able to see enemies in all directions, and with our coming advanced sidewinder missile, it will be able to fire missiles in any direction, even at a target that's on their tail. And each F-35 will work with each other and a connected network to achieve superiority in battlefield situational awareness. The future is not going to be about having the fastest plane, or armor, or out-turning Soviets. It's about stealth and information and having missiles that can kill targets before you can see them. We won't be dog-fighting.”
“They keep saying that the technology will make it amazing,” Harold says, “with all this wizardry it'll be so great, stealthy, yadda yadda. They've been telling this lie for sixty years now. In the '50s we were designing planes without guns because we would be using missiles to shoot down targets beyond visual range. But most of the time, you can't fire missiles at planes until you identify them. The battlefield is a complicated place. Even if you can see something on radar and know it's an F-16, well is that an American F-16? Israeli? Jordanian? They've been trying to sell BVR (Beyond Visual Range) for decades. But the things have still not really delivered. Most kills are within visual range, and many are by heat-seeking missiles, the kind that don't give a hoot if your plane is stealthy or not because they don't use radar.
They keep trying to tell us the technology will be amazing, but you just know they'll get into a turning fight and it'll come down to a dogfight, and it'll lose. And besides, if the technology is so great, why not put it on a a real fighter plane? I mean, Russia, China, they're building planes with one purpose, to win the air, and even if we have technological superiority now, that doesn't mean we'll have it in ten years. They've known we've had stealth for decades now, you think they haven't started to figure it out? The Bosnians shot down an F-117 with outdated at that time technology in the '90s.”