Aircraft design cycles, and the future of US air dominance

[LowObservable]

"It's not transparent and open in the media since journalists, unlike 401(c) think tanks like CNAS, don't have to legally disclose sources of funding or other commercial/consulting or advisory interests."

Are you suggesting that defense journalists routinely have such sources of funding (other than salaries or freelance payments) or commercial interests? If not, please retract that statement; if so, please provide facts.

 

[bobbymike]

I don't want to turn this into a media bashing thread, hey I get most of my information from defense and aerospace sources, but was there any price to be paid for the approximate 10:1 negative coverage I grew up with basically stating;

The Abrams, Bradley, B-1, B-2, F-16/15/18/22/35, Apache, CVNs, Patriot, THAAD, etc. suck and will never work articles?

LO - I am mostly separating who I personally describe as 'technical journalists' from excellent publications like AW&ST, been a subscriber since 1986 (and other defense specific sources) from rank and file, albeit, large circulation source defense writers from most every major US newspaper or weekly (NYT, LAT, WP, Time, Newsweek, etc.)

 

[LowObservable]

Aerospace and defense specialists became largely extinct in major media in the 80s and 90s, as journalism-school doctrine dictated that anyone should be able to write about anything at any time, and that anyone with a specific industry beat would become too "cozy" with that industry.

There's been a bit of a corrective reaction recently.

I don't think there was much of a price to be paid for the negative coverage of the programs you are talking about. In many cases, negative coverage was the accurate coverage of real problems (the B-1's EW system, for instance). The media didn't cause the B-2's cost overruns: even NorthGrum people today accept that its fate was a result of unstable requirements, the end of the Cold War and the difficulty of making a case for it when the AF had 100 brand-new bombers.

And it's hardly realistic to promise the moon in 5 years for $5 million, deliver a smallish asteroid in 10 years for $50 million, and then bleat about the resulting negative news coverage.

In other cases, Congress and the Pentagon mostly ignored the media and carried on regardless.

 

[sferrin]

Because these aren't your daddy's aircraft. Recruiting and retaining experienced talent who can make informed assessments when aircraft new starts are so infrequent would be extraordinarily difficult.
So you are left with the "old and the bold" e.g .those who leave industry and can't manage the transition to consulting or the talented but inexperienced. There is also no incentivization for the uniformed staff to stay in place on a program for any substantial amount of time and it's not a great career enabler for the civilian staff either.

Well why can't government labs build prototypes?

When is the last time a government lab built a prototype fighter?

This would seem to solve the dilemma of where will a trained workforce of government technical experts come from,

Not really.

but would also logically reduce the technical risk for other programs, as well as the financial risk for contractors as the technology developed there could be made available to every bidder in a contract.

I believe this entity is called "NASA".

 

[AeroFranz]

you mean NaSA (relative size of budget allocation shown to scale)?
The last pervasive contribution NASA made to aeronautics dates back to Whitcomb.

 

[LowObservable]

"When is the last time a government lab built a prototype fighter?"

Tejas. Probably not a positive example.

 

[sferrin]

"When is the last time a government lab built a prototype fighter?"

Tejas. Probably not a positive example.

Yeah. IMO government labs are good for general research that might have more risk than corporations are willing to take these days, and investigating new processes, but leave the manufacturing to the contractors. Believe it or not, contractors are motivated to be as efficient as possible without spending exorbitant amounts of money unless absolutely required. NASA, LLNL, AFRL, and all the rest of the government labs out there are doing a good job though I wish they'd be a bit less risk-averse. It blew my mind when General so-and-so (the head of the X-51 effort) said they considered not flying the last mission because it might fail. Genuinely speechless at that mentality. And for all intents it seems they went, "whew, okay, we got a successful flight. Let's not fly it anymore lest we tarnish our resumes." There aren't enough Picard facepalm images on the intertubes to do that justice.

 

[Void]

"When is the last time a government lab built a prototype fighter?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_aircraft_of_the_Soviet_Union_and_the_CIS Pick your favourite ;D

Closer to home US government labs certainly don't seem to have had problems designing and producing nuclear weapons, which are moderately complex hi-tech devices last I checked.

 

[sferrin]

"When is the last time a government lab built a prototype fighter?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_aircraft_of_the_Soviet_Union_and_the_CIS Pick your favourite ;D

No thanks.

Closer to home US government labs certainly don't seem to have had problems designing and producing nuclear weapons, which are moderately complex hi-tech devices last I checked.

They can't even design a bomb these days let alone an airplane.

 

[Void]

They can't even design a bomb these days let alone an airplane.

How many new nuclear weapon designs has the US military ordered since the end of the Cold War? :

The US National Laboratory system was successful in designing and building sophisticated weapons. This is a fact. Belief that the government "cannot" innovate or cannot play a useful role in the R&D of advanced weapons is politics. Claiming that aircraft are somehow uniquely impossible for the government to design is special pleading. When was the last time this was even attempted in the US?

It might not work. But it might.

 

[bring_it_on]

One has to see what is taking longer. Its the architecture constraints, the software development and testing cycles (commercial programs have this increase load as well) and the cost to develop and upgrade rapidly. We may see 'insourcing' that in a sense but not with the physical aircraft design. The system of systems approach to air dominance will essentially see the Customer in the Pentagon seek an open mission systems architecture that would allow plug and play insertion of capability. The architecture would essentially be something that would come from the customer down to the OEMs in effect being a design that they have to conform to. They don't physically have design the shape, mold line of an aircraft to positively impact the design cycle by shortening it.

http://www.darpa.mil/program/system-of-systems-integration-technology-and-experimentation

 

[fredymac]

It is not so much that government "can't" design aircraft. It is just that it would be done far more expensively and slower than private industry. An old joke about civil servants is that they are secret weapons which can't be launched and can't be fired (the usual one is about the dead coming back to life at quitting time). I've worked with a few hard working and competent civil servants. And a lot who weren't. The thing is, institutions (and people) which/who are not subject to being fired act like it.

 

[sferrin]

They can't even design a bomb these days let alone an airplane.

How many new nuclear weapon designs has the US military ordered since the end of the Cold War? :

Exactly. So why you'd think they could be any good at it escapes me.

The US National Laboratory system was successful in designing and building sophisticated weapons.

They designed the part that goes *BOOM* that's it. (And sourced many of the parts even then.) And when you're producing scores of designs and tens of thousands of warheads, continuously, over the course of a few decades you're going to get good at it.

This is a fact. Belief that the government "cannot" innovate or cannot play a useful role in the R&D of advanced weapons is politics.

Show me where I said they couldn't play a role in R&D. You can't. In fact I said that's their best role.

Claiming that aircraft are somehow uniquely impossible for the government to design is special pleading. When was the last time this was even attempted in the US?

You might ask yourself why that is.

 

[bobbymike]

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/business-leaders-eye-air-force-research-lab-tech/npZzr/

 

[quellish]

It blew my mind when General so-and-so (the head of the X-51 effort) said they considered not flying the last mission because it might fail. Genuinely speechless at that mentality. And for all intents it seems they went, "whew, okay, we got a successful flight. Let's not fly it anymore lest we tarnish our resumes." There aren't enough Picard facepalm images on the intertubes to do that justice.

...

But within an S&T environment you have to protect the opportunity to fail or else you’re not going to make any real progress.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

but let me break the painful truth to you: there is no more "free" content than Bernie Sanders' free college education. It all costs money, so someone is paying for it, likely to advance their agenda.

Who is paying for this media right here? The original point was not just about think tank vs media or Bill Sweetman vs Loren Thompson. But about new alternative sources to news and analysis to such traditional forms of media like this webpage. Secretprojects.co.uk is not being coerced into furthering someone's agenda. I'm sure you could try but it would be very hard.

supported by someone who at least is in an excellent position to identify media incompetence when he sees it, and with the usual passive-aggressive asides about diversity practices.

Troll is as troll does. But rather than just flip off everyone why not engage in the debate? Demonstrate to the rest of us that the media isn't incompetent (or that I am expressly incompetent) when it comes to defence and refute the arguments made about the causation of such? Otherwise you're just adding another chink to the chain of your credibility. Not a notch to your belt of defenestrations. Because in this forum veiled eloquent insults by themselves without a substantive argument are just not good enough.

But how can we talk about media, advertising, diversity, making fun of incompetence, etc without referring to this year's ground breaking South Park Season 19? We can't. So here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z696bTiP8Ro

 

[sferrin]

But within an S&T environment you have to protect the opportunity to fail or else you’re not going to make any real progress.

Yes, but you can't be paralyzed by the fear of failure. "We better not try this because it might fail and then we'll lose our ability to fail", does not compute. I get it, one can't be reckless, but if history has told us anything it's that breakthroughs are never easy.

 

[quellish]

Yes, but you can't be paralyzed by the fear of failure. "We better not try this because it might fail and then we'll lose our ability to fail", does not compute. I get it, one can't be reckless, but if history has told us anything it's that breakthroughs are never easy.

I quoted the person you were referring to, who was discussing the very thing you were referring to.
There was no "paralyzed by fear of failure".

The program was funded and scheduled for 4 flights. The first validated most of what they set out to accomplish. Each flight was dangerous and required extensive test assets. The other flights were icing.

I don't see how think tanks and journalists are relevant to the topic of this thread.

 

[sferrin]

Yes, but you can't be paralyzed by the fear of failure. "We better not try this because it might fail and then we'll lose our ability to fail", does not compute. I get it, one can't be reckless, but if history has told us anything it's that breakthroughs are never easy.

I quoted the person you were referring to, who was discussing the very thing you were referring to.
There was no "paralyzed by fear of failure".

The program was funded and scheduled for 4 flights. The first validated most of what they set out to accomplish.

The guy in charge of the program said himself they almost didn't do the last flight because they were worried about failing. And it was really the only flight that even came close to what they were promising.

 

[Arian]

Is there any advance in science or technology that doesn't take longer and cost more today than it did 20 or 30 or 50 years ago? All of what you guys are saying here is interesting, but it seems to me this is a phenomenon that can be seen in all technological fields. This may not be the case on a functional unit basis (say GB of memory for GB of memory), but it seems to be so in the overall product development cycle. So the question is, why would anyone not expect aircraft development cycles to get longer and more costly?

Is there some counterfactual out there of a country where we see the reverse? (admittedly, there's maybe 5 other countries in total)

 

[fredymac]

What is the historic development time for commercial airliners? They too have become significantly more complex and expensive but I think they are still executed in 4-6 year schedules. Where are private/commercial development times increasing the way government projects (military/space/FAA/etc) do? There are some private programs that can take a long time (Virgin Galactic for example) but it is usually due to budgetary limits. In electronics, Moore's Law was maintained for a long time and was only halted due to fundamental physics. It just seems that a lot of the extra time is a function of bureaucratic culture: we go this fast because this is how fast we go. Comparing the 50's-60's to today, we are way more legalistic and regulated and the amount of paperwork (digital or otherwise) that is required is exponentially greater.

 

[bring_it_on]

Both the A380 and Boeing 787 took significantly longer to finally deliver first articles to customer. I think the range was more like 7-9 years for those projects.

 

[quellish]

The guy in charge of the program said himself they almost didn't do the last flight because they were worried about failing. And it was really the only flight that even came close to what they were promising.

That would be the guy I quoted.
Again, they hit the most important test points on the first flight. A test program isn't built to fulfill promises. It's designed to learn. The X-51 was intended to validate a hydrocarbon fueled scramjet. The test program did that on the first flight.

 

[sferrin]

The guy in charge of the program said himself they almost didn't do the last flight because they were worried about failing. And it was really the only flight that even came close to what they were promising.

That would be the guy I quoted.
Again, they hit the most important test points on the first flight. A test program isn't built to fulfill promises. It's designed to learn. The X-51 was intended to validate a hydrocarbon fueled scramjet. The test program did that on the first flight.

Well, I'd think the only "promises" they'd make were ones they were planning on testing. Didn't see Mach 6 either, and the thing barely accelerated at all after booster burnout. Not what I'd call inspiring. Furthermore, doing a thing once and then putting it on the shelf indefinitely is not the way to make progress. It begs the question why they bothered at all. Yes, one can lawyer up and say, "technically, they had supersonic combustion with hydrocarbon fuel, and that's all they were testing" but it doesn't bode well IMO.

 

[quellish]

Well, I'd think the only "promises" they'd make were ones they were planning on testing. Didn't see Mach 6 either, and the thing barely accelerated at all after booster burnout. Not what I'd call inspiring. Furthermore, doing a thing once and then putting it on the shelf indefinitely is not the way to make progress. It begs the question why they bothered at all. Yes, one can lawyer up and say, "technically, they had supersonic combustion with hydrocarbon fuel, and that's all they were testing" but it doesn't bode well IMO.

Well, I think they were not out to "promise" or "inspire". They set out with specific test objectives. They met them. That did not include setting some record for time at a mach number.

They did not "do a thing once and put it on the shelf". The X-51 flight tests validated the propulsion concept. Follow on programs are building on that work. That is how progress is made. There are programs to mature the propulsion and airframe integration further, programs to develop seekers, programs to address some of the shortcomings of the flight test infrastructure. These have been part of the roadmap for a long time.

Why did they bother at all? To learn. To make progress. This is what research and development *does*.

 

[Arian]

Where are private/commercial development times increasing the way government projects (military/space/FAA/etc) do?

Everywhere, I would say. Not just time but costs as well. R&D expenditures increasing exponentially in any high tech industry. Of course most industries don't introduce radically different products in the same way as aviation. It's hard to tell in a car company where one model ends and one begins. So its hard to assign project costs looking from the outside. But we can see R&D budgets ballooning over time.

As an example, look at Apple. It spends today about 10 times more in R&D than it did in 2000.

In electronics, Moore's Law was maintained for a long time and was only halted due to fundamental physics.

Well that's what I meant. You can compare things in terms of functional unit: i.e. how long and how much does it cost to add an extra 1GB of memory to a computer. In that sense, things are constantly getting cheaper and faster. Or you can compare them in terms of discrete "new product" development cycles. Each new product isn't simply a linear increase in performance over its previous model. Because functional unit increases are cheaper, people expect 10x improvement over previous versions, which makes the new product development costs constantly increasing.

Other factors are that we're in no hurry. There's no war or impending threat. So why rush? Another factor of increasing costs is simply increasing opportunity costs of the employees. Today a career as an engineer in a government lab or an aerospace company is simply not as attractive as a career as an engineer in a software company (as an example). Which means aerospace companies (and certainly gov. labs) either get lower quality people, or have to pay more for higher quality people. And in reality they just end up with lower quality.

 

[fredymac]

The 787 is an example of a program marked with delays so the 8 years (project go ahead through customer delivery) it took is what a "bad" schedule delay looks like in a private venture.

I think the root problem is more of culture than technology and changing culture is usually done by large scale replacement of people. I'm not sure that has ever happened in a government bureaucracy.

 

[sferrin]

Well, I'd think the only "promises" they'd make were ones they were planning on testing. Didn't see Mach 6 either, and the thing barely accelerated at all after booster burnout. Not what I'd call inspiring. Furthermore, doing a thing once and then putting it on the shelf indefinitely is not the way to make progress. It begs the question why they bothered at all. Yes, one can lawyer up and say, "technically, they had supersonic combustion with hydrocarbon fuel, and that's all they were testing" but it doesn't bode well IMO.

Well, I think they were not out to "promise" or "inspire".

Nor did I claim they were.

They set out with specific test objectives. They met them.

Well according to this:

https://www.aiaa.org/uploadedFiles/About-AIAA/Press_Room/Key_Speeches-Reports-and-Presentations/RMutzman_and__JMurphy_X-51_Development_2011.pdf

their test objective was Mach 6. They failed.

That did not include setting some record for time at a mach number.

Did somebody claim they were out to set a record?

They did not "do a thing once and put it on the shelf".

Have they done anything with it since?

The X-51 flight tests validated the propulsion concept. Follow on programs are building on that work.

When I see something more than a Powerpoint placeholder acronym I'll believe that they're actually accomplishing anything.

That is how progress is made.

"Progress" is theoretical until one proves it in hardware. (And as HyFly and RATTLRS demonstrated, might turn out to not be real at all. I wouldn't call learning that you're wrong progress, though still useful to know.)

Why did they bother at all? To learn. To make progress. This is what research and development *does*.

If they're going to build on it then great. Given the past track record though, you'll have to forgive me for waiting to see evidence of it before believing it.

 

[Grey Havoc]

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160122-the-shape-of-wings-to-come

 

[quellish]

Well, I think they were not out to "promise" or "inspire".

Nor did I claim they were.

OK, can you elaborate on what you intended to convey here then? :

Well, I'd think the only "promises" they'd make were ones they were planning on testing.

Not what I'd call inspiring.

That would be helpful. You seem to be indicated that promises were made, and that you did not find the program inspiring.

Have they done anything with it since?

Yes. It's quite active. For example, the new booster hardware is at Edwards.

When I see something more than a Powerpoint placeholder acronym I'll believe that they're actually accomplishing anything.

Then I would suggest you go look. Again, the programs are quite active.

I wouldn't call learning that you're wrong progress, though still useful to know.)

That is a curious position to take. Finding out your model or assumptions were incorrect is extremely valuable in engineering and R&D. That is exactly why we test.

Why did they bother at all? To learn. To make progress. This is what research and development *does*.

If they're going to build on it then great. Given the past track record though, you'll have to forgive me for waiting to see evidence of it before believing it.

If you don't look for the evidence I assume you are waiting for it to be handed to you? Or am I misunderstanding?

 

[marauder2048]

"It's not transparent and open in the media since journalists, unlike 401(c) think tanks like CNAS, don't have to legally disclose sources of funding or other commercial/consulting or advisory interests."

Are you suggesting that defense journalists routinely have such sources of funding (other than salaries or freelance payments) or commercial interests? If not, please retract that statement; if so, please provide facts.

The poster child for why such disclosures are important for media types. Who knew?