pathology_doc
ACCESS: Top Secret
- Joined
- 6 June 2008
- Messages
- 1,386
- Reaction score
- 1,077
...as explained in Buttler's book on US Secret Bomber Projects, is a wonderful thing. There's no doubt that it particularly applied to the aviation industry in the late 1940s and onwards, at least in terms of integrating structure, propulsion, avionics and armament, as various things (engines, the enormous amounts of fuel jets required, bulky avionics, internally-stored missiles where relevant, etc) began to compete for the previously cavernous internal spaces of new aircraft.
I've just finished reading Norman Friedman's book on British cruisers in and after the world wars, and have long been a fan of D.K. Brown, and it struck me that really, the whole "weapon system" concept was well understood by the battleship builders, except that of course they were also required to integrate armour protection into the design. On the other hand, there was compensation inasmuch as the sensor/fire control aspect didn't really come into it until the end of the pre-dreadnought era. Friedman mentions the frantic rejigging of designs in order to get the equipment fit deemed necessary into cruisers that had to obey treaty (and also affordability) limits, and the inevitable overloads (and X-turret sacrifices) that were required as more and more war equipment had to be loaded on.
This and the ever-fluid design process surrounding the British interceptors that died with the Sandys review drove me to hypothesise that the weapon system concept is a really marvellous thing when your technology (and the doctrine that surrounds it) is mature. It is, however, potentially disastrous to the development of a project (especially when said project is on shaky ground anyway) when one or more of the doctrine, weapons, sensor/fire control systems and propulsion wind up in what tvtropes.org calls "Development Hell" or drags others into it, or is evolving too quickly for a design to be frozen for integration. Get your doctrine wrong, or find yourself caught short by a newly evolved requirement, and suddenly the integrated approach comes crashing down like a house of cards.
It's all very well to design a neatly wrapped package; but unless you remember to include stretch ("space and weight reserved" matters as much for post-war aircraft as for ships), what you end up with might be no better than the lash-up you could have had years earlier (e.g. by shoving AI23 into a slightly redesigned Fairey FD2 nose and pinning a pair of Firestreaks to the wingtips), or - if the government axe swings - it might be nothing at all. To say nothing of what happens when the best (fire-and-forget) becomes the enemy of good enough: e.g. a call for SARH missiles in the intercept role, obliging radar manufacturers to integrate illuminators into fighter radars from the start of the design phase, or the delays and cost overruns inherent in the Avro-Canada Arrow's fire-control system and proposed missile armament, possibly providing the straw that broke the camel's back, when what they could have had from the start (a FCS using Falcon) was more or less what they eventually got when they bought the CF-101.
Sometimes it really does make sense to build a nicely shaped empty shell with the biggest engines, and then fit the best systems you have at the time inside of or onto it. At least now, whatever weapons we might develop, we can only expect the electronic systems we depend on to drive them to get more and more compact.
I've just finished reading Norman Friedman's book on British cruisers in and after the world wars, and have long been a fan of D.K. Brown, and it struck me that really, the whole "weapon system" concept was well understood by the battleship builders, except that of course they were also required to integrate armour protection into the design. On the other hand, there was compensation inasmuch as the sensor/fire control aspect didn't really come into it until the end of the pre-dreadnought era. Friedman mentions the frantic rejigging of designs in order to get the equipment fit deemed necessary into cruisers that had to obey treaty (and also affordability) limits, and the inevitable overloads (and X-turret sacrifices) that were required as more and more war equipment had to be loaded on.
This and the ever-fluid design process surrounding the British interceptors that died with the Sandys review drove me to hypothesise that the weapon system concept is a really marvellous thing when your technology (and the doctrine that surrounds it) is mature. It is, however, potentially disastrous to the development of a project (especially when said project is on shaky ground anyway) when one or more of the doctrine, weapons, sensor/fire control systems and propulsion wind up in what tvtropes.org calls "Development Hell" or drags others into it, or is evolving too quickly for a design to be frozen for integration. Get your doctrine wrong, or find yourself caught short by a newly evolved requirement, and suddenly the integrated approach comes crashing down like a house of cards.
It's all very well to design a neatly wrapped package; but unless you remember to include stretch ("space and weight reserved" matters as much for post-war aircraft as for ships), what you end up with might be no better than the lash-up you could have had years earlier (e.g. by shoving AI23 into a slightly redesigned Fairey FD2 nose and pinning a pair of Firestreaks to the wingtips), or - if the government axe swings - it might be nothing at all. To say nothing of what happens when the best (fire-and-forget) becomes the enemy of good enough: e.g. a call for SARH missiles in the intercept role, obliging radar manufacturers to integrate illuminators into fighter radars from the start of the design phase, or the delays and cost overruns inherent in the Avro-Canada Arrow's fire-control system and proposed missile armament, possibly providing the straw that broke the camel's back, when what they could have had from the start (a FCS using Falcon) was more or less what they eventually got when they bought the CF-101.
Sometimes it really does make sense to build a nicely shaped empty shell with the biggest engines, and then fit the best systems you have at the time inside of or onto it. At least now, whatever weapons we might develop, we can only expect the electronic systems we depend on to drive them to get more and more compact.
