A piece I wrote for the Peace Action network on July 13, 2009 points up the sharp cost escalation of warplanes. It is timely, in a sense, to reissue this communication in light of the Obama White House not cutting a single new warplane in the $487 billion, ten-year projected Pentagon budget cuts announced in January.
The fact sheet on the F-22 "Raptor" Fighter shows that the per unit cost increased from $148.8 million in early 1992 to $350.8 million in late 2008. This substantial increase in cost of a very sophisticated but fragile jet fighter is not unusual, as the cost of military fighter planes and bombers has historically wildly escalated. In her book, The Baroque Arsenal, the defense analyst, Mary Kaldor, writes that between the Second World War and 1980, the cost of bombers increased 200 times and fighter planes, 100 times.
The B-1B bomber had a per unit cost estimate of $30 million in 1972 but the per unit cost was about nine times higher in 1987. When first proposed late in the Reagan administration, the estimated cost of a 132-plane B-2 Stealth bomber wing was equaled by the cost of a 75-plane wing a few years later in 1991.
Not only is the F-22 a costly plane to build, but according to a July 10, 2009 Washington Post article, it requires 30 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight, or $44,000 for every hour of flight. Ever since jet fighters began to be crammed with electronics -- a process Mary Kaldor called "positively rococo in their elaborate and frivolous features" -- failures requiring maintenance have been a common occurrence. Kaldor said the time between failures varied from 12 minutes for the F-111D to 18 minutes for the F-14A and F-45 fighters. In comparison, the A-10 general-attack aircraft was a maintenance marvel, as it could commonly fly for 72 minutes without a failure requiring maintenance work.
At the turn of the century, when the F-22 passed from drawing board and prototype to actual production, analysts were generally agreed that the U.S. did not need to build a single new fighter, as it would have jet fighter superiority until at least 2020. So when the argument is made that the 187 F-22s are sufficient, the honest answer is that we didn't need to build a single one.
Parts for the F-22 are made in 44 states, meaning that it is difficult to curtail the F-22 program due to the job-loss argument. To those who say that we can build more F-35 Joint Strike fighters to offset job losses from production curtailment of the more trouble-plagued F-22, the reply should be that we didn't need the F-35 either.
After the piece above was distributed to the Peace Action network, the Pentagon announced the "fully burdened" cost of a gallon of gasoline used by the U.S. military in Afghanistan. The cost includes shipping, the loss of fuel when supply convoys are ambushed and the voracious consumption of fuel by military vehicles and combat aircraft.
The F-16 and the B-52 bomber can be used to illustrate this voracious consumption of fuel. The F-16 uses in less than an hour as much fuel as the average motorist uses in two years. The F-16 fuel consumption pales in comparison to the B-52. According to the book, At the Abyss, written by Thomas C. Reed, a former Secretary of the Air Force, an eight-engine B-52 at full-throttle uses a ton of fuel every four minutes. At a fully burdened cost of $400 a gallon, the one-hour fuel cost of a B-52 would be $1,440.000. Some B-52s have been used in bombing runs in Afghanistan.
Showing posts with label F-35 Fighter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label F-35 Fighter. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
A Very Light Diet for the Pentagon
Diane Sawyer, ABC anchor, described as "massive" the Pentagon budget cuts announced by President Barack Obama on January 5, 2012. The Pentagon is trying to frame the overall cut of $487 billion over ten years as the maximum sacrifice it will be able to endure. Yet Obama gave much of the game away when he said that even with the cuts, the United States would be spending more on the military than the ten next highest military spending nations in the world; also, he stated that the Pentagon would continue to get its "normal" increases.
None of the 11 aircraft carrier flotillas will be cut, except that their sailing schedules might be reduced. None of the current missions of the Pentagon would be eliminated, only "narrowed." There would still be a formidable nuclear weapons force, with the triad deployment probably preserved. Even though there might be fewer nuclear warheads, the modernization program, a new fleet of nuclear weapons-armed submarines and a new bomber equipped to nuclear warheads will apparently not be affected.
The planned 2,400 plane air wing of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will not be affected, except for a delay in deployment. The cost of a single F-35 almost doubled in just eight years; also, the Pentagon announced last year that projected maintenance costs alone of the F-35 could reach $1 trillion in 30 years. Fighter planes designed to serve two of the military services, as the F-35 is built to do, haven't worked out well in the past.
Although it is contended that the armed forces will have a reduced capacity to fight land warfare, this limitation is "reversible," as reserve forces and the National Guard will allow the U.S. to fight two land wars simultaneously. It is hard to imagine that given the drain on resources of the two wars during the last decade, that we are even contemplating fighting an additional war(s) in the next decade.
The Pentagon is following several major pathways: 1) the last Quadrennial assessment elevated fighting an insurgency of violent extremists to the highest planning level; 2) the Pentagon is also engaged in surmounting the major technological challenges in creating the electronic, robotic battlefield of the future, once the apple of Donald Rumsfeld's eye; and 3) the Pentagon is continuing to build the sophisticated weapons systems appropriate to fighting a major peer enemy, such as the Soviet Union once was.
There is a sense of deja vu in elevating fighting an insurgency to the top of the planning list, as about the time that Barack Obama came into the presidency, a Defense Department directive put "IW" (irregular warfare) to a level "as strategically important as traditional warfare," arguing that for the "foreseeable future, winning the Long War against violent extremists will be the central objective of U.S. policy."
The fact that we are militarily following several major pathways in military planning is linked to the concept of "full spectrum dominance," whereby a joint military structure achieves control over all elements of the battlefield, using surface, sub-surface and air space-based assets. Full spectrum dominance includes the electromagnetic spectrum and information space. Control implies that the freedom of an opposition force to exploit the battlefield will be wholly contained.
How will the $487 billion in cuts be achieved? The U.S. Army will be cut from 570,000 to 490,000 by 2017 and the U.S. Marines will go from 202,000 troops to 182,000. It was as recently as 2005 that the armed forces was increased by 92,000 troops, so this 100,000 cut basically restores the troop numbers to what they were seven or eight years ago. If Barack Obama wins a second term, the troop reduction will not be completed during his presidency.
Besides the troop reduction, some old planes will be retired -- two dozen C-5A cargo aircraft and 65 of the oldest C-130 cargo planes -- the U.S. Navy will retire seven cruisers earlier than planned and delay some purchases; the new generation of submarines will be deployed in 2032, not 2030 as now blueprinted; and there will be a delay in full deployment of the F-35. Notable in this list of cost savings is that not a single weapons system will be eliminated.
Given that the ten-year projection of Pentagon base budget spending and ongoing war-fighting spending submitted with the FY 2012 budget is nearly $6.4 trillion, a cut of $487 billion is not that impressive.
None of the 11 aircraft carrier flotillas will be cut, except that their sailing schedules might be reduced. None of the current missions of the Pentagon would be eliminated, only "narrowed." There would still be a formidable nuclear weapons force, with the triad deployment probably preserved. Even though there might be fewer nuclear warheads, the modernization program, a new fleet of nuclear weapons-armed submarines and a new bomber equipped to nuclear warheads will apparently not be affected.
The planned 2,400 plane air wing of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will not be affected, except for a delay in deployment. The cost of a single F-35 almost doubled in just eight years; also, the Pentagon announced last year that projected maintenance costs alone of the F-35 could reach $1 trillion in 30 years. Fighter planes designed to serve two of the military services, as the F-35 is built to do, haven't worked out well in the past.
Although it is contended that the armed forces will have a reduced capacity to fight land warfare, this limitation is "reversible," as reserve forces and the National Guard will allow the U.S. to fight two land wars simultaneously. It is hard to imagine that given the drain on resources of the two wars during the last decade, that we are even contemplating fighting an additional war(s) in the next decade.
The Pentagon is following several major pathways: 1) the last Quadrennial assessment elevated fighting an insurgency of violent extremists to the highest planning level; 2) the Pentagon is also engaged in surmounting the major technological challenges in creating the electronic, robotic battlefield of the future, once the apple of Donald Rumsfeld's eye; and 3) the Pentagon is continuing to build the sophisticated weapons systems appropriate to fighting a major peer enemy, such as the Soviet Union once was.
There is a sense of deja vu in elevating fighting an insurgency to the top of the planning list, as about the time that Barack Obama came into the presidency, a Defense Department directive put "IW" (irregular warfare) to a level "as strategically important as traditional warfare," arguing that for the "foreseeable future, winning the Long War against violent extremists will be the central objective of U.S. policy."
The fact that we are militarily following several major pathways in military planning is linked to the concept of "full spectrum dominance," whereby a joint military structure achieves control over all elements of the battlefield, using surface, sub-surface and air space-based assets. Full spectrum dominance includes the electromagnetic spectrum and information space. Control implies that the freedom of an opposition force to exploit the battlefield will be wholly contained.
How will the $487 billion in cuts be achieved? The U.S. Army will be cut from 570,000 to 490,000 by 2017 and the U.S. Marines will go from 202,000 troops to 182,000. It was as recently as 2005 that the armed forces was increased by 92,000 troops, so this 100,000 cut basically restores the troop numbers to what they were seven or eight years ago. If Barack Obama wins a second term, the troop reduction will not be completed during his presidency.
Besides the troop reduction, some old planes will be retired -- two dozen C-5A cargo aircraft and 65 of the oldest C-130 cargo planes -- the U.S. Navy will retire seven cruisers earlier than planned and delay some purchases; the new generation of submarines will be deployed in 2032, not 2030 as now blueprinted; and there will be a delay in full deployment of the F-35. Notable in this list of cost savings is that not a single weapons system will be eliminated.
Given that the ten-year projection of Pentagon base budget spending and ongoing war-fighting spending submitted with the FY 2012 budget is nearly $6.4 trillion, a cut of $487 billion is not that impressive.
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