Asymmetrical Information

Now that the new Airbus superjumbo is ready to do battle with Boeing, perhaps the British and French can focus on the fighter program. Priorities, after all, are important.

OK, I'm claiming "Eurofighter" as my entry in the next oxymoron contest.

Jane, schadenfreude is soooo 2003. I guess you and the Pundit of Vodka missed today's 3,000-word piece in the FT on the problems of the Joint Strike Fighter, which is too heavy, overbudget, and causing technological rows between allies (especially America and Britain). The Short-take-off-vertical-landing version of the fighter may not literally get off the ground, thus losing the Marines and the Brits as customers and killing the idea of the all-service, multi-ally fighter.

Then there's the F/A-22 Raptor, which may be killed for lack of buyers who don't mind its $260-million price tag. It's a magnificent project (how I dreamed of being a fighter pilot after Top Gun)--it'll be too bad if it gets canned.

So remember,

a) the Europeans are still allies, kids! and

b) making light of the misfortunes of others invites the same for you.

I, for one, thought that the JSF was a disaster waiting to happen. In particular, I thought it was a retread of the '70s era FB-111, which, like the JSF, attempted to be all things to all people and ended up being nothing to nobody.

C'mon, Contributor A -- if a libertarian can't make fun of the boondoggle results of a government spending programme, what exactly can we make fun of?

Oh, by all means rib away. I'm only asking for equal-opportunity ribbing. Feel free to throw stones across the Atlantic, but Arlington is much closer--and they're spending *your* money...

Eric,

The first flight of an F-111 was 1964. The F-111A entered service in 1967. The EF-111 flew until 1998.

The F-111 was a formidible weapons platform during it's day and served admirably in many missions.

Vietnam War (USAF, 1968-1972)
Libya - Operation El Dorado Canyon (USAF, 1986)
Iraq - Operation Desert Storm (USAF, 1991)
Bosnia - Operation Deliberate Force (USAF, 1995 [EF-111 only])

Forward based in the U.K, it's capability as an all weather low level penetrator with advanced avionics, supersonic speed as well as carrying a nuclear payload internally, the F-111 played a key role in keeping the Soviet Union from Europe's door.

The reason for the Navy rejecting the F-111 had more to do with intra-service rivalry than with the technical merits of the aircraft.

C'mon, Contributor A -- if a libertarian can't make fun of the boondoggle results of a government spending programme, what exactly can we make fun of?

Michael Bednarik?

hi all,

from an earlier era...

"anyone want to buy a starfighter?"

"buy an acre of ground.... and wait..."

cas, HUH?

For us who are ignorant or thick, please elaborate, just curious.

Joe, as an old F111 avionics tech, it was an awesome airplane. The D model, which I worked on for six years at Cannon AFB, owned the TAC bombing accuracy competition for many years. Only the other F111 models could even come close. It could easily penetrate any air defenses Iraq or other Arab countries could have mounted, and at Cannon we drilled hard throughout the 80's just for Middle East deployment scenarios. And yet, when Gulf War I started up in 1991 and I called my old buddies at Cannon to see if they were alright, the D-model had been scrapped.

Why? Mainly, it was also awesomely expensive to keep flying. Everything kept breaking after a few hours in flight, it took a pile of spare parts and hundreds of man-hours to put the plane back into service. It could penetrate defenses, but you'd expect to lose a few airplanes. The stealth planes theoretically would do the job with zero losses, and I expect that their 20-year newer avionics and motors didn't break down as often.

As for the Navy, the F111 was too heavy for many carriers, and it wasn't the airplane they asked for. What the Navy wanted in a swing-wing airplane was a Combat Air Patrol fighter that could snap the wings out to slowly orbit over their carriers for hours at minimum power, and then snap them back to turn into a high-speed air superiority fighter and protect the fleet. What the Air Force wanted was a light bomber, not a fighter - and the F111 was most of what they wanted. I've seen it flying with F16's, and it's like a barge next to a speedboat. It's only realistic option for air-to-air is to launch missiles at maximum range and run like a rabbit. (It is damned good at that - just try hitting a ground-hugging supersonic rabbit - which is part of what makes it a great bomber.) Maybe the Navy could have used the F111 as a superior attack airplane, but it would have sucked up the money they eventually used to develop a swingwing Combat Air Patrol fighter (the F14) and left the carriers nearly naked to aerial attack. (In hindsight, that probably wouldn't have mattered, but in the 1960's they had to consider how they'd operate against the Soviet air force.)

joe bagadonuts sez "The reason for the Navy rejecting the F-111 had more to do with intra-service rivalry than with the technical merits of the aircraft."

the F-111 performed pretty well as a dedicated bomber for the USAF and other allied air forces. however, the F-111 was originally intended to be a fighter as well for the both the USAF and the USN. the aircraft became too heavy for its ground-based fighter role for the USAF, and this role was scrapped, thus indirectly leading to the F-15 and F-16 aircraft.

for the USN, the TF30 powerplants didn't provide the power necessary for carrier-based aviation in any role even at USAF weight levels. given that the F-111 would have required extensive strengthening for the stress of carrier operations, that problem would have been much worse.

thus, the navy bowed out, which lead to the F-14 Tomcat (supposedly named for the admiral who stood in front of congress and told them their budget-saving design philosophy not only did not but would not work).

sorry for the double post, but i forgot to add my comment on the eurofighter.

bringing a complex new weapons system on-line is a non-trivial undertaking. current availability of the eurofighter might be abysmal, but don't think that it won't improve.

also, the fact that the eurofighter currently has poor availability does not imply that it is not a formidable system when it *is* available.

From the Scotsman article:

"The current name, Eurofighter Typhoon, was designed to be more dynamic and export-friendly, but the word Typhoon caused controversy because it recalled a famous RAF fighter-bomber of World War II which devastated German tank and troop columns."

Heh. Do you think you could sell an attack aircraft to the French if you named it the "Stuka"?

J.Swift: Cas' joke relates to the fact that the F-104 Starfighter had little stubby wings and the glide rate of an anvil, so it had a reputation for falling out of the sky more often than pilots usually prefer. Hence "buy an acre of ground" -- preferably at either end of the Lockheed runway. You'll be sure to catch one sooner or later.

Ed:
The French are not, repeat not, members of the Eurofighter customer consortium.
(Though if you want to be picky there is a French link via one of the manufacturing partners, EADS, which is in turn the result of the merger-and-float in 2000 of the Lagardère Group - alias Aerospatiale - and DaimlerChrysler aerospace businesses. No practical significance, though, as Eurofighter stuff remains the turf of the German units.)

Thomas Eastwood:
The story I've heard is that the Typhoon name was a deliberate Brit joke.
We just didn't tell the Germans about the WW2 link till after the fact :)

And deliberate because there's a common feeling among British aerospace types blaming the German link for the Eurofighter's problems: repeated respecification, then demanding lead status in cockpit systems/avionics/systems integration as reward for staying in, then not being up to the job.

T.E.

lol Thanks I suspected as much since I have seen a starfighter.

markm,

Do the Aussies still fly the F-111? The last I heard, many years ago, they were looking to buy the USAF spare parts inventory and keep flying it until around 2050.

hi j swift,
sorry the reference was so obscure. starfighters F104G
G as in Germany
http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/f104.html

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