• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Feb 23, 2011
5
0
Hi,
I've been lurking for a bit, but never put my toe into the water so far... I wanted to ask what people's opinions are regarding the increasing pressure the current economic and political situation has one the military, and more particularly the air components of the armed forces, and how it might be reflected in Naval War... <Warning, this may ramble a little ;)>

I've read a few articles specifically regarding fighters, fighter-bombers and attack aircraft of late, including one in this month's 'Combat Aircraft' addressing the spiralling costs of modern multi-role aircraft, both on land and sea-based. This obviously also affects other capabilities, such as the UK's mis-handling of the Nimrod MRA4 program and it's subsequent cancellation, leaving as as an island nation without an effective maritime patrol aircraft. There is also the issue of the sliding scale of the F-35's development schedule and costs... Currently predicted at £111 million per aircraft, as I recall.

It seems to me it comes down to 4 areas: Cost, Numbers, Stealth, and Manned or Unmanned

Cost.

Take Switzerland as a prime example. They have, currently, F-18Cs and F-5s. When they invited tenders for replacing the Tigers, they were offered various options, including Typhoon and Rafale... And yet it was a shock when they chose the Gripen!! The Gripen came in at half the price, while still being easily the equivalent in a lot of ways of the F-18s they will work alongside, but is, of course, not as capable as the Typhoon and the Rafale. It also didn't have the same heavyweight government backing. But the Swiss actually paid attention to the fact they needed to watch the bottom line. No-one has as much money for defence anymore, and they were replacing a lightweight fighter with some attack capability.. but they were being offered heavyweight multirole interceptors and other big ticket programs, because that's what everyone is buying these days. Instead they took a smaller option, with a more capability than the platform it replaced, bought into the proposed Gripen NG advancement program, and saved themselves a lots of money. Can anyone, even the US, currently say they have unlimited money to pour into a bottomless hole? They capped the F-22 at about a quarter of the production the USAF originally wanted, then just over half, because it was so expensive, but then, they refused to sell it for export to keep their capability lead, keeping the unit price up... Maybe that was an acceptable price?
The F-35 is the current big ticket program everyone wants, but it's currently looking like it will be at least $122 million per unit not bad for an "Affordable next generation strike aircraft weapon system" ... Not bad compared to $339 million per Raptor, but still, strange for a plane originating in a program called "Common Affordable Lightweight Fighter". And yet look at all the countries agreeing to buy it... The UK, Norway, Japan, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, Denmark, Australia, Canada.... Everyone wants it, so much so that as the price increases and budgets don't, they just downsize their orders for a chance to buy it. But that means that they won't have the number of aircraft they originally said they needed to fulfill their needs?

At the moment the US are facing a huge capability gap... the aircraft the F-22 and the F-35 were supposed to replace are getting old, and there aren't going to be enough to replace them, so they're having to look at programs to extend the life of the aircraft in place.. The F-15s, F-16s and early model F-18s. The question is starting to be asked: Can we afford the F-35? The manufacturers of the 'Less capable' aircraft are, and have been working on constant updates and improvements of their products anyway, to the point where the F-15s and F-16s their allies have bought are more capable than may of the US' newest planes, and especially more capable in many ways to the F-16s some of the European nations bought and are keeping working, or selling off.

Numbers
I think it was Josef Stalin who was quoted as saying "Quantity has a quality all of it's own". The man was a homicidal psychopath in a lot of ways, but he had a point. At the moment, all the western powers and their allies are facing an issue of affordability versus capability. Everyone wants the latest high-tech fighters for their air arms. They want it to outmaneuver everyone in the air, outshoot at range, deliver bombs behind enemy lines unseen, and and to be able to choose whether they hit the enemy in the right nostril or the left kneecap. the problem is, that rolling all these capabilities into one aircraft costs money. and because each aircraft costs more, we can only afford to buy less of them than the aircraft they replace. Therefore we have to hope that the new aircraft are more capable than their predecessors by orders of magnitude, to offset the loss of numbers. But there are issues there... One aircraft can only be in one place at a time. If it can move fast, it can be in 2 places within a short space of time, but it also has then to travel to the second target/location after it's revealed it's existence by blowing someone or something up. An aircraft staged in the UK will take, say, 4 hours to reach Libya. An aircraft in Italy will take half or a quarter of that, burning less fuel, and being able to therefore reattack more frequently.but an aircraft in the UK could respond to a request for some form of armed action in the northern part of the UK's territorial waters in under half an hour if on alert. An aircraft based in Italy would take 2 or 3 hours minimum. Similary, you cannot stage air defence in the Falklands from the Mainland UK, or vice versa. Governments are still making commitments to use force in many different places, but they won't admit that the sums don't add up when they buy less aircraft for the same money. However, they still say it is more responsible to not overspend. The assumption is that the military will find a way to make do, and the knowledge that the politicians will wiggle out of the blame, and put some poor sod in a uniform out for the lions. the truth of the matter is, if we need more aircraft than we can afford of a particular type, then maybe we are trying to buy the wrong aircraft for the wrong reasons? To keep a pilot properly trained for air defence AND strike is very expensive, in both time and money, and he can still only be in one place at one time, IF there's an aircraft available. But if you buy less of the all-singing aircraft, and use the money to buy a greater number of dedicated attack or fighter platforms, they will be more capable and better designed for their individual roles, and they can be in more places. also, if you shoot down 1 plane, there are still more to perform the tasks it now cannot.

Stealth

Everyone wants stealth. It just sounds awesome, doesn't it? Radar invisibility. But it's not invisibility, is it? It's just a case of playing the numbers, making it harder to get a good return. and it only works under the right circumstances. And it's expensive, in more than just a financial sense. To be stealthy a plane has to follow some very particular geometric rules in the way it is shaped and constructed, and it has to be aware of where the radars are, and steer clear of visual and auditory detection. It often needs expensive coatings to be applied, and reapplied to enhance that shape's ability to evade detection. And it requires an aerodynamically unstable airframe, which needs expensive computer equipment to manage it's flight and keep it from turning into a very expensive crater. And sometimes, even with all that computer technology, it can compromise performance in some way. All this, and once you've attacked your first target, or flown over a couple of unexpected guard posts, and people know where to look... well, you're only slightly less vulnerable then.

And stealth reduces your weapon load, because you have to carry them internally, protected from radar. So if you want to fly into hostile territory and attack a couple of buildings with 2 bombs, then fine. If you want to go tank hunting, and fly low and slow, idling above the battlefield and carrying wing racks full of Mavericks or Hellfires? Well then, you have a problem. So the overall utility of a stealth platform after a 'First day of war scenario' is lower, because normal battlefield missions negate it's stealth for utility purposes. So maybe stealth is a nice niche capability, but for general utility, it's an obvious compromise... And it is worth it, at the current level of technological development, as a general capability to pay for?

Manned/Unmanned

UAVs and UCAVs are fashionable at the moment. You can have one person monitoring and controlling several aircraft. They're generally low powered, high endurance platforms, so the pilots can works in shifts, and drive home every day, instead of living in a tent somewhere in Africa or Asia for 2 or 3 months at a time. and they can now carry weapons.. but a human is still need to aim and fire, because we don't, no CAN'T trust the computers to make those value calls.A UCAV can pull higher Gs than a manned aircraft, cos there's no squishy component to black out. You can buy 3 or 4 UCAVs for the price of a 4.5g fighter.
But a UAV or UCAV has a limited field of vision in many ways. Instead of a pilot sat in a big, bubble canopy, it has one or 2 cameras with a narrow field and range of view. to control a UAV from a distance requires satellite communications, these are expensive, of limited capacity, and can be jammed by a moderately sophisticated enemy. A manned pilot is still in his plane and in control if you jam his radar aand radios. He won't crash as easily under those circumstances. BUT, if he does lose control of the aircraft, he can be captured and interrogated. He may even be displayed as a trophy. That never makes anyone happy back home.also, a UAV or UCAV has an inherently long.... Reaction.... time.... Governed by those same satellite or RF links taking a pre-defined time to travel back and forth. so they aren't as capable of protecting themselves.

Overall, we need to stop pretending there's any one solution to air power and air support. You can either throw money at the problem and buy a lower number of expensive toys, or you can logically break down your needs in terms of the number of aircraft/platforms/missions, your budget, and then find a solution to match it. If you need 10 MPAs, 60 QRA Fighters Interceptors 80 Naval multirole aircraft, 60 bombers and 40 fighters for tactical missions, plus 150 helicopters, then you need to buy those aircraft, or you will not only compromise your ability to do what you've promised to, but you will spend more money than expected on maintenance and training and crew rest, and the aircraft will wear out sooner than expected. We need to build an appreciation of this into the way our countries approach defence appropriation. And if we can't manage that, especially now, when the budget is shrinking, then our armed forces will either fail, or fold in the attempt, as they always do, to do the best they can with what they have. Someone has to be brave enough to make the call, surely? Even the USAF is considering what it might need to do if the F-35 gets taken off the table.

What do you all think? (If you're still awake). Sorry it became a bit of a rant, but it seems to me, when deciding what units you will include in NW, you have to balance reality with fiction, but I'm wondering if you've thought about what you could put in that might reflect this, and possibly enhance or change the gameplay by forcing people to utilise the differing capabilities of their units, or try to find a way to do everything without enough aircraft, no matter how capable.
 
That's definitely a bit of a rant there ;p

Cost: This is basically a product of horrible project management practices present in most western military industrial complexes and in particular the US. This is a worsening problem as you can see that the F-35, the 'cheap' strike oriented multi-role fighter has now at least matched and may well soon surpass the 'expensive' high-capability F-22 which itself was quite pricy. If you compare this to the development and production costs of the Gripen, advanced variant flankers and the Pak Fa it becomes pretty clear that you can develop these things for less money then Locheed Martin is asking.

Numbers: This basically comes back to the cost issues, one of the UK's Queen E carriers is being slated as a helicopter carrier because they couldn't afford the rising cost of the airwing ( F-35 ) those who keep costs under control get to keep their numbers those who can't reduce numbers or deal with a big hole in the budget.

Stealth: This is a complicated issue when related to cost, it's expensive but offers a lot of capability as well so can offer value in spite of it's cost. The issue is that it's also set against one of the most rapidly advancing aspects of fighter aircraft, radar which could threaten to wipe out the advantages of stealth at a fraction of the cost.

Drones vs Manned: This is a rapidly changing aspect of combat aviation these days but there are some divisions and difficulties that remain. Drones have cost and endurance advantages that make it appropriate for strike and COIN aviation. Manned remains required for air to air combat to react quickly enough.
 
I guess overall I just find it scary and bizarre that even the professionals have forgotten that the best platform for a task is optimised for that tasks, and that sometimes folding too many capabilities into one aircraft can be a false economy. Apart from the argument about putting all your eggs in one basket, which would you rather have flying cover for your troops on the ground? An A-10, or an F-22 or Typhoon? And yet, if you were going after an enemy bomber or fighter, it would be the other way round. Both are designed and optimised for particular jobs, and do them very well. The F/A-18 only really came into it's own as a multi-role naval fighter with the E/F models, and the G is still growing into the role the Prowler defines... The Tornado ADV finally became the interceptor it was always meant to be just in time for it to be retired and scrapped, and that was a special purpose adaptation of an airframe designed for another role, instead of a true multi-role aircraft!! IT seems to me that a lot of the time multi-roling or swing-rolling is often a good way to compromise an outstanding design, and costs an awful lot of time and money to put right. and when people DO get it right, everyone is too busy looking at something prettier and shinier :) Most of the weapon systems that get bought are designed for one role, and other roles and capabilities are strapped onto them to justify price increases, but themselves add to the cost. Maybe we need to find a way to take the politics and promises/favours out of defence procurement. Too many purchases are justified by theoretical job and financial incentives that never really benefit anyone but shareholders :)
simple can sometimes be better, and I'd love if people remembered that.

In regards to the game, though... I think Jan and the guys should maybe think about adding in advanced versions of some of the current/classic aircraft as part of the mix for naval and maritime strike and fighter capabilities, because the purse is no longer bottomless in the real world :)
 
one of the UK's Queen E carriers is being slated as a helicopter carrier because they couldn't afford the rising cost of the airwing ( F-35 )

Nope, it'll operate as an LPH in it's secondary role. This was always the case regardless of the air wing cost. Both will be CATOBAR by 2022.
 
All we need is to be able to afford enough aircraft to put an air group on.... And to hope that there are no problems with EMALS, or it'll make the conversion to CATOBAR even more expensive ;)

We can just operate Nick Clegg off of them!
 
Amur, same guy from militaryphotos.net?
 
I thought they hadn't decided what they're doing with Queen Elizabeth yet? No CATOBAR on entering service in 2016, and currently no announced plans for outfitting with EMALS (or any other system) either.

Unofficial sources are indicating QE will get EMALS on first refit. The plan seems to be to rotate them both in and out of service to ensure 365 day coverage.
 
The VAST majority of UAVs are operated by folks in theater. There is a pretty big delay in sending controls and video halfway across the world.

I've got a buddy that did some firefighting in the Green Zone of Iraq, and he told me they basically had a building dedicated to UAV consoles.
 
The military industrial complex of the western world is horribly inefficient and is disgustingly corrupt. There was a interesting article in the Internationalist (a bit of a lefty magazine) recently about just how horribly bad the arms trade is at creating jobs. I'll see if I can find it.

EDIT: Bah you have to subscribe to read the article but its well worth a read if you can find it in university libraries etc.
 
The military industrial complex of the western world is horribly inefficient and is disgustingly corrupt.

Not in my experience it's not, yes it can be inefficient and corruption exists but I've never encountered the extreme picture you have obviously come across in your experience. However, having now tried to sell arms against Chinese and Russian companies I can tell you that the military industrial complex of the non western world is, with some exceptions, horribly inefficient and disgustingly corrupt.

But maybe you have a different experience? Which contractor, procurement agency or NGO do you work for?


There was a interesting article in the Internationalist (a bit of a lefty magazine) recently about just how horribly bad the arms trade is at creating jobs. I'll see if I can find it.


Indeed it's terrible at creating jobs. But so is most government spending, its notable worse though.
 
Last edited:
Too many purchases are justified by theoretical job and financial incentives that never really benefit anyone but shareholders :)
simple can sometimes be better, and I'd love if people remembered that.

The simple answer to your question is that, from a UK perspective, Public expectations of defence capability are not aligned with the reality of defence capability and there is no public will to find additional funding. Thus, as no one is prepared to let go of capability areas, everything just gets increasingly thinly spread until there is no capability but in name. Occasionally it does snap, as with the MPA capability but this is extremely rare.

Nothing will change until we lose a battle or war.
 
Mowers you seem like a knowledgeable guy, would Sweden be an exception to the Western Military industry or where would you place it?
 
Last edited:
Mowers you seem like knowledgeable guy, would Sweden be an exception to the Western Military industry or where would you place it?

From my understanding, the Swedes have a weird system compared to the rest of the West. Its difficult for the Swedes to sell kit compared to most western countries, it's much harder to get the approval. But, when they do get a approval they can keep supplying and supporting the kit if the client goes to war. This is very attractive for client states; which is why despite the bofors scandal, the Indian Defence ministry love Swedish kit.

As for the procurement body the FMV simply arn't corrupt, there is so much transparency, and after years of cuts they really have become pretty efficient.

As to Swedish defence industry,(I am probably biased here because I have loved working with Saab and the former Haglunds, CelsiusTech and Ericsson) it's just so pleasant to do business with them. They are efficient because they have to be to survive. Lots of Swedes I have known have lost their defence jobs through repeated downsizing. After a day in one of these companies it would be obvious that they are not some bloated, inefficient, tax wasting organization. If anything Swedish companies have to be super lean to compete against corrupt and subsidized companies with much larger R&D budgets.

As for as corruption and efficiency goes I'd rate Swedish government policy, the FMV and Swedish defence companies in the top 10% for sure.
 
Last edited:
Not in my experience it's not, yes it can be inefficient and corruption exists but I've never encountered the extreme picture you have obviously come across in your experience. However, having now tried to sell arms against Chinese and Russian companies I can tell you that the military industrial complex of the non western world is, with some exceptions, horribly inefficient and disgustingly corrupt.

But maybe you have a different experience? Which contractor, procurement agency or NGO do you work for?

I have no doubt that your right about the levels of corruption and inefficiency in non Western bloc being worse . My choice of words was probably rather poor and hyperbolic. I am willing to admit I was wrong in my use of words and possibly my opinion.

I'm studying International Politics (Intelligence and Strategic Studies) and am in my first year. I'm hoping to go into the navy or one of the intelligence services after I complete my degree. It seems to me that your much more experienced in defense procurement than I could ever hope to be so, as I said I am most likely wrong.



Indeed it's terrible at creating jobs. But so is most government spending, its notable worse though.

The article in the Internationalist, although definitely biased, had some interesting statistics on which areas of government spending created the most jobs for the least amount of money (defense was right down at the bottom). I only wish I could remember them.

The thing that strikes me is that if you had any other sector of industry or government wasting so much money or over running on projects like the way the defense industry does then surely they would be bigger ramifications than there are when, for example, the fleet of F 35s has operating costs of around $1 trillion. I realize that this might be poorly worded and I accept that you are most likely the greater authority on this subject so please by all means correct me but how can the Defense Industry get away with so much waste?



EDIT: It almost reminds me in a way of the corrupt Edinburgh Trams scheme. Promised at a cost of £375 million the project is now 1/2 the size it was supposed to be and is costing £1 billion. Nobody knows where the moneys gone and because the government can't afford to antagonize the contractors there won't be a corruption investigation.
 
The thing that strikes me is that if you had any other sector of industry or government wasting so much money or over running on projects like the way the defense industry does then surely they would be bigger ramifications than there are when, for example, the fleet of F 35s has operating costs of around $1 trillion. I realize that this might be poorly worded and I accept that you are most likely the greater authority on this subject so please by all means correct me but how can the Defense Industry get away with so much waste?


An interesting question but its a multi-headed beast:

I think it's much easier for the NAO to pick holes in defence because of the nature of the way that procurement occurs in comparison to say the NHS.

Governments continually pick at programs that require long term planing. It's easy to reduce funding, delay program elements etc for the short term because the public never notice/ don't care despite the much higher long term costs.

Nationalism, particularly in the UK, stops us combining to launch joint programs that are needed to pool funding to reduce unit cost.

Nationalism prevents the existence of genuinely competitive markets even in a free trade zone such as Europe.

Ministries don't really have the experience to deliver, compounded by a lack of genuine oversight.

Europe is in relative economic decline but refuses to acknowledge this and accept capability loss thus it continues to produce minimum capability at great expense.

European R&D has collapsed and thus systems and platforms are not properly developed prior to production leading to cost overun.

There is mass production and R&D duplication in Europe. How many Ship builders do we have? 7+ How many does the USA have? 2? Yet we have half the resources.

Most ministries are stacked with military personal who don't really have the experience to run massive procurement programs.

Most military procurement appointees change every three years and the next person starts from scratch again.

The Ministeries them selves are often archaic, overly hierarchical and lack the skills due to poor investment. Military control makes them change resistant.

Ministries, and their leaders (there is a new minister for defence in the Uk every 18 ? months on average) continally change the program definitions and raising cost and complexity.

There is little support for exporting arms publicly in Europe, and thus little extra money is brought into defence companies to invest in reducing future costs. European tax payers have to foot the full bill.

There is little public interest in defence procurement and thus poor oversight.

The length of the programs is such that it's almost impossible to set a freeze on system design. Commercial tech change rate is compounding issues.

There was a conspiracy of optimism for the past ten years in the UK, where no one was actually prepared to face up to the reality that the funding wasn't going to match the government/public procurement aspirations. This was compounded by a $1bn a year going on theater deployments. Programs have been continually pushed to the right, costs stay steady but production never occurs, look at Tracer and Bowman etc - 20 years in some cases.


There is a real lack of competition on some programs.

I could go on but I've got to go and I'm getting boring..... :)



EDIT: It almost reminds me in a way of the corrupt Edinburgh Trams scheme. Promised at a cost of £375 million the project is now 1/2 the size it was supposed to be and is costing £1 billion. Nobody knows where the moneys gone and because the government can't afford to antagonize the contractors there won't be a corruption investigation.

This is a good example imo. There was a radio 4 investigation on this - last year?

And they basically said that, IIRC, the council had tried to be the prime contractor to save money and, unsurprisingly, completely bodged the whole thing up due to a lack of experience.
 
Thanks for your reply Mowers, its interesting to hear an outsiders view on your own country. Especially when its positive...

I also think that you are spot-on about the short-term thinking of our politicians. Unfortunetly its built in to the current democratic system with elections every 4/5th year.
Not saying that democracy is bad (not at all) but most politicians tend to think ahead only until the next election.
I guess some branches handle it better than others. Changing defence policy every 5-10th year is bound to end up bad one way or another.