Hacker News Reader

Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

> OSD, however, refused to tolerate this kind of intransigence and in May 1966 McNamara ordered a joint review of the commonality issue. Conducted over the next 18 months, the review confirmed that the needs of the Air Force and Navy could not be met by a single airframe. The two services argued that attempts to merge their requirements would produce, at exorbitant cost, a grotesque mutation with increased weight, and reduced performance.

The truth of this is again illustrated by the Joint Strike Fighter F-35 with its massive cost overruns and its reduced performance.

View on HN

This whole "multi-service aircraft can't work" meme has been going for essentially a century, and has been wrong just as long.

The F-4 Phantom, probably deserving the title of greatest Western multi-role aircraft of the cold war, had long successful service with both USAF and USN (and USMC), with fewer inter-service airframe differences than between the F-35A and F-35C. Multi-service aircraft are totally workable, the services just don't like having to play nice with each other.

The F-35 is better thought of as a family of tightly-related aircraft which share as many major systems as possible (avionics, sensors, engine, cockpit) while having differing airframes. Doing exactly the kind of reusable engineering a major project should be doing. You can claim that different project management might have been cheaper, but the idea that three separate airplanes, one for each service, could have been engineered and produced for less is just wishful thinking.

I generally agree with your thesis, but:

The F-4 was built for the Navy and the other services saw what a great plane it was and bought in.

The F-35 is intended as a lightweight multi role aircraft, so it’s full of compromises already.

The F-111A/B as a shared USAF/USN aircraft is much harder as there’s not as much margin for compromise in something that is supposed to be the pinnacle of current performance.

I'd say the F-111 is a particularly odd case, given the vastly different initial requirements involved. To be clear, everything that made the F-111 a great long-range interdictor for the USAF would have have also made for a great long-range interceptor and strike platform for the USN. It wouldn't have made a good air superiority fighter, and the experience over Vietnam made it clear that this capability was still very much necessary, and there was nowhere near enough budget (or, more critically, carrier deck and hangar space) for the USN to operate both an air superiority fighter and a dedicated long-range interceptor.

There is a very long list of could-have-been multi-service aircraft, though. If you look at the number of ground-based operators of the F-18, clearly the USAF could have been satisfied with it as well. The USN probably could have been satisfied by a navalized F-22 derivative (the story of 1990s/early 2000s procurement is complicated), the USMC definitely could have been satisfied by a navalized AH-64 rather than developing the AH-1Z, etc.

The services are just very resistant to ever needing to compromise on procurement issues unless Congress and the DoD make it clear that they have to. The USN feels their needs are special, and that the USAF would dominate any shared procurement and force them to compromise too much, while the USAF feels like every pound added for carrier operation is a direct affront. Neither view is entirely wrong - the development delays and compromises of a navalized platform like the Dassault Rafale are another good example of the costs of shared development - but the simple reality of modern aircraft development costs and defense budgets means joint platforms are here to stay.

The USN didn't need an air-superiority fighter when they were working on the F-111B, they needed a fleet defense fighter capable of lifting a huge radar and missile set. When the terrible engines in the B model gave them an out, they took it and moved forward with the Tomcat (which used the same engines and weapons set). Little did they realize the TF-30 would remain a terrible engine for so long, and replacing it with F110s would take almost two decades.

I'm not sure that the F-22 would have ever worked for the USN either. I think that its stealth coating are just too fragile for a marine environment. And the USMC could never afford the AH-64.

The engines certainly gave the USN the out it wanted, but the thing that truly killed the F-111B was the need for a dogfight-capable fleet fighter. There was no way they could have afforded two separate fighter development programs at the time, and Grumman had just the design they wanted ready to jump to.

The NATF program probably would have worked out fine, albeit expensively. There has always been speculation that part of the selection of the F-22 over the F-23 was because the F-22 was considered more suitable for a navalized version - and the comparatively small design differences between the F-35A and F-35C designed later by the same group suggest that a similar amount of work would have been involved in navalizing the F-22. Coatings would have been an issue in the 90s, but would largely have been solved by an realistic service entry date in the late 2000s. What killed the NATF was post-cold war budget reductions and shortsighted policymakers, not technical challenges.

The story of a navalized AH-64 is an equally strange saga. To hear the USN and USMC tell it, you would think it impossible to operate the AH-64 from a ship, yet the RN has done so extensively with relatively minimal modifications to the airframe. Given the small production run of the AH-1Z/UH-1Y program, it's questionable if much was saved. Certainly if you look at foreign customers, the capability/price of the AH-64 has been much more appealing than the AH-1Z.

Regarding the Sea Apache, it really would have been a huge redesign. Deleting the 30mm Chain Gun, moving the landing gear to the wing stubs, adding a nose mounted radar, and Harpoon/Sidewinder capability. Now some of these requirements were Navy specific, but some would have been required had it been selected just for the USMC.

I think that even an unmodified Apache would have been just too expensive for the always cash-strapped Corps. Plus the airframe and engine commonality with the UH1s they flew simplified their logistics tremendously. It's always a gamble comparing unit costs since so much is either hidden or excluded, but the latest info I found showed a new build AH-1Z was around $30M in 2018, while a new build AH-64 is currently around $52M. And I'm pretty sure the Corp has simply been rebuilding older airframes to the new "Viper" standard. (Turns out most were rebuilds, but some were new construction.)

Regarding the RN flying Apaches, is this from large decked ships, or from anything with a pad? I know the Merlin had a neat winch type thing to help it land in bad weather, and I just wonder how much more likely a rollover would be on a small decked ship versus something like HMS Ocean etc.

I think the Sea Apache design was doomed to failure, potentially deliberately, by including so many modifications to the base design. A reasonably scoped modification for the USMC would have been the standard increased corrosion resistance, folding main rotor, tail wheel moved forwards, and folding tail fin+rotor (i.e. all the same modifications made to the base S-70 design for shipboard use).

The cost question is a very tricky one, hence why I used the comparison of foreign orders between the two types as an assessment of overall value. My understanding is that more AH-1Z/UH-1Y airframes were new builds than was originally planned (hardly a surprise), which strongly suggests that airframe reuse did not save as much in production as hoped. The strongest argument for the AH-1Z cost-wise was the commonality with UH-1Y, but had the USMC considered switching entirely to AH-64 + SH-60 derivatives instead I don't think that argument would have been as strong (after all, the whole rest of the USN operates SH-60 variants, including the ships that operate USMC AH-1/UH-1s).

The RN has flown WAH-64s from their large deck ships, so roughly equivalent size-wise to anything that routinely operates AH-1Zs. The only important modification in the WAH-64 design is a folding rotor to reduce storage size, but that doesn't affect takeoff/landing abilities. With some minor changes like pulling the tail gear forwards (e.g. as on the {S,M}H-60{B,F,R}), you could fit an Apache on anything that can handle a Seahawk (i.e. basically everything with a pad). Notably, the AH-64 wheelbase is not that different from the spacing of the skids on an AH-1, so it's not going to be hugely different in terms of stability on a large deck ship. There's also been a fair number of training exercises between US army AH-64 units and USN ships, so shipboard Apache operations aren't exactly foreign to the US either.

> This whole "multi-service aircraft can't work" meme has been going for essentially a century, and has been wrong just as long.

I'm not sure that's really the case. When we see successful cross-service adoption, it's because the aircraft simply was that so good the other branch saw a lot of value in buying it. So far the only program that has worked from inception is the F-35. The others failed to get traction in the other service (F-111, F-16). What all other aircraft that have crossed services have in common is iterative design resulting in a superior aircraft:

Air Force to Navy

- F-86 Sabre designed for Air Force, Navy adopted it as FJ2 Fury (straight wing) and FJ3 Fury (swept wing version of FJ2). The FJ3 was a counter to the MIG-15 and was a navalized F-86. It's performance was superior at the time.

Navy to Air Force

- F-4 Phantom II. Naval multi-role fighter was just that good... better than most mission-specialized Air Force fighters at their own missions. Iterative design from the McDonnel F3H Demon that borrowed some ideas from the Douglass F5D Skyray.

- A-7 Corsair II. Naval attack aircraft. It's primary value was that it was inexpensive to operate and hit a sweet spot for payload and range. Iterative design from F-8 Crusader (which was probably the best air superiority fighter of it's era).

My point is that multi-service aircraft are entirely possible, and have been all along. That several notable aircraft emerged as multi-service aircraft is all the more evidence that a multi-service aircraft (really, a family of tightly related aircraft) can be designed as such. The reason there are more USN->USAF success stories is that it is much easier to design an aircraft with the stresses of carrier operation in mind than it is to navalize a entirely ground-based design, and it is much easier for the USN to make the case politically that a USAF aircraft "can't possibly meet their requirements" than the reverse.

The USAF and USN are just incredibly unwilling to have to compromise to work with each other, and for most of the cold war had the budgets and supplier diversity to acquire entirely separately.

> The USAF and USN are just incredibly unwilling to have to compromise

I don't think that is the case. The issue is that most of the joint programs fail because they start with such a broad difference in requirements the program can't work. Here are two examples:

F-111/TFX - Navy wanted a fleet interceptor / air superiority fighter built around the Phoenix Missile. Air Force wanted a heavy attack aircraft. The F-111 led to the Navy having to do a crash development to get the F-14 Tomcat.

F-16 LWF - Navy wanted a twin engine. AF wanted single engine. Joint program died immediately... so we the taxpayers ended up with the USAF buying F-16 (great aircraft) and the Navy ordering an update on the YF-17 which became the F/A-18 Hornet (another great aircraft). Incidentally, the YF-17 was a twin engine iteration of the F-5 (which is an iteration of the T-38 Talon), and the F/A-18 is an iteration of the YF-17.

> for most of the cold war had the budgets and supplier diversity to acquire entirely separately.

I think you are on to something: lack of supplier diversity will be a forcing function in the future...

> The issue is that most of the joint programs fail because they start with such a broad difference in requirements the program can't work.

Agreeing on requirements is the most important compromise. You can always come up with different requirements that make collaboration impossible. Sometimes these differing requirements are fundamental - e.g. the E-2 and E-3 (E-7 in the future), while performing similar roles, are necessarily very different platforms - that a joint program would never be considered. Sometimes these requirements are not so fundamental - e.g. the many years of single-engine versus twin-engine disagreement - that a joint program is possible, albeit challenging.

While the JSF program has had plenty of issues, the fact that it has been successful in delivering the envisioned aircraft is a testament to (a) technology improving to the point that many once-dealbreaker requirements (e.g. single-engine) could be swept aside, (b) the rise in costs making it clear that completely separate development programs were impractical, and (c) explicitly providing requirements flexibility via the "family-of-aircraft" approach (no way the F-35C would have been acceptable financially to anyone other than the USN, no way the F-35A would have been suitable for carrier use).

> ...lack of supplier diversity will be a forcing function in the future...

The consolidation of the 90s and 2000s is directly the consequence of lower budgets. Consider the fighter/strike fleets of the 1980s:

- USAF: A-7 (LTV), A-10 (FR), F-4 (MD), F-15 (MD), F-16 (GD), F-111 (GD), F-117 (Lockheed)

- USN: A-6 (Grumman), A-7 (LTV), F-4 (MD), F-14 (Grumman), F/A-18 (MD)

versus today:

- USAF: A-10 (none), F-15 (Boeing), F-15E (Boeing), F-16 (LM), F-22 (LM), F-35A (LM)

- USN: F/A-18E/F (Boeing), F-35C (LM)

there's just not enough business to support much more than the Boeing/LM duopoly keeping both production/support running and enough capability to be competitive for the NGAD programs.

". The first time the opponents showed up [in the training area] they had wing tanks along with a bunch of missiles. I guess they figured that being in a dirty configuration wouldn’t really matter and that they would still easily outmaneuver us. By the end of the week, though, they had dropped their wing tanks, transitioned to a single centerline fuel tank and were still doing everything they could not to get gunned by us. A week later they stripped the jets clean of all external stores, which made the BFM fights interesting, to say the least"

(source attached to this post https://www.f-16.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=54012 )

F35 can hold their own quite well. Disregard the 2015 report with the limiting software, this is where they are at, and things will only improve with the new engine

"F-35 is bad" is just an internet meme with little to support it.

We can revisit it after it is proven in combat, something that still has to happen.

What does proven in combat even mean? Win a war against China?

F-35s have flown over 1,000 combat sorties. When would you consider it "proven"?

Bombing ISIS does not count. Here is an example of something that could really hurt.

"...The F-35 can only tolerate supersonic speeds at high altitudes for short bursts before it sustains lasting structural damage and the loss of stealth capabilities..." - https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/five-problems-with-amer....

The Israelis have released footage of shooting down two drones, so they have the first kills with the F-35. Obviously this was not against a maneuvering human pilot, but still important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdSFEpqwA6Q

They also have multiple (unproven but everyone knows who did it) strikes against iranian positions in syria and even in iran itself, it is rumoured. The ability to be invisible to radar is an absolute gamechanger.

That just make it difficult to lock on with weapons. They are not invisible and any radar operator would tell you that if they would be allowed...

"...Stealth designs minimize an aircraft's radar signature, delaying and sometimes even preventing detection, but because of the physical requirements for tactical jets, stealth fighters can be easily spotted by certain low-frequency radar bands.

In fact, it's not even uncommon for air traffic control radar to be able to spot stealth fighters on their scopes. And we're not just talking about when these aircraft are carrying external munitions or fuel tanks, rather, even in full-on "stealth mode," F-22s and F-35s aren't as sneaky as you might think."

- https://www.businessinsider.com/radars-can-see-best-stealth-...

While you're not wrong that stealthy ≠ invisible, a proper mission design will render the aircraft effectively invisible to air defenses.

If you've got an active radar system you'll bounce signals off anything in the sky. Your ability to actually detect those things is based on the strength of the return and sensitivity/signal processing of the system. Big things can be detected hundreds of miles away, small things only tens of miles away. To protect some high value target you string together multiple radar systems to provide overlapping coverage. With enough systems you can have an unbroken wall of radar directing defending aircraft and SAMs.

Stealth lets a big thing (a jet) pretend to be a small thing in the view of an air defense system, essentially cutting the detection range of radar. This means your unbroken radar coverage that would work for an F-15 now has a bunch of holes because each radar can only detect an F-22 twenty miles out instead of two hundred. Your radar is also further compromised because the stand-off range of anti-radiation missiles is outside the range you can detect and intercept the jets carrying them.

Being able to see a stealth aircraft after it's fired a weapon to kill you isn't super helpful. A stealth aircraft can also fly through the artificial holes it made in your radar coverage and blow up the thing you're protecting and you only find out about it after the fact.

That isn't really how it works. Low observable aircraft flying in friendly civilian airspace generally have radar transponders turned on specifically to make themselves visible to air traffic control and prevent collisions. Those transponders are turned off for combat missions. And ATC mostly doesn't use primary radar any more so they don't even get skin paints on regular aircraft.

The F-35 has been proven in simulations with aggressor squadrons. The Air Force does that all the time: real aircraft in the air, real pilots, real weapons, they just don't actually shoot them for obvious reasons. But they have other ways of simulating kills.

https://www.businessinsider.com/f-22-pilot-describes-going-u...

Here's what a F-22 pilot (!) had to say about the F-35.

"It is challenging, even flying the Raptor, to have good [situational awareness] on where the F-35s are," he said.

Bowlds said that inserting F-35 aggressors into Red Flag made things "more challenging because there is a little bit of an unknown in terms of what they are going to be able to do."

Additionally, "red air detects are happening at further ranges," Bowlds explained. "It inherently poses more of a threat to allied blue-air forces than older aggressors," such as the fourth-generation F-16s.

The F-35s "have better detection capabilities kind of against everybody just because of their new radar and the avionics they have," he said. "It definitely adds a level of complexity."

I think this combined with the carrier capability is the scariest for the enemy. You'll never be sure there aren't F-35s around.

Proven in simulations is an oxymoron...

“Proven in combat” seems like a tricky concept. I mean the F-15 has that incredible 104:0 record, but that is because

1) it was ahead of the rest of the world when it came out

2) it spent a lot of time fighting older MIGs

Which is to say, the circumstances requires to get a real peer fight for a US plane are quite rare. Thankfully!

3) Flown by some of the best combat pilots in the world (at the time).

It's more like the F35 over promises and under delivers compared to what it is expected to replace. The F15 comes with a 20,000 hour airframe, while the F35 comes with a 8000 hour airframe. The F15 can get to target much faster, much farther, and still have fuel to do something when it gets there. The F15 can carry 12 AIM-120s (or 24 depending), while the F35 can carry 4. The F15's a great interceptor. The F35 is a great aircraft, but too expensive and limited to operate in that role.

The following article analyzes the F15EX buy that is being debated as compared to the F35.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/buying-just-80-f-15exs...

The f15 is going to be shoot down 60km from target by s400s, the f35 can get close enough to drop an harm on them at a speed they cannot intercept, so there's that.

Also the f15 has speed or range, and if you need one it reduces the other.

Isn’t the F22 the successor to the F15, being air superiority fighters?

It was, but since 22 production has stopped and there are plenty of 15s around, the 35 is often paird up with the 15 for wargaming. Doctrine and training is always dictated by practicalities like which aircraft you have to play with.

It was but production was scaled back so much, and the peer enemy aircraft it was needed to defeat still largely don't exist yet. As a result the production lines were shut down and equipment moved to permanent storage and other multirole fighters that are usually less expensive end up doing the F22's job.

In the horrifying event of a US-China war or similar they'd be front line units along with F-35s and other modern fighters, but as is they'll probably end up on service life extension and retired without ever being used much in combat.

The F-15 was sold to other nations and IIRC the majority of its air superiority engagements were with the Israeli air force.

Sure, 100% agree w/ all of that. Just pointing out that F15 vs F35 as a fighter isn't the right comparison, as they're not intended to fill the same roles. I think of the F22 as the ultimate expression of the old style of fighters, whereas the F35 is the start of a new style of military aircraft.

The F-15E and F-15EX (specifically these 'E' variants, aka "Strike Eagles") are multirole strike fighters. They're derived from an air superiority fighter and remain capable of filling that role, but being strike fighters they have a new emphasis on attacking ground targets with precision bombs. It is very similar to the way the F-14, the Navy's old air superiority fighter, was later turned into a strike fighter with the addition of LANTIRN (which the F-15E also got.) In addition to LANTIRN, the F-15E also gained a second seat for a weapon systems officer. Two seat F-15s had previously existed as trainers, but F-15s configured for air superiority normally have a single seat.

The F-22 is foremost an air superiority fighter and was intended to replace all the air superiority F-15s (but not the F-15E Strike Eagles.) However the USAF didn't get enough F-22s so they still have air superiority F-15s and will for some years to come.

This is why both platforms were designed to be used together as a team. F-35 provides sensor fusion and the F-15 is the missile truck. That also allows the F-35 to continue to evade detection, since launching attacks tends to get you noticed by the enemy.

Modern air combat can't be measured in direct comparison like this, or even thought of in terms of "we should be using X instead of Y"

The F-35 costs are also going down relative to it's peer group as the export market has grown significantly. The F-35s issue is that it's misunderstood, not that it doesn't meet expectations.

It always seemed to me that F-35 is an advanced replacement to F-16, which excelled in networked and multi-role operations.

Of course, by now the networked operations are in use by other aircraft too, just F-16 and F/A-18 operate at the very tip of the multi-role.

Whether the networked use could remain operational in a conflict against technologically advanced enemy (with saturated ECM and comparably aggressive AA systems) is not yet proven. Also with addition of drones, the whole air-dominance becomes a tough objective to attain.

The F-16 never really "excelled" at multirole operations. It was pressed into that because there were no other options available. But it has always had an insufficient fuel fraction and is forced to depend on constant tanker support to accomplish anything. The tankers are becoming more vulnerable.

This is why both platforms exist. There seems to be this strange idea that the F35 must be compared against the abilities of fighter in a direct 1v1 dogfight scenario, despite that this situation would almost never happen. Modern air-to-air engagements are not squads of fighters dueling one another, but instead entire fleets of aircraft with differing roles and responsibilities working together in a coordinated fashion. AWACs, electronic warfare planes, missile trucks (like the F15EX), and fighters that can get in close all working together. This is environment the F35 was designed for. The fleet level data-link and sensor fusion capabilities of the F-35 are it's main feature, as they augment the capabilities of the entire fleet. Then fact that F15EX can act as a better standalone interceptor is not really relevant, since it would almost never perform this role unsupported. An F35 and F15EX operating in tandem would be much more effective than either operating alone, since the F35 could enter areas covered by opposing fighters / ground fire, and feed sensor information to the F15EX to take out threats outside of its own sensors range.

You try flying an F-15 with 12 to 24 Slammers (and bags since you'll have so much drag. That's going to fly like a pig. Just because Boeing does some demo of it to sell more airframes doesn't mean it's going to be used that way.

Could go for those quad MRM packs though. Easier than 7 GBU-31s right.

> The truth of this is again illustrated by the Joint Strike Fighter F-35 with its massive cost overruns and its reduced performance.

For such a poor performer, the F-35 is sought after by almost every country that can afford it and that the US will sell it to. Sales increased even more after Russia invaded Ukraine, when European countries perceiving a new threat switched their plans to the F-35.

It had better be amazing or they’re going to be pissed!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com