Eric Palmer blog

Quick-leap, Quickstep, Quick-sand?

2013-05-20T20:20:00.000+10:00

Quickstep is one of the hallmark industry poster-children for the tripple-H (Hill, Houston, Howard) F-35 dream of 2002.

Quickstep and its' investors believed things like this from a 2004 Defence/LM sponsored brief.

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Hold that thought and consider this article from today's The Australian.

In it, Quickstep Holdings chief Philippe Odouard states that the F-35 program is "very interesting and very controversial."

I guess it would be when investors thought they were buying such (alleged) technology at such a high speed. More old Defence slides:

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Today, those Blocks are watered down, the schedule is very late, and there are few jets being made. This is a lot of lost money.

Not long ago, Quickstep told its' investors this:

In The Australian article, Odouard says, "It's (the F-35) killing a number of other aircraft makers." True but maybe for not all the reasons he thinks?

The reporter for today's The Australian article states the following without attaching it to another person:

"Conspiracy theories aside, the Bankstown-based listed minnow has its' own skin in the JSF game as the producer of carbon-fibre skins and other components for the F-35s."

What "conspiracy theories"? Most of the delay and troubles in the program are due to a faith-based belief system projected by a group of people that didn't know, what they didn't know, and as it seems, couldn't be bothered to find out.

Also, there is this un-fact in the story:

"The top-guns' grievances ranged from their helmets causing headaches to design flaws that meant the $90m planes could be shot down too easily."

In regard to the F-35, there is not a "$90m" plane anywhere on the horizon.

Odouard says part of the problem of delays in buying aircraft is that Norway and The Netherlands "dithered". Maybe because they both start with "N" Odouard is confused. Norway went full throttle and believed a riduculous low price guess only to have it blow up in their face. The Netherlands has a variety of issues with the F-35 faith-based program management but they have bought two early F-35 mistake-jets only to see them parked.

Value !!!

Quickstep has fed off of the taxpayer pretty well for such a high risk project:

"Quickstep has also benefited from a flow of government grants: $4.2m last year and $5m in 2011, including a $4m NSW government relocation payment to prevent the company from being lured by the Victorians."

Also interesting is that we know the ANZ debt is guaranteed by the Fed.

In any event, SME's tied to the troubled F-35 program are high-risk.

In 2011, Australia's Production Parts, (who were not as diversified as Quickstep) died due to over-optimism. and/or belief in the Ponzi scheme.

I hope Quickstep avoids damage.

However, Odouard telling investors fibs, won't help.

"There's a lot of rhetoric about the aircraft. The fact is it's the best aircraft that flies."

Really?

Conflict meets interest

2013-05-20T18:54:00.001+10:00

Williams Foundation (F-35 cheerleaders)

Board of Directors:

Air Marshal E.J. McCormack AO (Retd) (Chair)
Dr Alan Stephens OAM (Editor)
Air Vice-Marshal J. Blackburn AO (Retd) (Deputy Chair)
Air Vice-Marshal B. O'Loghlin AO (Retd)
Major General Jim Molan AO DSC (Retd)
Air Commodore Ian Pearson (RAAFAR)
Commodore Geoff Ledger DSC AM (Retd)
Air Commodore Graham Bentley (Retd)
Ms Katherine Ziesing
Wing Commander L.J. Halvorson MBE (Retd) (Exec Off)

Emphasis added.

Note the logo of the organisation is the F-35.

-----

The "about" section has this to say:

The Sir Richard Williams Foundation is an independent research organisation whose purpose is to promote the development and effective implementation of National Security and Defence policies specific to Australia's unique geopolitical environment and values.

At the bottom of the web page is this:

If interest is Quickstep. They received government sponsoring on the order of $10M plus for the F-35 program.

We have this:

Board of Directors:

Tony Quick (Chairman)

Philippe Odouard (Managing Director)

Mark Jenkins

Bruce Griffiths

Peter Cook

Air Marshal Errol McCormack (Ret'd) AO

David Singleton

David Wills

Emphasis added.

Ponder

2013-05-20T15:32:00.002+10:00

Something to think about from the Defence section of "The Australian".

Our journalists

Brendan Nicholson is Defence Editor and Cameron Stewart the Associate Editor of The Australian. Both have covered defence for over 20 years, travelling extensively and winning a number of awards for their journalism.

Just not informing the public very well about a raft of Defence risks.

Little of what the Navy says about the F-35 can be counted on to be true

2013-05-19T19:57:00.000+10:00

From the people that demand the taxpayer hand-over money for $25 dollar-plus-per-gallon fuel just to support a pet theory comes this very short but interesting piece of nonsense from the Navy.

The F-35 brings improved stealth and countermeasures, and incorporates the latest available technology for advanced avionics, data links and adverse weather precision targeting. It has increased range and includes weaponry upgrades which are superior to the weapons currently employed in the fleet. This state of the art aircraft will enable the Navy and Marine Corps team to command and maintain global air superiority in an increasingly dynamic and dangerous world. FY 2014 is the eighth Low-Rate Initial Production (LRIP) for the STOVL variant and carrier variant (CV) with six and four aircraft respectively.

As is, the Navy is well on-track toward fielding an obsolete-to-the-threat carrier air wing.

H/T-CDR Salamander

---

-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Aviation Week (ARES blog) F-35 posts (2007 to present)
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)

Operation:BOVINE, an F-35 PR tour at Fort Worth

2013-05-19T09:28:00.001+10:00

Here is a good look at a F-35 PR tour in Fort Worth. Make it a must-read.

The idea is not just to make everyone listen, but to prime for repetition – to turn every observer into an evangelical for the Church Of F-35, merely a conduit through which the product sells itself.

It’s not an unfamiliar technique. You’d probably face the same rhetorical mechanisms at any run-of-the-mill sales seminar for anything from a car to a timeshare, complete with the same kind of generalities, assumptions, repetitions, and immense timeframes that skew your ability to contextualize exactly what kind of money is at stake in the long run. It’s just rare that you have to face it for two straight days. Really, the whole experience was no different than watching the Shopping Channel selling the same product for 48 hours, receiving so much information at every possible moment that your senses are so overwhelmed, you’re finally incapable of deciding what bits are true, what might be useful to you right now, what might be useful in the future, and how much is probably just complete and utter bullshit.

It is also good that defence industry "journalists" help out too:

Flynn claimed the lag and jitter has been fixed. “The helmet works exactly like we wanted,” he said the first day. When another reporter and I asked Velazquez follow-up questions about the reports of flickering, one defence industry journalist from an aviation magazine actually stepped in to help him out, reminding us that the thing to remember was that the helmet was still in development. Twice. Some, it seemed, are more easily converted than others.

The reporter observes:

At more than one point, there was the suggestion that if anyone doubted the importance of stealth, one had to only look at what other global powers like China are developing. That is, perhaps one day, stealth might have to fight stealth. I found it strange, then, that when I asked a Lockheed simulator tech whether that computer program had ever been geared to train users how to fight other F-35s, the answer was no. It was possible, he said, but the concept of the Joint Strike Fighter was that only the U.S. and its allies would be using the planes. Quite the simulator.

The article is good with a few flaws: There is no $85M F-35.

Also; the reporter states some dumb things too.

There was a lot of talk at various points about the last stealth jet fighter, the F-22 Raptor, but none about how it still hasn’t seen a single combat mission. Ever.

In any event, it will be more interesting if journalists put more focus on this kind of a story.

The reporter has just seen their last trip to LM and will be put on "the list".

Touch and go

2013-05-18T12:53:00.002+10:00

Touch and go...

ADF cost per flying hour estimates from the 2013 budget

2013-05-16T19:33:00.000+10:00

The chart below shows ADF cost per flying hour estimates from the recent 2013 budget. These dollars are not for aircraft upgrades and refurbishment. Those jobs are handled under different fund-sites. For example, the C-130J software upgrade or classic Hornet refurb fixes.

Not all ADF aircraft are included.

Again these are estimates. The real figure will be known at the next budget. Some aircraft may do better, some worse.

This chart took a few extra minutes to prepare compared to a previous year cost per flying hour estimate that was already pre-prepared by Defence.

Sustainment dollars for each aircraft type are shown in the DMO portion of the budget. Authorized flying hours are shown in the service budget.

The chart is interesting for any number of reasons. I suspect the C-17 looks so good because the Boeing sustainment model happens to be tight. The Wedgetail cost per flying hour is improving. Helicopters? Basket cases and overly expensive.

ADF Cost Per Flying Hour Estimate for 2013-14

source: DMO/Defence 2013 Budget

Asked to resign

2013-05-16T11:26:00.000+10:00

LOL.

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USAF says it could lose F-35s due to lack of cash:

2013-05-16T09:03:00.001+10:00

This story ~~just disappeared in less than an hour~~ from Breaking Defense (Update-story back up):

F-35: Sequester May Cost Air Force 5 More F-35As; Air Guard, Modernization At Risk

ARLINGTON: “I don’t have the exact number yet,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Edward Bolton said Tuesday, but to pay the bill for sequestration, the service might have to cut its fiscal 2013 procurements by “two, three, four, maybe even five F-35s.” “That money’s just gone,” sighed Bolton, the service’s outgoing Deputy Assistant Secretary for Budget,…Keep reading →
Tags: 2013 budget, air force, Air Force Association, Air National Guard, budget, f-35 joint strike fighter, F-35A, Gen. Edward Bolton, sequestration

Some history:

“It’s about $37 million for the CTOL aircraft, which is the air force variant.”
- Colonel Dwyer Dennis, U.S. JSF Program Office brief to Australian journalists, 2002-

A look at Collins sustainment from the new budget

2013-05-15T21:11:00.000+10:00

The recent Defence 2013-14 budget projection for DMO submarine sustainment is only $574M.

I find that very impressive. I gather that 1 of the 6 Collins subs is pretty much in a semi-scrapped position. That leaves 5 others that are in various phases of periodic refurbishment or on-line for operations.

I am curious how many subs will be operational over this next budget period?

Defence--bloated senior staff numbers

2013-05-15T20:36:00.002+10:00

Amazing that so many could feed at the trough. A quick summary of ADF personnel numbers:

Flag ranks

Navy 57
Army 77
Air Force 56
Total 190

SES 168

Total ADF Personnel

Navy 16,374
Army 45,047
Air Force 17,264

Civilian 21,217

The problem is that Defence could be run properly with a small handful of flag-ranks. It is difficult to believe that Defence is careful with our money when they have 190 over-fed flags and 168 SES doing exactly what?

Of anywhere in the federal budget, this one of the top examples of unneeded welfare payouts for so little return on the dollar.

Whenever Defence states it isn't getting enough money, suggest leadership by example. The flag ranks and SES need a serious cull.

How serious? Look at the Army.

It is about the strength of a Corps composing 3 divisions (in numbers not the true organisational table of the Australian Army).

For those numbers you need:

A Corps commander and their second in command: a 3 star and a 2 star.
Each "Division" of 15,000 or so troops needs a Division commander and a second in command: A 2 star and a 1 star.
Brigades wound need a commander and a second in command: A 1 star and a colonel.

So just on the numbers, the Army has no justification for 77 flag ranks.

I suspect a good-ol' boy network here: you scratch my back, I'll get you a jag.

Sickening. Disgraceful.

Video: UCAS-N X-47B carrier launch

2013-05-15T06:42:00.001+10:00

Big fat Defence budget...starting with big fat DMO

2013-05-14T20:56:00.001+10:00

Defence budget items are here.

I will be commenting on them over the next few days.

DMO:

LOL!!!!!

24 star-ranked officers and 35 senior executives. That is enough rank heat to run all of Defence!!!

---

I would significantly trim the DMO and have it led by a flag officer that reports to the Chief of Defence. There wouldn't be any other flag ranks in the DMO.

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This largess has to be trimmed down to where it approaches something that gives the appearance it supports the defence of the country.

WWII history, near and far

2013-05-12T15:48:00.004+10:00

It seems the well-worn cliché of the Germans keeping good records holds again.

I have always liked WWII history a lot; the Russo-German war being a favorite subject.

Like other countries that were invaded by Germany, the Soviet suffering was appalling; where this part of the war had its’ own special kind of brutality.

The stories of all ranks in that war are of endless interest for me. I liked reading General v. Manstein’s book, “Lost Victories”. Recently on a trip to Sydney I got a must-read for anyone that likes the topic, “Manstein, Hitler’s Greatest General” by Mungo Melvin. It is a full biography on Manstein. It is very good. And, shocking for v. Manstein’s omissions of any number of bad things you can think of from that period.

A few months ago I was reading about the 1941-era of the war and just happened across a variety of battles that happened around Staraya, Russia. I even took the time to look at Google Earth of the area. There is a small war museum there that looks like it would be worth a visit.

My wife’s grandfather was an ethnic German in Latvia. Their family lived well in the pre-war years. The photo-album has some wonderful photos from those days. The grandfather (Konrad) and his wife were a stunning couple. After the partition of Poland (which included the Soviets getting the Baltic states), their family was moved to Danzig. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, their family moved back to Latvia.

Konrad ended up with some kind of administration job in government. In 1943 he was called up for military service as a signal tech with a German Army interpreter unit.

Recently someone in the family wrote off to Germany where there is a government service that tracks these things.

In incredible detail.

Konrad made it to corporal. After training he was assigned as a signal tech with the 2nd Company, 4th Grenadier Regiment, 32nd Infantry Division. The Division’s unit logo is a Lion. If any of you follow that sort of thing like the table of organization of Heer units, you instantly recognize that is one of the Infantry Companies at the top of the organizational food chain.

A quick summary of Konrad’s Army travels while he was with the Division are as follows:
June – Nov. 1943 – Staraya
Dec, 1943 – March 1944 – Newel
Apr – July –1944 –Ostrow

More specifically for Konrad, hospital admissions records show this:

08.04.1944 – South of Gorusha, 12km south of Pleskau, wounded, artillery shell shrapnel, injury to left thigh. Decision: remain with unit.

14.06.1944 – Nemojewo East of Ostrow, wounded, artillery shell shrapnel, injury to left arm. Decision: remain with unit.

Sometime after this, Konrad sent a photo back to his wife. The photo was one that he kept on him of her looking very pretty in the garden. The words on the back stated he wishes he was with her.

This is the remainder of the hospital records:

25.07.1944 – Berjotzki West of Ostrow, wounded, artillery shell shrapnel, injury to neck. Decision: transferred to field hospital.

Deceased:

27.07.1944, 17:55 – Field hospital Walk, Lettland; died as a result of injury. Shrapnel to neck. Spinal cord injury.

Location of grave:
District Cemetery, Walk. We have no information about the present condition of the grave.

The lastest LM F-35 marketing spin for South Korea

2013-05-11T09:46:00.002+10:00

Below is a recent ( 9 May 2013 ) LM F-35 marketing brief to S. Korea.

In it you will find numerous statements to the potential customer that are misleading and over-simplified. Of interest:

Slide-3: Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) batches past 9 are labled TBD.

DT Flight Test over by 2016? Interesting becuase TR-2 hardware jets (starting with LRIP-6) are needed to run Block 3 software. By 2016, if the schedule holds, these aircraft will still be a big question mark in capability before an operational test squadron touches them.

The slide does say "F-35 Master Schedule" at the top so it is worth a comparison down the road.

Slide-4: It says "Mission Effectiveness with an "*" for, "USG & Partner Validated and Verified Results". This is an incredible claim with so many things not proven on the aircraft.

I like the 10-1 thing on the electronic warfare category. For an export-tech-friendly aircraft, it will be interesting to see what capability the F-35 does not have.

Given what S.Korea faces in the coming years, if they think real stealth is important, best to have something with F-22 capability.

Like previous briefs, all through the briefing you will see the F-35 as a "fifth-generation fighter", meme. The aircraft is not a little F-22.

Slide-5: Ponder. And then look back at slide 4. Interesting as the outgoing LM F-35 front-man admitted that weight assumptions in the design were wrong. Not an easy fix.

Slide-6: There; with no substance of what it means.

Slide-7: Not mentioned is the watering down of Block definitions and that anything before a TR-2 hardware jet isn't of much use. That is being generous to the program.

Slide-8 & 9: Two whole slides dedicated to noise issues. This must have been a big issue in the S. Koran press.

Here is something from a few years ago for comparison.

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Looks like the same source. Of interest, those chevrons on the back of the F-35 motor may help some.

Slide-10: This is a monument which shows the fact that we are kicking out a lot of mistake jets with little credible knowledge about the F-35's capability.

Slide-11: Using a DOD hack to hell sell aircraft. We are parking ships and aircraft and cutting numerous other operational communities but somehow this is what counts.

Slide-12: This is not unlike Slide-4 in its' message.

The rest of the slides are a nonsense claiming that the F-35 can take on emerging threats. Highly doubtful.

Slide-15: grossly oversimplified. A real shocker. According to the F-35 sales-force (an important distinction vs. credible analysis) our allies need to buy this defective, weak and expensive aircraft to take on the red forces of evil.

I like slide 22. Funny as without Blue-Force-Tracker and ROVER, the United States Marketing Corps hope of a early deployment to Japan could mean that the very incomplete aircraft, would need a external electro-optical pod strapped to the outside to give a better orbiting field of view and proper connectivity for low-intensity close air support missions. Too funny that someone would be dumb enough to use this aircraft (where the U.K. expects that the F-35B is 20 percent more to own and operate than an F-35C) at $30k-$40k (or more) per flight hour.

The F-35 is too weak to take on emerging threats. We have two platforms that may be able to have an effect on some anti-access situations: The F-22 and cruise missiles. For everything else, existing technology does the job better-cheaper.

===

-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Aviation Week (ARES blog) F-35 posts (2007 to present)
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)

UK claim F-35B STOVL vertical landing issues

2013-05-10T15:14:00.000+10:00

A UK report alleges that the F-35B STOVL aircraft will have no vertical landing ability in hot-high, low pressure situations “without having to jettison heavy loads”.

Unknown what this means as the bring-back KPP for the aircraft is 2x 1000 pound air to ground weapons, and 2x air-to-air missiles.

The source states that a solution will be ready by 2020. That by itself sounds like faith-based program management.

Fortunately the USMC never flies where it is hot.

MRH-90 re-baselined with new industry agreement

2013-05-09T18:45:00.000+10:00

Minister for Defence Smith and Minister for Defence Material Kelly have announced that the troubled MRH-90 program will be re-baselined under a revised industry partner agreement.

Also the Army will get a free maintenance trainer.

Yippee.

This is an effort to convince us that the NRH-90 has value. I disagree with that theory.

The aircraft is overly complex for Australia’s needs, expensive to procure, and at $31k per flight hour, expensive to operate.

In comparison for practical Army needs, they could have refurbished Huey UH-1s for a small handful of millions or go whole hog and get something that is out of the box very useful, deadly (not unlike this) at night and in the UH-1Y form, salty-capable and joint with our USMC friends.

The MRH-90 is a legacy of years gone by when the federal government had budgets that were not in the red. Today, Defence still has the big-spender mindset.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

According to Defence, the MRH-90 will be considered for removal from the Project of Concern list by the end of 2013.

The NRH-90 and Tiger are a pox on the ADF helicopter force structure.

DOD Report: F-35 Software At Risk For 'Several-Month Delays'

2013-05-09T06:32:00.001+10:00

Via Inside Defense (subscription):

DOD Report: F-35 Software At Risk For 'Several-Month Delays'

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program faces the risk of "several-month delays" in software development that could add pressure to the schedule for building, testing and buying fully capable aircraft, the Defense Department warns in a report to Congress.

Yes well, a "fully capable" F-35 has no chance of happening until aircraft with TR-2 hardware (which is needed to drive Block 3 software) arrive with LRIP-6 deliveries.

Add up testing time for actual, complete, alleged go-to-war, SDD-finished aircraft and this is all some years off.

An intelligent buyer of military equipment will not have something to evaluate until 2020 at the earliest. LRIP jets have more in common with a "YF-35" than they do with an "F-35".

LM talking points pose as Heritage study

2013-05-08T14:37:00.000+10:00

Interesting how one can have alleged study opportunity associated with grand titles of organisations and still be galactically stupid on a topic.

Note the LM talking points on F-35 woe: "It's the government's fault".

The lack of accountability in the acquisition process can also be seen in the delays in production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Steve Bucci, director of Heritage’s Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, described how the original production methodology for the F-35 was designed to put “the best available plane in the hands of the warfighters as soon as possible. It also allows for cuts in cost per copy as efficiencies build upon one another.” Despite the F-35 being crucial to U.S. national security, insufficient planning and inconsistent funding from the government have led to substandard development for this important program.

---

-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Aviation Week (ARES blog) F-35 posts (2007 to present)
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)

Illegal numbers out of control

2013-05-07T19:13:00.002+10:00

From a reader:

April this year 3,436 people arrived on illegal boats, most of whom identified as asylum seekers.

The trend of late has been an increasing flow of inbound boat arrivals - but for the sake of this discussion let's assume 3,436 per month remains constant for the next 12 months.

That's 42,232 people arriving by boat in the next year.

There are a few reasonably reliable indicative calculations of the costs of processing each asylum seeker in the first year after arrival.

Labor budgeted $1.1bn in the 2012/13 budget for processing asylum seekers on the assumption we would get 450 arrivals per month. That works out at a cost of $203,704 per person in Labor's cost estimates.

The Australian Council of Social Services calculated the cost of processing each asylum seeker in detention on Christmas Island as $180,000 for the first year.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/underclass-worry-in-migrants-daily-struggle-20120802-23ihl.html

Let's go with the lower figure of $180,000 by 42,232 people - that's $7.42 billion

That buys a lot of Gonski, NDIS or increased Medicare levy.

I know these calculations are imperfect and indicative - but surely the scale of the problem and the costs are pretty clear to anyone with a calculator who reads this blog. How are we simply letting day after day roll on as this huge and uncontrolled cost accumulates?

GDP blues

2013-05-07T10:35:00.001+10:00

Yet again, empty suits claim that percent-of-GDP toward the Defence budget is a valuable metric.

In an entitlement society, it is meaningless.

UCAS X-47B, first arrested shore-based landing

2013-05-06T12:48:00.000+10:00

Well, well. If they can pull this off without wiping out a bunch of aircraft and people on deck, it will provide something great for aircraft carrier ops.

And, land-based ISR will be interesting too. If it proves itself, it may prove useful for consideration for Australia in the coming years.

New Defence White Paper fails to address Australia's core security needs

2013-05-05T15:16:00.001+10:00

The photo above illustrates the 2013 Defence White Paper (DWP 2013) perfectly.

The new DWP is nothing more than a prop to justify numerous bad decisions; not unlike the DWP of 2009.

For a federal government deep in debt, this new DWP is incompatible with a Defence organization that needs to be frugal.

Management 101 states that one should not embark on a project unless it has a realistic hope of having the proper amount of available resources; a useful timeline toward completion and demonstrates a real need.

The 2013 Defence White Paper refers to numerous projects that go against that kind of practical thinking.

Why is the 2013 Defence White Paper useless? 1) It will not help defend Australia; 2) The people that wrote it don’t give the impression that they are skilled in the military art; 3) DWP 2013 is a vehicle to support rent-seekers and buy votes; 4)The obscene wish list of projects has little hope of being affordable in any future budget.

Requirements?

The submarine replacement requirement is flawed. If one wants all the operational tasks mentioned for a conventional Collins-class replacement, they are unfortunately describing all the capabilities that only a U.S. made, Virginia-class nuclear submarine can perform. If the thought of having that kind of submarine is distasteful for some, then, change the requirement.

The Super Hornet; in its’ Block II form today, would, by itself, be more than a match to face the dangerous legacy air defense environment for the 1999 bombing campaign of Yugoslavia. The Super Hornet EA-18G jamming aircraft is obsolete to emerging threats. The jammer package; sorry, the escort-jammer package in its’ Growler/Grizzly form, is great for Boeing as a sales gimmick. Why? Because appearances matter to a de-skilled Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy. There are no dedicated jammer variants for the Typhoon, Rafale and Gripen. This helps lock in a sales pitch to the clueless. So, sell Australia a jammer package with gear that the U.S. Navy stated years ago was obsolete to emerging threats. Cheerleaders will say, “but there is the next-gen jammer”. True, but it hasn’t been delivered yet; might not arrive if the U.S. Navy is so short on cash they have to park ships and aircraft due to money mismanagement and finally; it will only be on the Super Hornet in a slow, short-ranged, power-limited, drag-o-matic setup that will need lots of tanker-gas to cover a Pacific op.

The F-35; the Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy is so “committed” to this program that we might have an active squadron of this obsolete-to-emerging-threats aircraft by 2020. If one follows the delay trends, it might be longer than 20 years after Defence Minister Hill and friends made their dumb mistake to pick a completely unknown capability. Roll the roulette wheel. Defence has also not figured out how to sustain this aircraft which could have a cost per flying hour twice that of the Super Hornet.

Adding to the gold-plated hardware wishes, the non-thinking Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy believes that if it is new, it must be good. For example: Australia does not need Boeing P-8 patrol aircraft. It needs to be frugal and upgrade existing P-3 patrol aircraft.

There are several more impediments for the new DWP. The welfare state is the mission of the seriously in-debt Australian government. The current spend-thrift leadership hates business and thinks it can tax its' way to prosperity. In this environment any conversation of Defence spending needed as a percentage of GDP can only be looked at as ignorant thinking buy the alleged Defence intelligencia. This statement from the new DWP is meaningless: "As Australia’s financial and economic circumstances allow, the Government will want to grow the Defence budget to around two per cent of Gross Domestic Product."

Defence will get whatever money there is after the welfare-state gets its annual fief; and, not until then.

And Reform?

Defence has no plans to shed failed programs like the MRH-90 and ARH Tiger helicopters. These platforms suck up money best used by other communities in Defence that provide actual worth.

The Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy and the writers of the new DWP seem to be unable to understand the fact that a top NCO or unit commander is not allowed perform proper discipline activities. Give that responsibility. A good NCO can stop adverse discipline trends quickly and effectively. This saves millions of dollars in government commissions that do not address how to stop root-cause military discipline failures.

The U.S. military-industrial congressional complex (like the Australian Entrenched Defece Bureaucracy) is now so corrupt and moribund that Pacific Rim deterrence will suffer greatly. The U.S. Air Force has large amounts of old aircraft and suffers from such high level management incompetence that it is unable to live within its means and is thus parking aircraft and cutting significant amounts of flying hours.

The U.S. Navy is in a similar situation where ships and aircraft are being parked because of poor money management and misplaced priorities. The aircraft that fly off of U.S. aircraft carriers now and into the future are obsolete to emerging threats. The real symbol of the U.S. Pacific pivot to Asia is the defective and often broken-down, new, littoral combat ship that would get shot up and sunk by many kinds of low end threats.

The USMC will depend on air domination from the above mentioned services and, there may be many events where there are not enough, or any, F-22s.

Lack of air domination is paid for with hundreds and thousands of casualties.

Of the frontline U.S. Army fighting vehicles, none of them can swim or ford a river properly. This makes them useless for the Pacific.

All of this is the kind of U.S. military backup Australia is hoping for in its' new Defence White Paper.

Interesting to look at the flip side of all of this:

Indonesia has newer and capable combat aircraft, super-sonic anti-ship missiles (the U.S. Navy and RAN have none) and AFVs that can swim (BMP-3). That is not to hold Indonesia up as a great threat. It only illustrates a very serious point in how far the U.S. has slipped with its' poor ideas of what defines a useful force structure. Indonesia appears to have a better grasp of its’ littoral defense needs than either Australia or the U.S. have of their Pacific Rim defense needs.

The new Defence White Paper should be treated with as much contempt as possible for wasting everyone’s time on such an empty document.

The new Defence White Paper fails to address Australia's core security needs.

Will this disease of poor military planning cost Australia lost battles; a lost war?

---

-2009 Defence White Paper Fantasy
-Analysing "The ADF Air Combat Capability- On the Record"
-Find out who is responsible for the Air Warfare Destroyer mess
-Analysis of Defence Materiel Organisation Major Projects Management and What Needs to be Fixed
-New DMO Boss warns the staff that business as usual is over
-How dangerous is the Defence Material Organisation to our Defence Industry?
-Australia's Failing Defence Structure and Management Methodology
-More on the dud-jamming gear Defence wants to buy
-ADF cost per flying hour
-Illegal boat-people problem update
-Vacancy

U.S. Army looks good with a BMP

2013-05-05T01:25:00.001+10:00

(From Left) Staff Sgt. Kris Jorgensen and Spc. Jason Echevarria, both from Troop C, 2nd Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment Strykehorse, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, from Schofield Barracks, Hawaii maneuver with Indian Soldiers and their Boyevaya Machina Pekhoty, or BMP tank, a soviet amphibious tracked infantry fighting vehicle, during Exercise Yudh Abyas 09

Emphasis added.

KC-46 weight issues

2013-05-04T08:00:00.002+10:00

Boeing hasn't been doing well with weight estimates vs. design. Here, another problem via Inside Defense (subscription).

Air Force, Boeing Working To Reduce KC-46A Tanker's Weight

The Air Force and Boeing are relying on an "active" program to reduce the KC-46A tanker's weight, which is posing a technical challenge that -- if not remedied -- could erode the aircraft's ability to meet mandatory operating requirements for takeoff, mission radius and landing, according to government and industry officials.