From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #570 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Friday, 15 December 1995 Volume 05 : Number 570 In this issue: re: grounding of SR-71s Re: A-12 geneology (long) Re: Waverider [NASP] See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Wei-Jen Su Date: Fri, 15 Dec 1995 00:12:26 -0500 (EST) Subject: re: grounding of SR-71s On Thu, 14 Dec 1995 ahanley@usace.mil wrote: > The primary advantages the SR would bring would be the same that it would in > any situation: rapid arrival, very high survivability and the ability to > survey large amounts of territory in a given amount of time (the data > collection rate is at least four times that of a U-2, but the in-area loiter is > naturally less). If those abilities aren't needed, then the $35K an hour or so > it costs to fly the SR may not be worth it. The actual size of the whole > country isn't that important. Someone said: "... we might reasonably conclude that it is cheaper and easier to buy up the rest of the world than to conquer it by military force." May the Force be with you Su Wei-Jen E-mail: wsu02@barney.poly.edu ------------------------------ From: "Art Hanley" Date: Thu, 14 Dec 1995 23:51:42 +0700 Subject: Re: A-12 geneology (long) I haven't seen the message that Greg was responding to, but this bit of A-12 lore may prove of interest or helpful. It's another long one, so watch out! The Advanced Tactical Aircraft program was, basically put, the future of Naval Aviation. It was to be a first-day survivable strike aircraft that could operate in all weather, day or night, and possess good self defense capability against aerial threats, although not be designed for offensive counter-air operations. It would replace the A-6 and have a greater radius of action. Very heavy emphasis was placed on stealth (in the opinion of many, too heavy an emphasis) and all weapons were to be carried internally. It would have been the stealthiest aircraft ever. To give an idea of how heavily stealth characteristics were pushed, one of the requirements that has been disclosed would have required the plane to open the weapons bay doors, eject the weapon(s) and close the doors in 1/2 second. This is doable, but it has many consequences in design and drives the cost up. This could be a real problem since this was to be one of those consistently disastrous fixed price development contracts. The Department of the Navy insisted that companies team for the competition. Although never Officially confirmed, it was believed by some that Department of Navy not only required teams, but directed who was to team with who. This is believable when you saw Grumman teamed with Northrop and GD teamed with Macair. In those days, a voluntary teaming probably would have resulted in a MDD-Northrop team, as they had done in the past on the F/A-18, as well as on the YF-23. Tthis made for awkward meetings at the plants when the two companies were pals on the ATF but foes on the ATA. This also prevented cross fertilization of technologies within the companies. For example, the MDD people working on the ATF team were able to share the benefit of Northrop's experience in developing stealth technology for the B-2 (one of the reasons that the YF-23 was the stealthier of the two ATF competitors), while the MDD people working on the ATA team were forbidden to be told anything about it. I have been told that at that time the Grumman-Northrop pairing was not a happy one either. This posed a problem. The Grumman-Northrop team had a leader with 55 years of building carrier aircraft, and had built the long range attack aircraft the ATA was to replace, and a team member with an enviable reputation for weight control and had built the world's stealthiest aircraft. Both team members had large scale composite structure experience. The GD-MDD team was lead by a company with no carrier air experience and had weight problems on previous aircraft. The other team member had been building naval aircraft for some time, but the portion of that company that had built large attack aircraft for the Navy, Douglas, had not designed one of them since the early 1950s. Needless to say, this team was at somewhat of a disadvantage. The design competition went forward. It is known that there were discussions with the Grumman-Northrop (and Vought) team (whose design has been said to resemble a smaller, tandem seat B-2) to reduce their bid down to what the Government wanted the plane to cost. Grumman, having gone through this before on the original F-14 contract, along with Northrop basically said, 'Look, we Know how to build this plane and you can't do it for that amount of money'. According to published reports the Government said it was this or else and the team responded with what was a polite form of, 'O.K., See Ya!', and walked away. This only left one team, and they got the contract. The A-12 had a number of serious problems in development. One of the most serious was that the team had to essentially reinvent stealth technology. The team expected that they would be provided technological data from previous stealth programs, notably the F-117 and B-2, to which Northrop and Lockheed said, 'Say, What? That's our proprietary technology and processes and you want us to give it to Who? For a plane we aren't even building'? This drove up costs and produced delays while GD and MDD labored to reinvent the wheel. Of course, since this was a fixed price development contract, there was no guarantee they'd get paid extra for this. Weight problems also developed, partly but not solely because the RAM being developed wasn't as light as estimates. Later reports indicate that MDD, who had carrier experience, tried to raise bigger warning flags about weight control but that the team leaders didn't realize how really critical this was on a carrier plane. DoD also thought that management improvements could solve all the problems. It is also known that some of the problems were in fact concealed from DoD. The final straw came when soon after a major management review where DoD seemed assured that that had good cost and schedule figures and so briefed Congress, it surfaced that the plane would experience another delay and an additional $1 billion would be needed for R&D to meet spec. This embarrassment was coupled with the fact that rigid fixed-price development contracts have little or no adaptability (something we have to relearn ever 20 years or so) which means a go/no go decision had to be made. The Air Force said it was fully supportive of this magnificent joint development, was unequivocally committed to the program (the A-12 was to be the F-111 replacement), and could they please have more F-15Es instead? All this led Secretary of Defense Cheney to cancel the program when the first prototype was about 80% complete. This devastated Naval Air, and also had an adverse affect on the RAF which fully planned to buy the A-12 as their principal strike aircraft. While a relief, there were a number who thought the program should have been restructured not cancelled. Their argument was that the plane had serious problems, but they were fixable and doing that would cost far less than starting something else, plus you'd actually end up with an airplane instead of more studies. This prediction has unfortunately proved correct since the Navy is now going to spend much more in R&D to get a strike aircraft much less capable than the A-12. The replacement program was the AX (which eventually became the A/FX). There was more user input to the requiremnts for this plane which actually would have been a more useful plane than the A-12. Not as stealthy (but still a stealth aircraft), it would have had better provision for more flexible payloads, would have had somewhat less range (although still more than A-6's), but would have greater counter-air capability. It would have had offensive air-to-air abilities and would be more maneuverable and faster. A bunch of different teams formed for that one with some companies competing with themselves by being on different teams with different partners. The record, I think, went to Lockheed which was on at least four teams with different partners ( I can list all the teams if anyone's interested, but it's complicated enough to require a program). A/FX sort of moved along for a while, its IOC was moved back partly to make room for the F/A-18E/F. The Air Force said it was fully supportive of this magnificent joint development, was unequivocally committed to the program (the A/FX was now to be the F-111 replacement), and could they please have more B-2s instead? A/FX just sorta went away and along came the first of the many incarnations of JAST. The JAST (JSF) aircraft, by the way is not planned to be able meet the A/FX requirements. Meanwhile, back in court, the A-12 team and the Government were suing each other. The Government said that the program was terminated for non-performance and that certain problems were concealed from it. It says it is entitled to get back the money it spent on the program. The A-12 team said that the program was terminated at the convenience of the Government. Their main arguments are that they made it clear that their schedules and costs were based on the Government supplying them with stealth and composite construction technology data, which didn't happen, and that while they were indeed overweight on the prototype, the contract specified that they didn't have to meet the weight target until the 32nd aircraft and they claim they would have made it by then. If this was a convenience of the Government termination, then the contractors are entitled to reimbursement for their costs and possibly penalties as well. So Far, the courts have tended to rule in favor of the contractors, but everybody is appealing everything (you're not surprised, are you?). Art ------------------------------ From: sschaper@mo.net (Steve Schaper) Date: Fri, 15 Dec 1995 01:57:55 -0600 Subject: Re: Waverider [NASP] At 12:49 PM 12/14/95, larry@ichips.intel.com wrote: >Steve Schaper writes: >>Subject: Re: Waverider [NASP] I am not the one that confused the two. >Steve Schaper writes: >>>Actually, if I am not mistaken, there are waverider studies still going on, > >Terry Colvin wrote: >>However, when the NASP program was cancelled, most (if not all) of >>waverider-related research went with it. > >Steve is correct Terry, there is still work going on, and believe me there >is still a community of believers in developing this. > >Steve Schaper further writes: >>>though the object is not a manned vehicle, but long-range artillery >>>projectiles. > >I have heard of waverider 'projectiles' too, although I am not aware of >artillery applications (interesting shaped shell) being studied and >tested. I'd be interested in hearing more about that. I vaguely remember something about a team at MIT working on such, possibly for use out of naval guns to augment cruise missiles, these things would have remarkable range. ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #570 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. 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