From: owner-skunk-works-digest@netwrx1.com (skunk-works-digest) To: skunk-works-digest@netwrx1.com Subject: skunk-works-digest V8 #68 Reply-To: skunk-works@netwrx1.com Sender: owner-skunk-works-digest@netwrx1.com Errors-To: owner-skunk-works-digest@netwrx1.com Precedence: bulk skunk-works-digest Saturday, June 19 1999 Volume 08 : Number 068 Index of this digest by subject: *************************************************** Re: My response to Larry on AURORA Re: THAAD THAAD Re: THAAD Re: THAAD Operational uav's FW: Air Force Humour Aviation Archeology Re: Operational uav's Re: THAAD Re: Operational uav's Re: Skunk-Works Charter Classified? was Skunk-Works Charter ATF testing *************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 11:35:18 -0700 From: Larry Smith Subject: Re: My response to Larry on AURORA >>In fact. The best way to get a black program officially revealed, is to invent >>something better! >No, the best way to get one officially revealed is for someone running for >reelection to feel it would get them a couple more votes! Art's not feeling frustrated with politics at all these days is he! :) Good point Art. Yes, that's happened twice, to my recollection. The only problem, is that not everyone rubs elbows with the President. The scientific method, technology, and good teachers and books are there to be found, for everyone that wants to learn. You may have to look a bit, and you don't have to be brilliant. Just driven. Take heart Art. Feynman would remind you that nature doesn't follow political agendas. Thanks for your recent SR update too Art! I share your frustration. Larry ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 19:01:39 +0000 From: georgek@netwrx1.com Subject: Re: THAAD > IOC Sorry, I'm drawing a blank here...what is IOC?? George George, MR. Tibbs & The Beast Kasica West Allis, WI USA georgek@netwrx1.com gkasica@hotmail.com gkasica@yahoo.com gkasica@netscape.com http://www.netwrx1.com ICQ #12862186 Zz zZ |\ z _,,,---,,_ /,`.-'`' _ ;-;;,_ |,4- ) )-,_..;\ ( `'_' '---''(_/--' `-'\_) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 16:29:42 -0400 (EDT) From: "Timothy O'Brien" Subject: THAAD Hello, The reason I've heard for the rather odd initial trajectory of THAAD is that it needed to kill momentum to hit the target. Since it's a solid rocket booster, there's no way to throttle the engine. Plus, I believe it's control system is thrust vectoring, hence, a good way to slow it down would be to steer it in a veering pattern. Other opinions? Tim genghis@eng.umd.edu "Do you ever thank God that you have access to my dementia?" -- George Costanza, SEINFELD "Someday, we'll look back on all this and plow into a parked car." -- Anonymous > > Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 09:19:56 -0700 > From: "corey lawson" > Subject: RE: skunk-works-digest V8 #66 > > It even made the 6 o'clock news here in San Diego. It looked like the > missile had a funky initial launch path, like it was seriously > overcorrecting, sort of like this: > > > > ^ > _______/ > / > | > | > | > | > _____/ > / > | > | > | > | > > ...for several repetitions before it finally flew a much straighter > trajectory and hit the target... > > As far as the saga goes for the SR-71, someone needs to clean house at the > Pentagon, and give the Air Force brass a *serious* bitch slap. They > obviously have forgotten their raison d'etre, which is NOT to further their > careers or get better tee times at the base golf courses... > > - -Corey Lawson > clawson@ucsd.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 15:59:11 -0600 From: Brad Hitch Subject: Re: THAAD betnal@ns.net wrote: > > On 6/18/99 3:53AM, in message > <199906181054.DAA29295@toucan.prod.itd.earthlink.net>, "James P. Stevenson" > wrote: > > > > > The problem comes, Art, when we, as taxpayers, pay for these weapons to > > go into production before the testing has proven their viability. > > > > Jim > > > I agree totally. In the cases cited above, production contracts were not > signed or were conditional until testing was far enough along to be sure the > things would work. > > Nowadays, with the incredibly drawn-out no-risk testing we do no company can > afford to keep the option alive until its complete, so they say either pay the > total cost of the testing during the testing phase or give us a production > contract where we can recoup these costs. Further, because of the glacial > progress of testing (are you aware that in all these years we've only managed to > get two Comanches flying and the combined flight time of Both aircraft is less > than 300 hours?), support for a program may not last until testing is complete, or > it may become a target for someone trying to score political points. Finally, > because waiting until testing is far enough along pushes the IOC so far out > nowadays that it becomes ludicrous. So, all this convinces people to order things > into production before they should. > > It's going to be 22 years from the time the ATF started for it to reach IOC. > Over 13 years from first flight! It doesn't have to be that way. Again, consider > the Tomcat: Contract award in Jan. '69. First flight, Dec. 1970. Navy workups > 1973, IOC 1974 and first deployment (on Enterprise) in 1975. F-15 (which didn't > have benefit of F-111 experience) didn't take that much longer. This was normal > for those days and earlier. Why not now? > > Art Compounding this problem is the increasingly short project attention span. In the 60's there was an Air Force endothermic fuels program at Shell that lasted about 10 years with a constant 6-man (approx.) level of effort. These guys were able to make alot of progress because they weren't being redirected every 6 months. Now, if a project lasts more than a couple of years it runs a real risk of falling out of favor and disappearing into the dustbin or having its remaining program funds raided by the latest fad. Add to that a fear of failure on the part of program managers so you have to always be conservative in design and never push the envelope. Its a wonder ANY progress is made anymore. People who are afraid of breaking things shouldn't be in the R&D business. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 22:11:00 EDT From: SkyeFire@aol.com Subject: Re: THAAD In a message dated 6/17/99 3:14:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time, georgek@netwrx1.com writes: > > FWIW: > > I heard this was test #7...the previous 6 were failures...not exactly > a great kill ratio IMHO. The operative word is "test." You can hardly judge the kill ratio of a weapons system by its first few test firings -- heck, the first Sidewinder prototypes did no better. Quite frankly, I'm impressed once again by Lock-Mart's technical expertise in getting a system this complex to do a job this difficult this early into the testing cycle. As an industrial engineer, I usually run a few hundred to a few thousand test cycles before my machinery is rated satisfactory. And I have the luxury of being able to do so, "hands-on" and at minimal expense. The THAAD team has to work from a distance via telemetry during tests that cost M$ per shot. In addition, very little of the technology involved is really mature in this configuration. The jury needs to stay out for another year or so on this one. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 22:18:13 -0400 From: Martin Hurst Subject: Operational uav's Anybody heard about these UAV's !?!?! It sound like these have been used "successfully" in the field. - ---------------------------------- From: AviationWeek & Space Technology - The Paris Air Show http://www.awgnet.com/shownews/paris5/topsto16.htm Show Features Shadow UAV Family AAI Corporation, a U.S.-based maker of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the military and civil markets, is featuring its family of Shadow UAVs at Le Bourget this week. The Shadow family includes: * The Shadow 200-T, designed for four-hour endurance and payloads of up to 60 lbs. Capable of short field operations, the 200-T can also be parafoil-recovered. Unveiled late last year. * The Shadow 200, now in its sixth year of operations, provides six-hour endurance, 60-lb payloads, short field capability and compact avionics. * The Shadow 600 is AAI's largest UAV, in operation since 1992. The 600 has endurance of more than 12 hours, and can carry 100-lb payloads. Each UAV system includes an air vehicle, a ground control station, datalinks and payloads, the company said. AAI builds them in its 28,000 square-foot facility in Hunt Valley, Maryland, and is the largest provider of UAVs to the U.S. military. AAI said its UAVs have flown more than 23,000 hours since 1986, with more than half of that time spent under operational conditions. (By Paul Richfield - AviationWeek & Space Technology) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 22:18:19 -0400 From: Martin Hurst Subject: FW: Air Force Humour Got this from someone else. - ----------------------------------- A little military humor for ya! This proves that pilots retain (or they get worse)their sense of humor... Squawks" are problems noted by U. S. Air Force pilots and left for maintenance crews to fix before the next flight. Here are some actual maintenance complaints logged by those Air Force pilots and the replies from the maintenance crews. (P) = Problem (S) = Solution (P) Left inside main tire almost needs replacement. (S) Almost replaced left inside main tire. (P) #2 propeller seeping prop fluid. (S) #2 propeller seepage normal - #1, #3, and #4 propellers lacking normal seepage. (P) Aircraft handles funny. (S) Aircraft warned to straighten up, "fly right," and be serious. (P) Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick. (S) That's what they're there for. (P) Auto pilot in altitude hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent. (S) Cannot reproduce problem on ground. (P) Test flight OK, except auto land very rough. (S) Auto land not installed on this aircraft. (P) Something loose in cockpit. (S) Something tightened in cockpit. (P) Dead bugs on windshield. (S) Live bugs on order. (P) DME volume unbelievably loud. (S) Volume set to more believable level. (P) IFF inoperative. (S) IFF always inoperable in OFF mode. (P) Evidence of leak on right main landing gear. (S) Evidence removed. (P) Number three engine missing. (S) Engine found on right wing after brief search. (P) Target Radar hums. (S) Reprogrammed Target Radar with the words. - -- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 00:28:33 EDT From: Xelex@aol.com Subject: Aviation Archeology More wrecks found by X-Hunters Members of the X-Hunters Aerospace Archeology Team have located several more aircraft wrecks in the deserts of the western United States. In March, X-Hunters co-founder Peter Merlin and associate member Tom Kinzel located two crash sites near El Paso, Texas. The first was a Martin XB-51 bomber prototype. Only two were ever built, serial numbers 46-685 and 46-686. Ship 685 crashed while enroute from Edwards AFB, California to Eglin AFB, Florida. Following a stopover in El Paso on 25 March 1956, the jet crashed on takeoff due to premature rotation leading to a stall. Maj. James Rudolph and his crew chief were killed. There was some confusion at the crash site because the aircraft was marked as the "Gilbert XF-120," a paint scheme it had worn in the motion picture "Toward The Unknown." Merlin and Kinzel also located the crash site of SR-71A (61-7970). The aircraft was lost on 17 June 1970 during aerial refueling. The Blackbird pitched up suddenly, striking the KC-135Q tanker (serial number 59-1474). Lt. Col. Buddy Brown and Maj. Mortimer Jarvis ejected safely. The damaged tanker landed safely at Beale AFB, California. In early June, X-Hunters founding members Peter Merlin and Tony Moore, associate members Tom Tschida and Tony Accurso, and several guests located the crash site of JF-104A (56-0749) at Edwards AFB, California. NASA research pilot Milt Thompson ejected from this aircraft after an asymmetrical flap condition developed causing an uncommanded roll. The X-Hunters team is currently resaerching several other crash sites in the vicinity of Edwards AFB. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 02:18:02 EDT From: INFORMATION RESTRICTED Subject: Re: Operational uav's All this talk about UAVs lately, I'll have to built myself one! Kurt Amateur Radio Stations KC7VDG/KK7RC Monitor Station Registry KCA6ABB Based In Nevada, United States Of America On Fri, 18 Jun 1999 22:18:13 -0400 Martin Hurst writes: >Anybody heard about these UAV's !?!?! >It sound like these have been used "successfully" in the field. >---------------------------------- >From: AviationWeek & Space Technology - The Paris Air Show > >http://www.awgnet.com/shownews/paris5/topsto16.htm > >Show Features Shadow UAV Family > >AAI Corporation, a U.S.-based maker of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) >for the military and civil markets, is featuring its family of >Shadow UAVs at Le Bourget this week. > >The Shadow family includes: > >* The Shadow 200-T, designed for four-hour endurance and payloads of >up >to 60 lbs. Capable of short field operations, >the 200-T can also be parafoil-recovered. Unveiled late last year. >* The Shadow 200, now in its sixth year of operations, provides >six-hour >endurance, 60-lb payloads, short field capability and compact >avionics. >* The Shadow 600 is AAI's largest UAV, in operation since 1992. >The 600 has endurance of more than 12 hours, and can carry 100-lb >payloads. > >Each UAV system includes an air vehicle, a ground control station, >datalinks and payloads, the company said. AAI builds them in its >28,000 square-foot facility in Hunt Valley, Maryland, and is the >largest provider of UAVs to the U.S. military. >AAI said its UAVs have flown more than 23,000 hours since 1986, >with more than half of that time spent under operational conditions. >(By Paul Richfield - AviationWeek & Space Technology) ___________________________________________________________________ Get the Internet just the way you want it. Free software, free e-mail, and free Internet access for a month! Try Juno Web: http://dl.www.juno.com/dynoget/tagj. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 03:37:32 -0300 From: "Cleverson Borges Sutil" Subject: Re: THAAD > > IOC > Sorry, I'm drawing a blank here...what is IOC?? > > George IOC is Initial Operational Capability. 0 _ ii / \ `O __iiii______________ /|____ Bowling and spying at the wall. iii | \ i ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 01:04:18 -0700 (PDT) From: Wei-Jen Su Subject: Re: Operational uav's On Sat, 19 Jun 1999, INFORMATION RESTRICTED wrote: > All this talk about UAVs lately, I'll have to built myself one! > Too late, I already designed and built one "long long time ago in a city far far away..." :P May the Force be with you Wei-Jen Su E-mail: wsu@cco.caltech.edu - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Seize the time, Meribor. Live now; make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again" Capt. Picard (ST:TNG The Inner Light Ep.) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 07:22:21 -0400 From: "James P. Stevenson" Subject: Re: Skunk-Works Charter The disclosure of classified material is a crime. In order to be guilty of a crime you have to have committed the act (actus reas) and have the necessary mental intent (mens rea). In most cases, a lack of knowledge that something was classified would be enough to not be found guilty of passing classified material. Now, Art brings up the point of knew or should have known, which is the same standard that is used for receiving stolen property. Jim Stevenson > On 6/18/99 5:32AM, in message <376A3C44.AB4CEC0@ix.netcom.com>, Dave Bethke > wrote: > ? >> >> Sure does. Being a lay person, I figure if _I_ know about it, it >> can't be classified. :-) >> >> > > Not necessarily. It may have been disclosed to you innocently or > otherwise > without your knowing that it was classified. The key concept is whether > you knew, > or should have known, the information was classified. An example of the > latter is > if somehow you miraculously came across (I'm being far out here, I know) the > launch codes for our nuclear retaliatory forces. Even if they didn't have a > gazillion markings on them, it should be pretty obvious that these things were > classified. By not disclosing them, you would be doing the right thing (and > showing more concern than the Administration, but I digress). > > > Art > > ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 21:59:56 +1000 From: "Clifford M Dubery" Subject: Classified? was Skunk-Works Charter I am reminded of a senior high school student physics assignment on nuclear fusion. He designed a thermo-nuclear device from all the unclassified material at the local university and ended up with a classified paper. Does anyone remember that story, because I don't have a source, mid 70's I think? Clifford M Dubery - -----Original Message----- From: owner-skunk-works@netwrx1.com [mailto:owner-skunk-works@netwrx1.com]On Behalf Of Dave Bethke Sent: Friday, June 18, 1999 10:32 PM To: skunk-works@netwrx1.com Subject: Re: Skunk-Works Charter "George R. Kasica" wrote: > Chances are if you don't work with it you don't know it if its > clasified...if you do work with it you know it....make sense? Sure does. Being a lay person, I figure if _I_ know about it, it can't be classified. :-) - -- Dave Bethke ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 08:13:43 -0400 From: "James P. Stevenson" Subject: ATF testing Art wrote: > It's going to be 22 years from the time the ATF started for it to reach I= OC. > Over 13 years from first flight! It doesn't have to be that way. Again, > consider the Tomcat: Contract award in Jan. '69. First flight, Dec. 197= 0. > Navy workups 1973, IOC 1974 and first deployment (on Enterprise) in 1975. > F-15 (which didn't have benefit of F-111 experience) didn't take that muc= h > longer. This was normal for those days and earlier. Why not now? The reason it takes so long is a function of political engineering. The contractors and the Air Force want to lock in the contracts so the public is on the hook for an airplane that has never proven itself. The Air Force claims that the F-22 (formerly the ATF) has three pillars that make the F-22 invincible: stealth, supercruise, and avionics. The problem with the testing is not only has it taken a long time but the production decision will be made before it will have proven itself in flight test. Neither stealth nor the avionics have been proven to work even in the DemVal version, nor can the F-22 supercruise much further than the F-15C it is designed to replace. Approval for the F-22 EMD The decision for approval to proceed into EMD was set for mid-1991. As the date approached, the decision makers received inputs from various factions within the Department of Defense. What concerned one of them, the office of Program Analysis & Evaluation (PA&E), was the failure of the Air Force to adequately fund the F-22. In addition, PA&E was concerned that the ATF was so expensive, the Air Force could not replace retiring aircraft on a one-for-one basis. This meant that in order to keep the inventory at the same level, the Air Force would have to increase the average age of its aircraft. The only way to avoid that was to have a less expensive ATF. PA&E argued that the Air Force should procure a single engine version to reduce cost. It also reasoned that the Air Force should delay implementing the program until it had better resolution on the fiscal reality of the program. PA&E was also concerned that there was inadequate flight test data from the DemVal phase. Indeed, the "prototypes" had accumulated only 157 hours compared with the 4,337 hours planned for the EMD phase. Spinney could not understand why the Air Force was in hurry now that the Cold War was over. What Spinney wanted was a real prototype program. "The ATF was conceived at the height of the Cold War. Its System Operational Requirement (1 Mar 91) is clearly premised on the belief that the Soviet Union is the threat to be countered and that the intensity of cold-war competition would continue. . . . "We can reduce this risk by reducing concurrency--that is, by partitioning the program into a Phase II Advanced Development Program aimed at producing a truly combat-capable prototype with full-powered engines and fully-integrated stealth and avionics capabilities, while deferring manufacturing development until a competitive fly-off against current generation fighters confirms the advantages of proceeding with manufacturing development and production." The arguments from PA&E did not prevail. In July 1991, the Milestone Authority approved the Air Force award of the Engineering, Manufacturing & Development (EMD) contract to the winner of the ATF Dem/Val competition, Lockheed, GD, and Boeing. On August 2, 1991, it awarded a cost plus award fee contract (4% guaranteed, 9% guaranteed) for $9.55 billion in FY1990 dollars. The contract called for 11 flyable aircraft plus 2 test articles which was subsequently reduced to 9 flyable aircraft plus 2 test articles. The contract specified first flight in June 1995. The Engineering, Manufacturing & Design (EMD) Phase There are three aspects to the EMD phase: aircraft construction, flight test, and the inevitable attempt by the other services to reach for some of the money earmarked for EMD and production. These battles usually result in an increased justification for the program and a fiscal revamping with the funding pushed further out into the future. There is precedent for these assertions. When the F-15's increasing costs were exposed in the early 1970s, it created some analysis that showed that with a heat-seeking missile still on the drawing boards, it could garner an exchange ratio of 955-to-1 against a Russian MiG-21. As both Congress and the other military services reached for some of the funds tagged for the F-22, the Air Force and Lockheed have expanded their justification and produced a brochure that shows over 5,000 modern fighters as potential threats to U.S. forces. However, over 30 percent of them are U.S. fighters sold to friendly countries, including Canada. The fiscal stability of the F-22 is also threatened by the questionable financial willingness or capability of the contractor to build the F-22. Their potential for profit is aggravated by the Air Force=B9s insistence on a fixed price contract for early production models in which fiscal risks are still residual unknowns. The promise of 750 production aircraft was, no doubt, an inducement to Lockheed and its subcontractors, to initially invest their own money. But the payback on the declining production numbers may inhibit future enthusiasm as Lockheed Skunk Works president Ben Rich pointed out. "We won the competition, but all five companies involved in the F-22 competition have lost. We, the winners, will never make back our original investment because in the current budget crunch the government has cut back sharply on the number of F-22s it now plans to purchase. Currently, [1994] the Air Force has budgeted for four hundred new F-22s, but that number could decrease even further. [It is now 339. ] The fewer the new airplanes produced, the more expensive the unit cost. . . . "The sad truth," Ben Rich wrote, referring to the original amount of the YF-22 contract, =B3is that our stockholders would have done better financially if they had invested that $690 million in CDs." If the president of the Lockheed Skunk Works thought it could not make a profit on the 442 planned F-22s in 1994, how will it now that the planning number is 339? How will the fixed price contract the Air Force plans to use on these initial research aircraft give Lockheed an opportunity to recoup its investment in the YF-22? The F-22 EMD Flight Test Program The flight test program began with the August 7, 1997 first flight of the F-22. However it was an aborted beginning. The F-22 required some structural additions to the airframe. The second aircraft did not fly until late June of 1998. F-22 Flight Planned Test Hours and Sorties Of greater significance is the demonstration plan the Air Force has to insure that the F-22 can meet its contractual specifications. The Air Force wants to go into production with only four percent of the total flight test completed, concurrency reminiscent of the Cold War. Indeed, it wants to obtain production commitments with only 183 hours of flight test out of a planned total of 4,337. This is only 26 hours more than the total 157 hours on the combination of YF-22 and YF-23 DemVal aircraft for which the government and contractors have already spent $6.4 billion. Planned Stealth Flight Test Program The F-22 specification for radar cross section has a requirement that measures from a vertical angle of +20=BA to -20=BA. The flight test program, as outlined by the Air Force Program Office, stops at +/- 15 degrees. Furthermore, the Air Force wants production commitments prior to any flight testing on two of the F-22=B9s three pillars--avionics and stealth. In fact, the flight testing on radar cross section alone will not be completed until the introduction of the ninth test aircraft which is not scheduled to fly until the year 2001. Even at that, according to an Air Force System Program Office presentation, it will not completely test to the radar cross section specification. Avionics The F-22 will have in its production version, 1.7 million lines of software code. As testimony to this level of effort, a good programmer can produce three lines of debugged software code per day, Thus the F-22, when it has completed its flight test, will have over 2,000 man years of software code effort. Aircraft number one has 300,000 lines of code and the current plane to migrate up to the 82 percent level with 1.4 million lines of code in aircraft No. 9. The development test and evaluation (DT&E) phase will not include code for dropping the JDAM munitions. Costs Congress put a cap on the cost of the F-22 in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1998, November 18, 1997. It "imposed cost limitations of $18.688 billion on the F-22 EMD program and $43.4 billion on the production program." However, it did not specify a quantity of aircraft to be procured. This means that if the program acquisition unit cost (PAUC) increases, the quantity of aircraft will decrease because the money authorized is a constant. In August 1998, the Air Force was planning how announce that it would exceed the EMD cost cap by over $1 billion. Current overrun estimate greatly exceed the $1 billion overrun. Dividing the fixed amount authorized by Congress for EMD and production with the previous money spent on Concept Formulation and DemVal, the F-22 program unit cost will exceed of $190 million. Adding the $1 billion EMD overrun will add approximately $3 million to the program acquisition unit cost. Thus, if there were money in the budget to fund the F-22, which there is not, the aircraft would end up with a total program acquisition unit cost exceeding $200 million. Such an aircraft the U.S. might be afraid to risk taking to war. That is, unless if flew with heavy jamming like the "stealthy" B-2 did in Kosovo. But then, if you have heavy jamming, you don't need stealth. Fuel Fraction The seminal work on supercruise was done by Col. Everest Riccioni USAF Ret. at the Northrop Corporation during the early years of the ATF competition. He determined that fuel fraction was a critical factor in obtaining range for a supercrusing aircraft. At the time of the ATF competition, the range goal for the ATF was to cruise sub-sonically for 100 miles, then in 400 miles in supercruise, back out in supercruise, and home 100 miles subsonically. The F-22 has breached the Riccioni ideal of 0.38 as well as the minimum acceptable fuel fraction of 0.35 due to increasing weight. Indeed, the Air Force admits to a fuel fraction of 0.29, a figure that is bettered by other aircraft including the F-15C, the aircraft the F-22 was designed to replace. The F-22 does not have the fuel fraction of, for that matter, the F8H a Navy jet that first flew in the mid-1950s. Riccioni estimates that the F-22 at its current fuel fraction has a supercruise range between 90-125 miles. The Problematic Production Decision Making production decisions before substantial completion of flight test has been historically justified because "the Russians are coming." Yet, in making them prior to the completion of testing, the military runs the risk that the hard tooling of the production aircraft or the aircraft themselves will have to be changed. Even without the pressure of the Soviet threat, there is a tendency to lock in production commitments so that the program has a better political potential. The best example of this is the F-18E/F. In spite of 25 years of two flying prototypes, (the YF-17 and the F-18A/B/C/D), the F-18E/F--an airplane justified in large part for its increased range--developed a wing drop problem almost from the beginning, (see "Testing the Super Hornet: A Status Report," Aerospace America, June 1998). The Navy was 2,500 flight hours into its flight test program before it said that it had solved the problem. As a result, the Navy was successful in gaining approval to enter production before the flight test program was over. The production aircraft would incorporate the fix for the wing drop. Yet as the F-22 approached the December 1998 183 flight test hour mark, the point at which the Air Force wanted to gain a production commitment for the Raptor, the F-18E/F wing drop problem re-emerged. The production fix functions more poorly than the interim fixed used to gain the production approval. As a result, the Navy almost lost an F-18E. The fix was not something for nothing, either, in a low level range comparison, an F-18C flew further than the F-18E, defeating in large part, the justification to build the F-18E in the first place. The question that is now on the table is what unknowns will emerge in the flight testing of the F-22, now that we have gone into production. Jim Stevenson ------------------------------ End of skunk-works-digest V8 #68 ******************************** To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe in the body of a message to "majordomo@netwrx1.com". 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 local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe in the body. Administrative requests, problems, and other non-list mail can be sent to georgek@netwrx1.com. A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "skunk-works-digest" in the commands above with "skunk-works". Back issues are available for viewing by a www interface located at: http://www.netwrx1.com/skunk-works If you have any questions or problems please contact me at: georgek@netwrx1.com Thanks, George R. Kasica Listowner