Moderadores: Lepanto, poliorcetes, Edu, Orel
2013/08/08
Frugality and modesty
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When technological progress allows for greater weight efficiency, authorities prefer higher performance at old high) weight over keeping performance and cutting weight.
This is just another example:
Army, Marines to Field Better Ballistic Helmets
By Matthew Cox, military.com
The virtues of frugality and modesty could help us with many problems and save us many wasteful expenses, but they are also against bureaucratic instincts.
This means there's an opportunity for being superior to your adversary; break free off bureaucratic instincts like these, and pursue neglected approaches and virtues - such as modesty and frugality.
Another classic example is development of high technology big ticket items (say, fighter jets). The costs explode for every per cent performance engineers squeeze out of the design. A 90% performance solution can easily cost less than half of a 95% performance solution and a 100% performance solution may be technologically impossible (unless you extend the program for a decade or two).
Still, the frugal and modest enough 90% solution is terribly unpopular. This phenomenon worsened since military procurement became so very much broken that big ticket items have become all-or-nothing affairs. The British and French were still able to go for a 90%, frugal SEPECAT Jaguar attack aircraft design when it was merely one of several modern combat aircraft types in their inventories. This didn't work so well with the Tyxphoon and Rafale any more, and today's F-35 is basically a 100% solution in some regards (avionics) while irritatingly being a 80% solution in others (flying).
Frugality and modesty can only help us if there's a stern and decisive, competent and benevolent oversight over the bureaucracy. And it's only possible to stay frugal and modest with a lot of self-discipline.
Both good oversight and good self-discipline are in very short supply in Western defence establishments.
S O
A-7 Corsair II and the VAL program: how a multiservice aircraft should be developed
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But among all these programs [F-35 JSF, F-111] there has been also a huge success: the so called VAL (with V meaning for heavier than air; A attack; L light) from which the Vought A-7 Corsair was born.
Originally, the VAL was a 1962 joint service program for the development of an advanced light attack aircraft involving USAF, U.S. Army and U.S. Navy. However the Air Force preferred using its existing fighters for light attack and for close air support and suspended its sustainment to the development of the program. So the Corsair II became the result of a Navy’s specific requirement to replace the older light attack aircraft such as the AD Skyraider and the A-4 Skyhawk.
Only in 1965 USAF rejoined to the program, developing its all weather version of the Corsair II, the A-7D.
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However the A-7 wasn’t such a revolutionary aircraft like the F-35 is intended to be: in fact the Corsair II was a low risk project since its airframe was similar to the F-8 and was also simpler than the Crusader one.
Still, the last of the Vought naval aircraft achieved some impressive milestones such as accomplishing its first flight on Sept. 27, 1965 ahead of the schedule and the first training example of the aircraft was delivered to the Navy in November 1966.
The A-7 didn’t face high cost overruns and the airplane was also able to respect the maintainability requirement with only 17 maintenance man-hours per flight hour.
Maybe the story of the A-7 should guide the Joint Strike Fighter: a program not only affected by schedule slippage and cost overruns but that also a plane that risks to fail to meet some of its customers’ requirements.
http://theaviationist.com/2013/08/07/a- ... gO2vm1f3IU
Naval Aviation Museum FB page
poliorcetes escribió:Podemos seguir con la definición de cazas europeos en los años 60 - 80, cuando el primer día de tortas entre la OTAN y el PV se eliminaría cada aeropuerto capaz de servir a un avión de combate.
poliorcetes escribió:Por otra parte, tanto Jaguar como A-7 fueron empleados en conflictos reales. No el primer día haciendo sead o interdicción profunda contra un enemigo capaz, pero hay más tipos de operaciones que esos. Y si tienes aparatos baratos y sobre todo baratos de operar, puedes ahorrar costes de operación y horas de célula para los aparatos más capaces y caros.
poliorcetes escribió:Y a lo mejor no hay alternativa a medio plazo, porque el F-35 está amenazando cada vez más el presupuesto de todas las ramas militares USA...
Pues ahora imagina aplicar lo que hemos aprendido desde los 60 a diseñar un modelo que pudiera ofrecer lo que ofrecía el corsair II o el jaguar, pero por una parte del costo de adquisición y mantenimiento. Se podría compaginar una flota de punta de lanza con lo mejor disponible en poco número, complementada por un diseño barato pero que con tecnologías del 2010 en adelante pudiera llevar a cabo su cometido ahorrando presupuesto
poliorcetes escribió:Pues los indios no estaban descontentos con el Jaguar, precisamente. O los operadores del A7. No tengo noticias directas sobre el éxito del Hawk 200... pero con los avances de 30 y 40 años, seguro que se puede definir un producto como el que comentaba sven ortmann, tan capaz como un avión de apoyo de los 70 pero mucho, mucho más barato de adquirir y de operar.
poliorcetes escribió:En la actualidad no hay posibilidad de que tengamos un conflicto simétrico puramente convencional, sin componente NBQ. Los únicos que pueden plantar cara a la OTAN son los rusos, claro, o si acaso los chinos. Partiendo de que todo conflicto futuro va a ser asimétrico a nuestro favor, creo que la frugalidad que propugnaba ortmann es un ejercicio de responsabilidad ciudadana.
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