(05-09-2022 01:55 PM)Jugnaut Wrote: $200 million is way too much for a plane. The F-35 is already ridiculously priced. We'll bankrupt ourselves pursuing this kind of nonsense.
Since at least Joe Stalin, the Russians are fond of saying, "Quantity has a quality of its own."
My thinking is that we need some top-of-the-line superstar aircraft (and ships and tanks and so forth) but that we also need some affordable and easily maintained kit to flesh out the numbers. My active duty Navy time included the term of Elmo Zumwalt as CNO, and his approach was called High/Low. We built nuclear aircraft carriers, submarines, and cruisers that incorporated state-of-the-art technology, but also built ships at the lower end of the spectrum--46 Knoxes (which were already being built when Zumwalt took over) and 52 Perrys, both of which turned out to be pretty good anti-submarine warfare (ASW) platforms. Building those in numbers contributed significantly to the ability to build toward the "600-ship navy" championed by SecDef Cap Weinberger and SecNav John Lehman during the Reagan administration. There are conflicting opinions as to how much the USA military buildup drove defense and economic stress that brought about the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union. But one thing for sure, the major Soviet naval threat during the time frame was from submarines, and an extra 98 ASW platforms was hugely important militarily, even if the economic effect was not totally game-changing. From my point of view, the immediate triggers for the Soviet collapse were internal economic and demographic pressures, but the need (and difficulty) to keep up with the USA militarily clearly imposed additional stresses.
Enough history. I think we are severely handicapping ourselves by our fascination with high-tech, high-cost solutions to every military need. On the USN side, we are spending $14B each on Ford-class aircraft carriers that offer only modest (if any) improvement over the $9B each Nimitz class. And so far, the Fords have been plagued because their state-of-the-art systems have not proved to be reliable--specifically catapults, arresting gear, weapons lifts--and toilets. So they do everything well except launch and recover aircraft, arm those aircraft prior to launch--and provide a place to take a leak or a crap when necessary. We also spent roughly $700-800MM each on 35 "littoral combat ships" that possess few, if any, combat capabilities, and virtually nothing of use in a littoral scenario. If the USN had been willing to reduce top speed from 45 knots (for which nobody has made a convincing need-based case) to 30 knots, studies indicate that the ships could have been built for half the cost or less. They would still be pretty useless (a 57mm popgun plus a flight deck that is too light to handle large helos, and armor and damage control limitations that require abandoning ship if it take a hit) but at least it would be useless at a cheaper cost. The worst part is probably that the USN decommissioned the Knoxes and Perrys ahead of their time to make room for the LCSs, and in doing so along with prematurely decommissioning the Spruance class destroyers (probably the best ASW surface ships ever) severely kneecapped our ASW capability, which today is pretty close to nil (taking the S-3 ASW/patrol aircraft off carriers did not help either). In another area that is a particular peeve of mine, the USN has replaced the then-existing amphibious fleet (the ones that haul Marines around) with the LHA/LHD "big deck amphibs" and the LPD-17 class, both of which are too expensive to risk in close to an enemy coast (3-5 miles, from which amphib operations can be conducted) so that we can essentially haul Marines around to virtually anywhere on earth, but have no capability to put any of them ashore except as small ultra-ultra-light infantry detachments (which I liken to a bunch of boy scouts with BB guns). There are a number of other examples all across the fleet. What the USN currently needs badly are ASW, anti-surface/ship missiles (ASuW), mine countermeasures (MCM), naval gunfire support (NGFS), a redesign of the amphibious force back to smaller amphibs, and combat logistics force (CLF) ships to support operations. Fortunately, all of those (with the possible exceptions of big-gun battleships and cruisers needed for the NGFS mission) would be very much low-end ships in the High/Low concept, reducing cost/ship and enabling much greater numbers.
Bottom line, the current USN plan is to build a 355 or so ship navy (not really clear how big exactly, because the latest "plan" has so many alternative scenarios that it is impossible to come up with one number) at an average cost of $2.8B/ship, spending roughly $850B on ship acquisition in the next 30 years, or $28B/year (compared with current shipbuilding levels of $20-22B/year). By going with a High/Low mix, the cost/ship could be reduced to $1.4B, enabling the construction of a 600-ship fleet (funny how that number pops up again) for the same or lesser cost/year--or spread it out over 40 years, and you'd have a 450 ship navy at the 30-year mark, and 600 at 40, and that fleet could be built and maintained going forward for $21B/year, which is right in the current spending range.
One other thing is not addressed often enough in these discussions. The fascination with high-cost, high-tech systems not only decreases the number that can be built, but is also reduces the number of defense contractors that can build them. We won WWII because our industrial base vastly out-produced those of Germany and Japan. In particular, Kaiser produced 747 cargo, troop transport, and amphibious ships, along with 50 escort carriers ("Jeep carriers"). These were all decidedly low end ships, but they basically won the war in the Pacific by overwhelming the Japanese navy in numbers. We need more than two combat aircraft manufacturers (LockMart and Boeing/McD) and more than five navy shipbuilders (Bath, HII, Electric Boat, Fincantieri/Marinette, and Austal) in order to have the surge capacity to respond effectively to a major war. A High/Low approach would open up the field for a number of other players, creating not only ramp up capability in wartime but also building a cadre of trained and experienced workers who could help overcome the current maintenance backlogs. And having more providers to bid on contracts could reduce significantly the cost/unit.