The Lockheed Martin F 35:  

An Indian Appraisal Part 1                    Prof. Prodyut Das

Iss 2  0212/2024

Some time back I was approached by a Twitter-er who suggested I do an appraisal on the LM F 35. I have improved on the suggestion and decided to comply to the request in two parts. The first and present part is what I think about the programme which achieved much more than is generally credited and the F 35 really is, to repeat Alexander Yakovlev sixty years ago (after he had examined the wreckages of the ex-Vietnam Phantoms!),“Without a doubt technically (nota bene!)  the Phantom II is a triumph for the US Aerospace Industry”. This in no ways means I support acquisition of the F 35 by India. Neither do I think the F 35 is a very suitable warplane for us. The F 35 is the usual case of US case of overkill done largely because technically the US can do these things and thanks to NATO, its marketing arm, sell it for good profits.

 The “An Indian Appraisal” bit means that this is mainly a discussion on aspects of the management of the F 35 as relevant to the development of the way we handled the Tejas. It dwells on what I believe are Indian concerns for a largely Indian readership. In this case I have focused on the very different management practices the US follows with very enviable results.   

 If the push comes to the shove, the F 35 will do the job but it is, like the J 20, is an “expeditionary force “war plane costing at least twice as much to operate per flight hour than most aircraft that the IAF. The aircraft could be a waste of money unless delays on the AMCA, which I fear is a certainty, creates another “Rafale” import situation. The Rafale imports should  not have happened- not after setting up of ADA in 1983.

Introduction

In the early ‘60s a powerful Secretary at Capitol Hill- US equivalent of our Raisina Hill-, highly qualified, strong in deftness of working the system but deplorably lacking in Engineering knowledge over- rode the professional objections of the USAF and US Navy to argue for a single common fighter for using the then newly fangled technology of Variable Geometry which the Costermongers were hawking as the great panacea. New Technology does not automatically mean a usable fighter but try telling that to the clever and the inexperienced with access to Public Money! The idea was to develop an “all-singing, all dancing” two seat warplane for the USAF (F 111A) and USN (F111B) using powerful radars and long- range missiles. I cannot now remember if there was a F 111C for the USMC but there was a cartoon in the ‘60s by Uncle Roger Bacon in the last page of Flight (‘Straight & Level’, if you are old enough!) that showed purported versions of B 111, C 111, T 111, RF 111 and even a KC 111!

The British ridicule was justified because there is a limit what even the remarkably able US aircraft Industry can do when saddled with bad concepts and prophets. The aircraft though quite capable turned out to be a compromise and as compromises will go, fairly mediocre. The planned procurement of 1700 plus aircraft was cut back to 584, the UK declined to buy it for the RAF though in the scuffle for orders the very promising home- grown BAC TSR 2 was butchered. Let me record the perfidy of the then Labour Government even if it is only to show that a black deed is never forgiven by the faithful in aviation! The Labour Govt not only cancelled the programme in 1965 but they also ordered the several prototypes and under construction airframes and all production tooling be destroyed. It would seem our politicians are not that spiteful, merely being handy with Public Money! The last bit of vandalism was so that if the Conservatives came back to power they could not revive and make a possible success of the project. That’s what Politicians (Socialist politicians too, mind you!)  will do for the country if they can get away with it.

My reason for going back to the GD F 111 is that one would think that having been once bitten the US would be twice shy. But oops! Like Britney Spears they did it again! Scant thirty years later they again issued a “technology rich” specification for a fighter which would serve the needs of the – you guessed it- USAF, USN and USMC. These were to have a 70% commonality of parts and would be incremental developments over the basic F 35 A for the USAF. By now you must have uneasily noticed that this story has common features with what happened in India. It is the same the world wide over but let me go ahead with the story before I discuss the relevance to India.

Throughout the 90s’ i.e. whilst the F 16 had been doing quite well in the market the US started exploring what there next (5^th generation) fighter was going to be. They investigated by different agencies – not just the one pampered “ladli” (darling/cosseted) organization- several proposals for the next gen aircraft.

The Americans have a penchant for abbreviations.  If you have seen the parody of the Bond film Casino Royale you will remember the US agent who introduces himself to Sir James Bond with a string of abbreviations ending apologetically with “… Washington DC.”) so to avoid being foxed I had better put down some of the abbreviations used in this project. Notable amongst them were:

1.      DARPA Defence Advanced Research Project Agency funded Advanced Short take off Vertical Landing (ASTOVL) 1983-1994 aimed at designing a Jump -jet replacement for the Harrier

2.      ASTOVL including Supersonic STOVL Fighter (SSF) by Lockheed Martin for USAF and USMC a key feature being the Shaft driven Lift fan (SDLF). This was a canard delta and there was also a Common Affordable Fighter (CALF) involving LM, McDonnel Douglas and Boeing.

3.       JAST Joint Advanced Strike Fighter which followed the cancelled MRF (Multi role Fighter) which was tried as a F 16 replacement.

4.      Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) replacing the Grumman A6

5.       ATA (Advanced Tactical Attack) as above and resulted in the Douglas A 12 Avenger 2 which was cancelled after spending 4 billion- the prototype was just one year from first flight- because of cost and technology overruns meant further money would be wasted..

6.      JAST above was meant to mature emerging technologies and demonstrate concepts.

7.      JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) was the final configuration amalgamation and there were two Prime contractors for the fly off.

If you bothered to count that is eight fairly detailed-note that half built-protoype- proposals examined and criticized to shreds and abandoned in a period of about ten years.

Timelines - Journado del Muerto-  

In New Mexico by the Rio Grande there was a 120-mile trail through the desert called the “Journada del Muerto” – or the journey of the dead men. You filled two canteens for yourself and gave your horse as much water as he could drink and started off at night. If you did not make it within 24 hours you did not make it and died of thirst and exhaustion. Aircraft development is like that. If, for whatever reason, you can’t develop to clear production a usable fighter in about ten years what you produce will need major change. The Tejas programme even after FOC is proof.

 This was the timelines for the F 35.

In early 1997 it was decided that the programme had reached the CDF (Concept demonstrator Phase) and two (nota bene!) technology demonstrators will be funded out of four (nota bene, again!) submissions. The Boeing XF 32 and the Lockheed Martin X 35 were selected. The F 35 came in three versions. More in the beginning is ALWAYS cheaper. In 1993 ,if when ADA's submission was "rejected" by the IAF by a 200 page critique ,the presence of at least a HAL alternative ( socialism would have prevented Pvt. sector participation ) may have led to a better situation. Certainly the import of 114 Rafales- that's near where I think we will finally end up- would have been avoided. ADA's delays have been invaluable to the import lobby.

In about 40 months the Technology demonstrator X 35A did its first flight on 24 October 2000. Test were conducted for speed range supersonic and subsonic handling. After just 28 flights the aircraft was converted to the X-35B configuration (STOVL) with a powerful SDLF and demonstrated STOVL, hover, vertical landing and STO with a TO run of less than 150 mts. The X 35C (with a wing some 35% larger) first flew on 16 December 2000 and demonstrated CV (carrier) operations successfully. These were TD aircraft and carried equipment sufficient only to demonstrate the new technologies involved -stealth, the Lift fan & STOVL operations, had been mastered to a reasonable degree of confidence. I notice that CV operations about which the USN probably knows more than all other navies combined was probably ignored or not gone into sufficient detail in these tests and they had a problem with-can you believe it- the design of the arrestor hook?! In Aircraft design the lame Nemesis follows Hubris somewhat faster and so the actual design failed to trap 8 times in a row and the hook had to be redesigned! Eat Crow? Nothing can be taken for granted by anyone in a/c design.

The differences in the F 35 models were substantial. The lift for STOVL operations in the F 35B comes from a large about 1000 mm dia. multi bladed SDLF- a very innovative sort of a lift jet without combustion penalties possible only because of the monster 190 kN engine in the forward fuselage driven by a gearbox taking power from the engine PTO via a cardan shaft tapping perhaps 700-1000kW from the F 119/120 engine and a unique three bearing swiveling nozzle of lobster tail design with Russian inputs ex Yak 141. In the F 35A the fan was replaced by a fuel tank of 2172 kg. capacity. The Boeing X F 32 TD used the Harrier style vectored thrust from tapped Compressor flow to achieve STOVL

Personally, I thought that the Boeing XF 32 design had a certain Bauhaus kind of functionality and was better conceived and developable but they did not ask me for my golden opinions, did they! Lockheed Martin was declared the winner on 26 October 2001 i.e. within 4 years of go ahead for TD. and a contract for SDD (Systems Development and Demonstration) phase was sanctioned based, pl. note, only on proven hard data from the TDs and not on LM’s or in our case, ADA’s, say so. 

The technology demonstrators were quite different in detail. The trials though brief showed up the following substantial changes to the Technology Demonstrators:

1.      Lengthening of the Fuselage by 13 cms to accommodate additional Avionics.

2.      The Horizontal Stabilizers were moved back by 5 cms to maintain balance.

3.      The DSI was changed from a four sided to a three- sided cowl shape and moved back by 75 cms.

4.      The fuselage lines were made deeper at CL by about 30 mm to accommodate a bigger weapons bay that would be common to all versions which was a 2003 decision.

The above changes caused the aircraft weight to go up by a 1000 kgs because of which the aircraft would not be able to meet STOVL requirements.

This required massive re-redesign. In December 2003 the STOVL Weight Attack Team (SWAT) was formed. They incorporated the following changes:

5.      The weapons bay and the vertical stabilizers was made smaller.

6.      Airframe members were thinned

7.      The intake ducts were made larger to accommodate bigger mass flow engines.

8.      Electrical harness was redesigned

9.      The wing fuselage joint was redesigned

10.   The entire fuselage aft of the cockpit was “combed” for weight reductions

The extreme attention to detail can be seen in the fact that the F 35 was overweight by just about 7% and that rang alarms. The SWAT weight saving team was promptly formed in October 2003 and in nine months the SWAT had achieved weight reductions of 1100 kg ( F 35A) , 1400kg ( F 35 B) and 860 kgs (F 35C) . Also note that they did not move forward at all until weight reduction was done- no sense producing unusable junk. These changes cost 18 months of programme time and cost $ 6.2 billion. My estimate that means about 62,000 man hours and  about 31 engineers working for about a year to incorporate the changes.

The first Production fighter F 35 A (AA-1) was rolled out on 19 February 2006 and first flew on 15 December 2006. The planned IOC (4 years from first flight) was shifted back from 2010 to 2015 (nine years from first flight instead of five years estimated in 2001). Of this the customer’s baffling and misplaced insistence on a common weapons bay- at the core of the airframe- added about three years and about $ 6bn to the programme so the real delay is about 2 years.

Ordered in July 2007 a Handling flight was formed at Edwards in 2009 when the first 3 aircraft were delivered, one was delivered in 2010 and by July 2011 it had 9 aircraft- 5 F 35As, 3 F 35Bs and a single F 35C which between them had flown 1432 sorties. In the first ten months of 2011 the aircraft had flown over 837 sorties of which 407 were CTOL by F 35As and the remaining were STOVL the sortie rate of 84 sorties per month from 9 a/c. The first F 35A was retired out after only 97 flights because it was heavier and the tests would be wasted.

Flight testing revealed severe problems amongst them were:

1.      Software problems specially with respect to sensor fusion. There were some 17  million lines of code.

2.      Structural cracks that led to the F 35B airframe being re-tested.

3.      Heat damage to tail plane from prolonged use of afterburner.

4.      The F 35C refused to trap consistently requiring a two- year redesign effort of the tailhook.

5.      A “weird” unrepeatable damage to the stealth coat at high speeds.

6.      Wing drop at certain conditions.

The US attitude was an experienced- Ho-Hum or SNAFU as the old Americans used to say. There was never any pretence at infallibility and never any attempt to cover mistakes which were freely admitetd.

Despite all that the Total Effective delay was 5 years (2010 IOC was shifted to 2015) and of this the Customer’s dictated changes and reversion to original cost 2 years and $6 Bn. So the programme delays and overruns due to teh vendor were abt 2 yrs and and that 6 bn needss to be adjusted.

THE F 35 assessed

A British Journalist covering the American Advance into Libya in 1943 noticed that every other10 wheeler truck had a machine gun stuck in a cupola over the driver’s cab. He considered it a waste so far behind the front.  Had he investigated further he would have found that a single gun fired by an untrained gunner at a fast- moving aircraft had zero chance of scoring a hit. So why did the US fit them? The answer is for their specification’s philosophy of any time and everywhere and …waal… Heck! ..it might come in use sometime…an’ we can afford it"! The F 35 follows the same extravagant path but AI is transforming aircraft design and India has no option but to explore this new paradigm because we will fail in the old.

The design is nicer looking (if you are not into Bauhaus) and uses more advanced stealth technologies and the coating is more durable. The attention paid to masking the engine with the empennage is noticeable though as a single engine I think the Su 75 is the better thought out. The structure uses 35% composite mainly bismaleimides and carbon  for stealth more than as a magic cure for weight.

The F 35 can be summed up as a 5th generation replacement for the F 16. It has all the goodies of the F 16 (AESA, VHF, UHF, FBW, RWR, MAWS, RA, plus the benefits of stealth and of course sensor fusion for which the US has another set of abbreviations! Incidentally the “FBW” in the F 35 has an wire controlled local hydrostatic power controls with local battery backup giving better battle damage resistant. All this comes for a price; double the engine power is needed to push the F 35 around. LM has managed to stow away about 8278 kgs of JP compared to the F 16’s respectable 3200 kgs giving a longer range than the F 16 despite an engine twice as big.

In war the criticism is that the F 35 soaks up information but lacks the war load (in stealthy mode) to tackle all that it sees and I am yet to see why one of the most expensive fighters in the world should be used in the bomb truck mode.

I sometime envy the Chinese. In exchange for the somewhat dodgy food (Duck’s beak in shredded cornstalks with green algae velvet) they are insulated from much of American marketing. The ugly JF 20 may not be a good looker but if its stealth is good I ‘ll back the JF 20 because is a Waffenstrager which I think is the best use of stealth and AI technologies.

A discussion on the project costs  

The cost of developing the F 35 is 80 billion dollars from a projected cost of 38 billion (US CRS report on F 35 updated to 2018) has caused much heartburn and criticism – including lobbying to closed down the project and to investigate; the Tejas has overshot both the budget and timelines by over ten times. The US was alarmed about 2 times increase in costs and a three-year slip in schedule and budgets-we ignored the early warnings since 1993 to push trhough an organization. if not the project--which is why perhaps they have a healthy aerospace Industry and we don’t.

For a fair comparison we have to first compare what the US got for their money vs what we got and then adjust for PPP the two spends.

By spending $ 80 Billion (US Congress Research report on the F 35 updated to 2018) i. e. Rs.6,40,000 crores PDV in our money the US got:

1.      Two different and competing Technology demonstrators- the Boeing X 32 and the LM X 35,

2.      Three different versions of the F 35.

a)      The basic F 35A

b)     The STOVL F 35 B with a shaft driven Lift Fan of perhaps 1mW(1400shp) tapped off the engine

c)      A “big wing” 668 sq, ft wing area for CV operations. This had a tailhook, folding wings, additional ailerons and being USN a different kind of FR probe.

 

3.      17,000 hours of flight testing (vs about 3000hrs for us) resulting in a clear IOC by 2011 and FOC 2017. The honesty of the US IOC was demonstrated by the fact that the Israelis used the aircraft in Combat in 2017 before FOC. For those who mark the “crash free” record of the Tejas as an achievement they must note that there were no crashes of the F 35 during these 17,000 hrs and as far as I know the Americans are not even talking about any “achievement”. 

4.      A half- built prototype of the Douglas A 12 Avenger adding knowledge of what or how not to do.

5.      The result of transparent effort was that though heavily and raucously criticized the corrections could be done smoothly and openly, the corrected aircraft’s production built up rapidly (to about 60 p.a. quite early and is now going onto 100+p.a.) and as of date about 900+ has been delivered to customers in all climes and airfields.

6.      The programme has given employment to 260,000 US citizens and the value of F 35 exported up to 2021 is close to $30bn i.e. exports have got back about half of all invested funds.

7.      Presuming the Engine development costs were separately funded and we subtract after adjusting to present value the $ 6 bn (2003) dollars for the unnecessary redesign and another $6 bn (in 2006 dollars) for the Douglas Avenger which was cancelled because it was going to be a waste of money we are looking at an actual spend of perhaps $ 60 billion in 2022 dollars i.e Rs.4,80,000 crores. That looks like a fair lot at first glance but the US got the design technology of three fifth generation aero planes: 

8.      Now for the punch line. In the above figures the US used manpower whose average cost was four times more than ours. If the US had access to labour at the same cost as us their project cost would be just 140,000 crores ( 230 tons of gold in 2023 prices ) for a 5th generation assuming in both cases the Capital equipment (valued at 25% of the total) is bought at International prices and in the Tejas only used for that single aircraft. We have spent the equivalent of about 280 tons of gold i.e. 1,68,000 crores for a still half- baked product that needs a Mk1A, a Mk2 and now I hear a Mk2A- all without entering frontline service. These various  marks could be covert attempts to rectify a very badly designed Mk.1. DRDO/ADA Directors cite the lack of funds and how low cost they are. ISRO is low cost. Cannot say ADA is. The figures don’t support the claim.

The following comments emerge from the above to our Aerospace organization:

1.      The US are successful because they do not rely on one organization to generate ideas. At least 4 competing teams were involved. This is cheaper because winners show their mettle early and the incapable are identified at a stage when the cost per team is low e.g. A 20,000 hrs engineering study will take a year, cover a lot of detail and cost less than 6 crores per study. Four submissions could cost less than 30 crores and they would save 1000’s of crores in later rework and redesign. The present situation- ADA alone- limits ideas generation. 

2.      Money cannot be wasted on charities. The US did not hesitate to scrap even after spending 4 billion on the prototype of the Douglas Avenger II which was just one year from first flight when they decided it would not make the grade-because of changing requirements/assessment. Stopping a dud project and re-starting is always cheaper. In 1993 the IAF (take a bow then Gp. Capt. (later ACM) Krishnaswami and Wg. Cdr. R.N. Singh) precisely stated why the TejasMk1 would not meet operational parameters. People with little knowledge of Aviation re-monetized and protected the failure. The nation has paid for their injudicious and unrealistic decision. 

3.      There was no delay during project studies. The US deliberately delayed introducing the 5^th generation too early-which would have cannibalized into the 4^th generation F 16 sales. They had the time and they waited out the ‘80s until the F 16 sales began to taper down before finally sanctioning the development of the 5^th generation. Once sanctioned the programme proceeded with what in India would be called lightning speed,

  The problems of the LM F 35 were much the same as in the Tejas TDs. The difference was that the L-M had seasoned Leaders who did not panic, took the mistakes and the corrections in their stride  as a part of the day’s work and swiftly and cheerfully made the necessary correction including a rather stupid customer induced one of increasing the weapons bay size and then having to get back to the smaller original. They did not make any attempt to hide or cover up their “Failures” or “lack of knowledge” because their credentials, unlike ours, were indisputable.

“Confession being the first step to atonement” corrections could be professionally and swiftly carried out as there was no fear of being “shown up”. The difference was in the attitude of the leaders and that came from experience vs the lack of it. 

LM and ADA tackled the problem of weight entirely differently. L-M knew weight was crucial, the 7% excess was identified as a critical, formed a team and redesigned the aircraft for weight because without first reducing the weight all the subsequent work- FBW, U/c & brakes. structures etc would have to be redone. Tejas Mk1 had a 37% overweight but ADA failed to appreciate the downstream effect of it, focusing instead on making the project too big to be shut down. FSED should NOT have been sanctioned without weight being corrected by a Tejas Weight Attack Team- no need to acronym it- but that team was needed. This difference w.r.t weight was is the tipping point. The two consequences were: The F 35 has already earned in exports > 50% of what was spent on its development. The Tejas because of its overweight is not fit for production let alone export. 

The F 35  programme  ran similar to the Tejas-delays , cost overshoot, development problems etc- to that of the Tejas. Regarding nature of problems yes but the approach to problem solving differed. The differences are telling.

Development Milestones

a.      Three years (1997-2000) between ordering and finishing the TD part of development

b.      Three years (2000-2003) to incorporate Customer dictated changes to the weapons bay etc.

c.      Two years (Jan 2006) First LRIP (Low- rate Initial production.) 1^st a/c delivered.

d.      Three years for formation of handling Flight (manned by LM, US Govt, Military) with capacity to train 100 pilots and 600 personnel. To be noted well is that ALL training simulators were ready on time and used extensively.

e.      Programme ran 5 years behind schedule IOC was in 2015 instead of planned 2010 and cost overrun was about two times. FOC was on 2018.

What is to be done

The following would be my decisions if I had any say in matters. It is based on my experience in Engineering development, of following the Tejas project from inception and my own keenness as an Enthusiast. The points below are based only on “open source” knowledge and I have NO inside information. If ADA has secretly built a flying AMCA TD and has access to hard stealth data my comments will change. Views are personal. Pl. read with caution and use your own judgment to come to a conclusion.

1.      1. The decision on financing AMCA should be delayed. At present ADA is not ready for it and will waste funds and Time. It simply has not done enough homework. The delay will not matter because ADA has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to ignore commitments once it has got the funds therefore the delay by the MoF will be of no consequences.

2.      2. The present top personnel/system does not seem to have the capability technical or managerial to handle the AMCA. They have already wasted about ten years and done very little on practical Stealth which is the big feature of the 5^th generation. This major core competence is missing. The same with DSR. In Avionics/ EW wise they are probably in surer grounds but the core 5th generation technology development is missing and must be overcome- or else we repeat the Tejas. Only nouns will change but problems will be the same.

3.      3. ADA weight control, for technical or whatever reasons, is completely below standard as is their detail design supervision.

4.      It is attention to small details that add up to a brilliant design. The Tejas has potential but ADA has not succeeded.in developing it. ADA should first be “paced” by being given two tasks to be completed in about nine months and implemented in the next nine months. The two tasks are

a)      To have an airframe for the Mk1/1A weighing >2000 kg.

b)     To have the undercarriage strut weight at about 80% weight of the MiG 21 FLs.

c) develop a DST using one of the LSP series aircraft- if that is possible.

These targets are not arbitrary but carefully considered and when implemented will transform the Tejas . A parallel “one lakh-th rule” should examine all Tejas components where at least a 55 gms. savings can be done should be re-analyzed for weight savings. It is estimated to be around a ton. this level of attention to  detail has been lacking so far.

With the weight saving the empty weight will come down to < 6000 kg and the aircraft will quite as good as it was meant to be. Without weight savings the Tejas project will continue to be a MGNREGA and use up funds that could be put to better use.

4. What ADA or HAL can be funded for the 5th generation is a small subsonic TD Stealth Demonstrator project costing less than <500 crores to develop Stealth and 5^th generation related technologies and to be ready in about 3 years or less. The HAL HJT 36 did it in 3 years and it can be done again .If they cannot do it  in 3 year they will not be able to do the bigger project to any time.

5. A team headed by TACDE and appropriate inputs from private and public sector should set up a computer game to see what level of stealth would be required in a platform that can launch an Aakash to snipe a F 35 or a JF 20.

6. We will never be able to find the funds to feed the demand of inefficient R&D organizations. Contrary to common sense we have a development system- in aviation- where every case studied showed development costs that were significantly higher than the US. My post on this blog on the Tejas Mk1 vs, F 16 costs refers. This is  wasteful – it should be about a third of US costs-and impoverishes other more deserving projects/efforts. It is to be noted that in forty years ADA has failed to deliver a useful fighter. A purge of teh organization is needed if we ar eto expect any results .