Selling In Circles

Lockheed Martin does work, as my friend Pete might say:

Right now, the Pentagon is paying Lockheed billions to build a new fleet of F-22 Raptor stealth fighters. The Air Force and Navy have justified the program, which has become something of a boondoggle, by pointing to the spread of U.S.-built F-16 and F-18 fighters around the world. Indeed, a few years back, Lockheed was circulating a promotional pamphlet for the F-22, which stressed the need to maintain U.S. "air superiority" by pointing to countries around the world that were either adversaries or potential adversaries. It turned out that most of those countries were worrisome because they had... fleets of U.S.-built F-16s. Arms sales really are the gift that keeps on giving.

Excellent. It seems to me that the role of defense contractors in pushing policy in a bad direction gets weirdly neglected.

Comments

It seems to me that the role of defense contractors in pushing policy in a bad direction gets weirdly neglected.

If only we had a catchy name to describe this phenomenon. Like maybe the something-something complex.

Posted by Steve | May 23, 2007 5:59 PM

Okay, far be it from me to jump to the defense of the something-something complex, but it wasn't Lockheed-Martin selling F-16's to our potential enemies, right? It was, well, us. The U.S. government. I'm not particularly well-informed on this subject, but my understanding was that we sold these armaments to our allies 1) to bolster the defenses of our proxies in the Cold War, so that they were better-armed than the Soviet proxies and 2) as a reward, of sorts, for various policies that they implemented at our behest.

So while it's altogether likely that the something-something complex worked as a functional unit to engender its continuing relevance, this isn't quite so sinister as evil Lockheed developing planes using tax dollars, selling them abroad to further their own profits, then using their nefarious dealings as justification for further tax dollar infusions.

Posted by David S | May 23, 2007 6:06 PM

This is ignorant. The reason we need an advanced fighter if we want to maintain air superiority isn't because U.S. defense contractors have sold planes to allies (sales that had to be approved by the U.S. government, of course); it's because our current fighter designs are old and no longer represent cutting-edge technology. The F-16 was introduced in 1978 and the F-18 was introduced in 1983.

Air superiority gives us the luxury of fighting punitive air wars (when we chose that tack, as in Kosovo) at minimal cost in lives to us; it also enables us to deter more numerous ground forces. The rest of the world isn't standing still -- other countries, including France, China, and Russia are building their own fighters. If we take our air superiority for granted, we will lose it.

IMO, the F-22 is a far better investment than expanding the Army and Marine Corps significantly.

Posted by Fred | May 23, 2007 6:14 PM

Sorry, but I've clicked through all the links in these pieces and can't find anything other than an assertion that L-M was circulating a pamphlet saying potential adversaries were flying F-16s and F-18s. Who are these potential adversaries? North Korea? Iran? Iran has some 30 year old F-14s, but they're so obsolete we retired them from our inventory.

I'd like to see a copy of the pamphlet before I believe this.

Berrigan's LA Times piece seems to go on and on about how awful it is that Turkey is buying F-16s and F-35s when they are available. Somehow she neglects to mention that they are a NATO ally. She implies that's a poor use of Turkish resources, but I think that's something for the Turks to decide.

Posted by Campesino | May 23, 2007 6:34 PM

One reason we sell to other countries is not just for LM's benefit and at LM's behest but those foreign sales are also pushed by the Armed Forces to keep their per unit prices down and to keep assembly lines open.

In the 70s and 80s, at Carter's encouragement, Northrop pretty bravely put up $1B of its own money to make an advanced fighter aircraft to sell to foreign governments. Though this was encouraged by some branches of government, it was opposed by the Air Force who wanted to sell F-16s to other countries to keep our costs down. End result, actual free trade and let the market decide got shitcanned by the bureaucrats, and a pretty neat and cheap aircraft got scuttled.

I think the same or similar is happening with the F-22 or F-35 with regards to foreign sales.

Posted by jerry | May 23, 2007 7:09 PM

Re David S's comment "it wasn't Lockheed-Martin selling F-16's to our potential enemies, right? It was, well, us. The U.S. government."
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1) In May 2001, Ariel Sharon used US-made F16s to bomb the Palestinians. Not only was this strongly condemned in the Islamic World, it was condemmed in Europe. A fact which the New York Times and US news media chose to ignore.

The US State Department moved to condemm Sharon, but Bush ordered them to halt.

Bush then turned around and approved the sale of 52 more advanced F16s to Israel in June 2001, for a price of around $2.3 Billion. The F16s are made in Fort Worth Texas.

2) Plus, Guess which wife of a certain tubby Vice-President was on Lockheed's Board of Directors from 1994 until the 2001 inaugural?

Guess who gets $millions in campaign donations from Lockheed?

3) Subsequent interrogations of Al Qaeda showed that the order to execute the Sept 11 attack was issued in July 2001.

4) In a Nov 2001 interview, Bin Laden justified the Sept 11 attack as follows:
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"The American people should remember that they pay taxes to their government, they elect their president, their government manufactures arms and gives them to Israel and Israel uses them to massacre Palestinians. The American Congress endorses all government measures and this proves that the entire America is responsible for the atrocities perpetrated against Muslims. The entire America, because they elect the Congress."

Ref: http://www.dawn.com/2001/11/10/top1.htm

5) In an earlier 1998 interview with ABC, Bin Laden had also warned about Israel's use of US-made F16 fighters:

"It is not enough for their people[Americans] to show pain when they see our children being killed in Israeli raids launched by American planes, nor does this serve the purpose. What they ought to do is change their governments which attack our countries. The hostility that America continues to express against the Muslim people has given rise to feelings of animosity on the part of Muslims against America and against the West in general. "
Ref: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/interview.html

6) I am NOT defending Bin Laden. But what disturbs me greatly is that our President lied to us about why Sept 11 occurred and our news media worked strongly to promote that lie, even though they had contrary information in their own archives.

In Sept 23 2001, the New York Times even put out a "News Analysis" titled "Israel as Flashpoint not Cause" which claimed the Israel -Palestinian problem was not a motivation for Al Qaeda --even those anyone who followed Bin Laden knew this was bullshit.

Posted by Don Williams | May 23, 2007 7:14 PM

Re Fred's comment "Air superiority gives us the luxury of fighting punitive air wars (when we chose that tack, as in Kosovo) at minimal cost in lives to us;"

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This is bullshit.

We LOST a stealth F117 in Kosovo --around Feb 1999 -- and the wreckage was carried away by the Serbs before the Wesley Clark could get his thumb out and bomb it. God knows who the Serbs sold the debris to --because we sure don't.

Any foreign college professor in Chemistry would
know how to analyze that debris, determine its composition and how to make the stealth material. When a F117 crashed here in the USA during an air show, the military immediately sealed off the crash site and recovered all the debris.

The loss of that F117 debris damaged US national security in a way I cannot discuss but which some Republicans like Porter Goss know.

I suspect that sometime around Sept next year, we're going to see bit of new tarnish on the Bill Clinton legacy -- which is also the Hillary Clinton legacy.

For more details, check with Melvin Dubee.

Posted by Don Williams | May 23, 2007 7:25 PM

Re Jerry's comment : "it was opposed by the Air Force who wanted to sell F-16s to other countries to keep our costs down "
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Keep OUR costs down?

Over $3 BILLION /YEAR in foreign aid goes from the US government to a rather bemused Israel Government.

I say bemused because the aid has strings attached --requiring the Israelis to spend the aid only on US-made "something". Guess what that "something" is?

Posted by Don Williams | May 23, 2007 7:33 PM

Take a look at The Arms of Krupp sometime for an amazing discussion of this phenomenon in the decades leading up to WWI.

Posted by dan Pittman | May 23, 2007 7:49 PM

Don Williams:

When you wrote:

"this is bullshit"

In response to my claim that:

"Air superiority gives us the luxury of fighting punitive air wars (when we chose that tack, as in Kosovo) at minimal cost in lives to us..."

I expected you to attempt to refute that claim -- perhaps by telling me about the large loss of American lives we suffered from dropping bombs on Serbs from 15,000 feet. No such luck. Instead, we get this ominous warning about one of (? two?) planes we lost out of thousands of sorties:

"The loss of that F117 debris damaged US national security in a way I cannot discuss..."

Could you discuss it if we agreed to let you kill us afterwards?

Seriously, the possibility of losing a high tech plane in combat is not an argument for not building one, and in any case, as you acknowledge, there is a simple way to prevent technology from being stolen from a downed plane: bomb it.

As for Osama bin Laden's distress at Israel using American-build F-16s to bomb Palestinian militants: Did he give us any props for using American-built F-16s to bomb the enemies of Muslims in Kosovo? How about for giving Palestinians American-built M-16s to fire at Israelis? No? Didn't think so. Maybe Osama would prefer if Israel were still buying Mirages from France, but I don't think it would change the equation in the Israeli-Palestinian (née, Arab-Israeli) conflict.

Posted by Fred | May 23, 2007 7:55 PM

Fred
Your error was in saying that use of advanced fighters allows us to fight "at minimal cost in lives to us".

The bill --in lost lives -- of losing that stealth F117 has not yet come due.

Posted by Don Williams | May 23, 2007 8:29 PM

PS Fred
Exactly what major threat to US national security did we have in Kosovo, by the way?

I know, I know -- we wanted to build that AMBO pipeline so we could collect tolls on Russian Caspian Sea oil shipments.

But what THREAT was worth putting that F117 at risk?

Note that my concern is not that someone is going to build a copy of the F117. But ever hear of asymmetrical attacks?

Posted by Don Williams | May 23, 2007 8:34 PM

Meanwhile, there was a feature tonight on The NewsHour about families holding fund raisers to supply body armor to their boys going over to Iraq because the US government can't be bothered to spend the money. It's all about priorities for your scarce defense dollars

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | May 23, 2007 8:44 PM

I guess Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are the potential enemies in mind, definitely not Israel, Turkey, or Taiwan. Bush sold F16s to Musharaff; but I'm not sure they were delivered. I remember that India went nuts, because F16s can deliver Pakistan's nukes.

About the Pentagon's argument and Matt's attempt to take it seriously, it works the other way around. We don't want more weapons to counter the weapons we've sold overseas. Generals and Republicans in general always want to spend more and more money on super cool high tech weapons. So since we've been electing them so much, they've spent that much. Then we sell other countries our old weapons, so we can funnel that money into even more super cool weapons. But don't worry. Pretty soon, no more Republicans.

Posted by Gary Sugar | May 23, 2007 9:04 PM

I think that it isn't crazy that we need a next generation air superiority fighter, given recent developments in Chinese and Russian fighters (especially given Russian AAM developments).

I don't think the worry is that we will be fighting these regimes themselves, but that they will make money by selling them or giving them away to clients.

This dovetails with the interesting discussion at Crooked Timber recently about China expanding its influence in Third World countries as part of its geopolitical strategy.

Now, I don't know if we need THREE next generation air superiority fighters, but it seems to me that anything that we need one. Whether that should be the F-22 or the JSF (I prefer the F-22 because it is, well, cooler), I don't know.

Posted by Patrick | May 23, 2007 11:20 PM

The bill --in lost lives -- of losing that stealth F117 has not yet come due.

Yeah, I'm sure no one else has worked on stealth technology and the only way they could develop it was to analyze a scrap of an F-117. Also, what good is our stealth fighter against another stealth fighter?

I think that it isn't crazy that we need a next generation air superiority fighter, given recent developments in Chinese and Russian fighters (especially given Russian AAM developments).

What we need are advances in unmanned drones and missiles to counter these hypothetical advances. The F-22 is a toy for the fighter jocks and a boondoggle for Lockheed.

Posted by Col Bat Guano | May 23, 2007 11:51 PM

I find it hard to believe that we are anywhere close to developing manned drones that have the same capabilities as an air superiority fighter, but I can be convinced otherwise.

Posted by Patrick | May 24, 2007 12:43 AM

1) Re Patrick's comment, what's are "manned drones"??

2) The advantage of an "Unmanned" drone over a fighter is that it can do more extreme manuevers -- since it does have to worry about the pilot blacking out from high G forces.

3) One significant DISADVANTAGE of the F22 and JSF over F16s is cargo. Air to Air missiles and bombs have to be stored within the body of the craft -- because hanging them of the wings would run the stealth. Hence, the payloads of F22 and JSF are lower than F16s.

Plus, you can't hang extended range fuel tanks off F22s/JSFs -- so their range tends to be shorter -- I don't have the figures.

Posted by Don Williams | May 24, 2007 1:03 AM

it's because our current fighter designs are old and no longer represent cutting-edge technology. The F-16 was introduced in 1978 and the F-18 was introduced in 1983.

So you're argument is that we need to drop cash on Raptors and JSFs because they're new and shiny, while those stupid old Fighting Falcons and Hornets are stupid and old?

First of all, while the models might have been introduced in decades past, they certainly haven't remained static with avionics from decades past. The airframes might be the same, but the current machines are different beasts from those that first came off the assembly line.

Secondly, whether technology is "cutting edge" or not is besides the point. The measure is effectiveness, as in "are these machines effective in doing their job?" and "are the new machines much more effective than the old ones?" By all accounts, on the first point yes, they are, and there are few if any aircraft made by foreign countries that can compete with them. On the second point, the jury is still out. While pilots do rave about the F-22 being a joy to fly, the question is do they substantially improve upon the F-16 and F-18 in capabilities? That has yet to be shown.

In any event, the fact that we allow any of these machines to be sold overseas to fair-weather allies means that we might be going head-to-head with them at some point in the future when the going gets rough. Which is Matt's whole point. It's not as if the Raptors and JSFs are going to be staying domestic. They're already planning on selling these puppies to foreign nations that might someday not have our best interests in mind (hell, the JSF program is based on this concept). So wash, rinse, repeat.

Posted by josephdietrich | May 24, 2007 1:30 AM

The Arms of Krupp was a fantastic book.

Posted by merlallen | May 24, 2007 3:13 AM

The bill --in lost lives -- of losing that stealth F117 has not yet come due.

Please, please tell me this is not serious. You think no one else knew about stealth? For God's sake! The man who wrote the original paper on minimising RCS, back in the 70s, was a Russian! (Pyotr Ufimtsev) It was just lucky for Lockheed that the Soviets didn't pick up on it before they did.

So forgive me if I don't immediately become terrified at the thought of armadas of Iranian stealth bombers sweeping in over New Jersey.

Posted by ajay | May 24, 2007 5:51 AM

I highly doubt that L-M needs this sort of marketing material to convince Congressmen/women and Senators to get behind the development of a new fighter. Not when jobs in the respective districts are in the balance. The military already wants stuff like this, and the elected representatives want to either bring more defense contractor jobs into their districts or at least maintain the ones they have. In fact, if they fail maintain the defense contractor job levels in their districts, they'll have a hell of a re-election fight on their hands.

Posted by Kurzleg | May 24, 2007 9:22 AM

I believe President Eisenhower had something to say about this subject...

Posted by Thomas Allen | May 24, 2007 10:49 AM

Nonesense! The Russian is selling their Flankers to anyone who have money to buy. The Flanker is superior to the our best current fighters, the F-15 Eagle. Please get your fact straigth.

I often wonder why people of your political inclination know so little about military issues. This is the main reason Democrats are not trust with National Security issues. Not because Democrats are evil or hate America. It is because there less than a handful of Democrats who master the issue.

Democrats are not going to beat Republican on National Security issue until they take it seriously. That mean knowing the subject inside out, and especially refrain from making ignorant statement

Posted by Minh-duc | May 24, 2007 6:39 PM

Jerry

The US is damned lucky the F5g (F20) Tigershark never got made.

It was on most measures a better air superiority fighter than the F16: smaller and therefore more likely to be able to sneak up on its opponent, faster ability to change manoeuvres (the key determinant in success in air to air combat).

When the US went into air war over Vietnam, it got a nasty shock. The loss ratio F4s: Mig21s was *more than* 1.0 (they did somewhat better against the MIG19s and 17s). They had to create the 'Top Gun' school and retrain their pilots, and give their pilots back their guns.

josephdietrich

The F18 E/F is not old, it is a modern fighter (well, reasonably so) and almost completely different from the A/B version (really a different airplane).
The F18 A/B are almost worn out (sea air and carrier takeoff is bad for fighters--corrosion).

F22 may be a great plane, but as you allude to, the USAF can only afford 200 of them.

The F22 is a bit like the German ME262 jet fighter. Faster and better than anything in the sky, but they could only field 70 or so of them (Galland's wing). The P52s used to hang around the airfields to kill them on takeoff or landing.

The maintenance burden on the F22 will be crippling, too-- a consequence of the stealth technology. And of course it's not really a ground attack fighter.

The JSF might be the greatest fighter ever made. I have my doubts though. It's bigger than the F16, and will, AFAIK, have less time in combat due to fuel tankage restrictions.

In air combat, if you break off, first, you die.

Time to recommend Charles Salter's The Hunters
http://www.amazon.com/Hunters-Novel-James-Salter/dp/0375703926

which is based on the author's experiences hunting MIGs over North Korea in an F86. It is completely gripping and you really get a feel for the issue of fuel and combat radius.

The MIG21 informed the design of the Tigershark: emphasis on passive radar detection (if you turn your radar on, the whole sky knows where you are), low visibility, manoeuvrability.

re Stealth

The real problem is if the other guy's air defence can see it. Which given the Serbians know, and they were liaising with the Iraqis (and perhaps the North Koreans) we can reckon that pretty much everyone knows.

The US problem will be, as in any war, to put enough platforms on top of the enemy's air defence that it is overwhelmed. Shoot down his interceptors and pound his SAM and radar sites into silence.

*this* is why the decline in US aircraft numbers due to spiralling cost is a problem.

The other problem is that the crucial Electronic Warfare mission is now in the hands of a bunch of 35 year old A6 airframes flown by the Navy (for both services). The F18 replacement has been delayed.

Posted by Valuethinker | May 25, 2007 12:59 PM

Minh Duc

The latest model F16s are better fighters than the F15s.

Greater all-round visibility. Less engine smoke. More manoeuvrable. Smaller radar and visual signature. A better dogfighter.

As to the Flanker. Threat inflation is an old game in the defence industry. Russian avionics will not be up to Israeli/US standards. I doubt the Flanker is measurably better than the F16.

Even if it were, 200 F22s will not alter the strategic balance. The USAF will be unlikely to be able to field more than a single wing of this plane in a future war (given maintenance etc.). The plane is just too expensive to procure in quantity.

What recent exercises with the Indians *did* show is that the US advantage in pilot quality has been eroded. And that is about training, air time, professionalism.

Posted by Valuethinker | May 27, 2007 9:05 AM