08-27-2011, 12:22 AM
The combination of our aerospace companies in the Seventies and Eighties wasn't their own idea, I assure you. The DOD realized they couldn't support multiple companies R&D and production lines with the budget they had to work with, and as each lost a major contract, the DOD worked with Department of Justice to ensure a purchase of the losing company would not fall afoul of monopoly rulings. Some, such as Northrup, managed to shoot themselves in the foot by producing a major program and taking it through testing - billions of dollars - without a clear requirement. The resultant F-5G, later F-20, was a wondrous transformation of the T-38/F-5 with a remarkable engine that would have made another MiG-21-type aircraft that had so many fewer engine parts that they could have flown two or three sorties a day, easily. That didn't matter much against the lack of requirement for the aircraft, and Northrup then became a part of Grumman.
The Belgian M249 machine gun purchase was a quid-pro-quo for the Deal of the Century, the purchase of the F-16 by the four countries of Europe in the early Seventies who had all agreed to all buy the same aircraft. Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway had committed to the F-16, but Belgium was being strongly pressed by France to buy the Mirage F-1 with the M53 SNECMA engine. This multi-billion dollar contract was coincidentally cemented after a DOD announcement that they had adopted the Belgian machine gun that became the M249. FWIW, future of the F-16 was assured by the consortium, and, to date, there have been over 4,400 F-16s produced to date, a phenomenally successful run by recent standards.
ETA: The F-111/FB-111 probably should have been restricted under then-current interpretations. At the time, strategic treaties, i.e., "special weapons," were counted as a "single" or "MIRV" (Multiple Independently-targeted Re-entry Vehicle), and if they were ever tested as MIRV, they would always be counted as MIRV under the treaty. (B-52 aircraft were counted as MIRV, for instance.) FB-111 aircraft, being assigned to Strategic Air Command (SAC), carried the same sort of payload as the B-52, so the soviet Union, quite reasonably, attempted to group Tactical Air Command's conventional attack aircraft with those of SAC. FWIW.
The B-1 was canceled by Carter, true, but he did so knowing we had the B-2 under design. Reopening the B-1 line ensured we would not have enough funding to build more than a token 20 B-2 stealth bombers, a much more effective bomber.
One more edit: While the 22 months of F-14 development is a remarkable story, it's not completely surprising even by today's standards. Typically, engine development takes about twice as long as airframe integration, and the Navy left the F-14 with the TF-30, the same crappy engine used in the F-111. It left the F-14 crew with an engine they had to manage in combat, RPMs, angle of attack, etc., when you'd really rather be doing something else. FWIW, the F-18 was designed to be cheaper than the F-14, and it failed miserably at that; it would have been cheaper and more effective, IMO, to use the entire F-18 funding line to re-engine the F-14 with the F100 engine (same as F-15/F-16), then buy more F-14 aircraft, because nothing else came close to the Phoenix interceptor missile, but that's not what happened, obviously.
The Belgian M249 machine gun purchase was a quid-pro-quo for the Deal of the Century, the purchase of the F-16 by the four countries of Europe in the early Seventies who had all agreed to all buy the same aircraft. Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway had committed to the F-16, but Belgium was being strongly pressed by France to buy the Mirage F-1 with the M53 SNECMA engine. This multi-billion dollar contract was coincidentally cemented after a DOD announcement that they had adopted the Belgian machine gun that became the M249. FWIW, future of the F-16 was assured by the consortium, and, to date, there have been over 4,400 F-16s produced to date, a phenomenally successful run by recent standards.
ETA: The F-111/FB-111 probably should have been restricted under then-current interpretations. At the time, strategic treaties, i.e., "special weapons," were counted as a "single" or "MIRV" (Multiple Independently-targeted Re-entry Vehicle), and if they were ever tested as MIRV, they would always be counted as MIRV under the treaty. (B-52 aircraft were counted as MIRV, for instance.) FB-111 aircraft, being assigned to Strategic Air Command (SAC), carried the same sort of payload as the B-52, so the soviet Union, quite reasonably, attempted to group Tactical Air Command's conventional attack aircraft with those of SAC. FWIW.
The B-1 was canceled by Carter, true, but he did so knowing we had the B-2 under design. Reopening the B-1 line ensured we would not have enough funding to build more than a token 20 B-2 stealth bombers, a much more effective bomber.
One more edit: While the 22 months of F-14 development is a remarkable story, it's not completely surprising even by today's standards. Typically, engine development takes about twice as long as airframe integration, and the Navy left the F-14 with the TF-30, the same crappy engine used in the F-111. It left the F-14 crew with an engine they had to manage in combat, RPMs, angle of attack, etc., when you'd really rather be doing something else. FWIW, the F-18 was designed to be cheaper than the F-14, and it failed miserably at that; it would have been cheaper and more effective, IMO, to use the entire F-18 funding line to re-engine the F-14 with the F100 engine (same as F-15/F-16), then buy more F-14 aircraft, because nothing else came close to the Phoenix interceptor missile, but that's not what happened, obviously.