Media
by Dennis Jennsen
On the Defence Materiel Organisation website “correcting the record”, Air Vice-Marshal John Harvey attempts to “correct the record” but in so doing makes numerous inaccurate claims and statements about the cost and capability of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).
His comments, in response to an article written by me and published in the Australian Financial Review on January 7, 2009, are consistent with the Defence Department’s policy of shooting the messenger in the case of any criticism of the planned JSF purchase.
First, AVM Harvey states that I said the DMO was hiding behind unnecessary security classifications. I said no such thing. What I did state was that they hid behind classification. The classified nature of material is clearly reasonable and expected.
But the department’s appeal to the secret nature of some unrelated specifics attempts to do is put up a smokescreen to cover inadequacies of fundamental capability.
The fact AVM Harvey cites that there are plans for the US to have whatever number of aircraft is irrelevant to the argument as well. The US has bought duds before, and have cancelled projects before as well. That bears no relation to the questions which need asking and answering in our region.
Second, the point of my comment on the RAND report (and RAND did do analysis leading up to and surrounding the Pacific Vision exercise) was more to do with the fact that Dr John Stillion had been fired as a result. As I said, shooting the messenger. In addition to Dr Stillion, previous USAF Chief of Staff General “Buzz” Moseley and Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne were also fired as a result of very public support of the F-22 and criticism of the JSF.
Third, AVM Harvey yet again displays a lack of attention to detail. Harvey states that the exchange rate at the time of one costing was around 0.75. It wasn’t - it was over 0.8. The point of average unit recurring flyaway cost is that no one pays this price – it is an average, and only the cost of production, and would be a US cost.
The fact that this cost was continually referred to was once again a case of misleading conduct. It hides the real price of the aircraft. It is more than strange that the price of over $100 million only became publicly known when DMO chief executive officer Steve Gumley was pushed for the more representative procurement price in defence committee hearings. This was over a year after they had told me the procurement price was $131 million each.
AVM Harvey has a propensity for “correcting” my facts with errors. I have castigated him for this in the past, where he “corrected” my quoting of the price of the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme with a flawed cost for the scheme that was so incorrect it indicated a total misunderstanding of price and inflationary effects.
It is no wonder the cost of the JSF is so badly misstated. Now he attempts to “correct” my statement on the binding price for the JSF for Norway, inferring that it is the “Never to Exceed” price for Israel! The reason for misrepresenting and misleading on the cost issue is clear – a “never to exceed” price has a completely different nature to a binding price! Furthermore, despite the fact that Norway’s figures are the only really hard numbers we have got on price, DMO has not even bothered to look in to them, as they do not know what they represent!
Fourth, in terms of stealth, AVM Harvey displays a complete ignorance on the issue. The physics of radar propagation and reflection, refraction etc have not changed at all since the 1970s.
What has changed is the ability to number-crunch far more complicated shapes due to computing power, and that has resulted in the more advanced shapes seen today. The thing that has changed is that in the 1970s very few had access to resources (read computing power) required for the calculation of radar cross section (RCS). Now that sort of computing power is ubiquitous. AVM Harvey is quoting almost verbatim what Tom Burbage of Lockheed Martin has said on the issue.
Despite AVM Harvey’s contention that Defence have detailed knowledge on the stealthiness of the JSF, the fact is that they do not have this for an Australian JSF. The US has let it be known that the Australian, British and all other export JSFs, will not have the full stealth package that the US gets. The fact that stealth is a critical component of the JSF’s raison d’etre does not bode well for its effectiveness with degraded stealth.
What analyst Carlo Kopp (who I cited in my article) did was conduct a parametric operations analysis using the calculated (it has to be said, kind to the JSF) data and determined what this meant in a relatively advanced integrated air defence system (IADS). In the US context, the JSF will probably meet its stealth specification, but the specification is outdated by the latest radars and missiles available from Russia.
Using extant IADS capability from the 1990s was problematic. It is akin to designing a current model Ford Falcon based on a VN (circa 1988) Holden Commodore as the competition.
Fifth, despite the contention in the brief “correcting the record”, the rebuttal said NOTHING that refuted my point about network transmissions giving detection opportunities. AVM Harvey’s rebuttal is that networking is indeed nothing new, but that the JSF’s networking is being implemented to an extent beyond any other aircraft. Well so what? Would you really expect a new generation aircraft to be designed with less networking, particularly when this is one of the cornerstones of its capability?
In short, DMO and AVM Harvey’s “correcting the facts” does nothing of the sort, it is simply an article that is designed to mislead and misrepresent.
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