Exhibit VF-12. Retyped

STATEMENT OF

MR. GEORGE A. SPANGENBERG

CSA AND CONSULTANT

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR POWER

OF THE

ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

U.S. SENATE

CONCERNING THE F-18 PROGRAM

Revised 3 October 1975

Prepared 14 September 1975

G.A. Spangenberg

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

I am pleased to be here in accordance with your request to give you my personal views on the proposed F-18 program and related matters. You will recall that I appeared before you two years ago under somewhat similar circumstances to give you my opinion on the 1973 version of the OSD plan to cut in half the number of F-14 aircraft which had been programmed to replace the F-4. That plan which originally involved prototyping of an F-15N, a modernized F-4, and a reduced capability F-14 was wisely rejected by the Congress when it became apparent that the final outcome would have been a loss in effectiveness and an increase in costs.

The OSD has had what appears to be an obsession with the search for a lower cost alternative to the F-14, and its weapon system, ever since contractual problems were experienced with Grumman in 1971. Last year, after no acceptable pure fighter alternative had been found which was cheaper than the F-14, a multi-purpose fighter attack concept was suggested which would serve as both an F-4 and A-7 replacement. Congress and the OSD then combined to kill any hope that this VFAX concept could provide an adequate replacement for these types by directing that the design should be a derivative of the Air Force's lightweight fighter. This direction not only limited the competition, but it tended to constrain many of the requirements which were ultimately specified to something less than the levels which the F-4 and A-7 inventory currently possess. After permitting both of the competing contractors considerable leeway in deviating from the original Air Force designs, the Navy selected the McDonnell/Northrop design as the best of those under consideration, designated it the F-18 and is preparing to proceed with its development.

Although the losing contractor in the competition has protested the award, there is no doubt in my mind but that the selection process was fair and equitable to that contractor and that indeed the best design was chosen. The source selection decision should not be an issue, although one can certainly question the fairness of the entire procurement process when Air Force technology prototypes were allowed to grow into a large scale development and production program without permitting all of the industry to compete. One can also question the adequacy of the analysis and justifications which started the entire exercise.

As many of you must already know, I consider the F-18 development, and in fact the entire lightweight fighter program, to be ill advised and not worthy of financial support. More capable alternatives are available on which to spend this country's limited defense resources. Since my views differ so markedly from the official Navy and OSD positions, I feel some general comments may be in order on how such differences can exist when the basic facts are not a major issue. The members of this committee, I'm sure, are well aware of the problem in obtaining a frank opinion from subordinate officers within a service or any data from service spokesmen which does not support an OSD position. In too many cases, support is directed from the top under threats which to me appear to be almost blackmail. As I recall, all Navy spokesmen, military and civilian, supported the F-111B in authorization and appropriation hearings for several years, despite clear evidence available to them that a successful conclusion was not feasible. The Congress finally had to direct termination of that program allowing the Navy to escape condemnation for insubordination. Often in the hearing procedure, the OSD spokesman in his initial remarks will emphasize that he has the full support of the service involved, effectively stifling any show of dissent. Within the service, the normal rationale used for justifying those second rate programs which have been directed from above is that, "Anything is better than nothing". This attitude has been apparent within the Navy for the last few years since the completely arbitrary decision by OSD to limit F-14 procurement to about half that which had been justified previously on cost effectiveness grounds to both OSD and the Congress. With the acceptance of the OSD decision, every effort was expended in finding reasonable alternatives while hoping that eventually logic would prevail to reverse the decision before production of the preferred models ceased. The situation is bad and appears to be worsening as OSD assumes more and more of the authority in the weapons system acquisition process.

With that background out of the way, let me give you my evaluation of the F-18 program, using data presented by the Navy in previous hearings, or published in trade journals, as my source of technical and cost information. I will try to simplify the situation to the essential ingredients of whether the F-18 is worth buying as either a fighter or as an attack aircraft on the grounds of cost and effectiveness. Starting with the fighter case, we find by interpolating the Navy program cost and delivery data given in the Senate Appropriations Committee Lightweight Fighter Hearings, that the first 400 aircraft will be delivered between the years 1981 and 1986 at a total program acquisition price of $5.3B in constant FY '75 dollars. This means an average price of over $13M, certainly more than the average cost of an additional 400 F-14s. If one were to extrapolate from the FY '75 price of an F-14, using the same quantity/price relationship used for the F-18, the average cost of 400 additional F-14s would be under $11M. Since no one has disputed the fact that the F-14 has a great advantage in capability, a normal evaluation would end at this point with the showing of greater effectiveness at a lower acquisition cost for the F-14. However, operating costs have been introduced as a factor with Navy figures giving an advantage of $.5M per year per operating aircraft. If one assumed 18 squadrons of 12 airplanes each, operating cost savings would presumably be 18 x 12 x $.5M or $108M per year, thus allowing the acquisition deficit to be offset after about 8 years of operations. In simple terms then, we start delivering the new fighters in six years, finish in eleven and break even in total cost about the end of the next decade.

Although there has been little public discussion of absolute effectiveness levels of our various fighters, some understanding of relative values can be gleaned from justifications used by the services in starting new programs and then continuing them. As is well known, the capability of a fighter in today's world is primarily a function of its weapons system and its missiles rather than pure airplane performance and maneuverability, although these, of course, cannot be completely ignored. Two years ago before this committee, the Navy testified that the F-14 with its multi-shot system and Phoenix missiles was equivalent to at least three F-4 aircraft with its single shot system carrying Sparrow missiles against a moderate performance bomber raid. You have also received testimony that against some of the more difficult targets that the F-14 and Phoenix combination is infinitely better than the F-4 with Sparrow since the latter has no chance of killing that type of threat. To understand the importance of the weapon system and missiles to an aircraft, you should also know that operational analysts rate an F-14 with Phoenix as twice as good as an F-14 with Sparrow against most targets in most threat situations. Two years ago, you heard from the Navy that a two man crew was necessary in its all weather fighters in order to maximize cost effectiveness. At that time, OSD expressed its concurrence on the issue of crew size. You also know more radar range gives greater effectiveness. With the above background, it is clear that the ranking of Navy fighters in overall combat effectiveness would be the F-14/Phoenix first by a wide margin, the F-14/Sparrow next, followed by the F-4 and then the F-18. The latter suffers from its one man crew, less powerful radar, and fewer missiles, which combine to offset its predicted better reliability and maintainability characteristics. Overall, the F-18 type of fighter would fail a normal cost effectiveness justification over the F-4, a design initiated about 20 years ago.

In judging the capability of the F-18 relative to foreign threats, one should bear in mind the timing of the program. The six years before production corresponds to the time spent in developing, producing, and deploying the F-14. It is obvious that any enemy has the time to produce a counter threat. The enemy's task is enormously simplified if he has to counter only designs such as the F-18. If he chooses, he can easily design a better dog fighter since he has lesser constraints, and can defeat the F-18 in the only area in which anyone now claims a superiority over the F-14. To win in an air-to-air war, we must invest in better weapons systems and missiles if we are to have a chance of winning.

Summing up the fighter case, the F-18 has no more capability than an F-4 and costs more; while it has far less capability than an F-14 which costs no more, and is available years earlier. There is no way in which the F-18 can be justified as a Navy fighter.

Having shown that buying the first 400 F-18s as fighters makes no sense, let us now consider the second 400 aircraft which have been proposed as A-7 replacements. Costs in this case favor the A-7 both in quoted acquisition prices and in operating costs. Again using the Navy data for the total F-18 program, we find the unit procurement price for the F-18 attack models to be a little over $6M while the A-7 equivalent price has been quoted at less than $4.5M. Comparable operating prices were quoted by the Navy as $.9M for the F-18 and $.75M for the A-7. Overall, one sees that the F-18 is about half again as expensive as the A-7, so to be justifiable it should have at least that degree of superiority. It has been stated that the F-18 using three drop tanks has a slightly lower operating radius than the A-7 using two tanks, that the weapon systems are closely comparable, but that the F-18's higher combat speed reduces its vulnerability, making it a better overall attack airplane. Unfortunately, the difference in payload/radius characteristics of the two models is greater than implied by such testimony, particularly if the pilot actually uses his maximum power to achieve the claimed advantage in combat performance. Approximations of the differences in operating radii with the same bomb load and with the same external tanks show that the A-7 outranges the F-18 by about 150 miles when the pilot of the latter does not use his potential speed advantage and by about 250 miles when he does. The F-18 does not approach the 600 mile radius on internal fuel with six 250 lb. bombs, which was one of the requirements in the original A-7 competition in 1963, nor does it match the 750 mile strike radius with external fuel estimated for the F-4 early in its development. To the uninitiated, the attack radius quoted for the F-18 sounds not unreasonable, until one realizes that maximum external fuel is used on the least demanding of the many attack radius problems which exist. Its true range characteristics can better be gauged by noting that it is inferior on internal fuel and without combat power usage to what was initially estimated for the A-4 in 1952. It will be recalled that the A-7 was justified in part by the fact that its capability was twice that of the A-4. Although there are other deficiencies in the design as it has been reported, its range performance alone is sufficient to disqualify it for serious consideration as an A-7 replacement. With a 50% higher price and a 50% lower capability than the A-7, the F-18 cannot be justified as an attack airplane.

In previous hearings, the potential use of the F-18 as a reconnaissance type has also been claimed. Its range deficiency would appear to rule out its use in this role, which normally requires greater range than for the fighter and attack models for which it is doing the reconnaissance.

Somewhat as an aside, I might state that it is probable that the logic used for the F-14/F-18 choice would carry over to the F-15/F-16 issue, although with no cutback yet required of planned F-15 procurement to accommodate the F-16, the problem is less critical to the Air Force. In the Senate Appropriations Hearings, the Air Force showed equal cost forces to be 650 F-16s or 520 F-15s. If the F-15 is worth buying at all, its capabilities must easily offset the small numerical advantage noted.

Summarizing, it is clear that the F-18 is neither effective, nor cost effective, in either fighter or attack roles. It is vastly inferior in capability to the F-14 at about the same total cost, somewhat less capable and considerably more expensive than the F-4 and is inadequate in range and more costly than the A-7. There is no justification for continuing the program.

Funds now planned for the F-18 should be redirected to first increase and then hold F-14 production at a reasonably efficient level. Study work and component development should also be started on an adequate replacement for the A-7 when that becomes necessary. The Navy's goal of reducing carrier types is achievable with a mix of F-14s and A-7s far easier, at less cost, and with a greater level of capability than with a mix of F-14s and F-18s.

There has been much talk by OSD of solving the problem of our numerical inferiority to the threat by the lightweight fighter program and the high-low mix concept, but the figures to date belie the rhetoric. It seems clear to me that OSD should reexamine its policies and adopt only those which give us some chance of winning.