Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!mips!apple!veritas!amdcad!amdcad!military From: netxcom!tiwasawa@uunet.UU.NET (Takashi Iwasawa) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Expensive fighters Message-ID: <1991Jun1.012838.28064@amd.com> Date: 30 May 91 19:42:08 GMT Sender: military@amd.com Organization: NetExpress Inc., Vienna, VA, USA Lines: 103 Approved: military@amd.com From: Takashi Iwasawa In article <1991May29.011112.6898@amd.com> Carl Rigney writes: >I'm just suggesting that equipment should be chosen to fit the doctrine >that it'll be used to fight under (with flexibility for when doctrine >shifts). I know the Pentagon loves their state-of-the-art fighters >that push technology and budgets to the wall, but it still seems true >to me that pilot training makes the biggest single difference in >performance, training requires air time, and the more expensive the >plane the less time it'll spend in the air training. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that. Equipment DOES make a difference, but it's hard to tell without hindsight exactly how much difference a given change in hardware makes. One good example is the Battle of Britain. Looking at the specifications, there isn't that much quantifiable difference between the Hurricane and the Spitfire. The quality of pilots flying Spitfires and Hurricanes were similar, as was their opposition. Yet fighter pilots on both sides clearly felt that there was a very perceptible difference in the performance of Spitfires versus Hurricanes when flown in fighter combat, and that feeling is backed by what we know of combat losses. So if more Hurricanes had been procured (and more pilots trained with more air time) by scrapping the more expensive Spitfire, would the British have done better in the Battle of Britain? Most people (including myself) would say "No". But then where do you draw the line between sufficient technology and too much technology? A second factor is that the training has to be appropriate. Again, in the Battle of Britain, many RAF fighter pilots had as much time in the air as their Luftwaffe counterparts (after all, the Luftwaffe didn't even exist until Hitler scrapped the Treaty of Versailles). Yet the average RAF fighter pilot did not do as well as his Luftwaffe counterpart in fighter-to-fighter combat in the Battle of Britain due to outmoded training based on stereotyped "attack by the numbers" on unresisting bombers. [ I know I'll get flamed for this .... Let me quickly point out (1) I do know that the Luftwaffe lost more aircraft in the Battle of Britain than the RAF. But if you look at ** Fighter ** losses of both sides, they are remarkably close. And given that the RAF had the advantage of fighting over it's own country, with ample airfields for emergency landings and radar and ground controller network to help them surprise the enemy, while the Luftwaffe pilots were often fighting near the limit of their fuel and tied to bombers that Goering insisted they escort, even losses indicates to me that the German pilots were better. (2) If you want to argue about the outmoded training, please read some books by the RAF aces first; "Johnnie" Johnson, Douglas Bader, Bob Tuck, and "Sailor" Malan among others have written books about their experiences.] So just increasing the amount of time pilots spend training does not assure a better combat performance. On the other hand, better equipment might allow a pilot to survive his initial mistakes (take Bob Johnson, a P-47 ace from the Eighth Air Force. In his first combat, he did everything wrong, and came back only because the Thunderbolt was such a tough bird.). This is important because the losses peak in the early combats, and because a disproportionate number of victories are produced by a rather small group of experienced experts (in the Eight Air Force, Hub Zemke's Fighter Group had over 1000 victories, I believe. And the top half dozen Luftwaffe aces have over 1500 victories among them.). In effect, training IS very important, but the best training is actual combat, provided the pilot survives. So better equipment has an effect beyond the immediate combat. Finally, let me note something about the Pentagon. Personnel costs (pay, pensions, medical care, housing, training, et cetera) account for more than 50% of the military budget. This means that even if the equipment were given to us free by Santa Claus, and the fuel and spare parts too, we still couldn't double the size of our armed forces without appropriating more money. Given this, there is a very strong incentive to try to get more combat power by better equipment rather than by more equipment, which needs more manpower. And the new equipment (which admittedly costs a lot more to buy initially) are designed to require much less maintenance, which translates to lower manpower requirements, and to lower costs over the life of the equipment. If we had the same number of F4 instead of F16 in Operation Desert Storm, we couldn't have generated the sortie rates we did. So why does Congress (and we in sci.military) agonize over cutting equipment programs to save money, when the real spending is in personnel costs? Because politically, it's impossible to cut the personnel costs...... I better stop before I go over the edge into politics. Hey, I'm not responsible, Carl over there made me do it :-) [Followups re Battle of Britian to soc.history, please. And followups re politics only by email. In answer to a query the author replied that he thinks the difference in cost between spitfire and hurricanes may have been on the order of 25%. Much different than the difference between a $2.5 million mudfighter vs. $60-80 million Kitchen Sink Fighter concept. --CDR] -- Takashi Iwasawa DISCLAIMER: Net Express Inc. has nothing to do with these opinions. I'm the one solely responsible for them. Takashi