The WAY to WOW Shows
Tale of the Joint Strike Fighter
February 20, 2024
Automatically generated from YouTube captions; names and wording may contain errors.

[0:00] lessons from the military I'm your host Kevin bemel and we're here every Tuesday morning at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time uh well it's not morning if you're on the west of the East Coast right it's 1 pm in the 1 p.m it's in the afternoon so um we talk about business lessons that can be drawn from military Doctrine from military history from uh the leadership practices of um of of out standing uh people in the military and today I'm going to do something a little bit

[0:35] different so we're going to look at of all things military procurement the buying of of weapons so this tale starts almost 30 years ago and um at the time there were um each of the branches of the military flew its own type of uh aircraft so I'm going to quickly go to share my screen and just give you an idea of what they looked like so in the

[1:11] Navy um the platform that was being flown was the fa18 and here's one in Flight you notice it's a it there's two air crew in this um you notice the tail hook there because the Navy um launches and lands its uh aircraft on aircraft carriers um this right here this is actually um um an additional fuel tank and it maybe a little bit hard to see but these um under wings these are for carrying missiles other bombs other types of ordinance and by the way notice

[1:46] the picture in the background where the wings are folded up so when you're on an when you're on an aircraft carrier space is at a premium and um you uh you if you fold Wings up you can fit more of them in the hanger deck or for that matter even on on the flight deck okay so so this was the aircraft being flown by the Navy um a at the time um the uh Air Force was flying the F16 the Falcon and um you this is the Falcon in flight and you'll notice

[2:23] they're looks you know fairly similar right it's it's it's a jet you've got um the you in this case it's carrying um three uh looks like three fuel tanks um and then you've got ordinance um these look like these look like missiles I would guess different types of missiles under the wings um the F16 um had had one air crew as opposed to the fa18 which had two okay but looks looks pretty much the same right and then finally you have the Marine Corp which

[2:59] was F which was flying the uh av8b better known as the Harrier and this these are Harrier too Second Generation and and again doesn't look too different right you've got the here you have your uh your you know additional um fuel tanks you've got your ordinance hanging below the wings um you you have your pilot there the Harrier like the F-16 had one air crew and so um you know I mean they look a little bit different and and you know

[3:34] if if they if they were on the ground lined up next to them you wouldn't say oh they're all the same aircraft but but on the face of they look very much the same I I would argue so um in um oops here we go in um 198 um 1986 I believe it was yeah so the um the defense department came up with the idea of replacing all three of those with one platform with one aircraft

[4:11] basically okay and they they created something called the calf and and I'm I I don't have the name the common affordable lightweight fighter right only only only the Department of Defense could come up with an acronym like calf for an airplane right um I frankly it it it seems pretty silly to me and the calf was a joint venture between DARPA which is the uh defense Advance research projects agency and the United States Navy and the idea was um uh to develop a single uh

[4:49] aircraft that would meet the needs of the U the US Air Force the US Navy and the US Marine Corps um and actually that that project ran from 93 to 1994 four okay and um among the people or among people is the wrong word but among the entities that suggested that calf was a good idea was here's a surprise right loed Martin um and also McDonald Douglas so at the time um they were two of the largest uh

[5:24] defense contractors around um I I I believe they've since merged um although maybe it's I think it's Boeing maybe that took over McDonald Douglas if I'm not mistaken but um um McDonald Douglas doesn't uh exist as a separate company anymore okay and you know you can kind of well not kind of you can you can see the motivation on the part of loie Martin so um instead of having to compete in for three different uh programs to you know be able to develop

[6:00] the programs and and then and then get the production of the programs right if they could get one program to uh handle all three uh branches of the military that fly you know jet fighters so they would become the sole supplier of jet aircraft and and it's not literally triple their business because the the Marine Corps doesn't have as many fighters as either the Navy or the Air Force but in other words they could group all this business together

[6:35] so what you know it's it's easy to see that um um Loy Martin um had a had a vested interest in in pursuing this program less clear though is why the Department of Defense pursued it now um what what became known as The Joint Strike Fighter and and and what is now called the F35 lightning it's actually the F-35 lightning too but in any event what what what came to be called initially The Joint Strike Fighter was made up of this

[7:10] calf program and another program called jast and jast is the Joint advaned Strike technology and um it had a similar purpose um as CF and it started it also started in 1993 right and nothing like yeah duplicate programs and you know fortunately I suppose someone must have figured out we have these two different programs doing the same thing and so they merged calf and jast together to create the Joint Strike Fighter program

[7:46] now the original program was expected to cost $200 billion so so um this was as of uh 2000 basically 2002 2001 in $2 2002 okay and the eventual cost to develop the Prototype $ 46.5 billion twice the cost of what they expected okay now here's the other

[8:21] thing uh they originally projected it would take five years to I'm sorry six years to develop This Plane it ended up taking 15 years okay and by the way that was on top of a five-year period to to determine who the prime contractor was going to be um a a competition between lockie Martin and Boeing and locking locked Martin won with the x35 Boeing loss with the

[8:56] X32 okay so it took over 20 years to develop This Plane um whereas the initial time projected was five or maybe 10 years it's it's it's I it wasn't clear exactly um you know how the five years of of choosing the prime contractor worked into this but but let's let's let's let's be generous let's say it you know they expected to take 10 years and it took 20 okay so took double the time overd double the cost now you would saywell there's a lot of smart

[9:31] people in the Department of Defense and and there's a lot of smart people in the various service branches how could this be so I'm going to show you three short videos of the three planes we just looked at before and and and I want I want as you look at these I want you to try and spot why these planes are not nearly as similar as they seem just by looking at a static picture Okay so let's going to go ahead and share my screen

[10:07] again and okay here we go so look at this one first

[11:41] so I'm going to stop this video here because he's covered several important points that that highlight that highlight the distinctive qualities of this aircraft one was uh the the tail hook or the arresting uh the arresting gear which is the way the way this jet lands on the deck of a carrier is it drops the tail hook there's cables strung across the deck of the carrier and that CA that tail hook catches on best case scenario the first or second um uh cable and and that aircraft goes

[12:17] from flying at I I think it's roughly uh 120 miles an hour or whatever to zero in in in the space of like 20 yards okay so imagine the amount of force that's being put on this aircraft um the airframe of the aircraft by it recovering on the deck of the carrier and as he pointed out look how heavy the landing gear is so when when that landing gear hits the deck of the carrier okay it's not like landing on

[12:52] the ground when you land on the ground you're coming in on a um on on a Surface that's not moving but when you're landing on a carrier that deck is coming up to meet you in most cases um and so you're slamming together and there's much more force and therefore the airframe needs to be um I mean the landing gear needs to be much stronger the airframe does as well but the landing gear needs to be much stronger finally he mentioned that it's a twin engine aircraft and that's because if you're flying over water and one of your

[13:29] goes out and you're a single engine plane that's it you're going in the water you're not able to Glide and land okay unless you were already lined up to recover and even then landing on an aircraft carrier when you have no power is is a dicey dicey proposition at the very best so the reality is if you're a single- engine plane and your engine cuts out especially in a jet like this where you have very little Glide um to it you're you're in the water so you

[14:04] need a second engine to make sure that you're able to recover on the deck okay so let's look now let's look at the uh F16 okay here here we go

[14:44] okay so this this was a a news report done by a a local uh TV station um you if you noticed and I'm going to scale this back so you can see this well hopefully there okay notice the landing gear is not nearly as robust as it was on the fa18 also notice this is a single engine air aircraft which is fine because if you're over land and your engine cuts out so if you have to you can land on the ground okay um and

[15:22] and so you know you don't need to carry uh you don't need to have a second engine now you could say well why not just build an Air Force jet that has all the um uh additional structural Integrity that has a second engine well there's a good reason for not doing that one is it dramatically increases the weight of the aircraft itself okay and so when you do that there at least a couple things happen one is it takes a lot more fuel

[15:58] to power that aircraft okay because it's heavier and two since the aircraft itself is heavier and it has to carry more fuel in order to stay a loft the amount of ordinance that it can carry shrinks okay because you can only you can only put in the air so much it's not it's not an unlimited thing and so the the what the fa18 gives up by being able to land on a carrier is it can't carry as many missiles as many

[16:34] bombs Etc well there's no reason since there's no reason to have all that additional weight in an Air Force Jet right that don't carry it because then you can carry more bombs and you can carry more missiles and you're better prepared for air to ground combat and if necessary air-to-air combat okay so let I'm going to close this down now and now let's look at the the [Music]

[17:27] Harrier notice the carrier is what's called a v vertical takeoff and Landing aircraft okay now you say well why do you have to take off from a carrier vertically well an actual aircraft carrier you don't have to take off vertically however from um the Marine Amphibious ships they don't have as long a Runway so the Marine Corps needs the vertical uh takeoff and Landing ability in in

[18:04] order to um be effective in executing their mission so okay so let's go ahead and stop this so the Marine Corps also the Marine Corps needs to be able to take off and land vertically but and also since it flies over water it needs a two engine Jet right for the same reason the Navy does okay um but the reality is in general the the Harrier does not need to

[18:39] be as long range aircraft okay because what the Marine Corps does is is amphibious operations so um one of their amphibs will go in close to Shore and they will launch their ground and air forces close to shore so the the Harrier in in in practice only flies over the water for a short period of time and then it needs to do Overland operations okay so although in in some ways these aircraft look very similar the reality is they have very different

[19:17] Mission requirements and and and as a result when the Department of Defense decided to create one plat form to accommodate all three needs what they did was created a fight between the Navy the Air Force and the Marine Corps over how the plane was going to work because the Air Force didn't want to give up didn't want to take on extra weight because that restricted its ability to pursue its Mission the Navy wouldn't

[19:54] give up a second engine because that would endanger the pilot as well as the aircraft and the Marine Corps had to have a vertical takeoff and Landing aircraft Because by the time the Joint Strike fight Joint Strike Fighter came into being Marine Corps the the purpose for the Marine Corps and the doctrine it followed necessitated having that kind of capability and so the three service branches started fighting and I remember at the time um a friend of mine had completed medical school and so I flew

[20:30] out to um he was going to medical school in Chicago and I flew out there and he had his uh Uncle picked me up from the airport and we started talking and it turned out his uncle was one of the Air Force procurement officers for The Joint Strike Fighter and we started talking about the the difficult difficulties he was having negotiating with the Navy and the Marine Corps in order to get a plane that would work for the Air Force's needs and he told me

[21:05] at the time that it was it was a ridiculous concept to try and create one airplane in order to do what amounted to three very different tasks and and that's that's the key reason why in the end it took twice as long and cost over twice as much to develop the joint structure fighter because the solution ended up being that the JFS was designed in three different variants one for the Air Force One for the Navy and

[21:40] one for the Marine Corps now it was just you know it it was just just ridiculous so just when I'm just looking at some of my notes Here ah so um not o and then not only did um were there there the differences I spoke about but the kind of um technology in um computer technology navigational technology it takes in order to do vertical takeoff and Landing is is

[22:15] different than what the Air Force and and navy needed in terms of a con conventional airplane that was you know taking off off a Runway or off a carrier and developing that techn ology took much much longer than the um than than the designers anticipated and so because it took much longer to develop the Marine Corps variant the whole project got extended and so by the time the Joint Strike Fighter um was was being put into

[22:51] um in this the Air Force the f-16s had been flying for over 50 years okay they were way past time when when they should have been replaced um and now the same wasn't wasn't true of the fa18 um because the fa18 actually started out as the F18 and then it took on F-18 is f stands for fighter a stands for attack they have fighter is more like airto a attack is more like air to ground so um at least in Navy parlaments um and

[23:28] and what happened was they kept updating um the F-18 and fa18 over the years so when I was an airwing chaplain we had what were known as Legacy fa1 18s they were the C variant which was a one Ceder okay and they were they were really old but we H and they were known as The fa18c Hornet but I had a couple of squadrons that were flying the fa8 um FS e and Fs I think it was those were known as the super Hornets they were the

[24:03] two Twan aircraft that was actually the one I flew in I flew in an fa18f and and so they were much newer um and in fact um uh Boeing I believe is the is the prime contractor for the fa was for the fa18 they they could have done another variant um and and kept current um but in instead they just extended the life of of well what they ended up doing was extending the life of of the fa18 C's which had long which really were obsolete having been replaced by the later by the Super

[24:39] Hornet but they had to extend them because the Navy needs a certain number of aircraft and the new one wasn't ready it kept taking longer and longer and longer so why that's important is the longer you fly an aircraft an individual aircraft okay okay the more wear and tear you have on the frame especially in the Navy where you're landing on an aircraft carrier and they become harder and harder to maintain so that's one problem the second problem is once a prime contractor knows that its planes

[25:16] are going to be phased out it starts slowing down its production of replacement parts and so I know for my Squadron it was my Marine Corp Squadron that at the time it was a Marine Corps Fighter Squadron at the time they were flying the Legacy Hornets they were having a devil of a time finding replacement parts in order to keep their jets flying so you say well you've been talking for 25 minutes what does all this mean from a business standpoint well I think any one of us if we'd been

[25:54] given the information that that I just gave you over over the last 255 minutes would have been able to see that it makes no common sense or violates common sense to try and have one platform do three different functions right it's like saying a car can do the same thing as an SUV and an SUV can do the same thing as a pickup truck but that's not the case yes they're all motor vehicles but the reason we have cars SUV and pickup trucks is because there's

[26:31] three different needs and and they need to be met by a different kind of platform and no notice nobody's ever tried to develop a vehicle that that can be a car and SUV and a pickup truck all at the same time it makes no sense it completely violates common sense so in and so my my my point in in going through this is as we work in our businesses we we we need we we don't want to be Pennywise and pound foolish in the end it was ridiculous The Joint Strike

[27:07] Fighter was was ridiculous and here by the way here it is now so the the the U The Joint Strike Fighter uh finally was was launched um 2017 I believe it is okay so here it is um six years later and the various branches are already looking at what is going to be the next generation of aircraft so it's been operational for only a few years I mean it took 20 years to get it operational and here we are already looking at replacing it and you

[27:44] know if it takes another 20 years to replace it which it well might um then you know it's a good thing we're starting now but it but it it it just it it doesn't make sense each service Branch needs to handle um the pro the design and procurement of of what they need in order to serve their mission and the same thing is true in our businesses so there's a tendency to try and standardize things because it seems like it'll be less expensive we'll save on maintenance we'll save on this we'll save on that that may be the case if

[28:19] your Southwest Airlines and you fly all short routes so then flying only 737s may make sense because you know you it streamlines your your spare parts it streamlines your maintenance training it streamlines the training of your pilots and your flight attendants all that kind of stuff okay but Southwest Airlines tends to be an outlier most Airlines for example don't fly only short hops they fly short meeting them along and so they need different types of aircraft to do

[28:55] that and the same as is true I suspect for our businesses so when we're looking at taking on technology or doing some kind of training what we need to look at is what's really needed in this situation and and and develop it for that circumstance that also allows us to develop things more quickly Implement them more quickly which allow will allow us to stay competitive in a better way than having long long L times lag times

[29:31] to try and develop something that will work in in several different circumstances but in the meantime we're we're eating up time trying to get to this sort of optimized you know product or or service that in the end is going to leave us in the dust as other people optimize on a on a on a you know more peac meal basis so I I think that the lesson to take away is um you know obviously don't be Penny wise and pound foolish but but really

[30:06] think about are things as much the same as they seem all right or am I just seeing the sort of outer shell of it and when I climb inside I find that things are have much more variation than I think they do okay by the way look at your look at people right we all look basically the same but but inside each one of us is an individual and treating people like individuals I hopefully we've recognized that that's what we need to do the same thing needs to be done for all the

[30:43] various things we get involved with okay and and we have to look Beyond The Superficial to what's underneath so that's the lesson of the joint strip fighter and hopefully the department of Defense has learned its lesson um we'll we'll see with the upcoming programs so anyway I hope you uh hope you enjoy the show a little bit different than what I normally do got to see some cool aircraft and that kind of thing um would be interested to hear your comments about it so uh do share something in U uh the social me social media um about

[31:20] it if if you liked it or if you didn't like it whatever happy to hear whatever you have to say and and that's our show for today so tomorrow on um B people making money I'm going to be talking about how you build a real estate portfolio using a concept known as leverage so anyone who has a large portfolio of real estate this is the tool that they use I'm gonna and I'm going to take you through it step by step and then next week on Monday at 10: am Pacific time is the next uh episode of trust and Estates weekly my guest is

[31:55] going to be Hillary Cooper from uncluttered and she has a quite an interesting service that she does for people who are administrating um trusts and estate so I invite you to uh tune in to see Hillary next week and then we'll be back a week from today with the next episode of business lessons from the military so thanks very much for watching and signing off as I always do Marie you are my bell all the best folks