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Home » Trimble on the Case » Obsessed with Vertical Lift?

Obsessed with Vertical Lift?

JSF stovl.jpg

The short-​​takeoff-​​and-​​vertical-​​landing (STOVL) F-​​35B is either what makes the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) pro­gram the stuff of genius — or a sure bet for failure.

Think about it.

With the F-​​35B, the JSF pro­gram lays claim to an unprece­dented aero­dy­namic hat trick: one com­mon fighter design/​three very, very dif­fer­ent ways to take off and land. On the other hand, the F-​​35B is the biggest headache to develop and is already the lead­ing cause for a two-​​year-​​delay and $5 bil­lion cost over­run. And the air­craft still has yet to fly.

The F-​​35B also hap­pens to be the diplo­matic glue that attracts an inter­na­tional part­ner­ship to chip in one-​​tenth of the JSF’s devel­op­ment cost. Only two of the eight JSF part­ners want the STOVL air­craft, but one of those is the UK. And if the JSF pro­gram loses the UK, you may say good­bye to the rest of the inter­na­tional part­ners and hello to Eurofighter Typhoon Tranche 3. (Without inter­na­tional cover, the JSF also may look a lot more invit­ing to the increas­ingly rapa­cious budget-​​cutters in the Pentagon.)

So let’s hope the F-35B’s largest cus­tomer — the US Marine Corps — knows what it’s doing.

It is in this con­text that I was so inter­ested to read the new book, Harrier II: Validating V/​STOL, by Lon O. Nordeen. Perhaps, by under­stand­ing why the USMC believes the Harrier — and the F-​​35B — are so nec­es­sary, we may under­stand the dis­porpor­tion­ate influ­ence it wields over the JSF program.

AV8.jpg

First, it has to be under­stood that, historically-​​speaking, V/​STOL is an aero­dy­namic fetish. To under­stand this point, please check out the aptly-​​titled V/​STOL Wheel of Misfortune. Of the 45 V/​STOL projects attempted in his­tory, only four — the Harrier, the V-​​22, the CL-​​84, and F-​​35B –ven­tured much beyond the pro­to­type stage. Three of them involve the Marines.

In his book, Nordeen unfor­tu­nately chooses not to ana­lyze or com­ment but to straight­for­wardly present the USMC’s obses­sion with the Harrier as a prod­uct of Vietnam. Close air sup­port seemed to be quite a topic of dis­cus­sion (imag­ine that?) at the time. To deal with the issue, the Air Force wanted to buy the A-​​10, the Army favored the Lockheed AH-​​56A Cheyenne and the USMC focused on the AV-​​8A Harrier. Asked by Congress to pick the best option, DOD (sur­prise!) backed all three. (The Cheyenne was later cancelled.)

It’s clear from Nordeen’s writ­ing that the USMC likes V/​STOL because of the obvi­ous: its fight­ers don’t need a long run­way or an air­craft car­rier to take off. In the Falklands War, Royal Air Force GR Mk. 3 Harriers arrived — and oper­ated — in the South Atlantic war zone on board the con­tainer ship Atlantic Conveyor (until the ship was struck by an Argentine exo­cet mis­sile). Such bas­ing flex­i­bil­ity briefly appealed to the US Air Force, which in 2004 and 2005 flirted with the idea of buy­ing a bunch of F-​​35Bs.

Whether that flex­i­bil­ity is really worth the price in reduced aero­dy­namic per­for­mance and increased main­te­nance bur­den is unfor­tu­nately not within the scope of Nordeen’s book. Even within his cho­sen lim­its, how­ever, it is neg­li­gent as a his­to­rian for him to omit any ref­er­ence to the Harrier’s trag­i­cally hor­ren­dous safety record.

While the V/​STOL Harrier fleet were a potent force in the Falklands con­flict, the advan­tage of bas­ing flex­i­bil­ity alone hasn’t proved piv­otal in any mod­ern engage­ment since. It is impres­sive to think of the devo­tion the Marines lav­ish on this one aero­dy­namic qual­ity, per­haps to the detri­ment of all else.

– Stephen Trimble

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February 27th, 2007 | Trimble on the Case | 351622 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2007/02/27/obsessed-with-vertical-lift/Obsessed+with+Vertical+Lift%3F2007-02-27+18%3A21%3A44murdoc You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  1. Moose says:
    February 27, 2007 at 3:36 pm

    With due respect, Stephen, there’s another con­sid­er­a­tion with the USMC’s pref­er­ence for a V/​STOVL fighter: the Gator Navy. The Gator Navy’s pri­mary fixed-​​wing air defense and CAS is the Harrier, will be the F-​​35B, and The LHD, LHA, and LH(X) designs can­not sup­port CTOL air­craft with­out sub­stan­tial redesign. So either the USMC would have to con­vince the USN to pay the cost of con­vert­ing them, or base the entire Marine fighter force to the Navy Supercarriers. And since there’s only 11 Supercarriers, which don’t nor­mally oper­ate with the ARG/MEU(SOC)s, that would leave an awful lot of Marines with poten­tially no fixed-​​wing cover.
    In addi­tion, while forward-​​basing hasn’t proved “deci­sive” on a Falklands level since that war, the LACK of for­ward bas­ing has arguably hurt, alot. How many tar­gets of oppor­tu­nity have escaped since 2002 because a cruise missle or fighter was too far away when the order was given?

    Reply
  2. Chris says:
    February 27, 2007 at 4:05 pm

    Stephen, you for­got the YAK-​​38 Forger as an oper­a­tional VTOL air­craft. And how can you call the Canadair CL-​​84 “much beyond the pro­to­type stage” when only four were built?
    And the ben­e­fits of being able to oper­ate off of one of the 7 LHD’s or the five LHA’s is pretty impor­tant to the USMC. (Double the num­ber of hulls they can oper­ate off of, and what exactly is the point of the Wasp class with­out S/​VTOL aircraft?)

    Reply
  3. Stephen Trimble says:
    February 27, 2007 at 4:08 pm

    Hey Moose, I see where you’re com­ing from, but that’s a slightly dif­fer­ent point. Yes, the ARG’s are pretty use­less with­out the Harriers (although there are some alter­na­tives). But, even so, that’s really a con­se­quence of V/​STOL, not a justification.

    Reply
  4. atacms says:
    February 27, 2007 at 4:13 pm

    Let’s imag­ine a very long pro­tracted con­flict where air­power is in exten­sive use, unlike Afgahnistan or Iraq. Add to the sce­nario air­bases becom­ing tar­gets of tac­ti­cal bal­lis­tic mis­siles, cruise mis­sile and sab­o­tage by enemy SOF. Then you will see the mobil­ity and ground sur­viv­abil­ity of V/STOL’s through use of a FARP and relo­cat­able airstrips. And only then will the USMC will be hailed as vision­ar­ies able to see the future of warfare.

    Reply
  5. Stephen Trimble says:
    February 27, 2007 at 4:17 pm

    Hey Chris, you’re right. I should have included the YAK-​​38. It didn’t have a pretty oper­a­tional record, but it was indeed a big fleet for the Soviets.

    Reply
  6. Foreign.Boy says:
    February 27, 2007 at 4:17 pm

    I’m not expert.. by any stretch.. but the Flying flap­jack looks like it would be a great mod­ern air craft. Put some stealth abil­i­ties into it.. maybe an inter­nal bomb­bay… and you’d be smok­ing!
    But I think it would be too big for stealth caba­bil­i­ties.. but every­thing else makes sense
    – large sur­face area = good lift lots of carry poten­tial
    – more fuel stor­age
    – Flat front, good for low radar detec­tion
    Maybe with mod­ern mate­ri­als and com­puter assisted design… the flap jack would kill..
    Add on that NASA plane that can change it’s frame in flight… could be very interesting.

    Reply
  7. Bob Ehling says:
    February 27, 2007 at 4:44 pm

    Two com­ments:
    1) VTOL also gives the Harrier the capac­ity to “viff” (vec­tor in for­ward flight), which allegedly gave it a high kill ratio at low alti­tudes in Red Flag exer­cises some time ago. The lift fan may have sim­i­lar attrib­utes for future ACM, par­tic­u­larly flight at the high angles of attack nec­es­sary to fully exploit future air-​​to-​​air mis­sile capa­bil­i­ties.
    2) Don’t for­get that work is already under way to use the lift fan bay for a directed energy weapons suite. That capa­bil­ity might be worth the extra engi­neer­ing costs.

    Reply
  8. RTLM says:
    February 27, 2007 at 11:14 pm

    The F-​​35B will hap­pen. It is the only new fighter that the Marines and the British can launch off their Aircraft Carriers. By cut­ting the F-​​35B, you’d be ask­ing the Marines and British to either replace their Carrier Fleet or con­sider dis­band­ing it.
    And hav­ing sec­ondary Blue Water air wings atop much less expen­sive ships is an advan­tage worth the wait and the cost.

    Reply
  9. pedestrian says:
    February 28, 2007 at 4:45 am

    I like the F-35B’s VTOL capa­bil­i­ties, but miss VTOL F-​​109, which sounds like a jet ver­sion of a tilt rotor V-​​22. I won­der why F-​​109 was can­celled.
    AH-​​56A is pretty cool too, even the price and tech­nol­ogy was a chal­lenge. How would it have per­formed in the world today if it was in ser­vice, espe­cially in the assy­met­ric war­fare just like in Iraq?

    Reply
  10. George Skinner says:
    February 28, 2007 at 11:19 am

    Just wanted to respond to a cou­ple of points ear­lier in the dis­cus­sion:
    I think the AH-​​56 would have seri­ous prob­lems with sur­viv­abil­ity in cur­rent oper­a­tions in Iraq. From what I’ve read, one of the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for dump­ing the AH-​​56 and going on to the AAH/​AH-​​64 Apache pro­grams was that Vietnam had taught the US Army that they needed to build a lot more armour and sur­viv­abil­ity fea­tures into their heli­copters, which had proven extremely vul­ner­a­ble and suf­fered huge losses to ground fire. AH-​​56 started in 1965, so hadn’t ben­e­fit­ted from those lessons.
    As far as the Flying Flapjack, I don’t think that a jet-​​powered ver­sion would be espe­cially prac­ti­cal. The effec­tive­ness of the prop-​​powered ver­sion came from direct­ing the prop slip­stream over the wing sur­face in such a way that improved lift and also reduced induced drag by coun­ter­act­ing the vor­tices along the edges of the wing/​body. Without that prop slip­stream, you’d just have a big low-​​aspect ratio wing that would be pretty draggy.

    Reply
  11. John Duino says:
    March 1, 2007 at 1:33 am

    VTOL has always been trou­ble­some, as can be wit­nessed by the (con­tin­u­ally grow­ing) list of failed air­craft. When I approached a senior engi­neer while at Rockwell ask­ing about VTOL he pulled out a study done by “some smart-​​aleck young engi­neer.” To sum­ma­rize, if you took all the thrust required for VTOL, lose all the weight and com­plex­ity required for the clap-​​trap doors, noz­zles, etc., and just shoved the thrust out the rear end, a same-​​planform air­craft could STOL in ~10–20% of CTOL air­craft.
    Mr Skinner is cor­rect re: the flap­jack. The prop­wash over the sur­face is what gave it the extra­or­di­nary results.
    One inter­est­ing sta­tis­tic came out of the first Gulf War. Approx 15% of con­ven­tional air­craft struck by mis­siles were shot down. (my # might be slightly off, but not by far). The per­cent­age of Harriers shot down when struck by a mis­sile? 100%! The basic rea­son is that most mis­siles are heat-​​seaking, which head to the hottest parts, namely the noz­zles. Where are the noz­zles on each? F-18/F-15/F-14/F-16…they’re many feet behind the crit­i­cal com­po­nents of the engines and even the air­craft. Where are the noz­zles on a Harrier? Directly below the wings, directly astride the engines, fuel lines, con­trol systems…the heart of the beast.
    The list of STOL technologies/​techniques/​tricks is prob­a­bly orders of mag­ni­tude longer than VTOL, with just as high a per­cent­age of fail­ure (if not higher). It still comes down to physics and the air: there’s only so much you can make it do. Until we start mod­i­fy­ing the air (plasma?) to alter the physics I just don’t see VTOL improv­ing.
    Just my $0.02.

    Reply
  12. Ian M. Guajardo says:
    March 1, 2007 at 11:55 am

    Yes, the F-​​35B Lighting II V/​STOL should pro­ceed as planned. The need for a super­sonic V/​STOL air­craft was proven dur­ing Desert Storm and in the Faulklands.
    AV-​​8B Harrier II has been inter­grated into Marine Corps amphibi­ous war­fare doc­train. Cutting the pro­gram will only cause a defi­ciet in the over all war fight plans and doc­trains.
    Also, the new gen­er­a­tion amphibi­ous assult ships USS Wasp (LHD-​​1) class of ships are designed for the inter­gra­tion of the Harrier/​F-​​35B and the Osprey. These classes of ships can­not oper­ate con­ven­tional air­craft (due to the lack of cat­a­pults and angle-​​deck flight deck.
    Oddly enough, the U.S. Air Force was also con­sid­er­ing a small num­ber of F-​​35B V/​STOL as part of their strike pack­ages for future bat­tles due to the capa­bil­i­ties of deploy­ing with the troops, short run­ways, and quick reac­tion strike teams in a short notice.
    There are three other coun­tries cur­rently using ver­sions of the Harrier:
    Italy, Spain, and India.
    A plan should include these three and addi­tional coun­tries to pro­vided a boost in the F-​​35B pro­gram.
    Keep the F-​​35B pro­gram going strong!

    Reply
  13. Ian M. Guajardo says:
    March 1, 2007 at 11:56 am

    Yes, the F-​​35B Lighting II V/​STOL should pro­ceed as planned. The need for a super­sonic V/​STOL air­craft was proven dur­ing Desert Storm and in the Faulklands.
    AV-​​8B Harrier II has been inter­grated into Marine Corps amphibi­ous war­fare doc­train. Cutting the pro­gram will only cause a defi­ciet in the over all war fight plans and doc­trains.
    Also, the new gen­er­a­tion amphibi­ous assult ships USS Wasp (LHD-​​1) class of ships are designed for the inter­gra­tion of the Harrier/​F-​​35B and the Osprey. These classes of ships can­not oper­ate con­ven­tional air­craft (due to the lack of cat­a­pults and angle-​​deck flight deck.
    Oddly enough, the U.S. Air Force was also con­sid­er­ing a small num­ber of F-​​35B V/​STOL as part of their strike pack­ages for future bat­tles due to the capa­bil­i­ties of deploy­ing with the troops, short run­ways, and quick reac­tion strike teams in a short notice.
    There are three other coun­tries cur­rently using ver­sions of the Harrier:
    Italy, Spain, and India.
    A plan should include these three and addi­tional coun­tries to pro­vided a boost in the F-​​35B pro­gram.
    Keep the F-​​35B pro­gram going strong!

    Reply
  14. Ian M. Guajardo says:
    March 1, 2007 at 11:58 am

    Yes, the F-​​35B Lighting II V/​STOL should pro­ceed as planned. The need for a super­sonic V/​STOL air­craft was proven dur­ing Desert Storm and in the Faulklands.
    AV-​​8B Harrier II has been inter­grated into Marine Corps amphibi­ous war­fare doc­train. Cutting the pro­gram will only cause a defi­ciet in the over all war fight plans and doc­trains.
    Also, the new gen­er­a­tion amphibi­ous assult ships USS Wasp (LHD-​​1) class of ships are designed for the inter­gra­tion of the Harrier/​F-​​35B and the Osprey. These classes of ships can­not oper­ate con­ven­tional air­craft (due to the lack of cat­a­pults and angle-​​deck flight deck.
    Oddly enough, the U.S. Air Force was also con­sid­er­ing a small num­ber of F-​​35B V/​STOL as part of their strike pack­ages for future bat­tles due to the capa­bil­i­ties of deploy­ing with the troops, short run­ways, and quick reac­tion strike teams in a short notice.
    There are three other coun­tries cur­rently using ver­sions of the Harrier:
    Italy, Spain, and India.
    A plan should include these three and addi­tional coun­tries to pro­vided a boost in the F-​​35B pro­gram.
    Keep the F-​​35B pro­gram going strong!

    Reply
  15. Benjamin Onorato says:
    March 1, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    An unmen­tioned fact is that the devel­op­ment of this tech­nol­ogy is unprece­dented. It’s ver­sa­til­ity is unlike the Harrier, and requires extremely intense engi­neer­ing. It will cost a lot of money to do some­thing for the first time, but once you fig­ure it out, it gets a lot cheaper.

    Reply
  16. SteveD says:
    March 1, 2007 at 2:14 pm

    The F-​​35B has a seri­ous busi­ness case — it is the only air­craft that can meet the USMC/​UK RN require­ment (not to men­tion the “Harrier car­rier” require­ments of India, Italy, Thailand, and Spain, and poten­tially of Japan). More impor­tantly, if the Marines have any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for a “high per­for­mance” fixed wing jet, it is that they need a jet organic to units oper­at­ing from expe­di­tionary strike groups (no CVNs) and from short/​unprepared/​minimally hard­ened for­ward air strips. VSTOL pro­vides this capa­bil­ity, with the under­stood cost in range/​payload.
    However, tra­di­tional low-​​and-​​slow, eyeball-​​on-​​target CAS is obso­lete in the era of ubiq­ui­tous MANPADS, SHORADS, and light AAA. CAS must be replaced by direct air sup­port, pro­vid­ing NRT response to tar­get des­ig­na­tions by ground con­trollers using an illu­mi­na­tor (laser or MMW) or pro­vid­ing a 1m3 tar­get cube based on GPS off­set and laser rang­ing and a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion (e.g., tank, troops in trench, mor­tar team in SE cor­ner, 1st floor, masonry build­ing, etc.).
    The AF F-​​35A is an unnec­es­sary air­plane. It does noth­ing sub­stan­tially bet­ter than the already in pro­duc­tion F-​​22A except carry a some­what larger (but still inad­e­quate) bomb load; and is much weaker in range, air-​​to-​​air capa­bil­ity, and sus­tained cruise. The AF would do bet­ter buy­ing 10 AEF’s worth of F-​​22s (380), updat­ing the A-​​10 to A-​​10C, and reman­u­fac­tur­ing or buy­ing F-​​15Es with AESA radars and helmet-​​mounted sights, drop­ping the F-​​35, and expe­di­tiously retir­ing the range/​payload lim­ited F-​​16.
    The Navy F-​​35C is also of ques­tion­able value. While it has some­what more range/​payload than the F-​​35B, it offers no real ben­e­fit over the F/​A-​​18E/​F except stealth. It can­not match top-​​notch Russian– or European– air supe­ri­or­ity air­craft. The Navy needs a replace­ment for the F-​​14D — a fast, long range, truly multi-​​mission air­craft, or should invest its money in super­sonic, stealthy SSGN/​DDG/​CG-​​launched cruise mis­siles and long-​​loiter stealthy sub­sonic UCAVs.
    –SteveD

    Reply

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