Industry Today: The World of Manufacturing

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 Date:4/21/2009

 

It's Your Call
Lowered Defenses
William R. Hawkins argues that the Obama/Gates strategy behind defense cuts undermines military balance between major states.

The 2010 defense budget unveiled April 6 set base funding at $534 billion. Despite what appears to be a large sum, the budget canceled major weapons programs that will have a large, negative impact on the industrial base extending far into the future. Boeing and Lockheed Martin took a major hit from the termination of the F-22 Raptor air superiority fighter. Only 187 will now be built. Originally the Air Force wanted 750 of what is undoubtedly the world’s most advanced “fifth generation” warplane. After the Cold War, the number was cut to 339 in 1997. More recently, the service was willing to compromise at 243, enough to outfit 10 squadrons. The Air Force will now have to settle for less than a third of the aircraft it had originally recommended as necessary to maintain the air supremacy U.S. forces have long taken for granted.

Boeing will also suffer from the end of C-17 airlifter production and cuts in the F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bomber program, as will Northrop Grumman who builds part of the Navy fighter’s fuselage. Lockheed Martin had its future bomber design put on hold. The cancellation of the Future Combat Systems vehicle program, the Army’s top procurement item, is bad news for General Dynamics. Radar-builder Raytheon loses out on the F-22 and F/A-18, but also on cut backs in national missile defense deployment, as the plan to increase the number of interceptors in Alaska has been dropped. And behind the prime contractors are hundreds of smaller sub-contractors and component suppliers.

Cancellation of the troubled VH-71 presidential helicopter will impact Lockheed and Bell Helicopter, but these firms were merely outfitting a variant of the EH-101 design from Augusta-Westland, the European firm whose defeat of Sikorsky in the bidding had been controversial. The VH-71 program had nearly doubled in costs due to design problems and was terminated for failure rather than from any change in national policy.

Corporate lobbyists will swarm Capitol Hill to persuade Congress to add money to the Pentagon budget to save particular programs. C-17 production has been kept going for several years because it was argued that the program directly or indirectly employed 22,000 people in over 700 companies in 42 states. But in the current climate, with the Federal budget deficit hitting a trillion dollars, it will take more than touting the technological capabilities of systems or the employment impact on communities to change the direction of the Obama Administration’s military spending priorities.

To evaluate the program cuts, let alone combat them, requires understanding the strategic thinking of President Barak Obama. Defense spending and weapons procurement properly flows from how the state of the world and its threats to U.S. interests are perceived.

During his campaign for the White House, Obama stated, “We must not simply recreate the military of the Cold War era.” The Cold War military was designed to deter or fight other nation-states. Instead, Obama wants to wrap up the small wars he inherited in Iraq and Afghanistan, while pursuing arms control and “dialogue” with potential adversaries to avoid future conflicts.

One reason Robert Gates was retained as Defense Secretary is that he shares Obama’s outlook. The future scenarios Gates sees are more “irregular” conflicts like the current ones, where combat is waged at the low end of the spectrum against lightly armed insurgents, terrorists and pirates who inhabit the world’s periphery of failed states. In a speech last May, Gates said, “any major weapons program, in order to remain viable, will have to show some utility and relevance to...irregular campaigns.” Such one-dimensional thinking would endanger America’s strategic superiority against the most dangerous threats – rival major powers with the resources to expand their international influence. It must be remembered that irregular warfare is the tactic of the weak.

Critics of the F-22 claim that since the air superiority fighter has not been deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan, it is useless. Insurgents don’t have air forces, but rival national powers do. The F-22 is to replace the F-15 Eagle which first flew in 1972. There are 522 F-15s currently in service. Their performance has been surpassed by the Russian Su-27, which the Chinese are building as the J-11. In an era of rapid technological change, American security cannot rest on aircraft designed decades ago.

Gates wants to replace the F-22 program with expanded procurement of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will help Lockheed and Northrop. The F-35 will be a highly capable multi-role tactical fighter, but it was not designed like the F-22 to win command of the skies. With only one engine instead of two, it is smaller, slower and cheaper than the F-22. The F-35 will also cost less per plane than the F-22 because it will have a very large production run: 2,443 for the Air Force, Navy and Marines, plus more for export to allies. The high price of the F-22 is partially a consequence of its small production run. The same problem worked against the B-2 stealth strategic bomber canceled by President Bill Clinton after only 21 aircraft were built.

In every conflict, stealth capabilities have been at a premium. In recent Red Flag exercises, the Air Force has configured the first attack wave against an enemy’s most potent defenses around the F-22 and B-2. As Defense News (March 30) reported, “Red Flag planners were unable to get a B-2 for the exercise because the Air Force has only 20 and several were deployed to Guam. Instead, an F-22 stood in for a B-2 in a simulated bombing mission.” Having fewer F-22s than planned will make it harder to carry out such operations for real.

On March 25, Secretary Gates published the annual report on Chinese military power. The report portrays a China rapidly acquiring advanced weapons in an effort to dominate Asia. Though Taiwan remains a focus of Beijing’s military effort the report warns that China wants to project its power beyond Taiwan. The reason B-2s are deployed to Guan is to counter the Chinese.

The People’s Liberation Army has an “anti-access strategy” to keep the U.S. Navy out of the South China Sea. Submarines, anti-satellite weapons, shore based tactical fighters and cruise missiles are keys to this strategy. The report talks of Chinese development of ballistic missiles capable of homing in on aircraft carriers, and of lasers, high-powered microwave and particle beam weapons for use against space targets. Air and missile defenses are being strengthened.

The Chinese navy is building both surface warships and submarines at a faster pace than is the U.S. and is developing plans for aircraft carriers. Yet, Gates said during his presentation of the 2010 budget that, “the healthy margin of dominance at sea provided by America's existing battle fleet makes it possible and prudent to slow production of several major surface combatants and other maritime programs….We will delay the Navy's CG(X) next-generation cruiser program to revisit both the requirements and acquisition strategy. We will delay amphibious-ship and sea-basing programs…in order to assess costs and analyze the amount of these capabilities the nation needs.” The number of aircraft carriers will fall to 10 in 2012.

The U.S. Navy today has 283 warships, less than half the number during the Reagan administration 20 years ago. The budget calls for continued procurement of the proven DDG-51 Burke-class destroyers in lieu of the innovative DDG 1000 program, and possibly the CG(X). But warship construction will also tilt towards the smaller Littoral Combat Ship, and the total build rate will never give the Navy the 315 ships the admirals say are needed to fulfill global commitments. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO), told a meeting of the American Shipbuilding Association March 3, “The frank and honest assessment is that there are not the resources to build the ships in the Navy 30-year shipbuilding plan….not there by $5 to $6 billion a year.”

Advanced aircraft, naval shipbuilding, and missile defense are precisely the programs central to the military balance between major states; whether they are regional powers like Iran, resurgent rivals like Russia, or rising peer competitors like China. Yet these are the programs being cut. The immediate effect is somewhat masked by keeping older programs active and funding growth in some new, if less capable, projects.

The real impact will be longer term and cumulative as the shift away from high-end work reduces investment and innovation in the industry. If the strategic manufacturing base is to be maintained as the foundation of American preeminence in world affairs, and not take another crippling hit as it did when major programs were terminated in the 1990s, the fallacies in the Obama-Gates defense strategy and worldview must be addressed.