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High-tech fighter field needs diversity

The way things are going, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter could be the only manned warplane being assembled in the U.S. by 2013.

That’s called putting all your eggs in one basket.

The U.S. has never been here before. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is staking the country’s future on a single aircraft that hasn’t even experienced the rigors of operational service.

The F-35 is at an early stage in its flight-testing program. Yet Gates is committed to buying 2,456 planes in three versions, with other nations purchasing perhaps 2,000 more.

The last combat aircraft built in such big numbers was the F-16 Fighting Falcon, which remains in production for overseas users. But the F-16 was offered with a choice between two engines. The worldwide F-16 fleet is divided between planes with Pratt & Whitney power plants and those with General Electric motors.

Two successive administrations have resisted a second engine for the F-35. Democrats and Republicans alike want every F-35 to rely on the Pratt & Whitney F135 turbofan. They don’t want to fund the alternate General Electric F136.

One plane, one engine: So far that’s not a problem, but if something goes wrong with the F-35 fighter or the F135 turbofan engine, the Pentagon won’t have a Plan B.

Limiting choices isn’t good for airmen or the Air Force. Relying on a single type of manned combat aircraft with a single type of engine also poses questions about the future of America’s bedrock scientific and technological capabilities.

Does the U.S. want to limit the production of fighters to a single plant, the Lockheed Martin (formerly Lockheed, formerly General Dynamics, formerly Consolidated) building in Fort Worth, Texas, where most F-16s were built?

What will happen to the assembly plant operated by Boeing (formerly McDonnell) in St. Louis, once the undisputed focal point of American fighter know-how? What will happen to the knowledge about fighter design vested there?

C-130J Hercules airlifters will still roll off the line at the F-22 Raptor assembly plant operated by Lockheed Martin (formerly Lockheed, formerly Bell) in Marietta, Ga., but — again — what will happen to the knowledge about building fighters that resides there?

If the U.S. is going to rescue its high-technology skills in fighter design, it must divert funds from low-tech Air Force programs that aren’t necessary, such as the OA-X light attack program, the C-27J Spartan Joint Cargo Aircraft. Forget counterinsurgency. The country should end the pointless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and get ready for a big fight with a serious adversary.

About some of the companies cited above: They were named for real people, aviation pioneers from a past when American technology led the world. Most of those companies are gone because, years ago, the U.S. allowed too much consolidation in its aircraft industry. It’s not too late to avoid making the same mistake in the engine-making sector.

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Dorr is An Air Force veteran. His e-mail address is robert.f.dorr@cox.net.

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