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Global Defense Procurement and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter by Bert Chapman (Review)

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Global Defense Procurement and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter by Bert Chapman (Review) Global Defense Procurement and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter by Bert Chapman (review) Steven J. Childs Journal of Advanced Military Studies, Volume 11, Number 1, 2020, pp. 242-245 (Review) Published by Marine Corps University Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/796228/summary [ Access provided at 24 Sep 2021 09:31 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Journal of Advanced Military Studies Global Defense Procurement and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. By Bert Chapman. Basel, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Pp. 396. $99.99 (hardcover); $79.99 (ebook). The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is among the most controversial U.S. defense procurement programs in Pentagon history. Originally envisioned as the more affordable “lo” to the “hi” of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, the system reflects the culmination of the Department of Defense’s culture of “jointness,” but in procurement rather than operations. From the program’s onset, it has been an ambitious endeavor to replace four at- tack and fighter aircraft models used by the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps with a single airframe, and with variants designed to operate from convention- al runways, aircraft carriers, and helicopter carriers or forward locations using short takeoff and vertical landing capability. As a fifth-generation fighter, this stealth airframe features internal weapons carriage and incorporates advances in fusing information through its sensor suite. On top of it all, the program relies heavily on international cooperation in the production process through a tiered partner arrangement. The scale of the program’s ambition is matched by its expense, with an overall cost that may reach as high as $1.5 trillion as the Pentagon seeks 2,400 aircraft with an expected per-unit cost of $115 million (p. 134). Despite the high aims, the production schedule has constantly been delayed and readjust- ed, as per-unit cost estimates climb ever higher. The fact that the program has seen 11 separate directors during 24 years is testament to its troubles (p. 356). Given its complexity and procurement woes, the program is a recurring target for defense budget hawks and critics who question the value of a fifth-gener- ation stealth fighter in a world where low-intensity threats do not require the survivability it brings, and where cruise and ballistic missile threats at the other end of the spectrum menace the short-range basing of tactical aviation. Critics advocate eliminating or reducing purchases of the F-35 in favor of greater reli- ance on legacy fighters. The crux of the issue for the policy makers in the United States and allied countries is whether the F-35’s $115 million price tag offers a substantial leap in combat effectiveness over the approximately $50 million cost of upgraded “fourth-and-a-half” generation fighters (p. 17). Given the size, importance, and controversy of the JSF, scholarship on the program is much appreciated, particularly approaches to the program in its totality, including international participants. In Global Defense Procurement and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, author Bert Chapman sets out to “provide a his- tory of the JSF from a comparative multinational perspective transcending the US-centric approach to the JSF” (p. 3). In this, he has written a useful work that provides a succinct and valuable overview of the experiences of program 242 Book Reviews Vol. 11, No. 1 participants. Using prose that is direct, generally clear, and heavily data driven, Chapman manages to tackle the complex nature of combat aviation in an ac- cessible package and convincingly argues that the F-35 will not be going away any time soon despite its cost and procurement hurdles. Organizationally, Chapman begins by outlining the common generational construct of classification for fighter aircraft since the advent of the jet age. Such a historical approach was refreshing, particularly for those who will find this volume to be among their first scholarly forays into the world of mili- tary aviation. Chronicling this evolution of combat aircraft helps the readers understand the context of the F-35, and specifically what qualitatively makes for a fifth-generation fighter versus the fourth-generation “legacy” (F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F/A-18 Hornet) and the fourth-and-a-half generation (Dassault Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon, F-15E Strike Eagle, F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, JAS-39 Gripen) mainstays of fighter fleets today. After reviewing advances in the field military aviation throughout the de- cades, the author considers the technical factors of geographic theaters that the F-35 would be the most likely to fight in. China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia are all included, with each country’s approximate order of battle, such as surface-based air defenses and relevant geographic and political characteris- tics. This helps frame the broader issues surrounding the particular technical elements of the program, or as Carl von Clausewitz contended the politics as “the womb in which war develops.1 Nonetheless, the end of this section relies heavily on a 2017 Heritage Foundation report to make the case that the exist- ing fourth-generation aircraft are insufficient to meet the needs of the Armed Services, with many of the legacy aircraft receiving a capability score of a 1 out of 5. Despite the book heavily relying on this assessment, the methodology is not made clear to the reader, with some sentences indicating that capability and age were synonymous, whereas other passages argue they are separate. Without greater exposition on the methodology, it is difficult to trust the inherently low scores. The author concludes the rest of the volume with piecemeal chapters on the biggest participants in the JSF program, starting with the United States and including Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom (UK), Japan, and a slew of other European buyers. These chapters are of the highest quality and greatest utility, and overall the work is very well-researched using a mix of defense news publications, think-tank reports, and a multitude of government publications and audits. Readers are given a sense of the domestic politics surrounding pro- curement in each country, along with the scope and the geographic distribution of production. As a matter of clarification and despite the title, the book does not specifically review multinational joint production programs, opting to give individual profiles of the countries that have or are endeavoring to purchase the Book Reviews 243 Journal of Advanced Military Studies F-35. For scholars of the defense industry, a brief comparison of the JSF expe- rience with F-16 coproduction would have been useful given the similarities in country participants and arrangements. Moreover, it would have been useful to see a comparison of the JSF program’s experience with prior joint fighter pro- grams, such as the 1960s era McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II fighter, and the controversial TFX (tactical fighter experimental) program. For the Europe- an cases of the UK, a comparison on the Eurofighter consortium would have also offered insight for scholars. Additionally, the problems associated with a lack of competition in the defense sector are briefly mentioned but not expand- ed on, and the topic overall could shed light on how the lack of competition adversely impacts the cost and schedule. Chapman concludes the work by noting that despite the challenges of ris- ing costs and close-range maneuverability compromises inherent in the design, the airframe performs well at beyond-visual-range combat due to its advanced sensors and stealth characteristics. It is also deemed essential for dealing with high-threat environments in light of Russian and Chinese developments of fifth-generation fighters, as well as advanced Russian air defense systems and their proliferation. Though not at a performance level of the F-22, the JSF is demonstrably better than the fourth-generation airframes that, for all their up- grades, cannot be made into low-observable platforms given the inherent nature of their designs. While an impressive volume in total, the work is dotted with a few inac- curacies. For instance, Chapman incorrectly writes that Lockheed Martin ac- quired Northrop Grumman in 1997, when in fact the attempted merger was blocked by the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice (p. 17). Some of the data presented in the many tables in the work list puzzling perfor- mance characteristics or facilitates odd comparisons. For instance, it is strange to see a table on U.S. fourth-generation aircraft purchased compare the General Dynamics F-16XL variant to more established fighters, such as the F-14 and F/A-18, even though the F-16XL was an experimental model that was never operationally fielded by the United States (p. 17). The inclusion of the Grum- man A-6 Intruder aircraft in the same table is also out of place, as this was clearly an attack aircraft and not a fighter. That said, these errata do not detract from the overall points advanced in the work. After reviewing the nature of combat fighters, the political context of its most likely combat zones, country-specific politics, and experience with the program, Chapman concludes that there simply are no other fifth-generation fighter options on the near horizon, including unmanned combat systems. With the exclusion of Canada, the international partners more or less have shown a propensity to proceed with the JSF to achieve a capability that is more survivable in contested airspace. Additionally, they have seen fit to do so with 244 Book Reviews Vol. 11, No. 1 consistently decreased purchase quantities given the cost overruns.
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