Alternate history: Boeing won JSF

[Scott Kenny]

I never liked winner takes all. F-32 proceeds minus EODAS and EOTS? I think that is a terrible idea. JSF needed to key in subsystems separate from the base airframe to make this alternative feasible. NG simply had a much better big picture design irregardless their airframe choice literally looks nothing like X-35. Same issue with the ATF winner, the F-23 would have been a simpler design to build and maintain, but NG won the competition on the overall big picture design. F-23 with MAW, 2D tvr, and the bombbay innovations that were in F-22 would have not been possible in the winner takes all outcome.

F-32 only makes sense if you scrap F-32B and allow NG to proceed with F-35B as the -B winner and as a competitor against F-32C for future orders. That way USAF and USN end up with F-32A and F-32C, but USMC is able to choose its own JSF offshoot. F-32B was simply a loser by design. It had no chance. But F-32A and F-32C really needed the goodies found in the F-35 program to justify their existence. I know everyone loves supercarriers, but the USN really would have benefitted from distributed airpower in cruisers with STOVL and expanded helicopter hangar packages. Losing a supercarrier is basically losing $100 billion in one swoop, whereas hybrid cruiser carriers would probably be 1/10th of that. The biggest difference is no longer treating carriers as mobile islands for extended operations. That required relinquishing prolonged bombing campaigns to the USAF and a reduced number of supercarriers. Not sure we still aren't headed that route as both supercarriers and LHDs are ill equipped to fight future drone wars.

Smaller carriers are grossly less capable than the big ones. FFS, the QE-class have HALF the air wing of a Nimitz, despite being ~3/4 the displacement.

 

[MadRat]

If the platform they sit on cannot survive a future war then you fought the wrong war.

 

[stever_sl]

It's mentioned in one of the JSF threads on here that the original idea for the X-32 programme was to fly a couple of prototype ASTOVL systems. LM had the shaft driven fan, MDD had a gas driven fan, and I think someone else had a third candidate system. The idea was that after testing, there'd be a competitive design phase for a production aircraft (CALF?) using the preferred system.

But when it turned into JAST, LM had exclusivity on the shaft driven fan, and the gas driven fan didn't work. Which left lift engines or vectored thrust for Boeing and MDD/Northrop/BAe to pick from. And as it turned out, the shaft driven fan was a better fit to the requirement.

I worked MDC's ASTOVL (after our brilliant Harrier 21 alternative got crushed by internal politics) and we were acutely aware from our own studies, as well as just ordinary common sense, that the shaft-driven lift fan (SDLF as it was known then) would produce a lighter, faster, cheaper configuration than anything that could be done with the gas-coupled lift fan (GCLF) but we were forced to go with the latter when the Government gave the SDLF award to Lockheed and made us take the GCLF. There was tremendous frustration in our group, and for awhile our management considered Company funding for doing an SDLF design in parallel with the GCLF one, but at Corporate level it was decided that we had to just go with what the Government had given us. We suspected something fishy at the time but had no idea that the whole ASTOVL was nothing more than a cover story for the secret program with Lockheed that DARPA and later the Services had been funding for years, to mature critical STOVL technologies, specifically the lift fan. So it was always planned that Lockheed would have years of risk reduction to bring to the eventual JAST/JSF competitions, and it worked out perfectly for them in the end. For years the whole ASTOVL story was kept on the government's own JAST/JSF website, and luckily for historians those pages have been preserved here, if anyone wants to read about it: https://web.archive.org/web/20061112005516/https://www.jsf.mil/history/his_prejast.htm

 

[danwild6]

Considering the major malfunctions Boeing has had since they were defeated in the JSF Competition, I do not see how they could possibly have made a success of the X-32. Their three most public failures being the 737 Max, KC-767, and Starliner along with the CEO leaving under the 737 Max cloud. Terrible examples of "Wrong Stuff".

Yeah it's a damn shame they let McDonald-Douglas merge with Boeing that's were a lot of the company's problems come from.

 

[stever_sl]

Yeah it's a damn shame they let McDonald-Douglas merge with Boeing that's were a lot of the company's problems come from.

That merger was over a quarter of a century ago. If Puget Sound management couldn't fix any incoming problems in that length of time, it's a shocking revelation of their own weakness and incompetence. It's always convenient to have someone to blame things on, but after awhile the excuse wears pretty thin. (Full Disclosure: I retired from Boeing in 2016 and watched the entire collapse from within. The former CEO from PS wrote one of my recommendation letters for becoming a Technical Fellow. I know what I'm talking about! )

 

[danwild6]

I'd agree they've had plenty of time to sort this out but management culture has a habit of continuing in a certain direction for decades until radical change i.e. Jack Welch at GE (not entirely positive direction for the company).