November 1999 Vol. 82, No. 11 By Peter Grier print-friendly

F-22 Survives a Stealth Attack After weeks of dispute, Congress sustained the F-22 fighter with a new $2.5 billion appropriation. "I'm satisfied that the F-22 is funded enough to keep it going," said Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee and the F-22's key backer. Lawmakers voted the funds as part of a $267.7 billion Defense Department appropriation (not including military construction) for Fiscal 2000. The fighter program had been in turmoil since midsummer, when a small band of House appropriators, led by Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), launched a surprise attack on its production budget. The House chopped out $1.8 billion needed to buy the first production F-22s and approved only $1.2 billion for research. In contrast, the Senate had approved the full $3 billion request. F-22 backers warned that the House, though it claimed to be seeking only a "pause" in the program, was actually killing it. Senate and House negotiators on Oct. 6 shook hands over a compromise. Technically, it postpones fighter production (a House demand) from 2000 to 2001. However, it protects the production option by providing the following amounts: $1.9 billion in development funds, available not only for research but also to build six so-called "test" F-22s in 2000. $277 million in advance-procurement funds, to buy or build long-lead items for 10 more F-22s to be procured in 2001. $300 million in reserve funds, intended to cover contract-termination liabilities but also usable, in time, for aircraft. A final go/no-go decision on production will come in 2001 and will depend on whether the F-22 during the next year meets an array of test goals for critical areas such as avionics. The Senate-House agreement specifically precludes production until the avionics software is successfully flown in an F-22. "The testing language is quite strong," Lewis said. The Air Force wants the F-22 to replace the F-15, which will have been in service for 30 years by the time the Raptor becomes operational. USAF already has spent more than $20 billion to develop the F-22. It plans to produce 339 of the fighters, at a marginal cost of $85 million per fighter.

Funny Figures in the F-22 Fighter Flap "With a most recent cost estimate of $200 million for each plane, we need to be asking if [building the F-22 fighter] is our most important priority." So said Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, just after his panel zeroed F-22 production funds last July. Lewis and other critics repeatedly cite the $200 million figure. As the chart shows, per-aircraft cost can be calculated in nine ways. None reaches the level of $200 million. The highest figure is $184 million, but it is attained by using inflated dollars and including nonrecurring costs such as development and military construction. Critics frequently imply that $200 million is the Raptor's "sticker price"--what it will cost to buy each new F-22 from this point forward. The chart shows that flyaway cost (excluding sunk costs and inflation) comes to $85 million per F-22-not much more than what would be spent for a new, but far less capable, F-15E.

F-22 Fighter Unit Cost	Base Year 1990 Dollars	This Year 1999 Dollars	Then-Year Inflated Dollars
Flyaway Cost + aircraft + management + nonrecurring start-up + allowance for changes	$70 m	$85 m	$98 m
Procurement Cost + all of the above, plus ... + contractor services + support + other government costs	$84 m	$101 m	$117 m
Program Acquisition Cost + all of the above, plus ... + research & development + military construction	$142 m	$172 m	$184 m
	Source: USAF, Fiscal 2000 Budget -Robert S. Dudney

Ryan Says Easing of Optempo at Hand Long effort will pay off in the next six months, with such improvements as the Air Expeditionary Forces and the long-awaited pay raise finally coming to fruition, Chief of Staff Gen. Michael E. Ryan told airmen Sept. 1 on a visit to Peterson AFB, Colo. The stand up of the new AEFs will not reduce total optempo, he said. But it does promise predictability, leading to increased use of the Guard and Reserve. "As we use Guard and Reserve forces more, it lessens some of the active duty tempo," said Ryan. "It puts predictability and stability in the lives of our folks, unless we have another Major Theater War." Operations in Kosovo, and recovery from the wear and tear thereof, could delay the coming of positive AEF effects. But it will be felt in the field by next spring, said the Chief. Effects from the pay raise will likely appear faster. The new 4.8 percent increase is expected to take effect Jan. 1. "These changes will have a positive effect," said Ryan. "Our people don't say, 'Show us the money,' but in some cases we ask so much from our folks that this kind of need-that they have to take care of their families monetarily-is really important." Families, after all, play a big retention role in today's military. Most members of the service are married and thus have more than themselves to think about when making the decision to remain in service. "The family has a vote, a big vote, on whether they stay or go," said Ryan. On other subjects, Ryan said that troops wouldn't have to wait six months to see the payoff from greater integration between space and air forces. That is already here. In Kosovo, space was involved across the whole spectrum of operations, in areas such as surveillance, intelligence, reconnaissance, navigation, weather prediction, and communication. U-2 information, for instance, was beamed back to the US, interpreted by "reachback" personnel, and kicked right back to people in-theater. "Integration is the process of making sure all the systems we have within our military capability interact with each other in a synergistic way, in an additive way, and that they are more than just a sum of their parts. In Kosovo we saw that in spades," said Ryan. "Space has become integral to all the operations we do; that's why we call ourselves an aerospace force," said the Chief. DiBattiste Talks Recruitment The new undersecretary of the Air Force, Carol A. DiBattiste, traveled to Randolph AFB, Texas, this August to talk about something that relates to her past life and future duties: recruiting. A former Air Force "mustang," who served in both the enlisted ranks and as an officer, DiBattiste spent three tours as a recruiter on active duty. A lot has changed since 1991, when she last got a new recruit to sign on the dotted line, DiBattiste admitted. But she still thinks she can help the Air Force get out of the recruiting "pickle" it's in. The service will be about 2,000 recruits short this fiscal year, she noted. Senior leadership is worried and is pursuing a number of efforts to turn the situation around. Solution one: More recruiters. The service needs "more top-of-the-line production recruiters," she said. "That's who sold me on the Air Force." Solution two: Enhanced prior-service recruiting. "They are qualified, they are skilled, they've received the thousands and thousands of dollars of training that we've pumped into them," she said. Solution three: More enlistment bonuses in more career fields. The service started offering such bonuses in more than 100 specialties last year. But in the end, it all comes down to the recruiter promoting the service, she said. "We're different from private industry," said Undersecretary DiBattiste. "We offer something different. We offer someone the ability to serve his or her country in a way that private industry does not."

Clinton Doctrine? What Clinton Doctrine? In the wake of the successful NATO operation to oust the troops of Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo, President Clinton earlier this year proclaimed a new emphasis on humanitarian intervention that some experts labeled the "Clinton Doctrine." "Whether you live in Africa, or Central Europe, or any other place, if somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background, or their religion, and it's within our power to stop it, we will stop it," Clinton said at the time. Then came East Timor. After Indonesian­backed paramilitaries began rounding up and killing civilians in their restive province after it voted for independence, the Administration suddenly changed its mind. The US would support a multinational intervention, said US officials. But only a small number of US troops would actually take part. The world is a messy place after all, and the US can't intervene everywhere, said Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. "You know, my daughter has a very messy apartment up in college," Berger said on Sept. 8. "Maybe I shouldn't intervene to have that cleaned up. "I don't think anybody ever articulated a doctrine which said that we ought to intervene wherever there's a humanitarian problem. That's not a doctrine, that's just a kind of prescription for America to be all over the world and ineffective," Berger continued. Berger later apologized for comparing his daughter's housekeeping to the slaughter of innocents in a long-troubled part of the world.

Delay Hits New Standoff Missile The Air Force announced Aug. 27 that it is pushing the decision on low-rate production of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile from 2001 to 2002-in effect, delaying the program for a year. The move is necessary because subcontractor Teledyne is moving slower than planned on engine development, due to design changes in the engine main bearing and digital fuel control, among other things. In addition, configuration changes made by prime contractor Lockheed Martin have set back some airframe part deliveries, and the JASSM program is facing the unforeseen need for two extra development flight tests to calibrate data for the flight control and autopilot systems. JSF Competitors Girding for Battle Both competitors in the Joint Strike Fighter program are proceeding apace, company officials said late this summer. Lockheed Martin will end the concept demonstration phase on time and within budget, company representatives said Aug. 25. In February, the firm had predicted a $100 million cost overrun on its JSF program. It has since restructured its effort-planning to build only one cockpit, instead of three different ones for the three JSF variants, for instance. Lockheed's X-35A is about half completed and will fly next year in the configuration of the Air Force's conventional JSF variant. Boeing, for its part, is also on time and on budget, with 80 percent of its concept demonstration work already finished, according to Frank D. Statkus, vice president and general manager of the program. Boeing's X-32A conventional takeoff and landing demonstrator has been completely assembled, except for the Pratt & Whitney engine. Its X-32B short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing demonstrator should be done by the end of the year. The Boeing demonstrators are slated to fly next summer. Meanwhile, the Navy has decided to ask program competitors to increase the range of their naval JSF variants by 100 miles, to a 600-mile combat radius. Adding the range means adding more weight--already a concern for the carrier-based JSF, which will be heavier than its land-based counterpart.

Survey Shows NATO Close on Serb Damage Estimates NATO did a fairly good job of estimating the amount of damage it inflicted on Serb forces in Yugoslavia, but the alliance never used a running count of Serb equipment destroyed as a measure of its success, according to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, US Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark. Clark briefed reporters in Brussels Sept. 16 on the results of an exhaustive survey intended to determine just how effective NATO was in striking Serb forces in Kosovo and southern Serbia during Operation Allied Force. He said NATO aircraft destroyed 93 tanks, 153 Armored Personnel Carriers, 339 military vehicles, and 389 pieces of artillery or mortars. The figures are "actually pretty close" to those NATO was quoting toward the end of the bombing campaign, Clark asserted. (See chart.) An assessment team, led by USAF Brig. Gen. John D.W. Corley, looked at pilot reports, gun camera footage, satellite and aircraft surveillance imagery, and eyewitness accounts, and some 35 experts made a direct, on-the-ground examination of 429 bombing sites in Kosovo. Corley attributed the discrepancies in numbers to several causes: multiple hits on the same targets, hits on Serb decoys, relocation or covering of damaged vehicles, and an "exceptionally conservative" approach to the tally, which imposed "extremely rigorous" standards "to validate a successful strike." Some hardware probably destroyed by NATO aircraft was not included in the count because it could not be satisfactorily confirmed as destroyed, he said. Only those items that could be positively deemed "totally destroyed, nonsalvageable" were counted, Corley said. This survey is based on data from an on-going 12-month Air Force effort to systematically understand the air campaign's effects and glean useful lessons for future operations. The survey also fed into the Pentagon's quick-look lessons-learned effort, but Clark's briefing was spurred in large part by press reports questioning NATO's vehicle-damage figures, given the relatively few hulks found in Kosovo after Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic capitulated. The reports also quoted Serb leaders claiming a vastly smaller number of vehicles destroyed than NATO figures suggested. NATO destroyed about a third of Serbia's 350 or so tanks, more than a third of its 430 to 450 APCs, and more than half of its 750 mortar and artillery pieces, according to Clark. He said he had "no way of knowing" what Serb casualties were. In monitoring the withdrawl of Serb forces from Kosovo, Clark said NATO has noted that "they're missing a good deal of their equipment." In some cases, NATO pilots deliberately attacked known decoy sites so they could not be used for subsequent Serb "ambush traps," Corley noted. There was clear evidence that the Serbs had cleaned up the battlefield, and Corley said this was part of an effort on their part to make NATO's strike planning and assessment job tougher. Scars on the ground found at many bombing sites indicated that very heavy objects had been dragged away and removed from the scene. Witness reports showed some damaged vehicles were covered with tarps. Some new pieces were brought in during the conflict, making the counting job harder still. Col. Ed Boyle, who planned and coordinated the airstrikes at the Combined Air Operations Center in Vicenza, Italy, also explained that, because Serb military vehicles were often intermingled with civilian ones, and because the weather was bad about half the time, the Serbs "did have periods during this entire campaign when they could freely move around the battlefield, move equipment, and reposition it." Despite having what Corley described as "the most robust intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability seen in any conflict to date," the battlefield could not be monitored nonstop. Boyle noted that "it was not a perfect world out there, where we could see the battlefield 24 hours a day and be able to prevent them from moving equipment." Clark said the NATO strategy was two-pronged. One part was a "strategic attack line operating against Serb air defenses, command and control, [army troops and militias], their sustaining infrastructure, and supply routes and resources." The other was a "tactical line of operation against the Serb forces deployed in Kosovo and in southern Serbia, ... who were doing the ethnic cleansing." t was imperative that this latter target set get priority, Clark asserted, since ethnic cleansing was the principal motivator of NATO's intervention in the first place. However, it was necessary to pursue "both lines of operation to be successful," he said. Clark added that the operation was a success. "The conflict ended on NATO's terms. Serb forces are out, NATO forces are in, the refugees are home, a cease-fire is in place. So in that sense, we succeeded in this conflict," he said. Clark conceded that the tank-plinking effort was an "extremely controversial part of the campaign," but that, "from the very beginning, we said we didn't believe in battle damage bean-counting as a way of measuring the effects of airpower." Wholesale destruction of the Serb army was not necessarily a goal of the tactical effort, Clark said. Rather, "what we had been successful in doing was keeping it in hiding, under wraps, ineffective. ...What we found was that the Serb use of heavy equipment was quite constrained as a result of the airpower." The measure of success in the tactical effort is clear, Clark asserted. "We destroyed and struck enough," along with more strategic targets, to get Milosevic to accept NATO's terms. Clark also asserted, without offering evidence, that another factor influencing Milosevic's decision to capitulate was that "he had ample evidence to conclude that, had he not conceded when he did, the next step would have been the long-awaited and much-talked-about NATO ground effort." -John A. Tirpak

Target Category	Pre-War Estimate of Serb Arms	Reported Destroyed (June 1999, Initial BDA)	Confirmed Destroyed (September 1999, After Survey)
Tanks	350	110	93
APCs	430 to 450	210	153
Artillery/Mortars	750	449	389
Military Vehicles	N/E	N/E	339
	Source: NATO. N/E means Not Estimated. BDA means Bomb Damage Assessment.

Last Engine Completed at Kelly An era ended at Kelly AFB, Texas, when the San Antonio Air Logistics Center completed work on its last F100 engine. Kelly workers first started to maintain the F100 engine, which powers F-15 and F-16 fighters, 26 years ago. "We received the first F100 at Kelly in 1973," said Curtis Mendez, F100 production manager. "It came in for unscheduled maintenance." The F100 flow peaked in the early 1980s at 27 engines a month. In recent years the workload has averaged about eight engines a month. "Whole up" work includes borescope inspection, break down into modules, disassembly, module repair and overhaul, replacement of electronic harnesses as required, reassembly, and testing. Customers also sent individual engine modules-inlet fans, gearboxes, augmentors, and other sections-to Kelly for work. In the last 10 years Kelly had done more and more module maintenance, while the number of whole engines declined. Following the 1995 decision to realign work at Air Force Air Logistics Centers, the service decided to keep 24 percent of its F100 work as a core workload. In a public­private competition, Oklahoma ALC won the right to perform F100 maintenance at Tinker AFB, Okla. Kelly's F100 workforce began closing out accounts and moving the last of its tools and equipment to Tinker on Sept. 1. "We finished up what was here," said Mendez. "Anything that was inducted here was completed here. This F100 was the last engine on work order."

Marines "Can't Take Care of the Air Force" The Air Force believes other US services need to take on some additional operational duties while USAF reconstitutes from the war in Kosovo, but a senior Marine had a response: No. The Air Force's Chief of Staff, Gen. Michael E. Ryan, recently argued the USAF case in front of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the Marines say their own workload is so heavy that they can't help out. "I don't think the Marine Corps right now can take care of the Air Force," said Marine Lt. Gen. Frederick McCorkle, deputy chief of staff for aviation, on Sept. 9. "We've got our own problems." Many Marine air units are overworked, said McCorkle. Radar-jamming EA-6B Prowlers have been in heavy demand, for instance. During Operation Allied Force 17 of 20 Marine EA-6Bs were deployed.