Delete comment from: Elements Of Power
Let's take your rephrasing of my 'strawman' argument at face value for a start.
First you mention schedule, cost, and performance as important variables. Thus criticism of programs that completely blow their schedule and cost goals, and perhaps have their performance goals reduced, even by small margins, are open to criticism on these grounds, correct?
Second, you mention alternatives twice and you are invoking the '50s when there were multiple contractors with many designs to keep Boeing honest. That model is correct but breaks down when either purposefully or as collateral damage DoD precludes alternative designs and even alternative contractors from the mix.
Ref "ignorami": does that include the GAO, all of whose evaluations of the F-35 program have been far more accurate than those of the program itself? Does it include the guys who wrote the QLR from within the program, which was fodder for the kind of Sweetman articles you evidently felt compelled to ridicule? Does it include the people within the program who write the last SAR, the analysis of which Bill was pilloried for without anyone factually refuting his claims in a 400 comment thread on Ares?
Finally, just because I am argumentative:
-- Ref the B-70, it's first flight was 5 years after the Atlas and about 3 years after the Titan II, so ICBMs were hardly a surprise that cancelled the program. Your thesis that ICBMs invalidated manned bombers also fails when the later B-1 and B-2 are considered. I also believe the history is that Kennedy and McNamara cancelled the B-70 over the objections of Lemay and you gloss over the revolt of the admirals as well in protest of the B-36. So much for consensus and the idea that everything was cancelled from within DoD.
-- The prop flying wing, first flight 6/46, and the jet flying wing, first flight 10/47 bracketed the B-36, first flight 8/46. The B-52 didn't fly till 4/52, much later than any of these planes. The flying wings were B-36 competitors, not B-52 competitors.
-- Here's a line from the National Museum of the US Air Force fact sheet on the F-108 "The North American F-108 was designed as a very high speed (Mach 3) interceptor and escort fighter for the B-70 "Valkyrie" bomber under development at the same time." So no, not just an interceptor.
Apr 19, 2012, 10:50:04 PM
Posted to The B-52 Turns 60: What IF? (Part 3)