Dominant Logistics
Why "Fly Before You Buy" Doesn't Work
This is a purely informational piece on the realities of the
"Fly Before You Buy" concept. This concept is the result of a phenomenon
that continues to plague the military in all areas - learning the wrong lessons.
Proponents claim that FBYB results in lower costs and better equipment. The
reality, as you will soon see, is that FBYB not only increases costs dramatically, it
results in less capable equipment, and it guarantees technological obsolescence.
First, let's look at the actual concept of FBYB, then we'll take a look at a couple of
programs from the perspective of FBYB, and finally, we'll look at the lessons we SHOULD'VE
learned that we didn't.
The Concept
The basic concept of FBYB is that a new aircraft should pass through an extensive
prototyping phase that will address all of the various aspects and challenges of
developing and building the aircraft. The jist of the concept is that a new design
should be continually prototyped until the design is set and stabilized in a working
design. Along the way, production issues will be address but no actual production
facilities are created until the design is fully stabilized. While at face value,
this concept appears to make perfect sense, there are a number of fundamental flaws in the
theory.
First is the issue of costs. As a rule, prototypes tend to be very expensive because
they are entirely hand made and this requires a very high level of skill. Material
costs also tend to be high because instead of parts being manufactured on an assembly
line, they are all made by hand until the specs are determined. Another cost issue
arises from the time frame involved. In this stage of development, virtually all
costs are fixed. What this means is that regardless of how much progress is or is
not made, there is a set amount of money that the program will cost every year it is in
the prototyping phase, and the military gets absolutely nothing for these dollars.
The longer this phase lasts, the more money flies out the window. I believe
the term I've seen you use for it is the R&D Racket or something on those lines.
The second major problem is that the more complicated the design, the longer and more
thorough the prototyping phase will have to be. But as has already been mentioned,
the longer this phase lasts, the more unproductive money is spent. Consequently,
FBYB includes an automatic pressure to reduce the capabilities of the product to reduce
the prototyping timeframe. There is no other way to reduce these preproduction costs
with FBYB.
A third issue is that FBYB guarantees technological obsolescence. The fundamental
concept of FBYB is that a given, fixed design be established and proven before production
facilities and contractors are brought into the mix. Let's say we come up with a
good design and we fix everything so we are ready for production. At a minimum, our
technology is already going to be a year old to account for evaluating the technology,
getting it into the prototype, and fully testing it. In most cases, we will actually
be two to three years behind, but we're going to look at the best case scenario of one
year. Now, we have to line up production funding, line up contractors to supply the
goods, and build a production facility. Here again, we're looking at another two to
three year time frame but let's be daring and say we can pull it off in one year.
Actually getting all of the components built and assembled into an aircraft
typically takes about two years. But these are only the aircraft going to the
training units; it'll be another two years before the aircraft we're actually going to use
hit the flight line. So, under our best case scenario, the aircraft hitting the
flight lines will be using six year old electronics; in most cases, the tech stuff will
actually be closer to ten years old. And that's for the newest of the useable
aircraft, it only gets older from there.
The Myths of Fly Before You Buy: The F-16 Falcon
For some strange reason, people have a tendency to associate FBYB with the F-16 which is
extremely ironic. Of all the aircraft developed in the last 40 years in the US, the
F-16 is furthest removed from the entire FBYB concept but it was developed by the creator
of the concept, Maj. Boyd.
The truth about the F-16s development cycle is available in a variety of places but the
basics of what happened go something like this:
Various programs went on in the mid to late 1960s evaluating the concept of returning to
smaller and lighter fighters instead of the heavier fighters the Air Force was buying and
developing. These studies culminated in the initiation of the Lightweight Fighter
program (LWF) in 1971. Eight companies signed on with designs and this was
ultimately reduced to two. Each of these two companies produced two prototypes of
their design and flight testing ensued. In total, the YF-16 completed roughly 100
hours of flight tests, the lowest amount of testing of any recent fighter developed.
It was plagued by problems including an uncommanded idle problem where the engine
would lose power without warning. The F-16 went straight into production based on
the results of these limited tests. But not before the fuselage was lengthened, the
wings were enlarged, and a radar was added. Production was initiated before ANY of
these changes were tested.
As would be expected, the early F-16s had numerous problems that had to be corrected early
in the program. But all of these problems were adequately addressed and the result
was arguably the best fighter ever built, and it also happens to be one of the cheapest.
But there can be no doubt whatsoever - regardless of Boyd's involvement in this
project, there was no relationship whatsoever between the F-16 and the FBYB concept.
Fly Before You Buy in Action - the F-22 Raptor
Only one fighter program has ever really come close to being an example of what happens
when you fly before you buy, and this is the F-22, a case study in how to turn fighter
development into an absolute debaucle.
Like the F-16, the F-22 was born from a number of concept studies that culminated in a
fly-off between two prototypes. But unlike with the F-16, it was determined that the
F-22 would actually undergo extensive testing before a production contract would be
issued. All told, over 1100 hours of flight testing were to be completed before
production, with another more than 2000 hours of flight testing after production began.
This was hands down, the most extensive flight test program ever planned for a
fighter. The 1100 pre-production hours is more than three times the TOTAL flight
test hours of the F-16 and the F-15 COMBINED.
Due to a variety of factors, costs were a problem from day one. Much of this can be
attributed to the fact that the Air Force simply was trying to get too much too fast out
of this aircraft technology wise. Another was the fact that the program was forced
into an extended development and testing cycle with the previously cited fixed costs that
come with that. But as was also mentioned, with FBYB, the only option available for
reducing current costs was to scale back the program, and this is exactly what happened.
Few today remember that the original F-22 was to have three radar sets for expanded
coverage. It was also supposed to have an Infrared Search and Track system. It
was originally supposed to have more bombing capabilities. A two seater version was
planned and another version was proposed for the Navy to replace the failed A-12.
All of these items were scrapped because there was no other way to reduce costs.
But even with these changes, many are raising the perfectly valid point that much of the
technology in the F-22 is already obsolete. But as mentioned early, how could they
not be? When the configuration of the aircraft has to be fixed and tested prior to
production, you are locking yourself into technology that will be a minimum of a decade
old by the time it goes into service. Many point out that the F-35 is more
technologically advanced than the F-22 and they're correct - but the F-35 won't even hit
production for another five years and won't enter service for at least another two, and
this is assuming there are no delays.
The Lessons We Should've Learned
The first lesson we missed is that there is a direct correlation between the length of
time it takes to develop an aircraft and the costs of developing the aircraft.
Development costs are relatively fixed and as such, increase at a consistent rate
with time. The longer development and testing takes, the more expensive it will be,
and consequently the more expensive the final aircraft will be.
Lesson two is that the only way to reduce these costs prior to production is to scale back
the capabilities of the aircraft. Because we are flying before we buy, we can't
reduce testing because that would defeat the purpose of our efforts. But those are
the only non-fixed costs that we have, they're the only costs that CAN be cut.
Consequently, we scale back on capabilities to reduce the number of tests we have
to do. There is no other way to reduce pre-production FBYB costs.
Lesson three is that every day we mess around dealing with number one and number two is
another day towards technological obsolescence. Technology in modern times is
evolving at a rate of one major advance every year or so. Following our previously
listed timeframes, FBYB means that there will be a minimum of six but probably ten major
advances in technology between the time we lock in our design and the time it enters
service.
What this means together is that we cannot fly before we buy without significantly
increasing total costs. With pre-production costs fixed, the more testing we do, the
more pre-production costs we have. Plus we will also have to address obsolescence
issues early on in the program so we are forcing additional costs there. And the
only way to limit these problems is to decrease the capabilities of the aircraft.
With FBYB we are guaranteed of an end product that has fewer capabilities at
greater costs that is also technology obsolete. And this is if everything goes
RIGHT!
People are correct to use the F-16 as the model for how aircraft should be developed but
this is specifically because we DIDN'T FBYB. The F-117 is another example of this.
These programs had virtually no development costs. To put it into
perspective, if we were to still build 750 F-22s, the development portion of the total
cost of each plane would cost more than the entire total cost of the current Block 50
F-16, and it would be about equal to the projected cost of the future Block 60.
That's how much it cost just to test the F-22! So how did the other
programs do it?
They started by limiting the initial aircraft to the most fundamental elements that were
required. This sort of goes along with the old proverb of how do you eat an
elephant? One bite at a time. The F-16 didn't even have radar in its original
design; the F-117 never even GOT radar. This allowed for initial testing to focus on
the core elements of the aircraft itself - the electronics would be worried about later.
The wild ideas about what we ULTIMATELY wanted the aircraft to do could be dealt
with later. Instead, we took just that first bite. This also allowed for our
testing of the fundamentals to be very aggressive because that's all we needed to do.
They may have had virtually no capabilities but we knew they were sound aircraft
and had the space for us to give them capabilities.
Once you know the basics are okay, you can head into production. Whether or not the
electronics are any good doesn't matter; you're going to be replacing them in a couple of
years anyway, whether they are absolutely great or if they completely suck. Why
waste the time and money to see which it will be? You'll still find out anyways when
the pilots get their hands on it and they're going to be a helluva lot more honest about
it than the contractors.
Once production has started, the development team can work on what will be the REAL
electronics package. The first couple years of production run are nothing but
training aircraft anyways. This gives you two years to come up with a good system
and have it ready for the aircraft that matter. You can nab the first aircraft off
the line for testing the system. Plus, all the money you saved from not wasting your
time is money that can be put back into improving the aircraft. Or, as our Air Force
calls it, the F-16C.
You get a better aircraft, at lower costs, with more capabilities, and more advanced
technologies. Either way, it'll take you about ten years to get from point A to
point B. But one yields a much better aircraft.