F-35 bad "selling" by Steve O'Brien

[artik]

I've stumbled upon a lecture given by Steve O'Brien for Israeli Air Force Forum...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLFSAZ7Yz3Y#t=185

It was a "sales" lecture although IAF already bought some of F-35s...

I've started listening to such a lecture and I was surprised by how unprofessional it is... i.e. you can sell this way maybe to general public but not to IAF.

Let's start, opening quote:

visual engagement arena is driven by high bore-sight missiles, it is incredibly lethal environment and in the air-to-air regime what you want to avoid any VVR or dog-fighting

Dude?! Have you opened a region map before you got there to sell BVR and avoid VVR?

Although, the note that VVR weapons are especially lethal is correct, if you are in Israel... it is very slim chance that in air-to-air engagement you can avoid VVR combat... The airspace is so dense that you takeoff and you already see the eyeballs of your opponent near the border.

F-35A would have 18,500lb of fuel internally compared to F-16 having only 7,200 internally...

1st of all telling I have 18,500lb vs 7,200 fuel is almost telling F-15C has 14,000 lb internally vs F-16 7,200. F-35's engine is much more powerful and thus fuel hungry and the plane much heavier...
2nd you forget IAI designed CFT which adds only ~6,000lb of fuel with minimal penalty to performance and radar... which makes "just an negligible difference"

I'm not trying to tell that the range of F-35 is poor. But telling that IAF F-16I's range isn't as good as of F-35's just gives you a bad taste.


It just felt so unprofessional, populist and cheap... and he is  Lockheed Martin's VP of business development...

I hope that their technical guys are much more pros...

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Usually the most successful salesman is he who lies the most. This is of course true when the customer doesn't really know the details of the sold item enough to be critical. But this is often the case, especially when the selling is done to the highest tier of management who are usually clueless to anything else except statistics.

[Vulcan]

Usually the most successful salesman is he who lies the most.

Only if you're in insurance or used car sales.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Only if you're in insurance or used car sales.

Oh it works also in software sales. Especially when you tie the customer to a 2 year contract with no bailout option after the BS sales pitch. Our competition does that all the time and get away with it. You see by the time the customer finally realizes he was fooled he has spent way too much money and resources to admit to others they made a mistake.

Devilishly genius actually.

[Saxman]

Oh it works also in software sales. Especially when you tie the customer to a 2 year contract with no bailout option after the BS sales pitch. Our competition does that all the time and get away with it. You see by the time the customer finally realizes he was fooled he has spent way too much money and resources to admit to others they made a mistake.

Devilishly genius actually.

Apparently it works on the US military, too, because THEY bought into the F-35.

[Brooke]

I bought an F-35.  Now I feel cheated.

[Nypsy]

[Easyscor]

Oh it works also in software sales. Especially when you tie the customer to a 2 year contract with no bailout option after the BS sales pitch. Our competition does that all the time and get away with it. You see by the time the customer finally realizes he was fooled he has spent way too much money and resources to admit to others they made a mistake.

Devilishly genius actually.

The salesman will unabashedly claim his job is to make the sale and now it's the engineer's job to make it work.   

[MrRiplEy[H]]

The salesman will unabashedly claim his job is to make the sale and now it's the engineer's job to make it work.   

Yeah something like that. Except that in most cases they never get it to work. First thing they do is make a press release on the 'honeymoon week' announcing how awesome and good improvements the client is going to get from it. Then when the customer starts noticing something is wrong,  first they say you need more training. Paid training. Then they say you need new servers. Paid servers. Then they say you're using it wrong. And in the end the customer is head over heels deep in the system, spending fortunes in man hours and funds and would make a fool of himself to go public with the failure. Or like typical, the executive level is satisfied with the reports they get from the system and ignore the fact that grass root level is completely suffering and spending multiple times more time to the system than necessary.

I can see how in some ways a military acquisition can be somewhat similar to that process.

[Gman]

Anyone see those pics on the net of the Israeli jets hitting Syria last week?  On Dec 7 a bunch of F15s and F16is hit a target right by the airport in Syria.  They used Popeye missiles.  This isn't the interesting part.

The interesting bit is the 2 SA-11 or Sa17 missiles fired at the F15s.  You can plainly see in the video/pictures the missiles heading right for the F15s contrails.  Then the F15s make a gentle simple turn.  The missile contrails follow it for about 20 degrees, then stop, and keep flying straight as arrows off into the sunset.  There is a pile of talk about it out there on the defense and aviation sites right now.  Incidentally, an older SA-3 battery did hit one of the inbound Popeye missiles, and there are pics out there of it as well.

Maybe Israel and the "super ECM" technology that has been rumored for a few years works well enough that the F35 becomes a moot point?

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/four-israeli-f-15s-dodged-syrian-missile-fire-to-attack-urgent-targets-a28cff11323d

[artik]

Anyone see those pics on the net of the Israeli jets hitting Syria last week?  On Dec 7 a bunch of F15s and F16is hit a target right by the airport in Syria.  They used Popeye missiles.  This isn't the interesting part.

The interesting bit is the 2 SA-11 or Sa17 missiles fired at the F15s.  You can plainly see in the video/pictures the missiles heading right for the F15s contrails.  Then the F15s make a gentle simple turn.  The missile contrails follow it for about 20 degrees, then stop, and keep flying straight as arrows off into the sunset.  There is a pile of talk about it out there on the defense and aviation sites right now.  Incidentally, an older SA-3 battery did hit one of the inbound Popeye missiles, and there are pics out there of it as well.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/four-israeli-f-15s-dodged-syrian-missile-fire-to-attack-urgent-targets-a28cff11323d

How reliable the source is?

Several points:

- if Popeye is used to strike a site near Damascus International Airport you don't even need to enter Syrian airspace. The distance to Lebanese border is ~60km which allows you to shoot Popeye from Lebanon and even from Golan Heights.
- There are two few available pictures/videos to confirm the story released to the public...

Maybe Israel and the "super ECM" technology that has been rumored for a few years works well enough that the F35 becomes a moot point?

The point is that recently IAF increased the amount of ordered F-35s, but , F-35 that is going to be provided to Israel isn't F-35A but rather F-35I (A derivative) and one of the most important changes is an ability to install Israeli ECM.

I think having F-35 with its stealth + Israeli ECM would make it very powerful strike/penetration platform. I think having 1 or 2 F-35I strike squadrons would give a nice strike capability boost as it may protect against some threats that ECM may not work well against them.

Also as far as I know how IAF and IAI work... 90% of the chances that they going to strip some US stuff very soon and add Israeli avionics + develop some addons like CFTs to increase the range, that later would be retrofitted to main-line F-35. (Similarly to IAI CFTs for F-16).

[MrRiplEy[H]]

How reliable the source is?

Several points:

- if Popeye is used to strike a site near Damascus International Airport you don't even need to enter Syrian airspace. The distance to Lebanese border is ~60km which allows you to shoot Popeye from Lebanon and even from Golan Heights.
- There are two few available pictures/videos to confirm the story released to the public...

The point is that recently IAF increased the amount of ordered F-35s, but , F-35 that is going to be provided to Israel isn't F-35A but rather F-35I (A derivative) and one of the most important changes is an ability to install Israeli ECM.

I think having F-35 with its stealth + Israeli ECM would make it very powerful strike/penetration platform. I think having 1 or 2 F-35I strike squadrons would give a nice strike capability boost as it may protect against some threats that ECM may not work well against them.

Also as far as I know how IAF and IAI work... 90% of the chances that they going to strip some US stuff very soon and add Israeli avionics + develop some addons like CFTs to increase the range, that later would be retrofitted to main-line F-35. (Similarly to IAI CFTs for F-16).

Except adding bulky fuel tanks to a F-35 will most likely destroy some of its stealth properties so it's easier said than done. Much more demanding task than the hump-back modification of the F-16's.

[bozon]

Maybe Israel and the "super ECM" technology that has been rumored for a few years works well enough that the F35 becomes a moot point?

ECM is not just on the aircrafts - it is a layered system with various means on the attacking planes, support planes and on ground. When operating in western Syria, the IAF can bring so much ECM to bear that they can do what every they want in Syrian airspace - and that is even without bringing out the most advanced ECM in order not to expose them.

In such an ECM-saturated environment, F35 does not bring much to the table. The farther you need to go, the more ECM support you lose and the self ECM/stealth of the planes becomes more important. The F35 will be really useful only for strikes on a significant range from Israel where they will have to be independent. The IAF does not need an airforce of F35s, only a squadron or two. As Artik mentioned, the great allure in the F35 to the IAF and Israeli defence industries is that it was promised that the IAF will be allowed to install its own gizmos on the fresh planes (meaning, some custom adjustments on the production line to support them). The US is already backing up a bit on that promise and the IAF will be forced to get the planes with some unwanted regular USAF components.

btw, that article on the website is just a compilation of not very good guesswork.

Except adding bulky fuel tanks to a F-35 will most likely destroy some of its stealth properties so it's easier said than done. Much more demanding task than the hump-back modification of the F-16's.

normal (or special) DT can work. You do not need stealth 100% of the time from takeoff till landing. In long distance strikes, part of the way to the target can be flown without stealth and you can use DT in that part.

[Vulcan]

Yeah something like that. Except that in most cases they never get it to work. First thing they do is make a press release on the 'honeymoon week' announcing how awesome and good improvements the client is going to get from it. Then when the customer starts noticing something is wrong,  first they say you need more training. Paid training. Then they say you need new servers. Paid servers. Then they say you're using it wrong. And in the end the customer is head over heels deep in the system, spending fortunes in man hours and funds and would make a fool of himself to go public with the failure. Or like typical, the executive level is satisfied with the reports they get from the system and ignore the fact that grass root level is completely suffering and spending multiple times more time to the system than necessary.

I can see how in some ways a military acquisition can be somewhat similar to that process.

I exactly know how you feel. I work for security vendor and our competition is like that. We have one competitor that overinflates their performance significantly, and another who claims they invented everything (the apple of security products) and charges 3 x as much as us.