The Pentagon Paradox: The Development of the F-18 Hornet [Hardcover]

James P. Stevenson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1993

Did the U.S. Navy avoid Congress's explicit direction to "navalize" the winning design in a flyoff competition - by lying to Congress with the argument that the winner was not carrier capable - and then develop the losing aircraft into an even worse fighter for its carrier squadrons? To find the answer James Stevenson, an experienced aviation writer, dug through government files and interviewed key players to present this hard-hitting, behind-the-scenes account of the development of one of the Navy's current front-line aircraft. His investigation exposes the politics of Pentagon weapons procurement, a process that pits service against service, the military against Congress, admirals against generals, pilots against engineers, hard liners against reformers. This book provides a developmental history of the F-18 Hornet from drawing board to its results in Desert Storm. It is the story of a multi-billion-dollar aircraft-design war between those military officers who insist that America's interests will be protected best by sophisticated aircraft, even if America can afford fewer of them, and a group known as the "Fighter Mafia, " who claim that larger numbers have always won in warfare and that for equal dollars America can only produce greater numbers if each one is less sophisticated. He shows that by picking the YF-17 - and renaming the F-17 as the F-18 - over the clearly superior YF-16, the Navy antagonized the Air Force, Congress, and its own F-14 community, and sparked a major legal battle. Undeterred, the Navy took the light, cheap YF-17 and loaded it with technology and weight, which produced an F-18 that has less maneuverability, less acceleration, a range no better than the1952-vintage A-4, and costs almost three times as much as the F-16. From its first flight in 1978, the F-18 performance continued to degrade. Nevertheless, in 1992 the Navy asked for additional money to modify the F-18 as the F-18E/F. This request was in reality funding for a brand-new

Product Details

• Hardcover: 445 pages
• Publisher: US Naval Institute Press (September 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557507759
• ISBN-13: 978-1557507754
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,592,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 5 star information, 1 star analysis and presentation, March 2, 2008

By 

Dianne Roberts (Los Angeles, California United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Pentagon Paradox: The Development of the F-18 Hornet (Hardcover)

This is a difficult book for me to review, and a difficult one to read. Looking at all the other reviews, the good and the bad, they are all basically right.

As a naval officer with the designator responsible for aircraft acquisitions (although not personally involved, with the fleet instead) and a personal / professional interest in aircraft design this book aligns with my interests more than most any other. I expected a good history of exactly how the F/A-18 was developed, how the lightweight fighter competition went, how the acquisition process works, and a fair assessment of the actual F/A-18 fighter. What I got instead was the best history of all these things. I got the best history, because this is the only history of all of these things. And in an absolute since, although I think the topic is highly important and the data presented is very rare and thus invaluable, this is a very bad history. I actually agree with the author and the lightweight fighter mafia, but as one reviewer put it there's an argument for the lightweight fighter and this book isn't it. The author truly writes a confusing, sometimes deceptive, and way, way too cynical book that in the end feels more like a strange, biased hit piece on the F/A-18 plane rather than a balanced assessment of the acquisition process, how it can be reformed, and just how the F/A-18 development went.

The Pentagon Paradox is basically that the more is promised of a plane (or any military system for that matter) the heavier, more complex it gets, the more it costs, and the less it actually performs. This is relatively well known and the book will convince you of it if you didn't know already. But the author just gets vindictive about it, seemingly taking out his anger on the subject of his book, instead of actually offering much real advice on how to reform the system. It's like kicking the cow for not lactating lemonade. By definition the current system is perfectly designed to produce exactly the results it produces. The acquisitions process does indeed sound like a nightmare in need of improvement. It involves huge sums of money, the careers of senior military officers and government officials, turf battles between the multiple bureaucracies and projects, and the politics associated with congressional oversight. As a result, in the budget battle, program advocates drastically overstate (i.e. lie) what they can deliver, unrealistic specifications are written, the system gets funked up in development in backwards attempts to meet those misguided specifications, too many people have a say in the development making it slower and worse because it tries to meet too many demands, and we do end up with systems that are relatively wasteful of taxpayer funds. But like Churchill said it's the worst system except for all others it would appear. The author weakly advocates more prototyping as a solution, and I agree, but doubt that this will solve the problem. Indeed it didn't, the F-16 and F/A-18 were both prototyped and this tome is mostly dedicated to ripping the F/A-18 to shreds. So where does that leave us? I don't think the author even realizes in the bigger picture he's writing against his own solution.

There is a lot of good information in here about a lot of topics: air to air combat history, missile performance, air force doctrine, fighter design and performance, development of many different fighters, systems acquisition (especially the politics and bureaucratic infighting involved), the Gulf War, and the state of Naval aviation. A lot of this information simply isn't available elsewhere and thus I recommend this book for anyone whom would have professional interest in the above categories. I can barely scratch the surface here and so won't, do yourself a favor and buy the book.

But a lot detracts from the book. The author is frequently whiny, confusing, and sometimes deceptive. He lionizes the lightweight fighter mafia perhaps too much, not critically evaluating anything they say. I agree with them mostly, but still think you should not grant them and their pronouncements God like and inviolate status the way he does Boyd, Pierre Sprey and Chuck Spinney. His presentation of facts is in depth and hugely detailed, but extremely spotty and selective; A huge amount of detail about some of the trees, not anywhere near enough on the forest. By cherry picking his trees he can paint a picture that while not untruthful, is not the whole truth either. One of the biggest standouts for me was the lack of any real comparison of just how the YF-16 and YF-17 performed in their fly-off for example. It also smacks of bias. Anything that can possibly be said bad about the F/A-18, whether they are mutually exclusive critiques or not, is presented as the truth. Basically nothing good is said of the plane. The F-16 on the other hand is always faultless.

Despite being a book that suffers from many flaws this is an important book for many in the military and aerospace sectors to read and take to heart.

End of my review.

As an adjunct the lone one star review got challenged to back up his assertions of twisted logic and factual mis-representations. These bothered me too, so I compiled a list. Read on only if you're interested.

- Despite a rather lengthy discussion about minutiae detail as to why the Navy rejected a Navalized F-16N, the factor of twin engine versus single engine is not brought up! Instead he spends most of the time claiming the Navy killed the F-16N based on a specious argument about its tail clearance angle. The F-16 features the same F-100 engine as used on the F-15. In another section of the book he disparages the low reliability of the F-100 engine and how acceptance flights of the F-15 experienced as high as a 15% failure rate for the engine. Although the F/A-18 is powered by a significantly more reliable F-404 engine the point is made. The lack of jet engine reliability coupled with blue water operations where rescue was unlikely in case of engine failure (and pointless in the North Atlantic Cold War battleground where the pilot would die from exposure within minutes of hitting the water anyway) was the primary reason the Navy wanted the actually slightly inferior performing but still highly capable twin engine YF-17 for its flight decks and not the otherwise superb single engine YF-16. In the event of a single engine failure the F/A-18 still has a decent chance of getting back to the ship, the F-16 has none and the pilot is likely lost too. This is the same reason that Canada, Finland, and Australia chose the F/A-18 over the F-16, all three countries have relatively vast wastelands which are difficult to perform search and rescue in and can easily kill downed aircrew if not rescued quickly. In a 389 page book with reams of notes and appendices the author doesn't even pay lip service to this primary reason the Navy chose the YF-17 but instead rips the decision for tens of pages citing secondary and tertiary issues only to make the Navy and the hornet look bad. The meticulously documented data of the tail clearance issue is an example of depth at the expense of breadth to a point that the much bigger picture is entirely missed. This was of course a decision of its time. The Navy had traditionally operated single engine aircraft, but there was a massive increased focus in safety and force preservation starting in the late 1950's which eventually drove the preference for twin engine Navy aircraft. Recently, improvements in engine reliability have allowed (some would say forced) the Navy to accept the single engine F-35, but not without uneasy reservations from many Naval Aviators.

- He claims that all weather aircraft are not actually all weather aircraft because the number of sorties in the first Gulf War dropped with increasing cloud cover. This is the result of two things. First, and least importantly in this particular case, all weather does not mean that the aircraft can actually perform 100% of its jobs with 100% efficiency regardless of whether it's a clear sunny day or the inside of a hurricane on a moonless night. Even all weather aircraft will be reduced in efficiency in adverse weather (and pilots will certainly be hampered by it too, having to spread their concentration out over more factors, and thus system performance of plane + pilot will decrease because of the pilot), but they can operate in those types of weather as opposed to non all weather aircraft. Second, and more importantly here, allied doctrine dictated no operations below 10,000 feet since it wasn't felt necessary due to the danger posed by AAA and because we were fairly confident of overall military superiority, thus why risk pilot lives to engage enemy ground forces not in contact with our own? So when there was cloud cover below this floor the sorties were usually ineffective because they were constrained by doctrine, but not by the performance of the airplane. Yet the author happily and deceptively slides the blame to the aircraft.

- Spends a large part of the book, rightly I think, describing the incredibly poor performance of the Sparrow missile in Vietnam and the reduction in fighter dogfighter performance associated with large radars and complex fire control avionics. Although he does this so repetitively throughout the book that it grows shrill and tiresome. In the same vein and often at the same time he disparages the F-14 (by no means a light weight fighter, much more it's antithesis) and the Phoenix missile, plus the NAVAIR bureaucrats who championed it. Later on though when the same pro F-14 bureaucrats, most likely defending their projects turf, testify before congress against the F/A-18 because of the Sparrow's inferiority to the Phoenix their treatment by the author shifts... Read more ›

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How the Pentagon Aquistion plans fail, April 13, 2003

By 

Charles H. Berlemann Jr. (Oak Habor, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Pentagon Paradox: The Development of the F-18 Hornet (Hardcover)

First off Mr. Stevenson has a very big axe to grind and he does it with this book. If you can put that out of your head when you read this and understand it for what it is. That is how, by using the F-18 Hornet as an example, the Pentagon wants to buy simple but so many people put so much into what that item needs to do that it become so costly and overbudget that it is cheaper to continue to fund it and buy it then it is to trash it and start again. This book is dated to a point in that it was written just after the First Gulf War. But the ideas covered in how the Pentagon fails to buy its weapons right is still true. The biggest part of the axe to grind is about half way through the book when the reader finds out that Mr. Stevenson was very involved with this project as an Undersecretary in the late 70's going into the early 80's. So he knows to a point how some of the bitter congressional fighting went. He also finds a way to bite back as some of the (at the time) current Defense personnel that stood in his way. If you can over look this axe then this is a very good book. When added with how he has recently written about the A-12 Avenger II fiasco it does well as to provided some ideas on how to fix the purchasing of new weapons sytems and platforms.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars confusing, comprehensive and engrossing look at defense acquisitions, July 19, 2007

By 

Rottenberg's rotten book review (nyc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pentagon Paradox: The Development of the F-18 Hornet (Hardcover)

"The Pentagon Paradox", subtitled "The Development of the F-18 Hornet", goes beyond that, describing how our military wastes money on equipment paradoxically overpriced and underperforming. Not the most expensive or least efficient of America's warplanes, the F-18 stands out because it was intended to reverse the trend towards expensive and complicated planes, but ultimately became that kind of plane.

James Stevenson's book is almost immediately partisan - he's got strong opinions about the shared Air Force and Navy addiction for aircraft needlessly sophisticated and too expensive to procure in reasonable number. Paradox begins in during the Viet Nam war, when we learned the bitter lesson of technology's limits. Despite the poor performance of the F-4- easily the world's most sophisticated fighter- both services commit millions to develop even more sophisticated successors. Instead of the USAF F-15 or the Navy's Tomcat, a cadre of officers known as "The Lightweight Fighter Mafia" press for a small low-cost fighter that can be built and maintained in large numbers while still preserving our technological edge. By 1977, ACEVAL/AIMEVAL exercises firmly demonstrate weaknesses in America's new warplanes. Knowing that they will never be rid of these expensive new jets, the Light-Mafia push for a light-weight fighter to "compliment" them.

The eventual result is the "lightweight fighter competition" between the GD YF-16 and the Northrop YF-17, designed to select the LWF for the USAF and the Navy with the apparent intention of selecting the same plane for both services. In hindsight, given bitter inter-service rivalry, a smarter course would have been to have both services evaluate each aircraft in parallel. Instead, the USAF gets the first pick, leaving the Navy with the unenviable choice or either a "navalized" version of a rival service's choice or the loser of the competition. While the Navy's dilemma may sound more unpalatable than impenetrable (what's so bad about shipping out with carrier-ready F-16's? The USAF accepted versions of the Navy's Phantom and managed to do quite nicely), the title "Paradox" says it all. The Navy went out of its way to choose the loser and has been trying to hide the fact of its cost ever since. Stevenson shows how the Navy bent its own rules to make the F-18 carrier-ready - using double standards in such areas as landing speed, range, weight and "spotting factor" (which measures how much space an airplane will occupy while on a carrier deck) which should have given the F-16 the edge. The Hornet is so unsuitable that, according to a study cited by Stevenson, it would have cost us more to select it for both services than both selecting the F-16 for the USAF and developing a new plane for the Navy.

The story doesn't end with the Hornet. Instead, the Navy will then spend billions in the early 1990's on a new Hornet, the F-18E. In some ways, the F-18E is simply a radical modification of older Hornets - visually similar, 90% common avionics, with marginal improvements in weight, range and maneuverability. In terms of actual structural differences (a redesigned wing and other control surfaces and new engine) but mostly because of the billions spent developing it, the "Super Hornet" is an entirely new airplane. Unsurprisingly, the Navy and the Defense Department prefer to characterize the F-18E as a modification because this will allow the program to bypass many procedural hurdles de rigueur for a totally new airplane, even though it will cost more to "modify" the Hornet than it did to create it.

"Pentagon Paradox" is ambitious - the F-18 is only part of that story in which our military stridently campaigns for weapons it doesn't need, paid for with money it can't spare. Besides the Hornet, Stevenson also tells of the airplane it was meant to "compliment" - the too-expensive F-14, an airplane that also benefited from selective bending of rules. (The Navy acquired the F-14 after rejecting a navalized version of the F-111 deemed unsuitable for carrier aviation. Stevenson shows how the Navy F-111 exceeded its parameters no more egregiously than the Tomcat.) The USAF doesn't get off lightly either - they choose the F-16, but can't make too strong a case for the small fighter lest it endanger the F-15. Eventually, the F-16 also succumbs to the "Pentagon Paradox", becoming an overweight, high-priced warplane with more sophisticated weaponry than needed. Stevenson also attacks the logic of stand-off missiles like the Sparrow, the reason-de-etre of sophisticated fighters like the F-15 and the Hornet. Sparrows were notorious heartbreakers in Viet Nam. Eventually tweaked to reliability, the Sparrow will never make beyond-visual-range intercept a reality, and all successful kills are made within the same range as shorter-ranged Sidewinder. Sparrow is a big player in the Hornet's story, because the Navy's insistence on Sparrow capability for the F-18 belies its role as a practical and economical aircraft.

But Stevenson goes beyond the Hornet - he also covers the many undisclosed technical blunders of Desert Storm, and reveals the hollow promise of exclusive airpower in other past wars. In his painful deconstruction of airpower, Stevenson harks to names like Pierre Spey, air combat visionary John "forty-second" Boyd and defense analyst Chuck Spinney, all attacking the military's single-minded obsession with big and heavy warplanes from different angles. Stevenson also covers the almost mind-numbing bureaucratic and political maneuvering that shaped our current generation of tactical fighters (and also shaped a number of paper projects that never survived the planning stages). At times, Stevenson nearly succumbs to the Paradox himself, and there are stretches that are nigh unreadable as he navigates the bureaucratic and political morass of defense acquisitions. Stevenson also tends to inject more cynicism than necessary. (As an aviation analyst, was he really that shocked to learn how unrealistic the F-15's stated specs are?) That said, Stevenson's work is heavily footnoted (perhaps excessively so - but at least he's got research to back him up, and we never doubt that he stands by what he says). "Paradox" may be inaccurate, but it is incendiary, compulsively readable and it deserves an answer.