Customer Reviews

The Pentagon Paradox: The Development of the F-18 Hornet

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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 to heralded brainchildren behind the amazing F-14 who should know better than anyone else just how bad the hornet is. So the hornet is bad for having the Sparrow because it is heavy and complex, but it is also bad for not having the more complex and heavier Phoenix. The F-14 is also apparently able to out-dogfight the hornet all of the sudden, a claim made by the F-14 constituents at NAVAIR and one he gives validity to. But if this is true, that the heavy, complex and underpowered Tomcat can outdo a smaller, lighter, higher thrust to weight ratio and lower wing loading fighter in a dogfight, it is something that would invalidate his every argument for the lightweight fighter that he has built his entire book on. The common thread is criticism of the hornet, deserved or undeserved, not logical consistency.

- He argues against any radar in a lightweight fighter other than a ranging radar for the pipper of the gun fire control system and a bare minimum of avionics. Later he blasts the F/A-18 though for lacking an additional avionics suite for its radar that would improve its air to surface mode, a radar he argued earlier it shouldn't even have in the first place.

- He makes comparisons that are often incomparable and usually further cloud the issue. To continue his proof against all weather fighters he compares the total sorties generated by the allies in the winter months of WWII (with no all weather fighters) in 1944-45 to the total sorties flown in the Gulf War, and since more overall sorties were flown in WWII during a similar period (and in worse weather) than were flown during the Gulf War all weather fighters are thus bad and don't actually "buy you anything." Comparing different wars is one thing, but in this case the basis of the comparison being total sortie generation rate is invalid. By the winter of 1944-45 the allies had been fighting for three to six years (depending on America or Britain respectively), were spending over 40% of their GDP on the war, had tens of thousands of planes, so on and so forth, conditions that amply contribute your ability to generate sorties and that didn't apply to the Gulf War. So what does it prove that more sorties were flown in WWII per month than in the Gulf War? Nothing. This isn't even comparing apples and oranges. But this false comparison is the basis for a whole extended argument against all weather fighters. At other points he literally compares how many B-17's we could buy for one F/A-18 (not including crew costs.) This is apparently because tonnage of bombs dropped is what counts and the tens of B-17's we could afford per hornet would thoroughly outclass the one F/A-18. I only mention crew costs, to say nothing of fuel costs, because these things would count in how many B-17's you really could afford to operate per hornet and would drastically skew his comparison. So his comparison is not just merely pointless, it is in fact inaccurate. Yet unsurprisingly it makes the hornet look bad again. He also talks about how many F-86's we could buy per F-15 at another point. There is a logical fallacy of many small steps that make sense individually (i.e. comparing one fighter to an earlier one, then comparing that earlier fighter to an earlier one, and so on and so forth to make a chain that you can eventually compare the first and last fighters against each other; only comparing non-deterministic systems like fighters is not commutative) but do not make sense taken together. For example, to go one or two steps further with the author's reasoning, do you realize how many Sopwith Camels we could afford per F/A-22 right now? Would our plentiful fleets of affordable lightweight Sopwith Camels clear the skies of enemy MiG-29's??

- Because the F/A-18 "only" scored 2 of the 33 fixed wing air to air kills in the Gulf it was clearly a bad air to air fighter according to the author. This is his entire argument based on the combat results. But this is obviously not the whole story! How many F/A-18s were in the air versus F-15s, Tornadoes, F-16s, F-14s, Mirage 2000s, etc? How many of those F/A-18s were given the mission of and armed for shooting down enemy fighters, i.e. escort or Combat Air Patrol? (Next to none, those missions went to the F-15s, Tornadoes and F-14s, which sought the clear the MiGs before they could reach the hornets and falcons. The Hornets were bombing ground targets and not exactly going out of their way to down MiGs, the 2 MiG-21s the hornet did shoot down were while laden with tons of bombs and on their way to another target, a not un-impressive feat.) How many Iraqi aircraft came up to fight in the airspace where they would be in proximity to allied hornets? All of these are salient factors that are ignored. Worse, the F-16 (his championed plane as the model of what we should do) scored no air to air kills, so applying his own logic it must be an even worse air to air fighter, a claim he unsurprisingly doesn't make.

- He compares the speed of the F/A-18 and the A-7 and comes away with the conclusion that there is no speed advantage to the F/A-18 when it is loaded with stores versus the A-7 and that therefore the clean max speed of the hornet is meaningless. I don't know the relative speeds (and he oddly doesn't actually state them himself either despite the fact that he has no problem providing reams of data in other situations) but I will grant him that it is true. But does his argument "miss the point?" I will put it this way, would a pilot who had just dropped a ton of bombs over a hostile target and thus alerted the enemy to his presence and intent which aircraft would he prefer to make his egress with, a clean configured F/A-18 with twin afterburning turbofans or a clean single engine, non afterburning A-7 that is well known to be slower in that "meaningless" configuration?

- Although bogus comparisons between WWII and modern fighters are often made, there is amazingly very little comparison between the F/A-18 and contemporary fighters in a broad sense. Yes, the F/A-18 is compared to the F-14 in the interceptor role briefly (and on paper), as well as compared briefly again with the A-7 in the ground attack role (and again on paper), and as a multi-role fighter it comes up wanting. This is a valid argument against multi-role fighters and already well known, the old adage "jack of all trades, master of none" immediately coming to mind. However there is a large amount of data of the F/A-18 did this or the F/A-18 did that, either in actual combat or testing, indicating that the results were poor, but not comparing how well the F-16 or other contemporary planes performed in testing or combat at the same missions, data that certainly exists. The lack of this data being presented can be ostensibly explained that this is a book about the F/A-18 and not the other planes. But it can just as easily be misleading. We don't know and his book thus conveys far less useful information and understanding than it could have. If little Johnny scores 45% on an Algebra test is he an idiot? If that's all that's mentioned most people would say yes. Well, how did the other kids do? Was the average 95%, or did the teacher write an incredibly difficult test and was the average 35%? Did the hornet perform poorly in combat because it didn't destroy every target it was assigned, or did the fog of war (Clausewitz's inexorable "friction") mean that most planes didn't perform perfectly or as advertised either? This comparison is left out, and the silence is deafening. In fairness to the author though I feel compelled to point out that he does actually do a good job of talking about one plane, the A-10, which certainly did perform well in the Gulf War and makes a convincing case for it.

- On Page 270 he shows that in the Gulf War it took on average 72 sorties to destroy a bridge, and thus claims a completely ridiculous 1.5% sortie success rate, clearly meant to imply poor weapon systems performance. But this is deceptive in the extreme and assumes that each sortie was defined as some lone warrior plane sent up with the intent and capability of destroying the bridge all by itself, that it should have destroyed the bridge all by itself, and that it took 72 tries to destroy the bridge for a 1.38% (1 divided by 72, rounded up to 1.5%) success rate. In reality the strike package against a bridge would consist of multiple aircraft designated to actually strike the bridge in order to make sure the thing went down and without the need for a second strike package. Included in this package would be the nucleus of strike aircraft for actually hitting the bridge, fighter escort to protect the whole package, possibly SEAD aircraft to engage enemy SAM and AAA and clear the air defenses ahead of the strikers, AWACS assets to give the strike package situational awareness and provide control, reconnaissance aircraft to follow up the strike and provide Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) plus tankers for the whole package and can thus easily approach dozens of aircraft. This is not bad aircraft design (in fact the author prefers and argues for single role aircraft!) or poor system performance but it just is what is necessary to drop a bridge, protect yourself, and evaluate if you actually did it. To report this fact in a completely misleading and incorrect way to imply poor combat performance of weapons systems furrows eyebrows as to exactly what the author's point is.

- Read Page 297 for a good example of having it both ways. At first the author talks about how completely and utterly ineffective the Gulf War air campaign was, citing only one point of information in a vast ocean of data as opposed to any overview or summary data to show the whole picture. (Although the air campaign was not that effective compared to the ground campaign somewhere in his gloomy analysis of how poorly the military and its equipment worked during the Gulf War is also the minor detail that we actually won the war with less than 200 combat fatalities.) But apparently this completely incompetent bombing campaign is also blamed for somehow destroying Iraqi healthcare and the food supply, which weren't even targets, and more amazingly doing so after the war was over. Quoting verbatim from that page: "Yet as reported in Aviation Week & Space Technology, at one location, 'only 10 of 100 oil storage tanks were destroyed, and postwar Iraqi fuel supplies are so great that gasoline is still cheap' . . . some of the strategic bombing accomplished nothing more than the postwar demise of health and food services for the civilian population." Or could it be that after the Shia uprising at the end of the war Saddam denied food and adequate medical care to suppress his enemies, which is the normal explanation of any starving group most anywhere on the planet. We don't actually lack food, but around the world we do have people in power willing to starve their enemies. This is not some bizarre after-effect of what the author would have you believe is a bungling air war that couldn't tie it's own shoes. It was the policy of Saddam Hussein. But why bother putting that blame on him when it could just as easily (and inaccurately) be laid at the feet of the US military, the equipment it buys, and the way it buys it? The author does the latter, disingenously in my opinion.

- After explaining away the Gulf War victory as Pierre Sprey did as a complete collapse of Iraqi morale due to being exhausted after the Iran-Iraq war and thus not really an allied victory in one chapter, he later castigates the development of the F/A-18E/F in the next by asking, if we won the Gulf War against the fourth largest military in the world with the original hornet what's the more "potent potential threat" out there than the Iraqi military was in 1991 to justify an upgraded hornet? Well, China for one, but by his own reasoning one day practically any military, North Korean, Iranian, Chinese, or otherwise, would be more potent than Iraq's in 1991, argued in order to deny a successful victory to allied forces, but when it suits his purposes to extol the vaunted and vast Iraqi military in order to deny the ostensible purpose or justification Super Hornet the next day he does so without blinking an eye. All these things made it very hard for me to accept what the author says on face value.

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.

"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.

As a former military officer, I was curious about this book upon hearing about it from a friend in the Naval aviation community. I have seen factual evidence of this kind of procurement first hand. In fairness, all branches do it. The Army bought off on a very substandard Bradley (quasi-armored) for political reasons, for example. As I have no way of researching Stenvenson's facts, I keep an open mind but gauge that against my personal military experiences. After reading this book, I have to admit allegiance to the lightweight fighter mafia. America cannot afford 50-90 million dollar hyper complex fighters in limited numbers against aggressive factions that possess superior numeric air forces. I believe that the military should invest in a reality check as to where our dollars are being thrown. The quote "Where is Naval Aviation going?" really deserves in-depth consideration. Careers in the upper military ranks are being bolstered by people manuevering for political and monetary gain shamefuly at putting the lower ranks and our country at risk. Between the aerospace industry, the lobbyists, and the obscene amount of money involved, it shouldn't come as a shock that politics and corruption are rampant. I enjoyed the book and have already made multiple recommendations to other military officers and friends in the V-22 Osprey community.

This book takes an indepth look at the F-18 history. But it does not assume that what the Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy claims is necessary true.

The book gives a behind the scenes look at what really happened with the F-18 and how it became an aircraft less than it could have been.

Anyone who wants to feel good about the F-18 should avoid reading this book. This tome is for those looking for what really happened and want a basis for understanding the process by which the military provides systems that often fall far short of their claims.

James Stevenson does an excellent job of not only showing how the Pentagon is just another government bureaucracy which squanders taxpayers money but also shows how the US Navy deliberately chose to procure an aircraft they knew was inferior mainly because they didn't want the hated US Air Force dictating what aircraft the Navy should fly. Shows the ugly corruption that places interservice rivalry and favored defense contractors ahead of America's security. Every elected official and concerned taxpayer should read this and see the dark underbelly of America's military.

I enjoyed reading this book. As a former Naval Officer charged with building/maintaining the infrastructure Naval Aviation uses coupled with my engineering background I find the historical aspects of Naval aviation to be a very interesting topic.

While in the Navy I also became a Level II (Level III is where the big money is spent) contract officer which accorded me first hand experience of the acquisition process. I can relate the the issues and concerns which the author alluded to with procurement. What the author does not talk about is the issue of time which in major acqusitions is usually long. Time appears to be a major issue in the Navy's reluctance to prototype the F/A18E/F. Given the issues the Navy was having with the F-14 in the late '90's I'm not surprised that NAVAIR pushed the E/F Rhino through. Did the Navy really have an alternative? Especially for the F/A-18F. No more Tomcat, no more Intruder; what does the Carrier task force have left for power projection?

Overall I found the book to be laced with facts and statistics which was enjoyable. I found the book lacking on conclusions and/or reccomendations. I can see how people have issues with the book but I can say I did not find the author making the same conclusions in some of the other reviews. I read the book rather fast (2 days) and probably need to read it again.

Since I left the Navy and now work in a fortune 200 company, I can tell you that the issues we faced in the Navy are very similar to those faced by corporate America. Big projects suffer from scope creap and also seldom meet the requirements/needs for which they were approved. Individuals make careers on getting them completed and supporting the completion of the project regardless if it really works. I offer for reference any ERP project at a fortune 200 firm. But is that the point of the book?

I can say after reading this book that I am much less a fan of the F-15 and F-14. I was never a fan of the F-18 only because of the "jack of all trades, master of none" philosophy. I would have enjoyed this book much more if the author took about 10 pages to write up his conclusions and then add a chapter which would allow for his perspective of what a Naval Air wing should look like. I found myself wanting for concusions or better yet, a specific point to the book. What should I learn from this book?

That said I would reccomend this book to people who are:
1. Interested in the development of modern fighter aircraft
2. Interested in interservice rivalry challenges
3. Interested in understanding inertia against change in large beauracracies

I would not reccomend this book to people who are:
1. Interested in making a case for the F-18, F-15 nor F-14
2. Interested in getting insights to improving the procurement process
3. Interested in debating issues/solutions facing our naval aviators and NAVAIR Strategy.

If you are interested in modern aviation, this is a good read.

My favorite quote: "Analysts are seen just above traitors..."

The author argues forcibly for the case of lightweight fighters, and tells the story of the development of the F/A-18 and F/A-18E. His work would be far more convincing if it was not extremely rich in factual errors, misrepresentations of the facts, and twisted logic. Read it because it gives the views of some insiders; but don't trust it.